R&B Wagner gets an assist in dealing with sales tax

Since the 1850s, this Wisconsin-based family business has specialized in architectural handrails. The 150-employee company is in growth mode, recently completing expansion to all 50 states and further development into Canada. R&B Wagner offers a range of sales channels for its customers, many of whom qualify for sales tax exemptions.

R&B Wagner's expansion has created complexity in three primary areas:

• An increase in the number of exemption certificates across channels; there are over 11,000 in the company's system
• New nexus obligations, each of which must be managed individually, including registration and filing monthly or quarterly returns
• Online sales management, which creates additional challenges for exempt customers

All of these challenges fall on R&B Wagner CPA, Dave Chermak, to solve. Although he consults with outside accountants, Dave is the only full-time employee responsible for tax compliance.

When Dave joined the company in 2014, Avalara AvaTax, Avalara Returns, and Avalara CertCapture were already being used at the company, although they weren’t fully implemented or utilized. Dave wanted to maximize the suite's efficacy and found that making the most of Avalara's offerings was surprisingly simple. "The implementation was 10 times easier than we expected it to be," he recalls.

Simplified returns filing

Avalara Returns automatically files R&B Wagner's returns in every tax jurisdiction where it owes sales tax. R&B Wagner makes one payment to a secured account to cover the total amount of taxes owed, and Avalara takes care of making individual payments.

Streamlined document management

Dave worked with R&B Wagner's dedicated Avalara account manager to set up CertCapture on online sales forms so customers could load their own exemption certificates. "The new process is up to 40% more efficient than the old one," Dave says.

Confident nexus monitoring 

R&B Wagner uses Avalara's nexus monitoring service to help reduce risk by watching the company's nexus obligations. When a sale occurs in a jurisdiction where R&B Wagner is not registered to collect and file sales tax, the transaction is flagged and Avalara alerts R&B Wagner. If registration in the new jurisdiction is required, Dave has the option to set it up himself or let Avalara take care of it.

Automation for the win

If Dave didn't have Avalara's help, he would have to hire one or two more people to take on sales tax. Currently, he has a staff of three working in other areas, and he calls Avalara his "fourth employee." 

Thanks to Avalara, Dave's day-to-day work on sales tax is minimal and he can spend more time working on finding process improvements for the business and making things easier for his other three employees. "The less I have to think about sales tax, the better," he says.