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The A+ Guide to Infor A+: How the A+ Connector and AvaTax Work Together

January 27, 2022
Leyla Fazel

The purchase of A+ Avalara Connector provides your organization with access to Avalara Tax Services. This includes sales tax calculation for all 50 U.S. States, the District of Columbia, and all Canadian Provinces and Territories (including GST, PST, and HST). We’ve put together a simple guide to get you started with the connector.

Avalara Provides Three Key Services:

  1. AvaTax, for tax calculation and reporting.
    • With AvaTax, you will not need to calculate tax using the ERP.
  1. Cert Capture, which is a separate portal where Customer Exempt Certificates are stored and maintained.
  2. Manage Return Services.
    • They can file returns on your behalf.

Five Steps to Get You Started:

  1. Initially, you’ll need to create and configure your AvaTax Portal in the cloud with the appropriate nexus.
  2. Aktion will install and configure the A+ / AvaTax Connector.
  3. Validate your customer’s addresses in A+.
  4. Then mark your customers as either Taxable or Exempt using the ‘Tax Exempt Cert#’ field.
  5. Apply the appropriate Avalara Tax Code to your Items and Special Charges.

Run the Address Validation Report

When beginning the process of integrating A+ with Avalara, it is extremely important to do a comprehensive verification of all existing Customer Bill-To and Ship-To Addresses. The report should be used to correct all invalid addresses in the system.

Maintenance Options

There are some updated Master Files in A+.

  • What drives taxability using the Connector is the:
    • Address
    • Customer Exemption Certificate Field
    • Item Tax Code
  • There are Three Master Files That Have Been Changed:
    • Item Master Maintenance
    • Customer Bill-to / Ship-to Master Maintenance
    • Special Charge Maintenance

In the Item Master Maintenance:

  • ‘Product ID’ field = Avalara Tax Code #
  • Avalara Tax Code is used to determine if the item is taxable or not, and at what rate it is taxable.

*If the Product ID is left blank, Avalara assumes the item is classified as ‘Tangible Personal Property’ and is therefore taxable. It’s always best to code your items with the best tax code that matches your items or services.

Special Charge Definition Maintenance

  • All special charges should also have the appropriate Product IDs.

Customer Bill-To / Ship-To Maintenance

  • The Customer Bill-To / Ship-To Master Files have been updated to allow for address validation. Each time you change a customer address, the Address Validation service is called.
  • If the address fails, a warning message is displayed on the bottom of the screen. If the address is partially correct, you’ll see the Suggested Address screen.

Tax-Exempt Certification Number

The ‘Tax Exemption Certificate #’ field drives taxability at the customer level. The field should be:

  • Populated if the customer is exempt.
  • Left blank if the customer is taxable.

The A+ ‘Tax Body Number’ field is no longer needed for tax calculation. All rates come directly from AvaTax.

Order Processing

  • During order entry, A+ will connect with the AvaTax service to retrieve the current tax rates. It can also validate a modified Bill-To or Ship-To address.
  • On the Order Second Header, if the Tax-Exempt Cert # field is blank, the customer would be taxable. You can change the taxability of the order by clearing or populating this field.
  • Once the End Order (F10) button is entered, the service program calls out to Avalara and retrieves the proper tax rate for the order.
  • During Invoicing, A+ will connect using the AvaTax service and post the transaction to the AvaTax portal. The transaction will appear as ‘Committed’ in the Avalara portal.

Aktion developed, implements, and supports the AvaTax A+ Connector. Contact us to learn more about how the AvaTax A+ Connector can streamline your sales tax process and make manual sales tax calculations a thing of the past today.