Avalara Plugins

I see there are two Avalara plugins available for nopCommerce - one developed by the nopCommerce team, the other by Golden Communications. A couple questions:

1. We are on nopCommerce 3.8. Does the nopCommerce developed plugin support this version? I see the plugin listing now only lists 4.0+. However, when I download the plugin there are directories for 3.7-4.1. So, is 3.8 actually supported and just not in the web listing?

2. I read a comment that the tax service is called on each product page load even when the site is configured to exclude tax in product prices. (Configuration → Settings → Tax Settings → Tax Display Type to be Excluding tax). If this is the case the cost for Avalara will be astronomical for my client. Can a member of the nopCommerce team confirm this?

Regards.

Any feedback from the nopCommerce team on this?

Hi.

1. Technically, the plugin is available for versions below 4.0, but we made all the recent changes and bug fixes only for last versions, so we cannot promise for its correct working.

2. The tax service is actually called for each page load to ensure that the actual information is used. But received tax rates are cached after the first request and the Avalara service is not called again. Actually, the number of requests will match with the number of addresses used by users of the store, at which the tax rate is determined.

I used the avetax plugin for 2 weeks total- something did not seem right as the log had many (1000's) errors, today I got a $1300 bill from avetax as they claim I went over 40000+ units over my plan.

Now trying to get out of avetax if they will respond to my emails.....

Almost done with a plugin for TaxJar, I will have the developer sell it on his site if he will when done.

Kenny Larsen

@larsenlights - Thanks for the feedback. Do you mind telling which version of nop you are running? While we decided against TaxJar we may not have an option if this is the way the Avalara works with nopCommerce.

Thanks again for the feedback - very helpful!

Started with 3.9, worked with the company avetax have making the plug-in trying to make it work, it will only send about 1/3 of the transactions to avetax, they (goldencom) tried to make it work, but after many attempts and 5-6 months I think they gave up on my site.
Then I updated to 4.1 and got the 4.1 goldencom plug-in, same result.
I have to manually move the missing orders into avetax every month, not much fun...

Then I tried the 4.1 nop made plug-in, it works, but filled my log with errors. Read that if I enter a default tax address in tax settings, that should go away, and it did somewhat. I was scared that I would send too many API calls to avetax as the first attempt to use the goldencom plug-in sent over 400000 API calls to avetax. They did not charge me for this.
Now I have over 40000 calls and I am not sure if it is a fault from my store or if there is other issues, avetax said they had a hold on my account and that expired, this is why I got charged $1300+ this month... They said I had to go-to another higher tier and most the charge was for this upgrade.

Note they will not let me leave, they say I am locked in for a year, so I get to pay them until September, yay...

To me it is $110/month for the service and plug-in connection, $50+ for the one state file they do for me.
Now add this latest fee if $1300+, it has been expensive for nothing. Well... I do get the tax rates correct for the customers location...

I needed this to work for 2019 as I need to file sales tax for more states, luckily my customers can claim sales tax exempt, so in case of an audit I can hopefully get around it.. but I wanted to be 100% legal and wanted the website to do the work.

Hope the tax jar system will work, it is a lot cheaper, I think for my use (simple tax issues) it will work ok

If you try avetax make sure you get it in writing and explained very well, and have them give you daily API call statics so you can catch it if something goes wrong. Also don't get locked in for a year, I still don't know how they got me there....

Good luck, wish this sales tax bs would go back to before SD vs wayfare or who ever started this mess...

Kenny

Kenny,
Wow! The more I hear the more concerned I get about the Avalara implementation. We are upgrading to 4.2 soon which has the Avalara plugin from the nopCommerce team installed by default. However, the more I hear the more concerned I am. The biggest issue is that Avalara does not give you access to the lookup count when using their free trial. While initially they tell you their fees are based on committed transactions we know that's not the case. They do take lookups into account. And if each product page load calls the tax service this will be a problem.

I am VERY interested in the Taxjar plugin you are developing if there's a chance to work with it.

Did you try this plugin before developing your own? https://www.nopcommerce.com/p/2302/taxjarcom-nopcommerce-team.aspx

Adam

Adam,
1. Just FYI in the current plugin implementation for the version 4.20 there is a log of all requests to Avalara service, you can find it on the plugin configuration page, so you can compare the number of requests in this log with the number that the Avalara provides you and also see which ones were related with committed transactions.
2. At moment we don't plan to update and support previous versions of our TaxJar plugin.

@RomanovM Thanks for adding to the discussion. The question still remains - in version 4.2 is the tax service called each time a product page loads, even if tax is not displayed on the product page? Has the call count to Avalara been tested by your team? If the service IS called each time the product page loads Avalara is not an option based on our site receiving 70k+ visitors each month. That means we would be 250,000+ calls to Avalara.

For a taxjar plug in, contact Jatin at [email protected]. He made mine  

Kenny