JL Marine Systems finds calm waters with sales tax automation

Tampa-based JL Marine Systems started out making shallow-water anchors, then expanded to include tools that manage all onboard accessories and power. Channels to market include an outside sales team, boat manufacturers (OEMs), national retailers, boat dealers, and the company’s own ecommerce-enabled website.

JL Marine’s systems were not optimized for their explosive growth in transactions, channels, and nexus obligations. The company calculated sales tax using Everest Software, its ERP system, and filed tax returns directly with the state of Florida, but found that workload unsustainable in the face of a large upsurge in business, especially online.

CFO Jean Treimanis had worked as the company’s outside accountant since 2005, joining JL Marine full time in 2013. “I came on board during a massive sales tax audit by the state of Florida,” she recalls. “Missing exemption certificates were a huge issue, and we got hit with significant penalties.”

Jean initiated the search for a sales tax solution and determined that since the company had just invested in a major upgrade, Avalara’s certified integration with Everest made it the obvious choice. 

“Changing ERP systems is a massive, painful project, and we wanted to avoid that if we could,” says Jean. “Avalara gave us a way to minimize that pain and improve our sales tax compliance at the same time.”

JL Marine implemented Avalara’s sales tax compliance solution in conjunction with its Magento upgrade and needed to make sure both systems integrated fully with Everest. “The Avalara team worked constantly with Everest and our own IT people to make it work,” says Jean. “We went live in July 2017 and haven’t had an issue since. It has been amazing.”

Today the company uses Avalara AvaTax to calculate sales tax on quotes, sales invoices, and credit memos in both Everest and Magento. When a change is made to a document, the tax is recalculated in real time, using current rules and rates.

Filing tax returns is much easier, Jean says, and having all of the company’s sales tax information stored in one place has taken the pain out of audits as her team no longer has to verify information manually. “I feel confident with what we can provide to any state auditor who comes in,” says Jean. “And we can do it remotely because they can access my information easily over the internet.”

Perhaps the biggest impact of the Avalara implementation is the management of exemption certificates. Whether a reseller calls on the phone or places an order online or through a sales rep, Everest works with Avalara CertCapture to check for a certificate. CertCapture also makes it easy to send notification emails to customers when certificates are due for renewal.

“I’m very impressed with Avalara, and with the Avalara team,” Jean says. “Everything runs very smoothly.”