Vertex Exchange Europe 2018: Why Bright Computing chose Vertex Cloud

Okko Koorn explains how Vertex helped Bright Computing automate its US tax reporting

Transcript

Tax technology provider Vertex hosted a two day conference in April 2018, bringing their experts in tax and technology together with their partners and clients. European CEO joined them to learn about the tax compliance challenges that multinational businesses are facing, and the trends in technology and automation that are helping them manage. In this video, Okko Koorn explains the steep tax compliance learning curve that entering the US represents – and how deploying a Vertex solution took away a huge burden.

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Okko Koorn: We are a very Dutch company. And we started an office in the US, and we needed to have advice – legal advice, tax advice – for all the different states and its complexity. To know: what do I file, where do I file, how to categorise it… we found out that in each city you have sub-divisions or sub-declarations to be made. And it’s like: for us as a Dutch company, there would be no way to figure that out.

So in order for us to do the right job, together with our tax advisor in the US, we worked together with Vertex Cloud, because it’s integrated inside our accounting software called Netsuite.

So all the data in Netsuite was gathered by Vertex Cloud, and we just push the button, go to Vertex Cloud, and they would just help us create the report for the appropriate state, and file it.

For us as a company, for me as a financial administrator, it takes away a huge burden. All I need to make sure is that the data inside Netsuite, and all the invoicing and sales orders, everything; that that data is correct. But not to worry about how to then create the correct form, to file it online, to do it as the states want us to do. If we make sure that our data is correct, then Vertex will take care of the rest.

The CEO yesterday in his introduction, he started with different football players. His point was, as a team you need to know where the ball will be landing in order to score. I think as a finance department, or as a company, you need to be aware of what is happening so I can anticipate not dealing with issues afterwards, but you are proactive.

The world is changing, eCommerce, our type of business, is changing. Taxation is changing. Compliance is changing. The EU, the US; so many things going on. So I would summarise that there needs to be a continuous cooperation, collaboration, between Vertex with local authorities, with companies, in order to make life easy on the tax end of the finance department that I’m in.