Automate sales and use tax compliance and exemption certificate management
Avalara helps solve common compliance challenges manufacturers and distributors face
Automate exempt sales and certificate management for purchases, drop shipments, and online sales.
Challenge
- Collecting the right documentation and applying sales tax exemptions can be challenging, especially with online sales.
- If tax is charged when it shouldn’t be, unhappy customers have to chase down credits and rebills, which takes up valuable time for accounting departments.
- Missing or invalid certificates require businesses to choose between bothering customers or being out of compliance.
Solution
- Avalara CertCapture collects exemption certificates as part of the transaction process, whether the sale is made in person or online.
- CertCapture then works with Avalara AvaTax to automatically exempt tax on future sales when a valid certificate is on file, so your customers are charged appropriately.
- CertCapture also sends renewal alerts to help you keep documents up to date.
See where you trigger compliance obligations and individual filing deadlines.
Challenge
- Some states have economic nexus rules, others don’t. Some count exempt sales toward that total, others omit them.
- And once you’ve figured out where to register, each state has its own rules and schedules for returns filing and remittance.
Solution
- AvaTax monitors nexus thresholds in each state, according to individual state rules. You’ll know when your business triggers an obligation to collect sales tax or exemption certificates.
- Avalara Returns keeps track of changing filing requirements and deadlines in each state, making it easier for you to file on time, everywhere you need to file — even when you have a $0 return.
Apply different tax rates for the same products across jurisdictions, states, and countries.
Challenge
- Selling across jurisdictions means monitoring multiple tax rates and factoring in different product taxability rules.
- Even for places you’re established in, rates change all the time, so you can’t just set it and forget it.
- Charging the wrong rates can create customer frustration or negative press, harming your brand and affecting sales.
Solution
- AvaTax automates sales and use tax calculation, so you don’t have to manually update rates for each jurisdiction.
- The Avalara tax engine accounts for different product taxability rules in each jurisdiction and AvaTax applies rates based on the details of each individual sale.
- For international sales, Avalara Item Classification ensures you’re applying the right HS codes to your products while Avalara AvaTax Cross-Border handles international taxes and customs duties.
Gather reports and prepare for audits in minutes.
Challenge
- Gathering reports and preparing for audits are tedious processes. You need to pull the data from each source, then consolidate the information, correcting any inconsistencies.
- It’s time-consuming and often diverts resources from revenue-generating tasks.
Solution
- AvaTax, CertCapture, and Avalara Consumer Use include detailed reporting capabilities that reduce weeks or months of work to minutes.
- Avalara serves as a single source of truth for sales tax information across all the systems involved in the compliance process.
Better for your bottom line
Investing in the right solutions can help save you time and money while improving customer experience.
Make the most of your technology investment
Avalara offers cloud-based solutions, so there’s no hardware to purchase, ongoing maintenance, or upgrades for IT — and it won’t monopolize your resources during implementation. It also supports a distributed or remote workforce.
Make things easier for your customers
Proactively gather the right documentation and apply exemptions automatically
Avoid abandoned orders and carts, rebilling, and interrupting the order process for documents by integrating certificate collection with your purchase process.
Our solution grows with your business
Automating exemption certificate management reduces human error and customer frustration when collecting and renewing documents, whether you’re managing 500, 5,000, or 50,000 certificates.
We have over 700 prebuilt integrations and a robust API
Our solutions work with disparate systems or omnichannel environments to give you a single source of truth for sales tax compliance information and reporting.
Why Avalara
Our cloud-based, end-to-end solution helps automate the compliance process:
Customer stories
Learn how other manufacturers have benefited from automating with Avalara.
Think exempt sales make you exempt from sales tax compliance? Think again.
Sales tax legislation in the wake of the South Dakota vs. Wayfair, Inc. decision has far-reaching consequences, even for primarily tax-exempt businesses.
In many states, exempt sales count toward sales tax obligation thresholds. Once obligations are triggered, a business has to register with the state and file returns, even if that business hasn’t collected any sales tax. During an audit, states verify all proper documentation is in place for exempt sales, and any deviation can mean taxes, penalties, and fees.
The Avalara manufacturing solution includes
Compliance documents
We’ll help manage the documents you need to stay compliant.
Avalara State Sales Tax RegistrationAvalara CertCaptureAvalara VendorCapture
Tax calculation
Get the appropriate tax rate for transactions made in the U.S. or abroad.
Avalara AvaTax
Avalara Consumer Use
Avalara AvaTax Cross-Border
Returns management
Choose the level of returns management that’s right for your business.

FEATURED EBOOK
Consumer use tax: what manufacturers need to know
A new eBook from Industry Week dives into the primary use tax pains experienced by manufacturers
See how Avalara handles manufacturing and distribution sales tax compliance challenges with ease
Schedule a risk review and demo with one of our representatives.