AvaTax for Jobber Integration Guide

Before you start

A few things need to be in place before you connect. Getting them sorted now makes the rest of the setup quick.

• An active Jobber account with API access on your plan.
• An Avalara AvaTax subscription, with the places you sell into turned on for tax calculation. If you do not have one yet, the Taxiom team can help you scope and set one up.
• Accurate job-site addresses on the Jobber jobs you want tax calculated for. The job-site address is the destination Avalara uses to pick the right rate, so it needs at least street, city, state, and ZIP.

Step 1 - Pay the setup fee and create your Taxiom portal account

This first step gets you a login to the Taxiom portal, where everything else happens. Start on the AvaTax for Jobber sign-up page. After you pay, you get a welcome email at the address you signed up with. It includes a link to set your portal password at avataxforjobber.taxiom.com. The link is good for seven days.

Step 2 - Set your portal password and sign in

Now you get into the portal itself. Click the Set Your Password link in your welcome email, choose a password, and you land on the AvaTax for Jobber portal. This is where you connect Jobber and Avalara, and where you can see the status of every invoice the integration has touched.

Step 3 - Connect your Jobber account

This links the portal to your Jobber account so it can read your jobs and write tax back. In the portal, click Connect Jobber. Jobber shows you a standard approval screen where you confirm the access the integration needs: it reads your clients, jobs, properties, quotes, invoices, and payments, and it writes the Sales Tax rate back onto your quotes and invoices. Approve it, and the portal confirms the connection is live. From there the integration subscribes to your Jobber invoice, quote, payment, and property events, so it reacts the moment something changes.

Step 4 - Connect your Avalara account

This links the portal to Avalara, which is what actually does the tax math. In the portal, paste your Avalara API account number and license key. Before saving, Taxiom runs a quick test calculation through Avalara to confirm the credentials work. Avalara stays the system of record for sales tax. On every Jobber invoice, the integration calls Avalara using the tax codes, customer data, exemption data, and addresses set up in your Avalara account.

Step 5 - Confirm property addresses and line item taxability

Avalara can only get the rate right if the address and the taxability are right, so it is worth a quick check before you go live. Spot-check a few recent Jobber jobs and confirm the property address has at least street, city, state, and ZIP. Also confirm your line items are flagged taxable or non-taxable correctly for what you sell. If you map products to Avalara tax codes, make sure those codes exist in your Avalara account ahead of go-live. The Taxiom team walks through all of this with you on the setup call.

Set your business address (ship-from)

Some states tax based on where a sale ships from, not only where it ships to, so Avalara needs to know your business address. Open Company Settings in the portal sidebar and enter your business street address, city, state, and ZIP. The integration then sends this as the ship-from address on every Avalara calculation, so origin-based states are taxed correctly. If you leave it blank, Avalara uses only the job-site (ship-to) address, which is fine for the destination-based states most field-service businesses sell into.

Validating addresses outside of Jobber (optional)

Bad addresses are the most common reason tax fails to calculate, so cleaning them up pays off. During the calculation call, Avalara validates the ship-to address and sends any problems back to the integration. Those land on your Errors Logs page so you can fix the underlying property record in Jobber. If you would rather clean up a batch of addresses before connecting (or audit your current client list), the Taxiom team uses this Excel-based validator: Validate and fix addresses in Excel. Export your Jobber client or property list to a spreadsheet, run it through the validator, and import the corrected addresses back into Jobber.

Map your products and services to Avalara tax codes

Different things are taxed differently from state to state, and tax codes are how you tell Avalara what each item is. In the portal sidebar, open Product Tax Mapping. The page lists every Product or Service you have in Jobber. For each one, enter the Avalara tax code that describes how it should be taxed. The integration sends that code on the matching invoice line so Avalara applies the right rules. Anything you leave blank falls back to Avalara's account default, which is usually taxable tangible personal property.

Common Avalara tax codes: P0000000 tangible personal property, PS080101 labor (computer setup), PS080104 computer maintenance services, SW054000 SaaS / software access, FR020100 shipping and handling. Full list at taxcode.avatax.avalara.com.

