Hi All,
We’re looking for a new partner for Tax Compliance that integrates with Epicor; we’re currently using Avalara. Does anyone have any suggestions of companies that we should be looking into?
Thanks in advance for the help!
Could you elaborate a bit on “integrates with”? How simple or complex would you like the integrated features to be?
Absolutely. We’re just looking for a compliance partner to calculate taxes on orders and invoices.
What’s wrong with Avalara?
Great question, we don’t want to change but pretty much have to at this point.
We’re on an older version of Epicor (10.1.500) and Avalara will no longer communicate with it starting in February due to them removing support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1.
The amount it’ll take you to upgrade is the same amount if not more it’ll take you to build some 3rd party integration into Epicor. Talking Dollars.
The Upgrade is simple, and you are on-prem. Let me know if I can help.
For Avalara, see if you can make a TLS 1.0 Proxy on-prem and then redirect the traffic to Avalara as latest TLS. Im sure it can be done, just like people use Local SMTP Relay to send more robust Relays to O365, Google Business what not. (Just an idea).
Example 1:
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Yikes. I don’t actually know of any other services with a pre-built integration to Epicor. Your CAM would probably know if Epicor offers anything else. Upgrading not an option?
We originally weren’t planning on upgrading because we are pretty heavily customized to get all our departments working in Epicor, but now we are either way and we could definitely use some help. Do you mind if I send you a personal message on here?
Thank you!
We weren’t planning on it originally but we are going to upgrade either way now. Just need a way to calculate taxes until we can get the upgrade completed.
Make sure you check this out, it lets you make a local TLS Server which will translate TLS going to Avalara and Translate TLS coming back from Avalara. This will probably be your fastest way out, for now.
Im sure there are many more tools like this out there, that can act as the middle-man and shape traffic going out and coming back in.
There is also
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Depending on your customizations, it might not be as bad as you think. It’s not like you’re coming off of Epicor 9… If you’re current on maintenance, download the new version, spin up a new app server, and try an upgrade. You’ll have dozens of issues, but work through each one at a time, and you’ll get there. We hadn’t upgraded for a few years, and each time it gets a bit easier. There’s lots of threads here about upgrading, and you’ll get the best practices from them. Most issues seem to be about security (certificates), SSRS reports breaking (Hello ARForm!), and then nomenclature changing in C# code between a few specific version updates (debugging one customization at a time). You’ll probably find the solution to all of them here, we’ve all been there!
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Hi Everyone,
We’ve been working on a few options for this (thanks @hkeric.wci for the TLS Proxy suggestion), but Avalara just sent us the following:
I was able to get some more helpful information from my internal engineer contact. Information obtained from Epicor indicates that version 10 might be compliant given a registry update. Epicor has not yet provided us those steps but said that an Epicor Help Article is available. If you are not able to locate that Help Resource please reach out to Epicor Support they should be able to help you locate that.
It looks like Epicor has plans to send flash updates on the matter as well. Please let us know if you are able to obtain that Epicor TLS resource, it should help your situation greatly it sounds.
We aren’t able to find the referenced Epicor Help Article, and our Epicor Rep keeps telling us that our only option is to upgrade… Has anyone else seen or heard anything about registry updates or flash updates? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place for the Help Article?
We would like to take an Epicor provided solution rather than going outside of support if possible!
Thanks again for all the support 
@mlrainsford
Hi Mitchell,
I believe the Epicor Help article that you want is “Epicor Tax Connect - Connections to Avalara’s AvaTax Service to Require TLS 1.2 (KB0119524)”. Follow the guidance in that article and you should be good to go.
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Btw, it definitely is not the case that your only option is to upgrade!
If you are not familiar with the Tax Connect nuances, you might find the following helpful, too.
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@mlrainsford - Pop in an EpiCare case and mention Avalara in the subject. You’ll likely get Duane, who knows the intricacies of Epicor/Avalara well. He should be able to get you pointed in the right direction, if the help articles above don’t solve it.
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Can vouch for Duane…
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