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Sales tax obligations are often complex and can cause headaches for small and mid-sized businesses, especially when marketplace fulfillment arrangements are involved. So while an offer of amnesty for uncollected sales tax sounds like a nice gesture, it's not surprising that the details are complex. And they could cause a headache.

Deciding whether that possible headache is worthwhile is a gamble each business needs to evaluate.

To clarify the details and help you make this decision, Avalara's Scott Peterson has analyzed the amnesty offer, suggested nine incisive questions you should ask about it, and also provided the answers. Even if you don't currently sell any of your products through a marketplace, it can be valuable to learn about this latest development in how states are pursuing tax funds.

Context for a decision like this is crucial, so the Avalara advice begins by sketching out the larger picture around the amnesty decision. Peterson notes that inter-state collaboration on tax forgiveness is fairly rare; however, he later points out that many states organize their own amnesty or voluntary disclosure programs. This current program is the largest to date, with full participation by 23 states and limited offerings from five others. Another unique feature of this effort is that all eligible back taxes will be waived for any business with qualifying tax obligations (that is, taxes from nexus based on inventory stored in a fulfillment facility), whereas these programs usually only apply to registered taxpayers and typically only disclaim the penalties and interest on the tax monies.

The crux of the gamble is this: registering for the program will remove the expense of past taxes and a possible audit from marketplace sales, but it will also establish a clear, on-going tax obligation for your online marketplace sales.

The key points of this amnesty offering that Peterson clarifies move from more general information to central questions of the risks involved with each option:

1. Who does the tax amnesty impact? Any business using a marketplace provider (such as Amazon or eBay) with inventory in the affected states.

2. What states are participating? Peterson lists the 28 states (plus the District of Columbia) that are involved with this Multistate Tax Commission (MTC).

3. Do I really have to register and collect sales tax? Yes, according to the relevant state laws and definitions.

4. What about income tax? This tax obligation has more variability across states and can't be easily generalized.

5. How does tax amnesty work? Between August 17 and October 17, you can apply to collect sales tax or to exempt from income/franchise tax and the unpaid back-taxes, penalties, and interest will all be waived. However you will be registered as an organization clearly required to collect and remit these taxes going forward.

6. What are the risks of participating in the amnesty plan? It requires time and resources to maintain accurate tax collection and payments, and increased costs are never pleasing to customers.

7. What are the risks of not participating? You may some day be audited and forced to pay these taxes, penalties, and interest, and state agencies are investing more resources into identifying and collecting these funds.

8. What are my other options? Hope to not be audited before you can take advantage of another amnesty or voluntary disclosure offering.

9. How do I learn more about the tax amnesty program? Talk with your trusted tax advisor, a representative of the MTC, or the Avalara hotline (phone or email) focused on this amnesty offering.

While the obvious numbers-based decision is to not let taxes erode your profits, the chance of future audits and the relevant ethical issues may weigh more heavily for your company. Whether your company is involved with manufacturing, distribution, or professional services, this is just one example of the challenging decisions that are part of the adventure of being an entrepreneur.

To offset the difficulty of tracking sales tax and the danger of not tracking it, you can invest in software solutions like AvaTax. And to further streamline your operations, this outstanding tax automation package can be integrated directly to your accounting / CRM / ERP suite. aACE Software provides a comprehensive yet affordable system with proven AvaTax integration. This robust business solution can not only bring peace of mind and a reduced burden for managing sales taxes, but can also provide increased visibility, accuracy, and velocity in your operations.

Learn more today about the synergy of Avalara tools and aACE 5.

"I feel the whole aACE package is customized and tailored to my needs." ~ Todd Breedlove, Vice President, Knight Hardwood Flooring Inc.

In an unusual collaboration, Barclays, Oxford, and Cambridge prepared a report last year on how small businesses can best prepare to scale up. Barclays is one of the most prestigious banks in Great Britain. This reputation may have been helpful in getting the two rival universities to work together. However the negotiations took place, the report brings together excellent insight from these top-tier institutions. And Philip Salter, a contributing writer for Forbes.com, has publicized a summary of key details.

