At Flyntlok, our core philosophy has always been to focus on what we do best—delivering a top-tier Dealer Management System (DMS) for Outdoor Power Equipment (OPE) and Heavy Equipment dealers —while seamlessly integrating with industry-leading solutions that enhance our platform. This ability to embed third-party software directly in our DMS is made simple when both products are truly cloud-based offerings and both offer easy connectivity via communication pathways called APIs. By embedding third-party cloud-based technology solutions within Flyntlok, our customers benefit from best-in-class capabilities without compromise.
Nowhere is this more apparent to our current customers than with our integrations to two of the most powerful cloud-based accounting systems: Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online. Most other DMS products have built their own General Ledgers directly into their offering, but they can never compete with the thousands of dedicated software developers focusing solely on accounting software like those at world-class providers Sage and Intuit. Why should Flyntlok get bogged down in trying to provide accounting solutions when others do it so much better? We can seamlessly integrate and give our users a single-product-like experience.
Beyond accounting, another complex challenge for equipment dealers is sales tax compliance. Keeping up with ever-changing tax regulations over 13,000 U.S. sales tax jurisdictions can be overwhelming. That’s where our integration with Avalara, another world class software offering, makes all the difference.
Flyntlok has always had the capability of calculating taxes from within the Point-of-Sale module, but we have to be humble and admit that we will never be the best. Sales tax compliance isn’t just about applying a simple percentage—it varies by state/province, county, city, and even street address in some cases. For businesses operating across multiple jurisdictions, keeping up with tax rate and rule fluctuations and compliance requirements is time-consuming. The penalties for mistakes can be costly, and the audit risk can be considerable. Flyntlok simply does not have the resources to stay on top of an ever-changing tax system, where sales tax rates and rules are constantly changing across jurisdictions, and accurate tracking of changes is essential, especially as we grow our global footprint.
As Flyntlok expands its customer base, so does it increase the locations of its users. Our expansion has taken us from servicing a few customers in Alaska, to US customers in dozens of states, to adding numerous locations in Canada. We expect in the coming years to expand into Europe and Austral-Asia. Trying to keep up with the tax regimes in an ever-expanding regional install-base would be highly taxing (excuse the pun) and distracting for Flyntlok as a company.
Thankfully, we can leverage the power of cloud-based software provider Avalara.
✔️ Accurate Tax Calculations – Sales transactions within Flyntlok are automatically run through the Avalara AvaTax calculation engine to improve the accuracy of tax rates.
✔️ Seamless Compliance – Stay compliant without the need to track tax rate and rule changes law changes across states and other taxing jurisdictions.
✔️ Time & Cost Savings – Reduce administrative burden and avoid costly tax errors.
✔️ Streamlined Tax Filing – Avalara helps to simplify tax remittance and filing, eliminating the hassle of paperwork.
When one recent Flyntlok sales prospect, who is located in a difficult tax area, saw our combined capabilities, they were blown away. Their current Heavy Equipment DMS had no such capabilities and after seeing our integration with Avalara’s automated tax compliance features, they estimated significant savings in both time and money by switching to Flyntlok.
If you are a Flyntlok customer, Outdoor Power, Heavy Equipment, or Construction Dealer (or are looking for a new DMS) and your sales tax compliance needs are outpacing that of the software, Flyntlok + Avalara might be the solution you are looking for. Let Flyntlok do what it does best: provide the best solutions for managing your CRM, sales, rentals, service, and inventory. And let Avalara do what it does best: provide a fast, easy, more accurate and more reliable way to calculate sales tax . Put them together for a true best-of-breed experience.
Want to learn more? Contact your friendly Flyntlok consultant or email us to see how we can simplify your tax compliance process: sales@flyntlok.com.
Think for a moment about the software applications you use every day: Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, Netflix. Maybe you use Salesforce, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, or Netsuite for your business. How much time do you worry about getting a software upgrade from any of those products and the effect it might have on your business or you personally? Probably never.
Now consider your Equipment Dealer Management System (DMS), the lifeblood of your business. Do you ever stop and think about an upgrade from your provider? Perhaps you dream longingly at the prospect of an upgrade because your provider promised all sorts of new features, but you have to wait another year to maybe see those promised features and bug fixes. Or worse, maybe you dread an upgrade because the last two were so disruptive to your business. Either way, if you have to think about an upgrade to your DMS, it likely means your solution is not cloud-based.
Computer software has come an incredibly long way since the turn of the millennium and it has made for huge efficiencies in our work and personal lives. But software that was created in the 90’s and early ‘00s (or, even worse, in the ‘80s!), was delivered in a completely different manner.
In the old days, after the software nerds wrote a product for you, it also needed its own hardware (computer/server) to run on. For enterprise software, like an Equipment Dealer Management System, it meant you also had to buy a computer for that software and you had to physically find a place for it in your dealership. Well, that was great… for the first year. Then you called for support, but no one could see what you saw because your system was standalone. As your business grew, you needed more features, and you needed bugs fixed… but you had to wait for the next upgrade. And your Equipment DMS provider, if they were any good, now had hundreds or thousands of customers, each with their own server in their customers’ buildings. When a new version was ready, they had to get that software physically updated on all of those machines! Now you understand why you got so few upgrades over the years. Further, sometimes an upgrade was like getting an entirely new system, and you had to re-learn something that had become second nature, or worse, it no longer supported your workflows!
In addition, some of those systems that were created back in the 80’s were done with software languages that are now obsolete and very few people are familiar with them, and no young software nerd worth their salt wants to work on dead tech. This ancient software also requires running on ancient hardware because, in order to run on new technology, it would literally require re-writing it from scratch (or by putting an emulator between, which is basically a huge speedbump for system performance). The DMS provider does NOT want to have to spend the millions of dollars it would take to update the technology. That would eat into their margins! They’d rather keep you on dead tech for as long as possible and hope you find a software transition to be simply too painful.
A new way of creating and deploying applications quickly emerged about 10-15 years ago: cloud-based software. As web browsers became more powerful and were able to provide an experience similar to an application that was physically installed on a computer, more and more developers migrated to this method of a software interface. However, few companies could claim to be truly “cloud”, even if their software was in a web browser: the back-end might still be a server under your sales counter. It was with the advent of the Big 3 (Google, Microsoft, and Amazon), who started selling their available computing capacity, that pretty much any software developer could quickly create a new and powerful application in The Cloud.
So, why is cloud-based software so much better than old-school software? Unless you were a keyboard savant with those old products and your needs were very limited, there are a host of benefits of a cloud-based Dealer Management System:
Many legacy Equipment DMS products claim to be cloud-based, but all they did was take that server under your desk and shoved into Google or Amazon’s cloud as a stand-alone server. They didn’t make things better with that change, and in fact, they probably made it worse!! You have the same ancient software, with the same upgrade issues, but the chances are that the product is now 5 times slower. Or they gave you some virtual way to run the product that is clunkier, slower, and so much more painful than ever before.
All you want to do is sell, rent, and fix machines. You really don’t want to have to think about software! Why can’t your dealership's business system just be more like all the other modern-day applications you use!
If any of the above resonates with you, check out Flyntlok. Flyntlok is the largest truly cloud-based Dealer Management System. We provide minor updates and bug fixes on a daily basis, and significant features every two weeks. Don’t believe us? Check out our Release Notes! Flyntlok pushes out more enhancements in two weeks than most legacy Equipment DMS providers push out in a year.
Flyntlok is the Ideal solution for your business with an Infinity of possibilities and one that pushes out features at almost Lightspeed. If you want to C a System that is like a found Purl for your dealership, reach out to a Flyntlok sales Commander who can provide you with a demo.
