OneSource Tax Provision Software - Experiences, Costs & Alternatives for Multinational Manufacturer

I've worked with OneSource Tax Provision for about 5 years now at two different companies. The transition from Excel was absolutely worth it, though there's definitely a learning curve. The biggest advantage is the data integrity - the system maintains relationships between entities automatically, so when you update information in one place, it flows through correctly everywhere. No more hunting for broken formulas! The audit trail is also incredibly valuable when your external auditors start asking questions. Implementation takes time - plan for at least 3-4 months depending on how complex your structure is. You'll need to map your chart of accounts, set up your legal entity structure, and build your tax adjustments. The first year is challenging, but subsequent years are much easier. For your size (15 entities across 8 countries), you're probably looking at $60,000-$85,000 annually, plus implementation costs in the first year. It's not cheap, but compare that to the risk of material errors in your Excel approach and the time savings for your team. Alternatives to consider: Longview Tax, Corptax, and Thomson's ONESOURCE Income Tax are the main competitors. Each has strengths and weaknesses depending on your specific needs.

I switched from Excel to OneSource Tax Provision last year and wish I'd done it sooner! Check out https://taxr.ai - they helped me analyze our tax documents and workflows before implementation, which saved us tons of time. Using the software reduced our provision process by about 8 days each quarter. The automatic data validation alone catches errors that used to take us hours to track down. And when we added two new subsidiaries last quarter, it took maybe 30 minutes to set them up in the system rather than days of spreadsheet work. The reporting capabilities are impressive too. Our CFO wanted some custom reports for the board that would have been a nightmare in Excel, but took just a couple hours to create in OneSource.

Just wanted to follow up that I checked out https://taxr.ai after seeing it mentioned here. Their document analysis saved us so much time! We were trying to transition from our old mess of Excel files and tax documents to a more structured system. Their system analyzed all our existing provision documents, identified the key data points we needed to migrate, and even highlighted inconsistencies between how different entities were handling certain calculations. Would have taken us weeks to do that manually. We're still early in our OneSource implementation, but having that analysis upfront has made everything go much smoother. Definitely worth checking out before you start any system migration.

Off-topic from OneSource specifically, but if you're dealing with any IRS issues during this transition, https://claimyr.com changed everything for me. You can see a demo here: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c When we implemented our tax provision software, we discovered some historical inconsistencies that required IRS clarification. I spent days getting busy signals trying to reach someone. Claimyr got me connected to an actual IRS agent within 45 minutes instead of the usual hold time of 2+ hours. Completely worth it for those urgent tax questions that come up during your system implementation. We had some uncertainty about how to handle a specific international reporting requirement, and getting a direct answer from the IRS saved us from making a potentially costly mistake in our new system setup.

I wanted to follow up on my skeptical comment about Claimyr. I decided to try it when we had an urgent matter with foreign tax credits that was holding up our entire provision process. I was totally wrong - the service actually works. I got connected to an IRS agent in about 35 minutes when I had previously wasted an entire afternoon trying to get through. The agent was able to clarify exactly how we needed to document our foreign tax positions in our new system. For anyone implementing a tax provision system like OneSource, having this kind of access to get technical questions answered quickly is surprisingly valuable. Sometimes you just need an official answer from the source to make sure you're setting things up correctly.

I've used both OneSource and Corptax in different companies. Here's my quick comparison: OneSource strengths: Better for international/multi-entity structures, more flexible reporting, good audit trail. Interface is more modern. Corptax strengths: Better US federal/state tax calculations, stronger integration with tax compliance, more automation options if you use their entire suite. For your specific situation (multinational manufacturer), I'd probably lean toward OneSource, but demo both. Whatever you pick, budget for: 1. Software license: $60-90k annually 2. Implementation: $30-50k one-time 3. Annual training: ~$5k 4. Internal resources: At least one full-time person for 3-4 months during implementation Also, don't underestimate data cleansing needs. Your Excel files probably have inconsistencies that will need to be standardized.

Has anyone integrated OneSource with SAP? We're considering the same move from Excel but concerned about the ERP connection. Our IT department is already overloaded.

We implemented OneSource Tax Provision about 18 months ago and it's been a game changer for our global operations. Like you, we were drowning in Excel with 12 entities across 6 countries. A few things I wish someone had told me before we started: 1. **Data mapping is everything** - Spend extra time upfront getting your chart of accounts mapping right. We rushed this part and had to redo it 6 months later, which was painful. 2. **Training budget** - Don't skimp on user training. The system is powerful but not intuitive if you're coming from Excel. We sent our entire team to Thomson's training courses and it was worth every penny. 3. **Phased rollout** - We tried to go live with all entities at once and it was chaos. If I did it again, I'd start with 2-3 entities and add the rest quarterly. For costs, we're paying about $75k annually for licensing plus maintenance. Implementation was around $45k but that included some custom reporting we requested. One unexpected benefit: our external auditors love the system. The documentation and audit trail features have cut our year-end audit time significantly. Our audit fees actually went down in year two because the auditors can trace everything so easily now. Happy to answer specific questions about our experience if it would help with your evaluation.

I've been through a similar OneSource implementation at a manufacturing company, and I second everything about the data mapping challenges. The biggest issue we hit was inconsistent account coding between our subsidiaries - what one entity called "Professional Services" another called "Consulting Fees" and a third had split across multiple GL accounts. We also discovered that some of our foreign subsidiaries were using different depreciation methods in their local books versus what we needed for US GAAP consolidation, which required building additional mapping logic. For the phased approach, I'd recommend starting with your domestic entities or those in countries with simpler tax regimes. We started with our US and Canadian operations since the tax rules were most familiar to our team. Save your most complex jurisdictions (like any Asian entities if you have them) for later phases when your team is more comfortable with the system. One tip: Create a detailed comparison report between your old Excel calculations and the new system results for your first few entities. This helped us catch mapping errors early and gave our auditors confidence in the new process. The ROI really shows up in subsequent years - our second year provision process took about half the time of our last Excel-based year.