For our take on these six important factors, read on:

1. Commit to Grow - The starting point is the entrepreneur's will and ambition. This isn't to say anything belittling about small companies. Each business owner will be satisfied with a different balance of lifestyle and time spent supporting that lifestyle. The fact remains that a company won't grow on its own. In order to scale up, the company leaders must want to grow, create goals for growth, elaborate on plans for growth, and accomplish each step along the way.

2. Build a Broad Management Skillset - That commitment to grow is clearly a significant labor. It can't be handled by a single company founder. While the expertise and experience gained from starting a company will always be valuable, continued growth requires more. The founding members of an organization need to be looking for additional people to bring into the team. These supporting players will contribute more diverse experience and more varied skills. This team-building should obviously proceed as the needs of the company direct — there's no sense in hiring a great IT director if what the company currently needs is stronger marketing. And while business management degrees provide a solid set of general skills, you may find that someone with an accounting, banking, or other background might have the unique insight needed for certain roles.

3. Build Collaborations - Building a capable, resilient team doesn't end with the people on your payroll. Instead, a growing organization needs to reach out to other groups and build strong, reliable relationships with them. Partnerships may come in varying degrees of formality, from a contracted vendor to regular conversations with a mentor in another, more established company. It's easy to see how service providers, sales channel partners, and suppliers fit into this valuable network. But ideally an entrepreneur will recognize that customers are an important part of that same network. Besides just purchasing your product or service, these folks, who are clearly willing to invest in your growth, can be a source of feedback and market information. As you go beyond the basic transactions with clients, you may find that some of them become your most helpful promoters. In fact, the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Methodology highly recommends this approach.

4. Establish Standardized Processes - The old adage is that getting something done right requires that you do it yourself. But this is no way to promote your company's growth. As your organization becomes more busy, you can't do everything yourself. Nor can a team of founding members. The solution is to establish clear, standardized, repeatable processes, then delegate those tasks to your team. Of course, this requires several important tasks of a higher level of complexity — documenting processes, selecting staff, training, and supervision. But the result is additional time for you to focus on even more sophisticated and valuable work. One way to ensure that this effort is a success is to invest in software that the entire team can use, integrating finances with inventory and customer outreach.

5. Identify Core Competence - Similar to documenting processes, scaling your business requires documenting other details, especially crafting a description of what actually IS your business. In early stages, flexibility and adapting to customer interest can serve you well; however, when your organization is expanding, it will require some disciplined decision-making. And that will require prioritizing opportunities and resources around the things that are most important. These core competencies will often grow from the unique expertise that you bring to the market. When your entire team knows what you can do better than all the competition, it simplifies the strategic choices that will sustain your growth.

6. Articulate Competitive Strength - Going one step further, securing ongoing profitability requires not only that you know what your business is, but that you know how well your business is doing. Objective numbers can be useful here, but even more helpful can be a subjective perception of your company, as seen by your customers. With everything that passionate entrepreneurs know and want for their businesses, it can be hard to understand how people outside the company perceive it. But appreciating their perspective is vital, since they are people funding the venture. Don't be chained to your own definitions of quality and success; seek out what your current and prospective clientele feel is the competitive advantage you hold. Once you have a sense of that value proposition from the customer's point of view, you can connect it to your internal processes, adapting to better fill the demand.

You can use these six guidelines to help navigate the sometimes confusing options that confront any business at a time of growth. With a solid foundation of motivation, skillsets, collaborative relationships, processes, and competitive awareness, you'll be ready to ensure that your growth is steady and continuous.

To get more details about these recommendations from Barclays, Cambridge, and Oxford, download a full copy of the report.

