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Texada SRM - Vertex Integration

All about Texada SRM’s integration with Vertex.

In This Article

Introduction

Vertex is tax compliance software that allows equipment companies doing business in the USA to automatically calculate tax rates for rental and sale transactions. 

By integrating Vertex with Texada SRM, Texada users can outsource the process of tax calculation to Vertex. This ensures that your organization remains tax compliant and allows Vertex to build a paper trail of transactions.

The following article covers everything you need to know about integrating Vertex with SRM, including enabling and configuring Vertex, how Vertex calculates taxes, and some additional utilities you can use to test and manage the integration.

Effects of Enabling Vertex

Changing your organization’s taxing method to Vertex will cause a number of behavioral changes in the system. We recommend carefully reviewing these changes before enabling Vertex.

Tax Calculation Changes

While Vertex is enabled, SRM will no longer use its standard tax calculation logic. Instead, taxes for documents of all types will be calculated by Vertex based on the document’s address. All tax rates, remittance reporting and exemptions will be maintained in Vertex.

Depending on the document and your system’s configurations, both Customer and Site-level addresses may be used. For all three of these address types, the following values will be used to calculate tax rates:

  • Address Line 1
  • Address Line 2
  • City
  • Province/State
  • Postal/Zip Code 

Vertex’s behavior, and potential address validation errors, will change depending on whether full or partial address information is available for a given document:

  • Full Address Information
    If full address information is provided, all fields will be validated against Vertex’s database.
    • If there is a discrepancy in the address information – such as the state not matching the city – a "No Vertex Tax Areas Found" Vertex error will be triggered. This means that address information needs to be corrected for taxes to be calculated.
  • Partial Address Information
    If only a partial address is provided (e.g. no Postal/ZIP code), Vertex will attempt to use the available information to calculate taxes.
    • If multiple possible tax areas match because the address is too general, a "Multiple Tax Areas Found" Vertex error will be triggered. This means that more specific address information must be supplied for taxes to be calculated.

To make sure that taxes are calculated correctly in all situations, it is recommended to review and update the address information in your system. See “Appendix A - Managing Address Information” for more information.

Tax Code Changes

While Vertex is enabled, the tax codes specified in SRM’s Tax Codes utility will not be used. Instead, all documents will be treated as having two specialized tax codes, Y (Taxable) and NTX (No Tax). 

These tax codes will be automatically added to your system when Vertex is first enabled, though the GL accounts to which they will post must be set manually. For more information, see the “Vertex Tax Feature” section of Tax Maintenance Overview (SRM help file).

To manage tax codes in Texada SRM:

  1. Navigate to the Tax Codes utility at System Maintenance → Configure System Settings → Accounting → Tax Codes.
  2. Ensure that the following tax codes are present in your system. If missing, they will need to be added manually. To do this, click “Add”, then enter the Code, Description, Tax %, and Acct # of the tax code, as specified in the table below. Press Enter to move between the inputs. Once you are finished, click “Accept”. 
 

Code

Description

Tax %

Acct #

Taxable

Y

Taxable

[Blank]

[Taxes payable GL account #]

No Tax

NTX

No Tax

[Blank]

[Blank]

Affected Parameters

While Vertex is enabled, certain standard company and division features and options will be restricted to the settings outlined in the Vertex Compatible Parameter Settings window. 

This window, which appears when setting your organization’s Taxing Method to Vertex, lists the parameters whose values will be changed to function properly with Vertex. Changing your organization’s Taxing Method will set the listed parameters to the stated values and will cause them to be uneditable as long as the Taxing Method remains set to “V - Vertex”.

See “Vertex / Avalara Compatible Parameter Settings” (SRM help file) for more information on the affected parameters.

Vertex Information

While Vertex is enabled, a new “Vertex Information” window will be available when viewing documents. This window allows you to select whether tax calculation for a document will be based on its Bill To Address or Ship To Address.

To access the Vertex Information window, click the three dots next to “Vtx Codes” when viewing a document of one of the following types:

  1. Calculate Taxes Based On
    Select whether tax calculation for this document will be based on its Bill To Address or Ship To Address. Select “Bill To Address” if the items are being picked up by the customer and “Ship To Address” if the items are being shipped to the customer. This field’s default value can be set via the Vertex Connection Information window.
  2. Credit Date
    If a credit is to be given, the tax calculations on the negative dollar amount will reflect the tax rates as of this Credit Date.

Province/State Codes

The Province/State Codes utility allows you to manage the list of provinces and states that can be selected when filling out address information on a document. To access this utility, navigate to System Maintenance → Configure System Settings → System → Province/State Codes.

When Vertex is first enabled, the descriptions for standard provinces and states will automatically be set based on Vertex’s database, and any manual overrides will be lost. For this reason, it is recommended to note the existence of any custom province or state codes that will be overwritten before enabling Vertex.

