# About this guide

Source: https://developer.avalara.com/products/ecm/integration-guides/document-management/tve4448169759785/

Guide: Exemption Certificate Management (ECM)

# About this guide

This guide explains how to integrate Avalara Exemption Certificate Management (ECM) into your system to manage customer records and exemption certificates.

Welcome to the Avalara Exemption Certification Management (ECM) Integration Guide. This document describes how to integrate ECM into your system to store customer records.

ECM is centered around the customer relationship management (CRM) component of your application. It provides a method for managing exempt customers, with AvaTax linking documents into your customer records. You just create and sync customer information between your platform and AvaTax, and you use AvaTax to send requests from your platform to your customers. In fact, for this integration, you’ll only touch three Certificates endpoints:

-   [DownloadCertificateImage](https://developer.avalara.com/api-reference/avatax/rest/v2/methods/Certificates/DownloadCertificateImage/)
-   [GetCertificate](https://developer.avalara.com/api-reference/avatax/rest/v2/methods/Certificates/GetCertificate/)

-   [UnlinkCustomersFromCertificate](https://developer.avalara.com/api-reference/avatax/rest/v2/methods/Certificates/UnlinkCustomersFromCertificate/)

If you use ECM to manage certificates, you can use this guide to integrate ECM into your ecommerce or ERP system.

The sections are broken down into individual milestones in the order that they should be completed in your integration, so be sure to complete a milestone before moving on to the next.

Note

-   ECM doesn't validate customer records.

-   There are subtle differences in the integration depending on whether you're integrating in an ecommerce or ERP environment. These differences will be called out when necessary in this guide.

Notice

Notice

The information provided in this Integration Guide is based on standard practices. It is up to each individual developer to determine the applicability of such information and to verify the functionality and use of the information. All information, including examples of code, is provided on an "As-is" basis. Use of Avalara's website is covered by Avalara's site terms located here: [https://www.avalara.com/us/en/legal/site-terms.html](https://www.avalara.com/us/en/legal/site-terms.html).