# Sandbox vs Production environments

Source: https://developer.avalara.com/products/avalara-1099-and-w9/integration-guides/1099-and-w-9/xaa6236876928915/

Guide: 1099 & W-9

# Sandbox vs Production environments

Understand the differences between Sandbox and Production environments for Avalara 1099 & W-9, including their purposes, credentials, and features.

Avalara provides 2 different environments for Avalara 1099 & W-9: Sandbox and Production. Each environment is separate, and each has its own credentials. If you have a Sandbox account, you cannot use that account to log on to Production and vice versa.

Tip

When you receive credentials for Avalara 1099 & W-9, you'll want to record the account number, name, and type. We keep Sandbox and Production credentials separate so you can test your software in Sandbox without accidentally affecting production data.

Consider sharing your Sandbox credentials with developers and reserve Production credentials for accountants. Keeping accounts separate helps avoid the risk of reporting test data to a tax authority.

Table 1. 

SANDBOX

PRODUCTION

Avalara 1099 & W-9 endpoint service

https://api.sbx.avalara.com/avalara1099

https://api.avalara.com/avalara1099

Avalara 1099 & W-9 website URL

[https://sbx.track1099.com](https://sbx.track1099.com/)

[https://www.track1099.com](https://www.track1099.com/)

Content

Latest version

Latest version

Monitoring

24/7 Monitoring

24/7 Monitoring. View Avalara status at [Avalara Status](https://status.avalara.com/)

Data

All Sandbox data is are fully separate from Production data.

All Production data is are fully separate from Sandbox data.

Credentials

Production credentials won’t work on Sandbox, so you can't accidentally save real transactions into the Sandbox environment with a production account.

Sandbox credentials won’t work on Production, so you can't accidentally create a test transaction in production with a sandbox account.

Forms Filing

Avalara 1099 & W-9 never reports data from Sandbox to a tax authority, so you can test your forms without worrying about accidentally reporting to the fiscal entities.

You can report forms marked as `Scheduled` in Production on a tax filing using the Avalara eFilling Service.

Updates

Generally updates a few days earlier than Production so that customers can experiment with new releases before they go live.

Updated a few days to a week after Sandbox so that customers can preview the new release on Sandbox before it’s live.