Builders, remodelers and designers can run their entire business from a single system with Houzz Pro. Over three million industry professionals use Houzz’s all-in-one AI platform to manage their entire business, bringing together client experience, marketing, planning, project management and financial workflows. With multiple revenue streams across jurisdictions, there’s a lot for Houzz’s finance and accounting team to oversee. And historically, managing sales tax compliance was time consuming.
Its previous tax engine required a significant amount of hands-on work. “We had to manually monitor territories,” said Edwine Alphonse, Controller and VP of Financial Operations at Houzz. To review and inspect state returns, the accounting team needed to generate special reports. Plus, transaction changes could take an hour to show up correctly in their dashboard.
Between manual tasks and navigating a difficult user interface, it took four days each month to complete a full tax review, monitor, and reconcile. Alphonse’s team needed one platform that could help them manage all their tax jobs more efficiently.
Houzz switched to Anrok and integrated with Houzz’s billing system, Zuora as well as its other tools and proprietary APIs. Through automated tasks and user-friendly dashboards, the finance and accounting department now completely manage sales tax compliance in half the time without sacrificing accuracy.
The integration automated manual tasks and alleviated days of work
Connecting Houzz’s billing and tax software was essential to creating a smarter finance and accounting operation. And thankfully, the integration was easy. “I find the Anrok UI and the capabilities very intuitive,” said Enoch Lee, Financial Systems Director at Houzz. During set up, Anrok retrieved historical product data from Zuora, which the team could easily filter, sort, and mass assign to the correct tax code. “On an ongoing basis, [Anrok] removes the manual effort of going into the system and setting up SKUs,” Lee said.
On the accounting side, the process largely runs itself. Anrok automatically calculates the sales tax returns for each jurisdiction, which Houzz’s accounting team reviews and approves each month. The automated process cut down time spent on tax compliance. “Typically, all that’s needed on our end is a couple hours of review on returns. After approving them in the system, Anrok will file them,” said Houzz’s Accounting Manager, Steven Dito.
The integrated set up in Anrok helped shrink Houzz’s team’s to-do list, and also redirect their attention towards other projects. “Mentally, it feels like there’s less I need to worry about,” said Dito.
With a centralized sales tax system, the business is in a stronger position to grow
For a team lead, having access to all the right financial and accounting data in one place also helps with oversight. Alphonse doesn’t have to ask her staff whether something got done, she can log into Anrok and check herself. “We can rely on the system to do the work it’s supposed to do,” she said.
Today, Alphonse and her team can focus on new responsibilities, like responding to regulatory requirements. “For example, now, we have that California sales tax that will be enacted in January. So that’s something we’re working on,” she said.
Overall, Anrok and its connection with Zuora and other financial tools helped the finance and accounting team at Houzz make a confident decision for their business. “The return on investment was higher and that’s why we went for it,” said Alphonse.
Across all the criteria the Houzz team had for its tax engine, including user experience and functionality, Anrok ticked the box. “We were getting a better user interface, a better integration and better scalability. We knew that Anrok was able to adapt to new products, new functionalities. We knew they had the right data privacy and security tools that we wanted," Alphonse said.
One year later, the team at Houzz doesn’t have to worry about whether Anrok can support its next endeavor. Whether it’s launching a new product or selling in another state, with a strong tax and billing software integration in place, the finance and accounting team can focus on supporting the business’ growth.
