Avalara Trade Compliance helps businesses manage regulatory requirements for cross-border transactions. It supports compliance with trade rules, restrictions, and regulatory obligations.

Core capabilities

Apply trade compliance rules across jurisdictions.

Regulatory rule management

Risk reduction

Help ensure transactions meet regulatory requirements.

Cross-border control

Integrate compliance checks into transaction workflows using APIs to validate cross-border transactions against regulatory requirements. Setup includes configuring jurisdiction rules and adding compliance checks to order processing workflows.

Getting started

Integrate via REST APIs to screen transactions and retrieve compliance status in real time.

How it integrates

What Avalara Trade Compliance solves

When to use Avalara Trade Compliance

Avalara Trade Compliance

Get Started

Avalara Item Classification automates the complex process of determining HS codes, taking into consideration country, product attributes, and other factors.

Apply Avalara-maintained tax rules and rates tailored to your product category and jurisdictions.

Industry-specific logic

Support tiered pricing, bundled offerings, exemptions, and multi-jurisdiction calculations without custom engines.

Complex scenarios

Stay current with evolving requirements through regularly updated content and configuration options.

Regulatory alignment

Integrate with billing, ERP, and custom apps using REST APIs built for high-volume transaction processing.

Operational scale

Use API documentation, integration checklists, and environment setup guides linked from each product below. Provisioning and access details depend on your Avalara products and onboarding path.

Avalara APIs provide REST interfaces for billing, subscription, ERP, and custom applications. They support scalable tax determination and high-volume processing so you can embed compliance into your existing workflows.

Tariff Code Classification

Automated Tariff Code Classification assigns HS and HTS tariff codes to products at scale using predefined logic and classification models. It helps businesses standardize product classification across large catalogs without manual intervention.

Automatically classify large product catalogs using standardized logic.

High-volume classification

Apply consistent tariff codes across systems and transactions.

Consistent code assignment

Reduce reliance on manual classification workflows.

Reduced manual effort

Support growing catalogs and global expansion.

Scalable classification workflows

Integrate classification workflows through APIs by submitting product attributes and retrieving assigned tariff codes. Setup typically includes mapping product catalog data and configuring classification rules within your system.

Integrate via REST APIs to submit product descriptions and receive tariff code assignments in real time.

Automated Tariff Code Classification

Self-Serve Tariff Code Classification allows users to manually classify products by entering product details and attributes. It is designed for interactive classification workflows when automation is not required.

Classify products using descriptions and attributes.

Interactive classification

Flexible input handling

User-controlled decisions

Enable interactive classification through APIs that accept product descriptions and return tariff code suggestions. Implementation requires passing product data and handling user-driven selection workflows.

Use the self-serve interface directly or integrate via APIs for a hybrid classification approach.

Self-Serve Tariff Code Classification

Managed and Premium Tariff Code Classification provide expert-led and hybrid classification services to support accurate tariff code assignment for products. These solutions are designed for businesses that require high confidence in classification, especially for complex or compliance-sensitive scenarios.

Leverage specialists to assign and validate tariff codes for accuracy and compliance.

Expert-led classification

Combine automated classification with expert review to support high-confidence results.

Hybrid classification model

Ensure classification outputs meet regulatory requirements and support audit workflows.

Compliance and audit support

Support classification for products with complex attributes, regulatory requirements, or high-risk profiles.

Complex product handling

Get started by onboarding products into classification workflows.

You can integrate APIs to submit product data and retrieve validated tariff codes, with support for automated processing and expert review.

Submit product data through APIs or batch uploads and receive expert-assigned tariff codes with supporting documentation.

Managed and Premium Tariff Code Classification

The Trade and Tariff Library provides access to global tariff schedules, duty rates, and trade data required for cross-border compliance and decision-making.

Access global tariff schedules and duty rate information.

Centralized tariff data

Stay aligned with changing trade regulations.

Up-to-date trade data

Support classification and compliance workflows.

Data-driven decisions

Access tariff and trade data through APIs by querying country, product, and classification inputs. Integration involves incorporating tariff data retrieval into classification, calculation, or compliance workflows.

Query tariff data and duty rates via REST APIs to embed trade data into pricing, compliance, and logistics workflows.

Avalara Trade and Tariff Library

Standard error response payload returned by the API when a request fails. Provides a short error title, the HTTP status code, and a human-readable detail message.

Invalid Request

Human-readable explanation of the specific error condition. Suitable for surfacing to end users or logging.

HTTP status code returned with the error response.

A product as stored in the product service, including its identifier, descriptions, country of origin, and ownership metadata.

Optional client identifier or label associated with the product. Used for grouping and searching products. Free-form string.

Description used specifically for customs declarations. If omitted on creation, defaults to the value of 'description'.

Country of origin in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 format.

Avalara identifier of the product owner. This is typically the end-customer's AvaTax account ID under the calling profile.

Customer-defined unique identifier of the product.

Request payload used to create or update a product. 'productId', 'owner', and 'description' are required; the remaining fields are optional.

Description used specifically for customs declarations. If omitted, defaults to the value of 'description'.

General description of the product. Required.

Avalara identifier of the product owner. This is typically the end-customer's AvaTax account ID under the calling profile. Required.

Customer-defined unique identifier of the product. Required.

### Access to the Production API
To interact with this API, you need to acquire a bearer token.
To acquire a bearer token:
1. [Create a License Key](https://knowledge.avalara.com/bundle/bhk1662649440973_bhk1662649440973/page/Get_your_license_key.html).
2. Call Avalara Identity to get an access token:
    ```bash
        curl -X POST https://identity.avalara.com/connect/token
             -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
             -d "grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=<avatax_account_id>&client_secret=<license key>&scope=avatax_api"
    ```
    Sample response (json)
    ```json
        {
            "access_token": "<jwt_access_token>",
            "expires_in": 3600,
            "token_type": "Bearer",
            "scope": "avatax_api"
        }
    ```
3. The `access_token` can be used to interact with the API.
4. The `access_token` is valid for 1 hour, after which you will need to request a fresh token.

### Access to the Sandbox API
To interact with the Sandbox API, you can request for a bearer token from your Avalara integration specialist.
You can use the bearer token issued for a fixed number of requests against the sandbox API.


Adds a new product to the system. Optionally overwrites an existing product with the same productId.

When true, overwrites an existing product with the same productId. When false, does not overwrite an existing product.