The Attilio Group saves time and effort processing 1099 forms electronically with Sovos

Case Study

The Attilio Group

The Attilio group couldn’t process 1099 forms electronically for clients. A move to NetSuite and Sovos solved that problem and saved employees valuable time and effort.

Summary

Business Challenges

  • Saddled with an old ERP system, The Attilio Group (TAG) couldn’t report Forms 1099 electronically for clients.
  • The company’s reporting process was inefficient and time-consuming, and didn’t allow for reporting using multiple systems with clients. 
  • TAG encountered penalties and roadblocks with the IRS as a result of outdated manual processes.

Solution

  • TAG switched to NetSuite ERP and adopted Sovos Tax Information reporting.
  • Sovos was the only solution that enabled TAG to import information from different systems templates into a single reporting engine.
  • TAG also uses Sovos for printing and mailing forms.

Benefits

  • Time to execute 1099 reporting has gone from a week to less than a day and no longer requires participation from the entire company.
  • TAG has eliminated penalties and other IRS hassles.
  • The company has improved customer service and satisfaction.

The Company

The Attilio Group (TAG), founded in 2007 in Racine, Wisconsin, is a cloud-based back-office solution provider that offers an enhanced, real-time platform that allows its customers to simplify their businesses. TAG handles many business workflows, including order to cash, procure to pay and record to report, and also offers payroll services. Beginning in 2016, TAG added Form 1099 processing to its list of services and began handling reporting for about 30 clients.

The Challenge

Until October 2018, TAG used an ERP system that lacked the capability to report Forms 1099 electronically. Because the company routinely filed more than 250 forms, surpassing the limit for paper-based filing, employees had to get a waiver every year from the IRS allowing for manual rather than electronic filing. Also, TAG lacked the ability to import templates from different systems into a single reporting solution. That was a problem because clients used a variety of different systems. Darek Yong, TAG’s customer bill pay manager who handles AP processes for clients, had to travel from her home office in Chicago to the company’s Wisconsin headquarters for a week every January to manage and mail Forms 1099 as part of a laborious process that ended up involving nearly all of the firm’s 11 employees. Inefficiencies in manual processes also led to IRS financial penalties.

The Solution

TAG scrapped its old ERP system and adopted NetSuite in October 2018. NetSuite had by then discontinued its ability to process 1099 forms. The ERP vendor recommended Sovos as an option for tax information reporting. TAG adopted the Sovos Tax Information Reporting solution to use with NetSuite after researching several other options and determine that Sovos had unique capabilities that could save TAG both time and money.

“We had one client that decided after two days to do 1099s,” Yong says. “With the old process, I would have cried. With Sovos, we imported vendors, and it was done. The client was happy, and it looked good on our part.”

Darek Yong

Customer bill pay manager, The Attilio Group

Why Sovos?

Sovos gave TAG the ability to incorporate templates from multiple different client solutions into a single system, a capability that was absolutely critical for the company. Other solutions would have required TAG to create a template of its own before importing 1099 information for processing forms, but Sovos enabled TAG to import different templates and “have Sovos figure it out,” according to Yong. TAG now imports clients’ vendor templates when the company on-boards customers and moves all of the relevant 1099 information into Sovos, which handles processing and reporting. “I cannot state how important the template part is,” Yong says.

The Benefits

Instead of traveling to Wisconsin to work intensely for a week with her fellow employees processing forms and stuffing envelopes, Yong spent just one day in the home office last January. TAG has eliminated IRS financial penalties, has done away with time-consuming and error-prone manual processes, and has significantly improved its customer service using NetSuite and Sovos. A reporting process that used to require 5-6 hours for gathering information and another 40 hours for printing forms and stuffing envelopes is now automated and requires less than a day of Yong’s time. TIN matching has also enabled Yong to avoid errors and late filings.

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