Actabl, a hospitality software company dedicated to empowering hotels with actionable insights to drive profit, has partnered with Avalara Inc., a provider of cloud-based tax compliance automation for businesses of all sizes, to offer customers tax reporting and data management.
“We are in the business of owning the forecasting and budget motion for each property,” Jason Luo, chief revenue officer, Actabl, told Hotel Business in an interview at ALIS. “We integrate with 270 different data sets today. What Avalara does is aligned with what we do, which is to make hotels more profitable.”
The partnership between the two companies consolidates revenue and tax data from various business systems, streamlining tax compliance processes through automation. In the hotel industry, daily tax-related activities involve handling data from various sources, making it a labor-intensive and error-prone process. Actabl recognizes the need for automation, not just for cost savings but also to address the severe labor shortage in the hospitality sector. Hotel management companies can leverage ProfitSword’s data consolidation and send it to Avalara, automating their tax compliance and reconciliation processes.
The integration allows hotel businesses to seamlessly compile data, automate tax return preparation and file returns using monthly transactional data. The partnership introduces technological innovations that streamline tax compliance, freeing up valuable time and resources for hoteliers, according to Luo.
“The tax process is so complicated,” he said. “For every jurisdiction—city, county, state governments… every filing is completely different. So now you have the data and Avalara to automate all of these findings.”
Oliver Hoare, GM, lodging, Avalara, is excited about the partnership. “Tax compliance is one of the most onerous factors impacting hotel management groups and their ability to operate and scale efficiently. Avalara’s partnership with Actabl allows hotel management groups to divert their aggregated data via ProfitSword to Avalara. It’s a win, win, win—an enhanced feature for Actabl, increased speed to market for Avalara, and it gives ProfitSword customers a vastly simplified route to automation”.
Navigating the complex world of hotel industry tax compliance involves dealing with manual tasks prone to errors and audit risks. Tasks such as calculating tax rates and filing accurate returns demand meticulous attention and any misstep can result in compliance issues, financial consequences and intensive audits.
By integrating with Avalara for Hospitality, hotel businesses can access accurate real-time tax calculations, regularly updated tax content repositories and comprehensive visibility into overall compliance through advanced reporting tools. Tedious tax returns preparation filing, and remittance processes are automated using Avalara, reducing the risk of audits, effectively managing tax-related jurisdictional notices, and providing a centralized online portal for seamless compliance management with heightened transparency.