As noted in this research, the ability to successfully scale your business can be optimized by the right software. Every business, from professional services to light manufacturing, includes a combination of general processes and unique features. The ideal business software solution will provide support for both aspects of your company. aACE 5 provides exactly this kind of support. The out-of-the-box functionality covers a majority of business accounting, CRM, and ERP needs. And because aACE 5 is built on FileMaker, it is simple and affordable to customize. We can identify your company's unique expertise and codify it into an app that integrates perfectly with the rest of the system. The personalized aACE 5 solution for your SMB is cross-platform, mobile-enabled, and ecommerce-ready.

Contact us today to learn more.

“Most companies of our size buy a software package and change the way they run their business to fit that package. We have been lucky enough to work the other way – aACE started with a basic structure, which was then tailored to our specific way of working.” ~ Peter Osbourne, President, Special EFX Ltd.

Growing your business is exciting, even though it demands new efforts and tough decisions. One of the most precarious business processes to build out is shipping. If you coast by just doing what you have always done while your customer base increases, it can create problems. When the demand for your product increases, you have to make sure every delivery goes as smooth as possible for your new clients. But that's easier said than done.

To ensure your company growth is solid, you need to address shipping proactively. SmallBizDaily.com has identified areas where you can take concrete steps to improve your shipping processes. This site has some great advice for entrepreneurs and this post written by Emma Sturgis is no exception.

The initial warning about company expansion bears repeating. No one likes to be "vulnerable," yet the exposure to risk is interwoven with progress. Ignoring the possible dangers is inviting them to trip you up. However with careful consideration of these four aspects of your fulfillment process, you will be able to transform vulnerabilities into strengths.

1. Get the Tools for the Job

The first step in shipping excellence is an investment in ERP. With a strong enterprise resource planning package, you'll have optimal insight into your inventory and order tracking. These tools can seamlessly integrate sales, operations, and accounting. And a comprehensive solution like this gives you not only increased visibility, but also workflow automation (more on this later), plus a reduction in data entry errors. Increase the speed and accuracy of your daily operations with high quality inventory management software.

2. Put the Tools to Work for You

When you find and implement good software, it can work hard for you. Contemporary consumers like to be able to quickly find answers on their own, which is one feature a robust CRM package provides. You can integrate it with the ERP system and let customers follow up on their own orders, read support materials, and reach out to your staff when needed. Likewise, automation of repetitive tasks can free up time and resources for you. Why have the system tell you inventory is low when you can have it automatically tell your supplier how much you want to order? You can use these tools to also track relationships with vendors, partners, and other business contacts.

3. Hire Experts

In basic economics, we learn that the division of labor maximizes efficiencies. Luckily there are people who specialize in administrative services and drop shipping. Outsourcing certain tasks can help you concentrate on the activities that will help your climb continue.

4. Refine Your Operations

A little bit of documentation can go a long way when it covers what your staff needs to do in complicated processes or unexpected developments. In addition, the process of thinking through these scenarios can help you know what it is you don't know about your industry and operations. Your investment in a robust business software solution can also benefit on this front. Business intelligence is vital, and the starting point of this intelligence is knowing exactly what your company is doing. An integrated accounting/CRM/ERP package puts this data right in your hands, showing you where the company is lagging and what efforts are excelling. With this knowledge, you can make strategic decisions to hone your business and continue the growth.

As sales increase, don't let the excitement distract you from the more valuable goal. Each transaction is the opportunity to create a long-lasting relationship with the client. Why settle for one sale now when strong fulfillment and customer care can earn you the client's future purchases? Earning this trust will partly depend on the effectiveness of your shipping processes.

Sharp business owners will recognize the larger pattern in this advice from SmallBizDaily.com — high quality resources are a powerful investment. The best software and staff will not only support your efforts, but will also help you improve operations.

aACE 5 is designed to accelerate your business velocity this way. It is powerful business management software that allows you to manage operations in a single, complete, cross-platform solution. Our satisfied clients say that, for their growing companies, aACE outperforms competitors such as Microsoft, AcctVantage, and NetSuite. Our mobile apps and ecommerce integration add to the aACE 5 value proposition, as well as our easy, affordable customizations.

