Smarter automation, greater compliance control: Avalara product updates for October

Avalara Product Pulse: What’s new at Avalara

Avalara Product Pulse is our regular update on how we’re evolving tax and compliance to help businesses move faster, reduce complexity, and stay ahead of change.

Tax compliance is full of manual drag. Teams spend endless hours chasing exemption certificates, tracking down transaction details, switching between disconnected systems, and conducting repetitive tax research. When everyday compliance depends on constant manual effort, tax teams turn into operational bottlenecks and lose time that should be spent on strategic growth.

In October, Avalara introduced updates built to eliminate that friction. Leading the way was the general availability release of Avalara Aviator, the agent hub for tax and compliance that brings purpose-built AI agents into multistep tax workflows, providing controlled execution combined with deterministic tax intelligence and audit-ready accuracy. Alongside Aviator, October saw real-time vendor data validation and key enhancements to financial systems.

Aviator, the agent hub for tax and compliance

Avalara Aviator is the agent hub for tax and compliance, bringing purpose-built AI agents into your workflows to execute complex, multistep tasks while you stay in control.

Orchestrated by Avi, specialized agents combine the speed of AI with 20 years of regulatory expertise, so users get:

24/7 execution. Avi orchestrates specialized agents that monitor, recommend, and execute tax research, exemption certificate management, reporting, and return preparation around the clock, turning days of manual work into minutes of strategic review.
Proactive compliance. Agents continuously monitor your transactions and certificates, flagging economic nexus thresholds, anomalies, missing documentation, and filing discrepancies before they become penalties.
Audit-defensible accuracy. Every decision is backed with direct tax code citations, detailed audit trails that provide the exact rules used in transactions, and human approval gates to ensure complete visibility across your workflows.

Backed by Avalara’s deterministic tax engine and 20+ years of regulatory expertise, the result is less time spent chasing data or navigating systems, and more time focused on strategic decisions. Learn more about the team of agents.

Validate payee data at the source with Avalara Real-Time TIN Match and Avalara Bulk TIN Match

Inaccurate payee data is one of the most common causes of year-end filing chaos. It can lead to IRS penalties, notices, and unexpected backup withholding obligations. The IRS transition from its legacy FIRE system to IRIS makes proactive data validation even more critical, because IRIS enforces schema checks at submission instead of months later.

To help finance, accounts payable, and compliance teams catch errors before filing season begins, Avalara has launched two stand-alone, API-based products under Avalara 1099 & W-9:

Avalara Real-Time TIN Match provides instant payee verification directly within onboarding workflows via an API. Designed to accommodate daily transactional needs, it quickly validates legal name and TIN combinations during registration, helping ensure clean, compliant vendor data enters systems.

Avalara Bulk TIN Match enables teams to verify extensive payee lists through an API — whether they have hundreds or hundreds of thousands of records. This solution provides validated IRS match results to teams within 24 hours to help proactively identify discrepancies and collect updated W-9s before year-end 1099 reporting deadlines.

These stand-alone API solutions help protect organizations from compliance risks and streamline payee onboarding.

Additional platform updates

Beyond this month’s featured launches, Avalara introduced several enhancements across ERP integrations, global VAT reporting, accounts payable automation, and in-app tools. Here’s what else is new.

Capability	What’s new
Avalara 1099 for Workday	Streamline 1099 filing directly inside Workday. Built natively on Workday Extend, the app automatically syncs payee records, validates vendor TINs against IRS records, and e-files 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC forms with the IRS and 50 state agencies, writing real-time filing statuses directly back into Workday business objects.
Avalara AvaTax for Accounts Payable for QuickBooks Online	Automate consumer use tax self-assessment on QuickBooks Online vendor bills. The AvaTax for Accounts Payable engine evaluates every saved QuickBooks Online bill against Avalara tax calculations, automatically creating journal entries for undercharged bills beyond set thresholds and adding audit notes without altering the original bill.
VAT number validation for Avalara AvaTax for VAT	Validate EU VAT numbers against the European Commission VIES database during record creation, updates, or bulk batch imports, capturing registered business names where available to improve master data quality and simplify EU B2B compliance.
Avalara Aviator agent hub and cross-product skills	Experience an updated Aviator interface featuring the agent hub, cross-product skills for proactive nexus tracking and anomaly remediation, and in-app online purchasing for select product tiers like Avalara Exemption Certificate Management Pro and Avalara Managed Returns.
Direct VAT return filing for France	Prepare, review, approve, and submit VAT returns directly to tax authorities in France from within Avalara VAT Reporting, complete with maker-checker approvals and digital filing receipts that reduce manual portal uploads.
Global VAT/GST economic heat map and AI taxability recommendations	Monitor global tax exposure with an interactive world map displaying active transaction volume and registration status across all Avalara AvaTax global supported jurisdictions. Track distance selling, B2C digital services, and nonresident thresholds with automated 80% warning and 100% breach alerts, while getting embedded AI taxability recommendations in the taxability matrix with visual badges, legal rationale, confidence scores, and one-click custom rule generation with audit-ready summaries.
VAT reconciliation framework and Hungary digital readiness	Catch discrepancies before filing with an automated line-by-line comparison engine that classifies transactions as Matched, Variance, or Critical across ERP, e-invoicing, and return datasets, while supporting automated credit-note balancing for Hungary’s upcoming eÁFA digital filing transition.
Avi Chrome extension for Salesforce Order Management System (OMS)	Access real-time setup guidance, configuration checks, and side-panel answers from Avi directly in your browser while configuring the Salesforce Order Management System connector.
Centralized notification panel in Avalara portal	View critical compliance, product, and service alerts in one persistent notification hub in the Avalara Portal header, featuring severity indicators, read status, a 30-day message history, and direct task links.
Property tax MCP server	Connect Avalara Property Tax trackers (Returns, Assessments, and Bills) directly to AI assistants and business dashboards, converting complex property tax APIs into standardized, natural-language actions.
Shopify in-app VAT discovery tool	Identify European tax obligations with an embedded diagnostic questionnaire in Shopify that evaluates cross-border sales against U.K. and EU VAT rules (including OSS and IOSS) to recommend required registrations.
Self-serve configuration migration (sandbox to production)	A new self-serve workflow lets AvaTax customers preview, test, and promote validated tax configurations — nexus, items, tax rules, locations, and marketplaces — from sandbox to production and vice versa directly in the customer portal, with conflict handling, real-time progress tracking, and downloadable error reports. The capability is rolling out in a limited pilot ahead of general availability.
Get support through Global Support Portal for Avalara for Excise	Avalara for Excise customers, can now get support directly through the Global Support Portal. Avi, our AI assistant, can help users resolve return schedules and calculation questions in real time with direct answers from the Avalara Knowledge Center. Easily manage support tickets in our centralized support portal or continue opening cases through existing Excise Portal workflows.

The compliance platform keeps getting better

Every update in this edition reflects a commitment to transforming how compliance gets done. With Aviator leading the way, tax management becomes faster, easier, and more accurate, giving your team complete control over automated execution so you can focus on strategic growth.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Avalara Product Pulse.

Sales tax rates, rules, and regulations change frequently. Although we hope you'll find this information helpful, this blog is for informational purposes only and does not provide legal or tax advice.