To address these challenges, Avalara developed its Treasury Management Platform (TMS), a scalable, cloud-based solution, launched and continuously enhanced over five years. The TMS was specifically designed to integrate seamlessly with internal applications and external banking and tool APIs, such as establishing direct host-to-host (H2H) connections with all banking partners. These integrations were crucial for mitigating funding and payment risks, implementing proactive financial controls, establishing rule‑based payment matching and validation, and driving the treasury team towards exception-based management.
The TMS goes beyond internal efficiency though. Avalara recognised that having a robust platform would help position the company as a thought‑leader, encouraging broader technology adoption among jurisdictions. By streamlining and automating complex workflows, Avalara has become an advocate for technology enablement in an industry historically resistant to rapid change.
Operationally, its TMS employs machine-learning algorithms to automate incoming client wire reconciliation, resulting in an 80% reduction in manual workload. Additionally, its TMS integrates with Avalara’s internal returns filing platform, enabling the collection of lump-sum client funding and precise disbursements to over 10,000 unique jurisdictions each month. Together, the platforms’ complex jurisdiction‑specific rules ensure exact compliance and eliminate collection of excess funds, enhancing customer satisfaction, accuracy and transparency.
By reducing manual processes, paperwork and cheque payments the TMS and returns console (RC) contribute to Avalara’s environmental and sustainability efforts by minimising paper consumption and waste. Additionally, the solution has been instrumental in empowering Avalara’s global workforce. The cloud-based nature of the platform supports collaboration across Avalara’s teams located in offices spanning the US, EMEA and APAC regions. This global accessibility ensures seamless operations around the clock, fostering agility, collaboration and consistent financial controls, regardless of geographic location. Implementing the TMS was a formidable task that involved intense collaboration across multiple teams – customer support, engineering, legal, product, tax compliance and treasury. Their concerted efforts transformed Avalara from a company limited by manual processes into an innovator setting industry benchmarks for efficiency, accuracy and compliance.
Today, this solution not only enables Avalara to efficiently handle US$3bn monthly across 30,000+ customers but also sets the company at the forefront of digital transformation in tax compliance. The journey from manual spreadsheet-driven processes to an automated, scalable and globally integrated platform does a great job capturing how Avalara has navigated many complicated challenges to create truly impactful outcomes for its employees, customers and the broader compliance community.