Shipping, freight, and handling charges

Shipping is taxed differently in different states, and Jobber has no dedicated shipping field, so you bill it as a line item and let Avalara handle the rules. Create a Jobber Product or Service for the charge (for example "Shipping" or "Freight"), add it as a line on the invoice, and map it to Avalara tax code FR020100 on the Product Tax Mapping page. Avalara then applies each state's shipping taxability rules to that line automatically.

Discounts

How you enter a discount changes how cleanly the tax math lines up, so it is worth knowing the difference. Recommended: lower the price on the line item itself rather than using a document-wide discount. When you reduce the price directly on the line you are discounting, tax is calculated on exactly what the customer pays for that line, and the Avalara transaction mirrors your Jobber invoice line for line.

If you do use Jobber's invoice-level discount field, the integration still handles it correctly: the discount amount goes to Avalara at the document level and is spread proportionally across the taxable lines, following Avalara's discount rules. The total tax is right either way. The only difference is that, because the discount is spread out, the per-line amounts in Avalara will not match the line prices shown in Jobber. For the cleanest records, discount the line items directly.

Tax-exempt customers (entity use codes)

When a customer should not be charged tax, you tell Avalara either by putting their exemption certificate on file or by tagging the sale with an entity use code. Here is how each works.

The recommended pattern is to upload the customer's exemption certificate to Avalara against the same customer code the integration sends. The integration uses JOBBER-CUST-{client id} as the customer code on every transaction. With a current certificate on file in Avalara, exemptions apply automatically at calculation time.

If you would rather apply an entity use code directly (for example government, charitable, or resale), add a Jobber Client custom field on the client record named Avalara Entity Use Code. Set its value to the code you want to apply, such as C for resale or E for charitable. The integration reads the value at calculation time and sends it to Avalara, which applies the exemption rules. The full list of allowed values lives in your Avalara portal under Tax Codes → Entity Use Codes.

Purchase order numbers on invoices

Some customers need their PO number on the tax record for their own audits and reporting. To capture it, add a Jobber Invoice custom field named Purchase Order Number and fill it in on each invoice that has one. The integration passes the value to Avalara as the transaction's purchase order number on every calculation. The same field works on quotes, and you can also name it PO Number or Purchase Order.

Manual tax overrides

Once in a while you need to force a specific tax amount or use a different tax date instead of letting Avalara calculate normally. For those cases, add either of these Jobber custom fields and fill it in on the affected invoice or quote:

• Avalara Tax Override Amount - enter the exact tax dollar amount Avalara should record instead of calculating it. Use sparingly; this overrides Avalara's rules.
• Avalara Tax Override Date - enter a date (YYYY-MM-DD) for Avalara to use as the tax calculation date, while keeping the invoice's own date as is. Useful when you correct an invoice after the fact and want the original tax rates to apply.

If both fields are filled in, the override amount wins. Leave them blank for normal calculations. You can also name them Tax Override Amount and Tax Override Date.

Reviewing Avalara calls in the portal

When a tax figure does not look right, the portal shows you exactly what was sent to Avalara and what came back. Every Avalara call the integration makes (calculate, commit, void, refund) is recorded on the Avalara Tax Logs page in the portal sidebar. Click any row to see the full request, the Avalara response, the HTTP status, and the round-trip time. This is the first place to look whenever an invoice's tax is not what you expected. Avalara error messages, including address validation feedback, also appear on the Errors Logs page so you can act on them directly.

Step 6 - Watch the first invoices flow through

This is the payoff: tax appears on your invoices on its own, in the place you already look. When a Jobber invoice is created or updated, the integration takes the job-site address and the line items, sends them to Avalara, and writes the resulting sales tax back to the Jobber invoice. The tax shows up in the same Tax line you have always seen on Jobber invoices. Nothing else about your invoice layout changes.

When recalculation happens

Tax keeps itself up to date while an invoice is still open, then locks once the invoice is settled. Recalculation runs while the invoice is in draft or awaiting payment. Editing line items on the related job, fixing the property address, or creating a new invoice all trigger a fresh calculation. Once an invoice is marked paid, bad debt, or closed, the integration stops recalculating it automatically. If you need to correct an already-paid invoice, the right path is a manual adjustment in Avalara or a quick note to the Taxiom team. Plan to review and finalize the tax on a Jobber invoice before you send it for payment.

