Sovos, a global provider of tax compliance and reporting software, on Thursday announced the acquisition of TrustWeaver, a provider of cloud-based invoicing compliance, auditing, and global Value-Added-Tax (VAT) services through electronic signature-based solutions. The acquisition extends Sovos’ eInvoicing coverage to 60 countries globally. We met with Sovos’ Chief Marketing Officer, Eric Olsen, and Senior Manager of Content Marketing & AR, Alex Forbes, to discuss the acquisition and Sovos’ plan for a global tax compliance solution.
A Completely Digital Tax Solution
As digital tax enforcement spreads across the globe, businesses must deal with complex requirements that can slow financial processes, increase compliance costs, and stretch financial systems thin. This is where Sovos has focused its energy, and the reason why the acquisition of TrustWeaver makes perfect sense. TrustWeaver is a provider of cloud software that helps businesses authenticate and centrally archive electronic documents for VAT audit purposes. TrustWeaver has become a seal of approval for the world’s largest P2P and AP systems, which is a testament not only to the effectiveness of its eInvoicing software and integrations, but also to its ability to monitor and interpret regulatory change around the world.
Eric Olsen, Chief Marketing Officer at Sovos, believes that government taxing should be a frictionless process. Businesses should be able to grow unimpeded by regulatory barriers, and communities can thrive just by being able to collect the taxes that they are owed. According to Olsen the acquisition of TrustWeaver positions them to:
- Offer the first complete solution for global eInvoicing, handling both post-audit and clearance models in 60 countries.
- Deliver a complete tax solution, including tax determination and reporting, in the world’s leading purchasing and AP systems, including SAP Ariba, IBM and Coupa.
- Help shape the future of digital tax compliance worldwide.
Sovos has been actively working to expand its breadth and depth of solutions that address tax compliance for eInvoicing around the globe (including its past acquisition of Invoiceware), so the TrustWeaver acquisition was a natural extension of that strategy. TrustWeaver has grown due to technology-driven tax compliance, and has offered a compliance-as-a-service in more than 60 financial systems (included SAP, IBM, and Coupa).
“As governments shift tax enforcement to the transaction level, our goal has been to create the first global solution for every form of transaction-level tax compliance, from SAF-T to real-time eInvoicing,” John Gledhill, VP of Corporate Development at Sovos said.
Final Thoughts
Last year, Sovos announced its global tax automation platform, Intelligent Compliance Cloud, and has been working on creating a global solution for all forms of transaction-level tax compliance. The acquisition of TrustWeaver expands Sovos’ capabilities in Procure-to-Pay and B2B transaction automation, adding e-archiving and e-signature compliance. This is the fourth acquisition by Sovos over the past couple of years and supports their stated goal of being able to provide a global solution for every form of transaction-level tax compliance. It adds new functionality and improved reach for Sovos, and it will now be able to automate every compliance step in the purchasing and billing processes. This includes tax determination, eInvoicing compliance, and tax reporting, which should make tax compliance a more automated and seamless process for its clients.
