Committing Tax on Billing Documents Using Avalara AvaTax

If your org is configured to use Avalara AvaTax to calculate tax on billing documents, you might be required to commit tax. This might be necessary if, for example, your business submits its tax returns using Avalara. You can commit tax for a single billing document from its detail page, or for multiple billing documents from the list view. Committing tax both calculates a billing document's tax value and commits it to Avalara AvaTax.

You can only commit tax for billing documents with the status "Draft" or "Ready for Review" where the External Tax Status is not "Finalized". If a billing document's External Tax Status is "Finalized" its tax value is already committed to Avalara AvaTax and you cannot make any further edits that might affect the document's tax value. For more information, see Edit Restrictions when External Tax Status is Finalized.

Read Using Avalara AvaTax for Tax Calculation before committing tax.

Committing Tax for a Single Billing Document

To commit tax for a single billing document:

  1. Click the Billing Documents tab.
  2. Click the Document Number of the billing document that you want to commit tax for. You can only commit tax for billing documents with the status "Draft" or "Ready for Review".
  3. Click Commit Tax with Avalara.
  4. To confirm the action, click Commit Tax.

If the billing document's External Tax Status is "Not Calculated" (either because tax hasn't been calculated or it is not up to date), a message is displayed advising you that the amount committed might differ from the amount shown on the document. You can choose to calculate tax now and review the value, or you can go ahead and commit tax without reviewing the value.

Warning:

Choosing the option to calculate tax might cause the billing document to be completed without warning. This happens if the Billing Central Automation feature is set up to automatically complete billing documents when their tax is calculated. Once a billing document's status is "Complete" you cannot commit its tax to Avalara AvaTax. Therefore if you want to commit tax manually, make sure the Billing Central Automation feature is not set up to automatically complete billing documents.

Committing Tax for Multiple Billing Documents

To commit tax for multiple billing documents:

  1. Click the Billing Documents tab.
  2. Select the billing documents that you want to commit tax for. You can only commit tax for billing documents with the status "Draft" or "Ready for Review".
  3. Click Commit Tax with Avalara. The Commit Tax with Avalara page displays the number of billing documents that will be processed. The page also lists any invalid billing documents with a description of the error. Invalid documents are excluded from the process.
  4. To confirm the action, click Commit Tax. The process starts in the background.

You can click View Background Process to monitor the progress. For more information, see Monitoring the Progress of a Background Process. If errors occur when processing multiple documents, contact your administrator to confirm that an appropriate scope size is set.

Committing Tax Automatically

You can configure the Billing Central Automation feature to commit tax automatically. This is only possible if the feature is configured to automatically calculate tax using Avalara AvaTax or the default tax engine, and is configured to automatically complete billing documents. When these options are enabled, the Commit Tax to Avalara AvaTax while calculating checkbox is available. Select this checkbox if you want tax to be committed to Avalara AvaTax as part of the automatic completion process.

Warning:

If you do not select this checkbox billing documents will be completed without their tax values being committed, and you cannot manually commit tax to Avalara AvaTax once a billing document's status is "Complete".

For more information about configuring the Billing Central Automation feature, see Setting up the Automation of Billing Central Processes.

Note:

The Billing Central Automation feature does not commit tax for, or complete, billing documents of type Credit Note with the status "Ready for Review".