"We switched to aACE at the end of 2011, and cannot even imagine (or remember) life before aACE. The system has streamlined our business operations to a level that we never thought possible. We have been able to trim our headcount in several areas, and achieve efficiencies we thought were only possible in dreams. The pre-sales process is very thorough and they work very hard to tailor the system to your business needs." ~ Doug Jacobs, President, Restylers' Choice

To set the stage, Panorama Consulting is an outstanding resource for research, education, and guidance about enterprise resource planning software. Deploying an ERP solution is a major decision and the people at Panorama are smart and talented. The best example of their caliber might be Eric Kimberling, a recognized expert on ERP systems with 20 years experience. He knows his stuff and his opinions about ERP are trusted by some of the largest organizations in the world.

This detail might be the thing that makes his advice wrong for you.

In Mr. Kimberling's July 25 post, he points out several reasons why purchasing new ERP software is a bad idea, both in general and specifically at this time. However to support this claim, he uses examples that predominantly fit into what Panorama labels "Tier 1" software — bulky, expensive packages for global corporations. For that subset of ERP solutions, his claim may be perfectly true.

But does it apply to you?

If you're not a globe-spanning organization with hyper-complex operational structures, the answer may very well be "No." In fact, there's a good chance that now is the perfect time to invest in new ERP software. This applies to:

• A CEO who is tired of not knowing what the company's true cash position is.
• A controller who is surprised by the AMEX bill every month.
• An owner who feels like she is steering a ship in the dark.
• An executive who is frustrated because everyone is busy, but nothing is getting done.
• Any decision-maker who feels debilitated by missing and incomplete data.

To be candid, Mr. Kimberling notes some limits to his claim later in the post. But a headline often grabs more attention than a second-to-last paragraph. So let's elaborate on the possibility that you should seriously consider investing in your company's ERP.

Your cost-benefit analysis needs to acknowledge what you are losing by not having an effective, integrated ERP system in place. How much time is spent shuffling papers, updating spreadsheets, and trying to get a clear report on the state of the business? In that lost time, how many opportunities are also lost? What more valuable tasks could you and your staff be addressing?

We acknowledge that major organizational changes can be difficult. But at aACE Software, we have built a reputation on implementations with rigorous preparation and with results that exceed expectations. And we have the case studies to support that standing. One client described his experience this way:

"The implementation was flawless and respectful of our need to continue operating. It couldn’t have gone better. Even though we had many systems to integrate, importing our data was easy and the entire process was smooth and professional. I’ve never experienced as easy an implementation of anything like I experienced with the aACE team." ~ Jim Parker, President and Owner, Vacutherm Inc.

aACE 5's value proposition is to accelerate your business velocity. This comprehensive yet affordable package operates on Mac and PC, coordinating your accounting, CRM, and ERP functions. Built on the FileMaker platform, aACE 5 can be easily and affordably customized, and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.

To be frank, we have to admit that aACE 5 isn't for all organizations — if you're part of a global enterprise, you'll just have to wait for a better time to get the most for your ERP dollar.

For small and medium-sized businesses looking to get an edge in their market though, aACE 5 might be a perfect fit. And now may be the perfect time.

Learn more today about how aACE 5 can accelerate your business velocity.

"We were looking for a solution that gave us a solid core that we could customize rather easily to suit our unique business processes. As a custom fabricator, we also needed a solution that could give us several different options when it came to how we want to manage and track inventory, account for multi-level job-costing, and handle our unique design and estimation processes as well. Since implementation, we have found that aACE has not only helped us reinforce and automate many of our complex workflows, but it has also given us visibility into our data at both a high level and granular level like we have never had before." ~ Andrew Porter, ERP Manager, Gable

You may have heard the saying: Smart people learn from their mistakes, but wise people learn from the mistakes of others. A tax audit might not exactly fall into the category of 'a mistake,' but we can definitely learn from audits that others have gone through.

In fact, Avalara has prepared a free, 15-page report about how tax audits are commonly handled. The data analyzed includes over 60,000 Texas audits and demographic details from an entire year of California audits. Several of the report's key findings have been summarized in Kerry Alexander's post on the Avalara blog.

