Ecommerce marketing company grows fast, adopts tax automation
Results
Cost savings
Integrated systems
Improved processes
Increased compliance
Summary
Results
- Cost savings
- Integrated systems
- Improved processes
- Increased compliance
Tax challenges
- Tax complexity
- Compliance risk
- Company growth
- Process inefficiency
Products used
Dynamically delivers sales and use tax calculations, based on the latest rules and rates in our tax engine, to a shopping cart or invoicing system at the time of purchase.
Automatically gathers data from Avalara AvaTax to prepare and file sales and use tax returns and remit payments across multiple jurisdictions every filing cycle.
Benefits
- Simplified tax calculation and filing
- Time and effort savings
- A secure feeling regarding tax compliance
Industry type
Company overview
Customer
Diamondback Branding
Industry
Retail and ecommerce
Tax type
Sales and use
Integrations
Shopify Plus
Brightpearl
Based in Austin, Texas, Diamondback Branding supplies promotional products. Since 2012, the company has been printing and engraving drinkware, coolers, and other gear ranging from earbuds to lighters.
Tax challenges
“We grew relatively fast,” says Diamondback founder and Chief Executive Officer William Lovelace. “We went from a garage in New Mexico to roughly a $15 million-per-year company.”
That rapid growth brought a new level of scrutiny to the business’s sales tax compliance. Diamondback was an ecommerce company doing business in multiple states but collecting tax in only one. “We hit the point that everybody was looking at us,” William recalls. “We’re primarily wholesale, but the nexus laws generally don’t care. We were breaking nexus thresholds in dozens of states. It quickly became a nightmare.”
“We wanted to get ahead of the game,” William continues. “We preemptively took action to avoid a bad audit.”
Why Avalara?
“I did research and I’d heard of Avalara,” says William. “While I hadn’t had any interaction with them, it was on my to-do list because I knew we had to automate tax calculation and filing eventually.”
When the time came to make a move, William found Avalara to be the easy choice. “Avalara was the option that integrated with Brightpearl, our ERP, so it was kind of a no-brainer,” he recalls. “We started testing the integration in July 2019 and we went live in January 2020.”
Customer
Diamondback Branding
Industry
Retail and ecommerce
Tax type
Sales and use
Integration
Shopify Plus
Brightpearl
Tax challenges
- Tax complexity
- Compliance risk
- Company growth
- Process inefficiency
Products used
Dynamically delivers sales and use tax calculations, based on the latest rules and rates in our tax engine, to a shopping cart or invoicing system at the time of purchase.
Automatically gathers data from Avalara AvaTax to prepare and file sales and use tax returns and remit payments across multiple jurisdictions every filing cycle.
Benefits
- Simplified tax calculation and filing
- Time and effort savings
- A secure feeling regarding tax compliance
Industry type
Tame the complexity of sales tax compliance in an omnichannel sales environment.
“With Avalara, we have the clarity that when a law changes or a tax rate changes, we don’t have to worry about it. We know everything we’re working with is regularly updated and we feel secure.”
—William Lovelace
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
“With Avalara, we have the clarity that when a law changes or a tax rate changes, we don’t have to worry about it. We know everything we’re working with is regularly updated and we feel secure.”
—William Lovelace
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Results
William lists several benefits of automating his sales tax calculations. “You’ve got time saved for one thing,” he says, “because it would probably require one, possibly two, full-time administrator jobs to calculate and report everything manually. Every single one of those jurisdictions would have to be calculated in a spreadsheet, reported, and paid.”
“For a company our size, we have a lot less staff than most people would think,” William explains. “About half the company works in production, engraving or printing the products that we sell. We have a very small administrative staff. We try to get on top of technology and stay there so that we don’t have people who just sit there and push buttons.”
“On top of that,” William continues, “with Avalara we have the clarity that when a law changes or a tax rate changes, we don’t have to worry about it. We know everything we’re working with is regularly updated and we feel secure.”