Exception Certificate Management: Implementation Activity

In the following implementation activity, you will learn how to add customers existing in MYOB Acumatica to the Avalara exemption certificate management (ECM) account, and how to request an exemption certificate from the customer.

Attention: This activity is based on the U100 dataset. If you are using another dataset, or if any system settings have been changed in U100, these changes can affect the workflow of the activity and the results of the processing. To avoid any issues, restore the U100 dataset to its initial state.

Story

Suppose that the SweetLife company, which sells juicers, has been expanding rapidly and has acquired a significant number of customers across various states in the US. As their customer base grows, SweetLife needs to ensure compliance with sales tax regulations in each jurisdiction where they conduct business.

Additionally, they have customers who qualify for tax exemptions. To streamline their sales tax compliance processes and efficiently manage exemption customers, SweetLife has decided to integrate their sales and tax systems with Avalara, and to implement its exemption certificate management functionality to accurately track and validate exemption certificates provided by eligible customers.

Acting as the a system administrator, you need to configure the exemption certificate management functionality in MYOB Acumatica.

Process Overview

In this activity, you will do the following:

  1. Add the MYOB Acumatica tax-exempt customers to the ECM provider account.
  2. Request an exemption certificate from a customer.

System Preparation

Before you start creating customers and requesting exempt certificates, you need to launch the MYOB Acumatica website, and sign in to a company with the U100 dataset preloaded. You should sign in as the system administrator, Kimberly Gibbs, with the gibbs username and the 123 password.

As a prerequisite activity, be sure you have configured the Avalara account and set up integration with Avalara AvaTax, as described in the To Set Up Integration With AvaTax.

As a prerequisite activity, be sure the needed feature has been enabled in MYOB Acumatica, and settings have been specified, as described in Exception Certificate Management: Configuration Prerequisites.

Step 1: Adding Multiple Customers to the ECM Provider Account

To create multiple MYOB Acumatica customers in the Avalara ECM account, do the following:

  1. Open the Manage Exempt Customers (TX505000) form.
  2. In the Action box of the Selection area, select Create Customer in ECM Provider. When you select this option, the table displays all the active customers defined in MYOB Acumatica.

    Notice that in the Company Code box of the selection area, SWEETSTORE is specified, and this box is unavailable for editing. The box was filled in because only one company created in the ECM provider account has been linked with the branches of the SweetLife company in MYOB Acumatica on the Company Code Mapping tab of the Tax Providers (TX102000) form. Because only this company code is available, the system has inserted this code oin the box by default. The processed customers will be created in the company in the ECM account that corresponds to the selected company code.

  3. In the header row of the table, select the unlabeled check box, which selects all records on the current page.
  4. On the form toolbar, click Process.

Once the process is completed, the processed customers are created in the ECM provider, and the success message is displayed next to each customer on the Processed tab of the Processing dialog box. For these customers, the system populates the Company Code column in the table on the current form with the company code. If you click the Go to Next Page arrow button located at the bottom of the table, you can see that the Company Code column is empty for customers listed on the next page because you have not processed these customers.

Step 2: Creating a Single Customer in the ECM Provider

To create a particular customer in the ECM provider, do the following:

  1. On the Customers (AR303000) form, open the HHEAVEN - Harmony Heaven customer.
  2. On the More menu (under Exemption Certificates), click Create Customer in ECM Provider.

    Because only one company created in the ECM provider account has been linked to the branches of the SweetLife company in MYOB Acumatica, the system adds the customer to the SWEETSTORE company in the ECM account by default.

  3. Once the process is completed, the notification message is displayed in the upper right corner of the form.

For the purposes of this activity, the customer has already been added to Avalara, so the warning message notifies you about it. If the customer had not been added to Avalara before, you would have received a message about the successful creation of the customer in the ECM account.

Step 3: Requesting an Exemption Certificate for a Customer

To have a customer's valid exemption certificate, you need to send an email to the customer with a request to upload the certificate to Avalara. To request an exemption certificate from a customer, do the following

  1. On the Customers (AR303000) form, open the HHEAVEN - Harmony Heaven customer.
  2. On the More menu (under Exemption Certificates), click Request Certificate. The Request Certificate command become available once you have created the customer in the ECM provider account in Instruction 2 of this activity.

    The Request Certificate dialog box opens.

  3. In the dialog box, do the following:
    • In the Certificate Request Template box, select Default Cover Letter. This is the cover letter template that has been created in the Avalara ECM Provider and that the system will use to send the request.
    • In the State box, select NY, which is the state for which the exemption certificate will be issued.
    • In the Company Code box, notice that the system has inserted SWEETSTORE (the only company linked to the branches of the SweetLife company in MYOB Acumatica).
    • In the Email box, notice that the system has inserted the customer's default email address to be used for requesting a certificate.
    • In the Country box, notice that the system has inserted the country of the customer. By default, US is selected.
  4. Click Request. The system sends a request to the provided email address and closes the dialog box.

The success message is displayed in the upper right corner of the Customers form. This means that an email request has been successfully sent to the customer containing a request to upload the valid exemption certificate; the email included the link the user can click to upload the certificatte. Once the customer uploads the certificate to Avalara, it will be available in the list of customer certificates in the ECM account. From there, it can be retrieved and viewed in MYOB Acumatica.

Retrieving a Certificate to MYOB Acumatica

In this step, you will retrieve an exemption certificate in MYOB Acumatica.

Note: For testing purposes, assume that HHEAVEN customer has received a certificate request and has already uploaded a valid certificate to Avalara by using the link in the email.

Do the following:

  1. On the Customers (AR303000) form, open the HHEAVEN customer.
  2. On the More menu (under Exemption Certificates), click Retrieve Certificates. The Exemption Certificates dialog box opens, in which the certificate is listed.
  3. In the Certificate Status column, notice that the status of the certificate is Valid.
  4. In the Certificate ID column, click the reference number of the certificate. The system opens it in a separate tab. You can review, save, or print the certificate.

As a result, when you create an invoice or sales order containing taxable items for this customer in MYOB Acumatica, the taxes are not calculated, and the related tax total boxes contain 0.