Avalara Enables Retailers with Physical Locations to Manage Complex Sales Tax Calculations at the Point of Sale

By STS News Desk On May 12, 2021

Avalara Announces Low-Code Developer Tools and New APIs to Embed Compliance into Business Applications and Ecommerce Platforms

Avalara, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based tax compliance automation for businesses of all sizes, today announced the availability of Avalara Content Generation for POS, a new solution for businesses with physical locations that delivers up-to-date tax content for point-of-sale (POS) systems to manage complex tax scenarios. This offering helps U.S.-based businesses perform more accurate tax calculations at their POS, accounting for sales tax holidays, multiple locations, threshold taxes, and more.

“Avalara Content Generation for POS provides businesses that have physical locations with the up-to-date tax content needed to more accurately calculate sales tax in their POS systems, whenever and however they need it”

“Brick-and-mortar businesses face complex tax obligations that require them to manage the taxability of their ever-changing product catalogs, while at the same time stay on top of changing rates and rules that vary by jurisdiction,” said Kevin Permenter, research manager at IDC. “Tools that automatically provide the up-to-date data needed to accurately process tax calculations at the point of sale help streamline tax calculations and reduce calculation errors.”

Point-of-sale systems are moving from a single-store requirement to part of an integrated online and in-person omnichannel solution

Businesses that operate brick-and-mortar stores, freestanding kiosks or carts, and mobile locations are subject to a wide range of challenges when it comes to their sales tax compliance. As more consumers embrace flexible shopping options like buy online pickup in store (BOPIS), retailers offering omnichannel experiences need the ability to manage tax across online and in-person channels.

Many brick-and-mortar businesses still rely on static lists of tax rates and rules. Many of these businesses have locations across multiple jurisdictions, possess expansive product catalogs, and manage POS systems at every checkout lane. Because product catalogs grow and change frequently, businesses continuously add locations in new jurisdictions, and tax rates and rules constantly change, manual management of tax content creates audit liability and risks poor customer experience if taxes are calculated incorrectly.

Improve tax calculations at the point of sale with Avalara

Avalara Content Generation for POS helps businesses simplify tax calculations at the point of sale by updating tax content as rates and rules change and providing self-service features that allow users to control how and when they want their tax content. This product enables businesses to:

Reduce compliance risk. Minimize the risk of noncompliance with regularly updated tax content provided for the POS system to improve the accuracy of sales tax calculations.
Streamline compliance for a variety of checkout systems. Support POS systems by leveraging a flexible, modern architecture integrated with Avalara’s extensive partner ecosystem.
Increase efficiency. Reduce time spent manually updating, distributing, standardizing, and transforming data from content sources to POS systems.
Improve customer experience. Provide prompt tax calculation at checkout regardless of whether the system is connected to a cloud service or offline, and access previous tax content data pulls for reference when customers ask why their purchases were taxed a certain amount.

“Avalara Content Generation for POS provides businesses that have physical locations with the up-to-date tax content needed to more accurately calculate sales tax in their POS systems, whenever and however they need it,” said Sanjay Parthasarathy, chief product officer at Avalara. “The new solution enables businesses to easily manage the most complex tax scenarios end-to-end for their POS, which allows them to save time on manually updating tax rules and transforming data and reduce the risk of error and noncompliance.”

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