Denver-based insurance compliance and producer management platform AgentSync was founded in 2018 to help insurance companies grow faster.
In 2021, AgentSync co-founder Niji Sabharwal heard from a peer who’d been hit with a tax bill totaling $500,000, in penalties, fees, and uncollected sales tax from multiple states.
As CEO of a fast-growing company that had recently raised a Series A round, Sabharwal didn’t take this warning lightly. He went straight to Dave Jaras, the team’s VP of Finance, and tasked him with getting ahead of sales tax before it became a problem for AgentSync.
Navigating SaaS sales tax alone
Jaras knew firsthand that getting sales tax compliant could be complicated and time-consuming. He had worked with multiple legacy sales tax tools in previous roles, and found the experience lacking.
“I’ve got an accounting background, but I’m not a tax expert. And I felt like I was failing,” Jaras says of one legacy tool he used at a previous employer. “I missed a month or two of reporting because I didn’t understand their deadlines, and I had to navigate all the setup without any support from their team. You’re very much on your own.”
Still, Jaras did his due diligence in evaluating those tools and other, newer players in the space. He found that Anrok stood out for its out-of-the-box support for SaaS, and the team’s expertise and guidance throughout the process.
“There are two big reasons we were very confident in going with Anrok,” says Jaras. “First, it just works. I’m not an expert, and I don’t have to be. And the second is the support that we get from the Anrok team, who really know SaaS taxability.”
A product and team built for SaaS compliance
With support from Anrok’s team, Dave and the AgentSync team were able to quickly connect Anrok and Stripe and get on the path to compliance.
Now, instead of worrying about deadlines or looming tax audits, Jaras’s team is able to focus on other priorities, while Anrok takes care of sales tax automatically.
“It just happens,” says Jaras. “Sales tax gets applied as our invoices are finalized—and we don’t have to do anything.”
As AgentSync grows and expands their sales and their team, the Anrok team has stepped in to help navigate the sales tax implications. Jaras’s team has taken advantage of Anrok’s built-in monitoring for physical nexus and exemption certificate management, on top of the core compliance platform.
“There’s a lot of support behind the system,” Jaras says. “There are people to reach out to if you have questions, who understand your business as well as how sales tax works.”
No sales tax worries, and no lost revenue
In the past, Jaras struggled like many SaaS finance leaders to check all the right boxes. But this time around, managing sales tax compliance has been a much lower lift.
“It’s pretty easy,” Jaras says. “We spend most of our time reviewing our sales tax returns, and that’s probably two hours a month.”
Looking back, Jaras is glad the AgentSync team decided to tackle sales tax early, and avoid any unexpected hits to their revenue.
“The world of sales tax is complicated,” says Jaras. “Before Anrok, I didn’t have a clear understanding of when or where we were going to trigger nexus. Now, sales tax compliance is at the bottom of my list of things to worry about.”