For example, tax auditors don't merely draw business names out of a hat. Certain industries get more attention than others. This is usually because the relevant tax policies are more complex than for other industries. With increased complexity comes an increased chance of error, so auditors give increased attention to those areas of the market. Likewise, there are often red flags that auditors recognize in a company's tax reporting, such as high ratios of exempt sales or out-of-state purchases.

The industries that seem to be targeted most by state audit divisions are Construction, Food Service, Manufacturing, Retail, and Wholesale/Distribution. These business avenues all share difficulties in clearly assigning sales tax nexus, while they each had at least one other major trigger for audits:

• Retailers, wholesalers, and food services struggle with details of product taxability, especially different states tax different products and services
• Manufacturers and construction companies often get tripped up with use tax and exempt sales
• Distribution companies have complicated rules for drop shipping

The Avalara Sales and Use Tax Audits Uncovered report goes into more details about these tax compliance trouble-spots.

The smart answer, of course, for avoiding an expensive tax audit is to not make any mistakes in recording and reporting. Easier said than done. The wise corollary to the smart answer is to get help from tax specialists and automated tax software.

Offering seamless integration with Avalara's AvaTax product, aACE 5 can also help simplify your tax compliance burden. This robust yet affordable software solution for small and mid-sized businesses gives you increased visibility into your company's accounting, CRM, and ERP. Built on FileMaker, aACE 5 can deploy on Mac or PC, can be easily customized, and provides mobile and ecommerce functionality for additional flexibility. So whether you're the CEO who is tired of not knowing what your company's true cash position is or the owner-operator who feels like you're steering a ship in the dark, look into how aACE can bring your business data to light.

"aCE has been able to fully integrate full scale accounting, construction project bidding and fulfillment, point-of-sale order processing, field service via iPad, web store management and fulfillment, and much more into one seamless package." ~ Alvaro Mendoza, President/CEO, Commercial Energy Specialists, Inc.

Does fraud make you worry about how your business handles mobile payments? It probably should. Especially according to the insightful article written by Benton Alexander Smith for IdahoBusinessReview.com.

The article provides several enlightening quotations and facts from Kount — a leading provider in anti-fraud technology — including material from their 2017 Mobile Payments and Fraud report. This report surveyed 800 merchants around the globe, taking the pulse of how contemporary businesses are handling digital sales.

Smith relates that this year's report continues to reveal the trend of merchants' increasing acceptance for payment options linked to mobile devices. Unfortunately, this development is matched by another trend: the increase of fraud perpetrated using mobile devices.

This isn't to say that mobile payments are inherently bad. As Smith shares from an interview with Don Bush of Kount, the perception of a technology's risk is one thing, but the actual risk hinges on the security tools that a company has in place. In addition, Smith notes how Greg Andrews of Entertainment Benefits Group identifies consumers' clear demands for the convenience of mobile payments.

As any smart business person knows, refusing to address your customers' interests is a sure way to reduce company growth. So mobile payments are here to stay. The question comes down to how well you secure your payment processes.

The Kount 2017 report offers help for this question. It provides industry standards of fraud prevention with mobile payments, enabling you to evaluate how well you are doing. Is your security over-the-top, costing you valid sales? Is it too lax, open to fraudulent activities? This information, along with more data about market segments, browser- and app-based transactions, and important trends, is available in Kount's report for free download after registration.

As Smith concludes, education and awareness of the salient details are vital for effective security.

Would it surprise you to learn that businesses and their marketing consultants have a different view of how well the customer experience is being handled?

This is one of the noteworthy findings gathered in eConsultancy's report: Implementing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Best Practice Guide. This 2017 report is free to subscribers and is designed to help you build a framework for improving your company's CX. It includes interviews with top marketing leaders, the findings from recent surveys, and additional data. Beyond knowledge though, the report aims to convey some wisdom as well, with practical advice on how to improve your company's interactions with your customers.

