3dcart is currently partnered with over 200 eCommerce companies. We’re constantly on the lookout for vibrant, innovative partners that can bring state-of-the-art solutions and services to our customers.

For the month of May, our Partner of the month is Avalara.  Our team interviewed Whitney Williams, Partner Alliance Manager at Avalara, to help 3dcart merchants get insight into their company and solution.

  1. Please provide some general background and history on your company:

Avalara, Inc. is a leading provider of tax compliance automation for business.  For more than a decade, Avalara has pioneered innovations in tax compliance for businesses of all sizes. Today, we offer hundreds of pre-built connectors into leading accounting, ERP, ecommerce and other business applications. Avalara calculates $100 million in taxes for customers and free users every day, files hundreds of thousands of transactional tax returns per year, and manages millions of exemption certificates and other compliance related documents.

Avalara is a privately held company; our venture capital investors include Sageview Capital, Battery Ventures, Warburg Pincus, Technology Crossover Ventures, Arthur Ventures, and other institutional and individual investors. Avalara’s headquarters are in Seattle, WA and it has offices across the U.S. and London, England; Brussels, Belgium; and Pune, India

  1. What’s the main service your company offers?

Avalara’s Compliance Cloud™ solution for sales tax management helps businesses of all sizes achieve governmental compliance by automating and simplifying the process, including tax determination, exemption certificate management, and tax return preparation, filing, and remittance.

We work within a customer’s own financial, billing, ecommerce, or point of sale systems to automate manual processes, delivering cloud-based compliance services that are fast, easy, accurate, and affordable.

Avalara continually broadens and deepens its reach, combining powerful technology with deep content to provide businesses with a single user-friendly place to manage key governmental compliance obligations.

  1. Describe the integration and how long you’ve been a partner with 3dcart.

3dcart partnered with Avalara in 2009 to provide automatic sales tax calculations within the cart, streamlining the tax compliance process while saving time, reducing errors, and cutting costs. Avalara AvaTax™ works with an extension that plugs into 3dcart, so buyers get an accurate calculation automatically on every shopping cart checkout.

  1. What are the benefits for 3dcart merchants that use your solution?

While 3dcart integrates with various financial applications, the cart itself requires manual entry of sales tax rates for each jurisdiction in which products are sold. Avalara saves 3dcart merchants time, money, and helps mitigate their risk by automating the process. As a result, users no longer have to research rates, build tables or make tax decisions. Avalara integrates with 3dcart to take care of these complexities, and more. 3dcart merchants have the option to buy Avalara Avatax™ online, making it a breeze to quickly get started.

  1. What are your solutions’ biggest strengths?

Manually managing governmental compliance requirements can be difficult, expensive and time consuming, and businesses can face stiff penalties if they don’t get it right. Avalara removes this complex burden, giving customers more time to focus on driving their own business success

  1. How does your solution compare to similar solutions in the market?

Avalara prides itself in offering a complete end-to-end compliance solution for customers and provide each merchant a support representative to ensure they are taken care of every step of the way. We provide more than 500 pre-built integrations into a broad base of leading business application in addition to 3dcart. If your organization uses other accounting platforms or a POS systems, Avalara can grow with you. In addition, Avalara offers its AvaTax customers “Guaranteed Accurate” financial protection in the event of an audit.

  1. Any other thoughts for our readers, who are mainly e-commerce merchants?

When considering how to best manage your organizations sales tax, compatibility with your current software is important, but so is compatibility with a wide range of ecommerce and accounting software. You may not use the same tools forever, so versatility is key for your sales tax solution.

No matter how you choose to manage sales tax, the single most important consideration is how well your solution will scale with your business. Minimizing compliance “growing pains” ensures that tax rules won’t hold back your business.