AvaTax WorkFlow

AvaTax Workflow

Quote or Sales Order (optional)

You create a quote or sales order in Order Time as usual.    Depending on your settings you either use the AvaTax button or change the Status of the quote to 'Sent' to estimate the tax.  Most of the time the tax calculated by Order Time will be the same as AvaTax unless there are certain items that have different tax treatments depending on the jurisdiction.    For example, if you have Shipping that is taxable and the ship to address is to a state for which shipping is non-taxable, Order Time will adjust the tax code for shipping.   

When you convert a quote to a sales order the following rules apply:

• If you convert the entire quote to a sales order without changes, then no further address verification or estimate is required.  
• If you convert selected line items or make changes to the sales order after it is converted, then you may want to do another estimate.

Creating a Ship Doc (mandatory) 

Whether you create a ship doc from a sales order or from scratch, it must ultimately be committed to AvaTax regardless of the tax amount.   All sales that occur in jurisdictions you have not configured in AvaTax will result in a tax calculation that returns a value of zero tax and therefore Order Time will adjust the tax rate on the ship doc to 0%.   

If you are using the AvaTax button, you can choose to ‘Send uncommitted’.  This is similar to estimating tax for quotes and sales orders except that the transaction will be saved in AvaTax.   You can skip this step and simply select ‘Commit’ or change the status of the ship doc to Shipped.   

When you either send uncommitted or commit a ship doc and before its status is set to Shipped or Closed,  you can Void the record and you would be back at the beginning of the process.

Creating a Customer Return (Mandatory) 

Whether you create a customer from a ship doc or from scratch, it must ultimately be committed to AvaTax.   Think of a customer return as the reverse of a Ship Doc.  It will ultimately reduce your tax liability.  

Voiding a Read Only Ship Doc or Customer Return 

You can either 

1. Delete the entire document from the list or
2. Set the status backwards.  Usually by deleting the document from the sync queue or undoing the sync.