Avalara, Inc. announced that Mast General Store is leveraging its integration with retail software provider Celerant to solve for tax requirements triggered by omnichannel retail sales. Mast General Store turned to Avalara and Celerant to enable its multichannel operations and address economic nexus requirements as the business expands into new jurisdictions. Mast General Store has used Celerant's point-of-sale software and ecommerce solutions since 2008.

However, like many retailers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mast General Store found itself needing to pivot to an ecommerce-first model while also contending with personnel capacity restrictions in their stores and distribution centers. As a result, Mast General Store implemented Celerant'sStratus ecommerce solution to enable "Best Store Fulfillment," an automated tool to fulfill orders from individual stores. This solution allowed Mast General Store to expedite its fulfillment process from a previous average of 3?5 days to same-day shipping for most orders.

At the same time, the business found itself up against another barrier to growth: economic nexus. Economic nexus laws impose tax collection obligations on businesses based on a certain level of economic activity within a state. Because each state defines economic nexus thresholds differently, businesses must be able to keep track of when they trigger new tax obligations by reaching a certain amount of sales and/or number of sales transactions in another state.

Mast General Store turned to Avalara AvaTax and Avalara Returns, to address economic nexus requirements in 14 states and filing tax returns for 11 states. All of Mast General Store's website sales are processed through AvaTax, so even if it's selling into a state where it currently doesn't meet the economic nexus threshold, the business can easily forecast upcoming obligations as sales increase and potentially trigger nexus in other states. Additionally, Mast General Store is able to handle events like sales tax holidays and sudden tax changes with ease because AvaTax is updated at regular intervals to reflect changing rates and rules in the 13,000+ U.S. sales and use tax jurisdictions.