Avalara AvaTax

Avalara AvaTax is a cloud-based service that automates transaction tax calculation and the tax filing process, using tax content from more than 12,000 US taxing jurisdictions and over 200 countries. This app connects AvaTax to Hantera so your transaction tax is calculated against the most current tax rules, and your sales and credit documents are recorded in Avalara for filing.

What the app does

Capability	Description
Tax calculation	Calculates US sales tax and Canadian GST/HST/PST/QST on carts and orders. The amounts Avalara returns are written directly onto order lines and shipping — the app never applies a rate itself.
Document recording	When Hantera creates an invoice, the app commits it to Avalara as a SalesInvoice. Credit invoices from returns are committed as ReturnInvoice documents, taxed at the original sale's rates.
Voiding	Cancelling a Hantera invoice voids the corresponding AvaTax document.
Tax codes	Look up Avalara tax codes from the portal and assign them per order line or per shipping line.
Exemptions	Assign a document-level entity/use code per order, picked from the codes your own account exposes.
Address validation	Validate and normalise a delivery address against Avalara's address service.
Logging	Every AvaTax call is recorded on the order timeline, optionally including the full request and response.

The app is scoped to the destinations you enable — US and Canada by default. Orders shipping anywhere else keep Hantera's native tax behaviour untouched.

Before you start

You need an Avalara AvaTax account. From your AvaTax Admin Console, gather:

What	Where to find it
Account number	Provided during your AvaTax account activation.
License key	Provided during your AvaTax account activation. If you've lost it, reset it in the Admin Console under Settings → License key.
Company code	The company profile identifier in the AvaTax Admin Console. You can also look this up from inside Hantera once your credentials are saved.
Environment	Whether you're connecting to Avalara's sandbox or production service.

You also need to know your ship-from address for each Hantera channel that will use AvaTax. Tax cannot be calculated without both an origin and a destination — see Configuration.

Start in sandbox

Set Environment to Sandbox while you set things up. Sandbox transactions never affect your filing data, so you can create, commit and void freely. Switch to Production only when you're ready to record real documents.

Set it up

1. Install the app on your Hantera instance through the standard app installation.
2. Enter your credentials and verify them with Test connection — see Configuration.
3. Set your company code, either by typing it or using the built-in company lookup.
4. Enable and configure each channel that should use AvaTax, including its ship-from address — see Configure each channel.
5. Set your default tax codes for products and shipping — see Tax Codes.
6. Place a test order to a US address in an enabled channel. The order's sidebar shows a Tax calculated by Avalara AvaTax badge and the order timeline records the call.

Nothing happens until a channel is enabled

AvaTax is opt-in per channel. Entering valid credentials is not enough — a channel with no AvaTax configuration, or with the toggle off, is left entirely alone. This lets you roll AvaTax out one channel at a time.

Documentation

Page	Contents
Configuration	Credentials, environment, company code, behaviour switches, country scope, per-channel setup, and exactly when tax gets calculated.
Tax Codes	Assigning Avalara tax codes to order lines and shipping lines, the resolution order, and how a product catalogue feeds them.
Working with Orders	The AvaTax order panel, entity/use codes, exemption certificates, address validation, forced recalculation, and troubleshooting.
Documents & Returns	How Hantera invoices become recorded AvaTax documents, how returns are credited, voiding, and running with an ERP as system of record.

Related

• Tax Providers — what all tax apps in this family have in common
• Commerce app — cart tax persistence, which makes cart renders free
• Avalara tax code reference — searchable list of Avalara system tax codes