How a Major Convenience Store Cut Tax Work Down to Just 1 Day a Month

The challenge

IGEN’s client, a prominent convenience store with over 2,600 locations, relied on a tax team of only four members to manually submit tobacco tax returns.

“It was time-consuming, ensuring we did our calculations correctly and having to enter them into the returns individually,” said the Indirect Tax Manager. “We were filing 2-3 tobacco returns per state, and we were in 16 states at the time.”

With expansion plans, they knew they needed increased efficiency in their tax compliance process.

The solution

This convenience store and tobacco distributor partnered with IGEN to digitally transform their tax preparation and form generation processes.

“We upload data, there’s some review and spot checking, and then ComplyIQ automatically generates our returns,” said the Indirect Tax Manager. “We review them internally and then simply submit the returns online.”

After years of manual filing, the digital transformation had a huge impact on efficiency and accuracy.

“It reduces the amount of human error; all of our returns have been accepted,” said the Indirect Tax Manager. “It does the work for us; we don’t have to worry about miscalculations or inputting numbers wrong.”

The results

“Data preparation and filing for over 32 returns takes less than a day now,” said the Indirect Tax Manager.

With this newfound time savings, they can allocate their resources to other business initiatives.

“ComplyIQ helps alleviate some of that time spent preparing returns,” said the Indirect Tax Manager. “Since our team is small, we use that time to work on special projects, audits, or other company taxes.”

Their tax team has:

• Maintained a 100% return acceptance rate on more than 32 monthly returns
• Increased filing efficiencies by more than 50% through digital transformation
• Transformed the error-prone manual data preparation and form generation process into a precise and accurate system
• Elevated team members to focus on other strategic initiatives such as special projects, audits, and other company taxes