ShipCompliant Product News

Updated April 26, 2021

 

It’s hard to believe we are already into the second quarter of the year! As promised, we are excited this month to share updates across our larger, more strategic initiatives. Of course, you can still find detailed release notes — outlining the day-to-day work to ensure our product is the most accurate, compliant and scalable in the business — via the Sovos Portal.

Oklahoma PRO renewal efficiencies

We heard your feedback last year that the renewal period had room for improvement in terms of efficiencies. This month we launched several enhancements for the Oklahoma PRO Renewal period starting April 15 and have received extremely positive reviews as a result. 

  • A new export feature enables sharing of eligible renewals internally and across suppliers in order to obtain the feedback needed prior to registering for the new year.
  • This export feature also allows for bulk selection, and is magnitudes faster than the prior sole option of manual selection. Plus, it can be done incrementally outside of the application workflow.
  • The data provided in the export provides additional detailed, critical insight into the items up for renewal, allowing for easy identification and fee reconciliation.

Keep an eye out for these enhancements in the New York and Arkansas renewal periods coming up in June. We will be applying the same enhancements across the remaining PRO renewal states as well in time for their end of year renewals. 

Coming soon: data dashboard (DtC)

A data driven, user experience focused facelift for ShipCompliant is coming this summer! Starting then, when you log in to your ShipCompliant account, you’ll be greeted with a new landing page displaying the most important areas of focus for the day. This new data dashboard will launch featuring four modules:

  • Needs Attention: This module will advise how many licenses are expiring soon, and link you directly to update them. It will give insight into orders with fulfillment exceptions; state reports needing tracking numbers, licenses, etc., prior to filing; and compliance rules that need to be acknowledged.
  • Business Insights: Here you will find a visual showing gross sales month to date (with a year over year comparison), transactions month to date (with a year over year comparison), estimated tax due for the month, number of reports due for the month, and a real-time count of reports that have been filed. 
  • State Breakdown Map: This visual indicator will be color coded to indicate DtC shipping enabled, DtC shipping available, and DtC shipping prohibited. Hovering over any state will show additional detail into year to date gross sales, number of transactions, average transaction size, volume sold, and top selling product SKUs.
  • AVL Thresholds: For states that have an aggregate volume limit threshold, we will provide red/yellow/green color coded insight into the days remaining in the period and how close you are to hitting that threshold. 

SST Model 1

The time is here! As of January this year, DtC alcohol shippers are eligible to participate in Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) model 1 offerings by Certified Service Providers such as Sovos. We are thrilled to report our product offering has been built and we are in the process of finalizing the launch to accept our first customers. Those interested in this offering will receive a discount on their AutoFile subscription price, full audit protection for sales tax filings in the SST states, entity exemption certificate management services, and product SKU tax mapping services. There are a list of qualifications to participate; to learn more please email us or check out this blog

DtC cider offering

The beta program expansion of our direct-to-consumer compliance solution beyond wine to beer, spirits and cider is well underway. As a last step of this process, we have completed the required excise tax and shipper reports for cider, and can now fully support real-time compliance checks, real-time tax rates, sales tax reporting, shipper reporting, and excise tax reporting for DtC cider shippers.

Coming soon!

  • Data dashboard expansion (economic nexus thresholds, federal/state registrations, wholesale reporting).
  • PRO renewal subscription offering within our ShipCompliant Market Ready platform (no tech fees, streamlined login access).
  • New York and Arkansas PRO renewal efficiencies. 
  • Modernized API technology (REST) and new workflows launched to scale our Market Ready federal and state registration solution. 
  • Ability to tie product SKUs to the federal registration process (COLA applications) to cut down on time to value for state registration workflow.
  • Ability to begin state registration workflow before COLAs are approved from TTB (provisional registrations).

We appreciate your continued business and partnership!

For past detailed notes on monthly compliance and maintenance updates, we encourage you to visit our release notes in the Sovos Portal