Vertex Cloud

Vertex does a great job of calculating tax rates for my company's account and implementing tax rules. We are sitting on 100,000+ accounts in our system. Vertex calculates tax rates based on jurisdiction for each one. It means allowing your ERP system to communicate with Vertex, and vice versa. In order to calculate special rates, such as a reduced California rate, you need to enter a tax rule to deduct the specific rate. Each account receives its own rule.

The UI is quite dated in my opinion. It's a straight forward software, meant for business applications. There are other software that present a much more modern look. The dated UI doesn't affect performance though. It would be nice if there was an option to store tax certs in the database as well, like Avalara CertCapture.

The ability to make specific tax rules that apply to my company's specific industry or transactional situation. Also the ability to not have to worry about tax application in state's with a stratified tax rate being incorrect because of the automation of the Vertex tax engine.

The fact that the tax categories are not as nuanced as they could be, with options for different transactional scenarios that may affect taxability. Also the fact that one or two types is missing, such as the Service Contractor tax in New Orleans, Louisiana.

We are able to test various scenarios as we expand our product lines and add states. Designing a report that meets your exact needs is helpful when completing returns and the exemption records are neatly stored and easily accessed.

Adding customers and their certificates can be time consuming since the advanced selection tool now pulls up everything then lets you request a specific account to add to. There is also a lot of date sensitivity that blocks things versus 6.0 which just let it go. Updates to the software are making both of these issues more pronounced.

The best part of the cloud was not having to have a dedicated remote server for all our software. The old Vertex ran but required constant maintenance, monthly updates, SQL knowledge. With the cloud, no longer do you worry about down times, corrupted databases and the like.

The Vertex team is very helpful from the moment you buy the software. Our support rep spent hours with us configuring everyhting out of the box to our exact specifications

The cost of the software is pretty immense since you're pretty much renting a server
Hold times can be a bit long in the customer support queue
SaaS so once you stop paying, you lose access the software and any data if not backed up.