Automated Exemption Certificate Management at Bridgestone HosePower

Alex Forbes
November 29, 2018

This blog was last updated on March 11, 2019

Bridgestone HosePower Selects Sovos for Customer Exemption Certificate Management

Bridgestone HosePower, LLC is a hose sales and service company that offers hydraulic and industrial hoses, hose assemblies and mobile hose services to internationally-recognized manufacturers of cranes, street sweepers, road paving equipment, sanitation trucks, and drilling rigs and other machinery through 40 branch locations in the United States and one location in Mexico. Bridgestone HosePower is a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of Bridgestone Corporation. Company growth, and with the number of customer exemption certificates approaching 10,000, required the company to move from a manual to an automated exemption certificate management process.

Exemption Certificate Management Challenges

Bridgestone HosePower lacked real-time access in a single online solution to all of its customer exemption certificates and had trouble maintaining the data to make sure they were valid as the company expanded operations. According to Andrew Snowden, Controller, auditors are more stringent on what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable and the tax department felt blind. On top of that, pulling the necessary files from various servers, drawers and warehouses could take up to six weeks to satisfy an auditor’s request, and even then they would have to occasionally go back to a customer to track down one that went missing.

As Andrew explained, the company did a good initial job of collecting the original certificate, but after that, there was never any follow up. The certificate would end up in a drawer somewhere and eventually fall out of compliance. With various states having different expiration dates, the team began to run into trouble manually managing the increasing number of certificates they had.

“I wouldn’t know if there was an issue until the auditor knew there was an issue. It wasn’t a good situation or feeling. I don’t like being blind when I’m in an audit, and I felt like I was blind going through the audit on the resale certificates,” said Andrew.

Selecting Sovos CertManager for Exemption Certificate Management

Sovos CertManager has given Bridgestone HosePower a more user-friendly and automated process to collect, validate, filter, maintain and download certificates and proactively alert customers to certificates that need updating directly from the solution. Reports also now alert the team where problems may arise to avoid future compliance issues and help the team get a head start on upcoming audits.

Bridgestone HosePower selected Sovos for automated exemption certificate management based on a solid existing relationship and Sovos’ ability to integrate with legacy accounting, ERP and cloud-based systems. The company also had confidence that Sovos would help it grow into the future. Furthermore, Sovos CertManager was simple to use, and the team liked its cloud-based user interface.

Using a template from Sovos, Bridgestone HosePower’s tax team was able to do a simple data extraction from the ERP system and quickly and easily load their customer exemption data and certificates directly into CertManager, giving them immediate visibility into the gaps they had. Andrew and his team are now able to run reports anytime and get a sense of where they stand, where they have missing or invalid certificates, where potential issues may be and where to focus their efforts. And any new customers that are onboarded are easily validated and go directly into Sovos CertManager.

“Having a single online location and real-time access to our thousands of certificates, with new customers onboarded daily, is saving the team time and effort, enabling us to focus our efforts on growing the business, while safeguarding the company from future audit penalties,” said Andrew.

Sovos CertManager is estimated to reduce the time spent tracking down valid customer exemption certificates at auditor request from six weeks to one day. Additionally, Bridgestone HosePower has increased both visibility into expiring exemption certificates and operational efficiency while reducing the risk of costly future audits.

Take Action

Learn how Sovos CertManager, backed by the Intelligent Compliance Cloud, reduces burdens and safeguards businesses from risk and penalty exposure by automating customer exemption certificate management. Get a preview, below.

Sign up for Email Updates

Stay up to date with the latest tax and compliance updates that may impact your business.

Author

Alex Forbes

Alex Forbes is Senior Manager, Content Marketing, at Sovos. When not helping readers navigate their tax-related digital business transformation journeys, he enjoys day tripping around New England with his wife.
Share this post

North America Unclaimed Property
February 10, 2025
Delaware Announces 2025 VDA Invitation Dates

This blog was last updated on February 10, 2025 Mark your calendars – April 11, 2025 and August 15, 2025 are this year’s anticipated release dates for the Delaware’s Secretary of State (SOS) VDA program invitations. In the event that an organization receives an invitation to participate in the Voluntary Disclosure Agreement (VDA) program  , […]

North America Sales & Use Tax
February 6, 2025
The Tariff and Sales Tax Mishmash – Untying the Mess

This blog was last updated on February 6, 2025 Talk of tariffs dominates the current news cycle with some commentators suggesting that tariffs will spell disaster for our economy while others say the exact opposite. We’ve seen the stock market sometimes fluctuate as tariffs are announced but later suspended, leaving us to wonder whether an […]

retailer dtc wine shipping
North America ShipCompliant
February 6, 2025
Retailer DtC Wine Shipping: The Time Has Come

This blog was last updated on February 6, 2025 By Tom Wark, Executive Director, National Association of Wine Retailers We are often reminded by the media and those in the wine industry—as well as by wine enthusiasts—that the three-tier system of alcohol distribution in most states hinders consumer access to the expansive number of wines […]

Montana 1099-DA
North America Tax Information Reporting
February 5, 2025
State Filing Alert: Montana’s New 1099-DA Requirements for Crypto Brokers

This blog was last updated on February 5, 2025 Reporting digital asset transactions on Form 1099-DA just got a little more complicated. For 2025 transactions, crypto brokers that file Form 1099-DA with the IRS will be required to file the 1099-DA with the State of Montana. This makes Montana the first state to introduce a […]

North America ShipCompliant
January 23, 2025
DtC Wine Shipping in 2024: A Year-in-Review

This blog was last updated on January 28, 2025 The direct-to-consumer (DtC) wine shipping channel faced a storm of challenges in 2024, navigating some of the toughest market conditions in over a decade. As inflation tightened wallets and consumer behaviors shifted, the industry recorded its steepest declines in shipment volume and value since the inception […]