Enable Vertex in Texada SRM

To enable and configure Vertex in Texada SRM, follow the steps below.

Before You Begin

This process assumes that your organization is already a client of Vertex, and has been provided the information necessary to integrate Vertex with external applications. This information includes:

  • Web Services URL 
  • User Name
  • Password / Trusted ID

If you do not have access to this information or are unsure where to locate it, please contact your Vertex customer representative.

Set Taxing Method to Vertex

The first step in integrating Vertex with Texada SRM is to switch SRM’s Taxing Method to “V - Vertex”. This will change SRM’s tax calculation logic and will enable a number of Vertex-specific configurations throughout the system.

This step can only be performed by a Texada administrator. If you would like to change your organization’s Taxing Method, please contact Texada support for assistance.

  1. Log in to Texada SRM as a Texada administrator and navigate to System Maintenance → Configure System Settings → System → Company Parameters → Taxing Parameters.
  2. Set “Taxing Method” to “V - Vertex”, then click “OK”.
  3. The “Vertex Compatible Parameter Settings” window will now appear. Review the listed changes, then click “Activate” to continue. See “Affected Parameters” for more information.

Configure Vertex

Once the Taxing Method has been set to Vertex, there are a number of additional configurations to make.

  1. Log in to Texada SRM and navigate to System Maintenance → Configure System Settings → System → Company Parameters → Taxing Parameters.
  2. Click the three dots next to “Vertex Connection Information” to open the Vertex Connection Information window.
  3. The Vertex Connection Information window contains all the fields necessary for configuring your Vertex integration.

    The first two fields, Script and Tax By, are universal across all environments. The remaining fields can be configured separately for each of three different environments - LIVE, PLAY, and TRAIN.
    1. Script: The version of Vertex O that will be used to connect to Vertex. Set to “tsivertexv9.py” unless instructed otherwise.
    2. Tax By: Select whether documents will default to basing tax calculations on the Bill To address or Ship To address. This default can be overridden on a per-document basis using the Vertex Information window.
    3. Web Services Base URL: Enter the HTTP:IP address provided by Vertex.
    4. Use Trusted ID: Check to replace the “Password” field with the “Trusted ID” field. This field will only be active when Script is set to “tsivertexv9.py”.
    5. User Name: Enter the User Name provided by Vertex.
    6. Password / Trusted ID: Enter the Password or Trusted ID provided by Vertex.
  4. Once you have entered your Vertex account information, click the “Test” button to test your configurations. If the information you entered was correct, you will receive a message reading “Successfully connected to the [ENVIRONMENT] environment.”

    If you do not receive this message, double-check the account information entered in step 3 and try again.

Additional Utilities

This section lists some optional but helpful utilities that can be used to test and troubleshoot tax calculations when using Vertex.

Test Vertex Tax Calculations

The Test Vertex Tax Calculations utility can be used to troubleshoot the tax calculation process. To access this tool, navigate to Utilities → Taxing Utilities → Test Vertex Tax Calculations while Vertex is enabled.

Enter a document number on this screen and click “Accept” to view both the address information that will be sent to Vertex for calculate taxes for that document, and the tax information Vertex will return to SRM based on the address provided. 

Use the “Customer Test” section to perform tests by customer and division without requiring an existing document.

Tax Area ID Inquiry

The Tax Area ID Inquiry utility can be used to query Vertex to view the tax areas that apply to a given address. To access this tool, navigate to Utilities → Taxing Utilities → Tax Area ID Inquiry.

Enter an address using the provided fields, then click “Accept” to list all tax areas that apply to this region or location.

Appendix A: Managing Address Information

Because Vertex uses address information to calculate tax rates, it’s important to ensure that the customers and sites in your system have accurate and up-to-date address information. The following section contains instructions on managing these addresses.

Customer Addresses

Address information for your Customers can be reviewed and edited via the Customer Information utility.

  1. Log in to Texada SRM and navigate to Accounts Receivable → Customer Information.
  2. Enter the Customer # of the Customer you’d like to edit, then press Enter to load its information. You can also search for a Customer by clicking the search icon .
  3. Edit the Customer’s address information as desired, then click “Accept” once you are finished.

Site Addresses

Address information for your Sites can be reviewed and edited via the Customer Site Information utility.

  1. Log in to Texada SRM and navigate to Accounts Receivable → Customer Site Information.
  2. Enter the Customer # of the Customer you’d like to edit, then press Enter to load its information. You can also search for a Customer by clicking the search icon .
  3. Enter the Site # of the Site you’d like to edit, then press Enter. Or, search for a Site by clicking the search icon .
  4. Edit the Site’s address information as desired, then click “Accept” once you are finished.