Calculating Sales Tax Using Avalara's AvaTax API in Python/

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Transaction Creation and Lifecycle

Transaction Creation and Lifecycle

Learn to use the AvaTax API to create tax transactions and understand the different transaction states.

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Overview

We can describe tax transactions in Avalara as any business activity taxable by the government. This business activity includes transactions such as sales, purchases, refunds, and inventory transfers. We use the {{BASE_URL}}/transactions/ endpoint to manage these transactions.

Creating a transaction

We can record our company's taxable transactions through AvaTax, which can be of the following types: sales, purchases, inventory transfers, and returns. To create one such transaction on AvaTax for calculating taxes, we use the {{BASE_URL}}/transactions/create endpoint and the POST method.

The {{BASE_URL}}/transactions/create endpoint calculates the total tax applicable on all items we pass to the lines array in this endpoint. AvaTax uses the different tax codes, rules, and profiles we define for our company for tax calculation. The complete endpoint URL for creating a transaction is as follows:

https://sandbox-rest.avatax.com/api/v2/transactions/create

Some of the request parameters for the URL above are as follows:

Request Parameters

Name

Type

Parameter Type

Category

Description

$include

string

Query

Optional

This parameter specifies the objects we want the API to add in the API response to our transaction creation request.

code

string

Body

Optional

This parameter specifies the transaction's unique code, allowing us to reference it to update or reconcile it quickly.

lines

array of item objects

Body

Required

This parameter lists the line items for the transaction.

type

string

Body

Optional

This parameter specifies the type of transaction. An invoice is a permanent transaction, while an order is a temporary transaction for estimations.

This parameter supports the following values: SalesOrder, SalesInvoice, PurchaseOrder, PurchaseInvoice, ReturnOrder, ReturnInvoice, InventoryTransferOrder, InventoryTransferInvoice, ReverseChargeOrder, ReverseChargeInvoice, CustomsInvoice, CustomsOrder, and Any.

date

string

Body

Required

This parameter defines the date of the transaction.

customerCode

string

Body

Required

This parameter specifies the customer code of the customer associated with the transaction.

companyCode

string

Body

Optional

This parameter specifies the company code of the company associated with the transaction.

currencyCode

string

Body

Optional

This parameter specifies the three-character ISO 4217 code of the currency associated with the transaction.

commit

boolean

Body

Optional

This parameter specifies whether the transaction is to be committed or not.

singleLocation

location object

Body

Required

This address specifies where our company made the sale and what tax jurisdiction the transaction would fall in. If this address and the company address are different, the calculated tax will be zero.

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