Highgate reaches new heights with Avalara for Hospitality
Results
Improved efficiency
Saved time
Reduced cost
Enabled growth
Summary
Results
- Improved efficiency
- Saved time
- Reduced cost
- Enabled growth
Tax challenges
- Process inefficiency
- Company growth
- Disparate systems
- Manual processes
- Tax complexity
- Compliance risk
Products used
- Avalara AvaTax for Hospitality
- Avalara Returns for Hospitality
Company overview
Customer
Highgate
Industry
Hospitality
Tax type
Lodging Tax
Highgate is a hotel management, investment, and development firm with over 87,000 rooms under management across North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
“We’ve grown substantially in recent years, with two acquisitions happening in that timeframe. Our ability to automate is vital to increasing efficiencies and managing the company’s growth,” says Andrew Greco, Highgate’s VP of Compliance and Taxation.
Tax challenges
Manually consolidating data to determine tax obligations for hotels or hotel management companies via their back-end systems is a time-consuming process. “It’s difficult to keep up with the multiple tax laws across the state, city, and local jurisdictional levels,” says Andrew. “Any misunderstanding of tax rules would be costly. Especially since many local tax jurisdictions are strict when it comes to compliance and aggressive when they audit.”
Staffing challenges and inconsistent data also contribute to this segment’s tax compliance complexities. These challenges are exacerbated when there are multiple brands of hotels with their own systems of record. “Before working with Avalara, our process was very expensive, complex, and rife with manual processes,” recalls Andrew.
Why Avalara?
“Avalara dominates the industry and their experience serving the hotel segment was clear,” Andrew explains. “Other vendors didn’t have tax content comparable to what Avalara for Hospitality offers specifically for the hotel industry. No one was even close to offering something comparable. Even the other big players in the space didn’t have a fully functioning solution for transaction tax specifically related to hotels.”
Tax challenges
- Process inefficiency
- Company growth
- Disparate systems
- Manual processes
- Tax complexity
- Compliance risk
Products used
- Avalara AvaTax for Hospitality
- Avalara Returns for Hospitality
“Using Avalara for Hospitality has saved us over $100,000 per year in increased efficiencies.”
— Andrew Greco,
VP of Compliance and Taxation, Highgate
“Using Avalara for Hospitality has saved us over $100,000 per year in increased efficiencies.”
— Andrew Greco,
VP of Compliance and Taxation, Highgate
Results
Andrew relies on Avalara to keep Highgate compliant amid the tax complexities of managing multiple brands of hotels across the U.S. and abroad. “The solutions are great, and the per-property cost is worth the value,” says Andrew. “We save considerable time by automating key aspects of tax compliance. The biggest time saver has been through payment processing. We just wire funds every month to fund the full tax liability, make sure we provide them with accurate data, and then Avalara takes care of the rest. It saves us from creating hundreds of AP transactions every month.”
Since implementing Avalara, Andrew has deepened his relationship by quickly adding new properties to enhance the value of the software. “Using Avalara for Hospitality has saved us over $100,000 per year in increased efficiencies,” Andrew says.
In addition to his satisfaction with the software, Andrew acknowledges the importance of working with a team of experts and having a collaborative relationship. “Avalara has become an important partner who values our feedback and implements our suggestions to enhance the product,” Andrew says. “The Avalara team is phenomenal and goes above and beyond.”
