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 expected, you can:

1. If the document is an invoice, check your Avalara admin console, 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. Whenever there is a tax amount difference/ issue, we suggest processing a sales invoice from them to see in Avatax how taxes are calculated. In this way, you will get more information such as:

• Tax rates
• Address used to calculate taxes (origin /destination/ point of acceptance/WH)
• Exemption applied if it was the case
• Custom rules or “Entity use code” that modified the original calculation.
• Tax type

4. If you are using 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.

You can check the Avatax version within SAP: Administration – Addons – Addon Manager (check under “Version” column) 
The version of the add-on is set with the following format: Year-month-day; E.g. 22080200 (year: 2022, month: August, day: 02)
We HIGHLY recommend using the latest version available, check the Downloads section 

The logs will be located as follow

The Avatax Addon logs: C:\log 

The Avatax WebUI logs: C:/logs/AvataxWebAPI_    

The Avatax Event Service (AES) logs: The logs will be within the folder where the service was installed 

If you have overlapping fields, or overlapping words, you should do this: 

• You should check: The font and background of SAP should be like this (Administration-System Initialization-General settings-Tab Font & Bkgd) 

• Check the display settings of the add-on (Avatax-Settings-Settings-Tab Display). 

• Here you can modify the distance of the buttons, and then buttons will be moved, set up the distance of each button at your convenience

For SAP, down payments are not taxable.  

The down-payments module does not have the "freight" field; therefore, it does not calculate taxes.  

The only way, within the initial payment module, is to select, only for these documents, the tax mode "line item", so if you want to calculate the tax in a down payment, you can add it as an additional line in the document the code "avatax" and in this way, it will calculate the tax on these documents.  

It´s important to clarify this, only in the down payments module you must configure this tax mode "line item". In the rest of the modules for the other documents, you can continue with the original tax mode chosen. 

You can restrict access to the Avatax module from the System Landscape Directory (SLD). 
After installing the solution and assigning it to the company, you need to select the start mode.  
There you can enable or disable the module for different users.  

If you dont want to see the "preview tax" in every document you create in SAP, you can hide it.

Since the latest versions of the addon (January 23) there is an option on settings to hide the "Preview Tax" button within the Display Tab in your Avatax Settings, see below 

Sometimes you can get this error when you press the "calculate tax" button.

This happens when the credentials are not properly configured.

How to solve it?

Go to Connection setup, under "settings" in the Avatax module.

Check if the Account and License key are the right ones, then press "load companies", and "test connection".

Check if the issue is solved

You need to check your Avatax settings and designate real values to all the fields. 

Go to the Avatax module, settings, settings.

1. In the General tab, all the drop-down buttons must be reselected again. You need to choose another one a reselect the same as it was 

2. In the Calculation tab, Configure the 3 tax modes and choose the one you are going to use 

3. In the Integrations tab, go to the first drop-down, (Freight for Ship Easy expense amount), you must choose another one and the reselected Avatax 

4. Update the setting, go to the Administration module, Add-ons, Add-on Manager. There select the Avatax add-on and stop it and start it again.

5. If the issue persists, please,  restart SAP and do the whole process again 

The length was modified in the latest releases of our addon, having a maximum length of 50 characters.

The log table is created with a length of 50 characters for the ItemCode. But the add-on only checks if the field is present or not, and if it is not present, it creates it with that length. 

If the table already exists previously, it has been left with the original length of 20 characters. In this case, you can directly edit the field length and set it to 50, from the UDF definition: 

Or, another option, is to delete the UDO and UDT tables from the logs and restart the add-on. There, they will be created again but with the current definition. 

Take in mind that, by doing this, all the logs will be erased, which is also good to do from time to time so that they are not too large. 

If you have to refund a complete invoice, you can do it with a credit memo, where you´ll be returning the complete purchase, taxes included.

But, if you need to refund only the tax amount, because that customer is exempt, or whatever the reason is, you can not do it by “adding” a credit memo from that invoice as is the usual process.

In this case, you need to create a new credit memo only to refund this amount.

Before doing this, you need to create a unique code, it will be created in your Avatax module, settings, settings. See screen below

There, you need to create a term that will be identifying this transaction whenever you need to do it. For example, in the screen above, the code “Tax only” was created for this purpose. This code will be used as an item code in your credit memo when you need to refund a tax amount.

Then, you need to create the same item in your Item Master Data as shown below, respecting uppercase and lowercase letters, exactly the same name as the one created in the previous step. Keep in mind always to uncheck the “inventory item” checkbox.

Those two steps described above are one-time tasks. Once the “tax only item code” and the “item” are created, you won’t need to repeat these steps.

Then, go to create the new credit memo, complete with the customer code which you need to refund, add as an item the new item created, “Tax only” following our example, complete with the amount of the taxes that you need to refund, you have to fill it out manually in the “Avatax Tax Total” column. Finally, press “preview tax” and add this new document.

This issue is because, by default, the UDF "AvaTax ship to type" within the document is set to "Line Ship-to Address" and it will search and confirm the address existing in the BP Master Data.

If an address is manually created/modified in a document, then, is required to change the UDF within the document to "Doc Ship-to Address"

If you want to change the default "AvaTax Ship to Type" value permanently, you should go to: Tools - Customization Tools - User Define Fields. And change it there.

If the Document Value does not exist, you can create it with the "New" button

Please, check this article https://developer.avalara.com/avatax/dev-guide/locations/location-based-reporting/

If you consider you need to define location codes, you need to define them first in your Avatax console, by going to Settings – Company Locations – Add a location.

Then, you need to identify them on the SAP side.

• Reporting Location Code

This is a field at the header level in the AvaTax transaction, that will help to identify the transaction for location-based reporting requirements.

The UDF created by the AvaTax add-on is U_ARGNS_LOCATION, at the document header level.

• ShipFrom and ShipTo Location

AvaTax allows you to define Locations in your console, that can be used in the ship-to and ship-from address details of your document transaction.

In order to use this, you need to define the location in your AvaTax console.

Then use the provided UDFs at the document header level or line level for this purpose. UDFs are U_ARGNS_STLOCATION (ShipTo Location) and U_ARGNS_SFLOCATION (ShipFrom Location).

Using a Location in the UDFs at the line level will overwrite a location defined at the document header level UDFs.

Using a Location will overwrite any address details sent in the transaction, with the address defined in the AvaTax console for the location.