ShipHawk is revolutionizing the logistics industry by offering advanced shipping and warehouse management software designed to automate and streamline the fulfillment process. With fast revenue growth and remote employee hiring, the ShipHawk finance team faced significant challenges in navigating the complex landscape of multi-state sales tax compliance.
With Anrok, they were able to streamline their sales tax processes, achieving substantial cost savings and reducing their potential liability.
Navigating multi-state sales tax complexity
As ShipHawk expanded its remote workforce across more than 20 states, the company encountered increasing complexities in sales tax compliance. Meena Izadpanah, ShipHawk's Controller, recognized the urgent need to address these challenges, particularly in light of future investor relations and potential acquisition scenarios.
“As the company started to grow, and then of course with COVID, we really expanded into hiring in other states. So when I first joined, I started to talk to my team about sales tax,” Izadpanah says. “I explained that the burden was on us, and that any exposure would follow us. That one day we’d be in a board meeting or pitching someone to give us millions of dollars and they're going to ask about this and say ‘what's your liability?’”
What pushed the conversations over the line was when, in 2022, the company did their first annual audit. Izadpanah “knew that we would have to have a liability on the balance sheet, and that's what drove this conversation.”When they kicked off the project, Izadpanah says, “we had 23 states where we had potential sales tax liabilities to work through. I was thinking “I can't believe this is happening to me. How am I going to figure this out? I have so many states to do this in.”
Simple, complete sales tax management with Anrok
ShipHawk chose to partner with Anrok on solving their multi-state sales tax compliance challenges. Having used other sales tax platforms in the past, Izadpanah was looking for something that met the needs of their fast-growing business.
“I have used Avalara and other systems. Anrok is just simple and gives me exactly what I need. It’s amazing that it tracks your physical nexus. No other sales tax software that I researched—and I researched probably seven—does that.”
Anrok integrated with their billing system, Xero, and their HRIS tool, Rippling, providing a simple but complete set of tools for end-to-end sales tax management — from monitoring to calculation to filing and remittance.
Plus, Izadpanah says, “the new features that have been released like exposure modeling, the global exposure tracking, and the reconciliation tool are exciting. That's a sign of a very good partner — that they're constantly iterating and trying to make things better.”
Anrok makes sales tax “a breeze”
With so many states to manage, the ShipHawk team leaned on Anrok’s product and team to help them address compliance strategically. They got an accurate, real-time view of their exposure, and used the data in Anrok to conduct VDAs and address historical liabilities.
“I was able to complete VDAs and a ton of historical returns with the help of Anrok. I could do everything I needed to do with the software and the customer support team,” Izadpanah says.
“The support that the Anrok team provides is exceptional. You don't get that kind of support with other sales tax software providers. That's something that’s really special.”
For ShipHawk, Anrok offered a path to streamlined compliance, reduced liability, and improved operational efficiency. As Izadpanah put it, "Sales tax is complicated, but having a platform and a team like Anrok to support you can make it a breeze.”
