FAQ

I received the error Avatax service error. Using JAAS. What does it means?

JAAS stands for Java Authentication and Authorization Service. This error is not related to SAP or the Avatax add-on. It’s a response received from the Avalara Address Validation Service.

This error usually indicates an issue with either the Origin, Destination, or line level address(es) or the service Avalara uses to validate addresses has failed. Please make sure the address(es) are correct and contact your Avalara Account Manager to check if their service has failed.

Whenever there is a suspicion that an invoice might not have been posted into the Avalara Admin Console, the first step is to verify this using the Avatax Reconcile Window. Open the window, load the SAP invoice by filtering the posting date, click on “Search for posted documents” and acknowledge you see the message that the invoice was not found.

There are several reasons invoices might not be posted into the Avalara Admin Console:

  1. The add-on might have never been turned on in the first place.
  2. The add-on might have been turned on in the first place but got stopped before calculating taxes and the end-user never noticed it.
  3. The document does not have the SAP Avatax tax code in any of its item or freight lines.
  4. The document is using a Series, an Address State or other condition configured to skip the calculation. If this occurs you will see a message in the SAP System Message Log showing it.
  5. The document is being created with the SAP native Document Generation Wizard or by 3rd party solutions or other add-ons. Any of these methods will NOT post the document to Avalara.
  6. Always check your connection settings are pointing to the Avalara Company you intend to, and the desired Avalara environment (sandbox or production).

Having taxes calculated and the Invoice not posted is extremely unlikely. Whenever this situation is encountered the most likely situation is that taxes were calculated on a previous document such as a Quote, Order or Delivery, and then the invoice was created with a copy-to functionallity, carrying the previous calculated taxes.

Some strategies to troubleshoot this problem include:

  1. Replicating the document creation process, using the exact same document information, and verifying the duplicated document is posted or not.
  2. Turning on the Avatax Log functionality and wait for the issue to happen again.

The tax calculation is performed exclusively by the Avalara engine.

The add-on does not perform any kind of tax calculation, remember the add-on is a connector to integrate the Avalara calculation features into SAP.

If you calculate tax on a document, and receive a different tax amount than the expected, you can:

  1. If the document is an invoice, check your Avalara admin console, and examine the calculated tax on the document, and confirm the calculated taxes.
  2. If you are calculating on another document that is not posted to Avalara, like Sales Orders, you can use the Tax Calculator functionality at the Avalara admin console, to test the calculation. 
  3. If you are use CertCapture with exemption certificates, and the exemptions are not being applied, contact your Avalara account manager to check your CertCapture account is linked to your Avatax account.

If you still think the taxes are not accurate, contact Avalara support or your Avalara account manager detailing the case.

If there is any problem regarding the information being sent from SAP to Avalara, or vice versa, then those are the kind of problems Argentis can jump in and fix.