Tax on quotes

Your customers see the right total before they ever approve. Quotes get the same treatment as invoices: when you create or update a quote in Jobber, the integration calculates tax through Avalara and writes the Sales Tax rate back onto the quote, so the approval total is accurate from the start. Quote tax is recorded in Avalara as a SalesOrder, which is for visibility only — it never rolls into a filing — and it is removed automatically if the quote is deleted.

Avalara transaction timing and Sync Settings

There is a difference between calculating tax and reporting it on a filing, and you control when that happens. The integration calculates and writes the sales tax to Jobber on every invoice change. The Avalara transactions behind those calculations stay uncommitted by default, so they do not roll into filings until your portal setting says to commit. Filing and Managed Returns are separate from the calculation integration and are handled under a separate Taxiom or Avalara engagement.

Configurable commit timing

Under Sync Settings in the portal you can choose:

• Commit on invoice creation — tax becomes reportable as soon as the Jobber invoice is created.
• Commit on payment — tax becomes reportable when Jobber records the payment for the invoice.
• Don’t commit — calculations still post to Avalara as SalesOrders so you can see them, but they never roll up into filings.

If you mark a Jobber invoice as voided or bad debt, or you delete it, the matching Avalara transaction is voided automatically, so your filings stay clean. And if a payment is deleted in Jobber on a transaction that was already committed, a Return Invoice is posted to Avalara so your filings net out correctly.

Other Sync Settings

The same Sync Settings page has a few more switches:

• Turn the integration on or off — a master switch. When it is off, the integration stops calculating tax on new invoice changes.
• Mute error emails — stops the integration from emailing you when a calculation hits an error. The errors still appear on your Errors Logs page.
• Tax-included pricing — tells Avalara your prices already include tax, so it works the tax out of the line total instead of adding it on top. You can leave it off (the default), apply it to international orders only, or apply it to all orders.

Finding the transaction in Avalara

The Avalara document code follows a JOBBER-INV-{invoice id} pattern for invoices and JOBBER-QUO-{quote id} for quotes. The Jobber invoice ID is the number in the URL when you open the invoice in Jobber (for example secure.getjobber.com/invoices/12345 → document code JOBBER-INV-12345). The customer code follows the same idea: JOBBER-CUST-{client id}. Use these codes to search the Avalara Transactions view or to attach an exemption certificate in Avalara CertCapture.

If you sync Jobber to QuickBooks Online

If you also push Jobber data into QuickBooks Online, two tax engines can end up fighting each other, so let us help you set it up. The integration creates Jobber Tax Rate entries on the fly as new destinations come up. If Jobber's QuickBooks Online Automated Sales Tax feature is also turned on, the two can produce conflicting tax entries downstream. Coordinate with the Taxiom team before go-live and we will help you choose the right posture for your accounting flow.

What Taxiom observes during your first invoices

You are not on your own for the first run. During initial setup, the Taxiom team watches the first few invoices flow through to confirm everything looks the way you expect. We keep an eye on the inbound webhook log, the calculation ledger, and the Jobber invoice totals. If anything looks off, we catch it before it reaches a customer.

What appears on the buyer-facing invoice

Here is exactly what your customer sees on the invoice, and why the percentage is always trustworthy. Your Jobber invoices show the sales tax line as Sales Tax (X.XX%) $YY.YY. The dollar amount is what your customer owes. The percentage is the rate the integration assigned to the invoice. On a single-jurisdiction invoice where every line is taxed the same way, that percentage is the real local rate (for example, 8.25% in Austin TX) and is accurate for each line.

If an invoice has lines that Avalara taxes at different rates because they map to different tax codes (say, taxable hardware on one line and an exempt SaaS subscription on another), the integration calculates the total tax through Avalara and writes a single blended rate to the Jobber invoice. The dollar amount is always correct. The percentage shown is the blended rate, which is the total tax divided by the taxable amount. This is a Jobber limitation: Jobber allows one tax rate per invoice, not one per line, so we cannot show per-line rates on the buyer-facing layout. For typical field-service invoices where every line is taxed the same way, the displayed percentage is the true per-line rate and the blended-rate case never comes up.