Sales & Use Tax - Something's got to make sense.

[everything]

I have looked and I have read, but still need specific insight into the following:

About us:
• the internet is an addition to a "brick and mortar" business in Louisiana, collecting sales & use tax,
• some customers pay state, parish, city tax;
• others pay state & parish tax (live outside municipalities);
• and others in special categories (such as schools and even wholesale) are on yet another taxable rate.

Questions:
A) Able Commerce does or does not allow any method to apply tax codes to user groups?

• • I know I can apply pricing discounts and pricing rules which would offset the tax variations, but the back-end accounting would be horrific.
  • I know I could create multiples of every single product offered with each tax variable attached to each one separately, but frankly that's just not feasible.

(BUT... if I were to do that, I would need to have customer user groups which had the specific set of products associated with it...)

• 1. Sorry, but the only options I see when creating user groups are for administrative/office tasks or nothing. (all security related)
  2. Working on it from the other side, then - editing the category or the item - I don't see a place to assign products to user groups made for customers, either. The only item option I find for user groups is setting pricing rules.
  3. I have got to be overlooking something here.
  UNLESS, user groups is no longer meant to have anything to do with customers at all. I'd guess that if I've got to code my own changes to customize the setup that may be what was intended. Wow, if so please tell me!

B) In lieu of more tax management, does or does not Able Commerce integrate with third-party tax service providers?
I know at one time, it did. Again, I must be missing something with the bigger, better version. Please, tell me how/where. Also, who/which providers.

I truly appreciate any help. Changing code is a hunt and peck task for me ... slow at best, flat out error-paged at worst. I really thought AC7 was not going to need more than creative labor and data entry. I anticipated the level of GUI options I had seen earlier to be expanded, not cut back.

Thanks,
connie

PS. I'd also like to see user groups set up to flag orders coming from certain "sales reps" that take phone ins. Maybe I can use the merchant fields in the page templates, just not sure how to get that out on a report.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

A) In the AbleCommerce 7.0.2 release, you can associate a tax rule with a user group. It's not exactly a tax code, but I think the tax rule is what you want to work with anyway.

B) For third party integration, currently the only one I know of is Avalara:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=5935&hilit=avalara

[everything]

Thank you for the very prompt response, Logan!

Able is hosting our service, but I see we are on AC 7.0, build 9381.
• Are updates included in the AC hosting service?

• Am I responsible for requesting these - please, advise.

(Cont. Original Question A)
When we do get the updates current, will I find the control in the Tax Rules settings or User Group settings?

• Also, does the AC logic allow for user groups to be constructed for customers, sales, etc.

• - or, is it really intended to be a security/admin tool?


(Cont. Original Question B)
There is one! But, only one ?

Are you politely saying that I'll have to "go under the hood and connect the cables" myself?

B) For third party integration, currently the only one I know of is Avalara:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=5935&hilit=avalara

• Is there a method to integrate them through the Merchant Admin Dashboard (as there is for shipping carriers and payment gateways) in AC 7.0.2?

• Does AC have a time frame in mind to include more flexible tax management utilities or integration?

The measures necessary to implement the functions that will take care of our tax burden simply as they are now concerns me. Sorry to put you on the spot, but it looks like the responsibility for extensive tax management in e-commerce (in multiple states, not just nexus states) is looming near.

*****
Sorry if I come across as hostile - I really don't mean too!
• I have tried to read the online user support literature and it doesn't cover some aspects of the software (user groups, for example).
• The forum info is great and very rich with info. But I have to go an a search and find mission, reading at length, to find comparable situations and answers.

Investing to research and tinker on this software is not a very productive use of our resources - whether I was doing it myself or hiring it out.

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the responsibility of customizing design, content or function to suit our individual needs! But, tax compliance and user groups? Seriously?

Those are pretty fundamental for the e-commerce software customer base. When's the last time you heard of someone renting a house without running water? And the landlord telling them to plumb it themselves? Furnishing it - yes. Building it - not really.