As a peek into the information captured in this report, eConsultancy editor Ben Davis has posted an article with key highlights. Topping his list of observations is an item of relative agreement between businesses and marketing agents — company departments have separate CX agendas. While 40% of business respondents feel this way and 43% of marketing agency respondents agree, this troubling trend might be a less important answer to the survey question.

The disparity on the next answer set also deserves attention. The survey question itself asks if members of the organization overall support CX goals. Nearly one-third of company respondents claim that yes, there is a good collaborative process in place. However the marketing agency respondents feel different. Only 17% describe the situation in such positive terms. In other words, while some internal company personnel feel they are doing well with unified CX, only half as many external marketing professionals would agree.

Which group is seeing things accurately?

A similar pattern of alignment/conflict between internal staff and external professionals is found in the final set of survey results that Mr. Davis shares. The question asks how often the company meets CX expectations. While the company personnel and marketing pros match up with a high response on "sometimes", the two surrounding answers show disparity. The claim that the company consistently meets expectations is distinctly higher from the company personnel than the outside observers. And vice versa, the admission that the company generally fails with CX is low from internal staff, but more than twice as high from professional agencies. These survey numbers suggest that employees think more highly of their organization than people outside the company do. Or perhaps the marketing professionals just more cynical?

Which group is viewing company performance clearly?

This hidden lesson may not be answered in eConsultancy's report, but the survey results give every organization food for thought. If your team feels strongly about how well CX efforts are going, an outside observer might disagree. This could be a good opportunity to ask more pointed questions and get more detailed answers. What exactly is working well? Where precisely can improvements be made?

One thing is for sure: CX is too important to ignore. Ongoing relationships with your clients are vital to your company's growth. So whether or not you explore eConsultancy's full report, be sure to explore your organization's efforts at creating an outstanding experience for each customer.

To facilitate high-quality customer service and relations, a robust CRM tool can make a huge difference. Synergies abound when your software solution for tracking leads and clients is fully integrated to your accounting and ERP systems. Orders can be instantly tracked against inventory, with prompts to your staff to reach out to clients when there are delays. Order fulfillment can begin almost immediately, cutting the wait-time for you customers. And besides the CX benefits, the increased visibility you get over your organization brings its own value-add.

aACE 5 is an integrated software solution that runs on both Mac and PC, supports mobile apps, and can be customized easily and affordably. It is designed to help SMBs maintain momentum and growth, and then go further for optimal efficiencies and increased business velocity. Learn more today about how aACE 5 can invigorate your company.

"In addition to not only implementing aACE and using it for the past five years, aACE has helped us grow our business, allowing us to quickly change our business processes as our customer base has changed, thus increasing our ability to get solutions to the marketplace quickly and efficiently." ~ Bryan Anderson, All Solutions 360 LLC

Sales tax rules are complicated enough when handling transactions between you and your customers, and adding a third party can seem to triple the confusion. You know that when a customer buys an item you have in stock, you're responsible for collecting any sales tax they owe on the purchase. But what happens when they order a product from you and it's shipped from a fulfillment center? Do you still need to collect taxes on something that was never in your business's possession?

As more small businesses launch ecommerce stores, drop shipping is becoming an increasingly popular way to fulfill customer orders without tying up warehouse space with unsold inventory. But as with any tax regulations, the rules around sales tax and drop shipping may be more complex than you think. On Thursday, August 3rd, join Sales Tax Compliance Expert Shane Ratigan of Avalara for a webinar to clear it all up.

Register now — space is limited!

Are you looking for a way to streamline your sales tax management? Avalara offers powerful and affordable sales tax automation software that makes calculating, collecting, filing, and remitting sales tax a breeze. And best of all, Avalara AvaTax integrates seamlessly with aACE to offer precise sales tax automation at the click of a button right from your order entry screen. Ready to make your sales tax headaches a thing of the past?

"[aACE] reduced the time needed to enter an order from hours to minutes. All transactions are easy and quick to enter."
— Wendy Donenfield, CPA and Controller, M & R International