It can feel like a losing battle: Staying on top of all the various changes to sales and use tax laws and rates. With good reason – there are hundreds of changes to state and local sales tax rates alone.

That’s not including the constant shifts to what’s taxable and what’s not.

It’s not something any company can afford to take its eye off of. Plus, cash-strapped states view sales tax audits as a great revenue generator. You don’t want them setting up shop in your office.

There is a better way to keep up. Think about reorganizing your existing customer database to include sales and use tax information.

You’d start by assigning a particular code to every customer based on its state, county and city. That will help you be more confident you’re assigning the proper rates to each. (And it shows auditors you take compliance very seriously.)

From there, think about talking to your IT folks to see if they can sync it up so any updates you make go automatically to your billing system.

Yes, the set-up will be time consuming. But it’s something you only have to do once. And you’ll certainly minimize the time and effort sales and use tax compliance takes out of your staffers’ day.

(To stay on top of the latest changes, you’ll find links to each state’s department of revenue Web site by clicking www.govspot.com/tax/staterevenue.htm)

Because it’s considered the most productive day of the workweek, every Tuesday we’ll offer a strategy to make finance departments more efficient.

Tags: audits, billing, sales and use tax compliance, streamlining, tech solutions