Oh, and support literature
Just looking for solutions,
connie

[Logan Rhodehamel]

Able is hosting our service, but I see we are on AC 7.0, build 9381.
• Are updates included in the AC hosting service?

• Am I responsible for requesting these - please, advise.

I don't know the answer to this one. Fred? Mike?

(Cont. Original Question A)
When we do get the updates current, will I find the control in the Tax Rules settings or User Group settings?

• Also, does the AC logic allow for user groups to be constructed for customers, sales, etc.

• - or, is it really intended to be a security/admin tool?

When you add or edit the tax rule, you will see the ability to include a group filter. A tax can have no group filter (as you have in AC70), or can apply to specific group(s), or can exclude specific group(s).

User groups serve multiple functions. Security is one, but there are other uses for groups. For example, they can be used to filter things like product pricing rules.

• Is there a method to integrate them through the Merchant Admin Dashboard (as there is for shipping carriers and payment gateways) in AC 7.0.2? [...]

You are being honest, not hostile, so let me give you some background. We supported third party tax providers in the past (AC55) because everyone said they wanted them. But once they were available, interest evaporated almost completely. The number of our customers that used them were in single digits, as far as I know... which is far below 1% of installations. So we looked at that, vs. the amount of effort we were spending to make it happen. As a result, we have yet to implement either of these services for AC7.

I see as time progresses, demand for these *should* increase. The wild west days of Internet taxation are probably ending. In preparation for this, AbleCommerce 7 uses a provider model for taxes. When we are ready to provide third party services, it's a relatively simple matter to plug them into the application.

This is how the Avalara integration was done. We actually had very little to do with it, beyond some technical / documentation assistance here and there. Now it appears to live on as a community effort. Perhaps our problem before was choosing the wrong providers, or perhaps it is three years later and more merchants wish to offload the concerns about tax compliance. I have not actually attempted to install the plugin, but I know there are a handful of merchants on this forum who are using it.

Also because you have the 7.0 version, you are not seeing that much work has been done on taxation features. We have added support for compounding taxes for our Canadian customers. We have added a large number of display features so that prices can be displayed with and without tax, tax rates can be shown on invoices, etc. We also added the group filters to tax rules.

So if you (or anyone else) would like to provide some input, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most, how likely are you to make use of these solutions:

1) Built-in tax provider.
(Assume you have access to the features of 7.0.2 version)

2) CyberSource
http://www.cybersource.com/products_and ... lculation/

3) CCH (fka CertiTAX / eSalesTax)
http://tax.cchgroup.com/CorpSystem/sale ... ns/default

4) Avalara
http://www.avalara.com/

5) Other (specify)

[jmestep]

I vote for #1. I had started to implement CCH in Able 5, then Ohio put off change requirements for a year. The implementation got about 3 people involved to get it set up. I would much rather have something in Able because of that and also it would eliminate problems of a web service/site being down, like UPS, USPS are occasionally.

[nickc]

Avalara plugged in pretty easily - VS made the method stubs and I filled them in . We've been using it for a few months now with no issues and only one noticable outage. The only implementation problem I encountered was having to modify Able Admin pages - order editing operations do not use TaxProvider methods, but should IMHO.

The benefits of a service like Avalara really start to show when you have multiple tax nexus and county based destination tax. They don't just provide rate info, they do all accounting and remittance as well, for substantially less than your accountant/bookkeeper can. A nice side benefit is that address validation service is included.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I vote for #1.

I forgot that we also beefed up the link between taxes and zones. Taxes have undergone a huge improvement since 7.0.0. We can continue to try and make it stronger as people point out scenarios that don't quite work right, like the Maryland rounding issue.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

The only implementation problem I encountered was having to modify Able Admin pages - order editing operations do not use TaxProvider methods, but should IMHO.

Something I am fairly certain we are tackling in the near term.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

• Is there a method to integrate them through the Merchant Admin Dashboard (as there is for shipping carriers and payment gateways) in AC 7.0.2?

I came across this topic just now, and thought I would cross reference here. This thread viewtopic.php?f=47&t=8694 contains a customization done by Mazhar to add tax provider management to the merchant admin.