Acima gives people access to what they need without the credit hurdles. Furniture, electronics, car repairs -- through flexible lease-to-own options at thousands of stores in person and online. It's a simple idea that opened up a massive market, and Acima grew fast because of it.
Fast growth has a way of outrunning your back office. For Acima, sales tax compliance was the thing that didn't keep up.
"Sales tax across all 50 states is so niche. Building in-house means the impossible task of finding and hiring true sales tax experts -- and living with the risk that they can leave at any time, taking domain knowledge with them and leaving you in a lurch."
Nate Heward | former CFO, Acima
Acima had software. What they didn't have was support. Customer service requests went unanswered. The software couldn't scale with them. And the longer the problems went unchecked, the bigger they got -- audits, unpaid liabilities, compounding exposure across states they didn't even know they had obligations in.
They needed people, not a ticketing system. They came to us.
"The Sales Tax People are a Godsend. We were always fully automated via API with real-time rates and third-party file and pay -- that was the easy find. The complete service? That is the unicorn find."
Nate Heward | former CFO, Acima
When we partnered with Acima in February 2019, we got to work immediately. We registered them in every state and jurisdiction where they'd triggered economic nexus -- including ones they hadn't realized they were missing. Within two days, they had a fully operational compliance platform across 240+ state and local jurisdictions in the US and Canada.
But the registration was just the start. We embedded ourselves in Acima's internal processes, coached their team on how to actually get value out of the software they already had, and operated like a trusted member of their finance team. Available, proactive, and accountable.
Acima handed off sales tax entirely. Their team focused on growth.
By December 2020, Acima hit $1.25 billion in revenue and was acquired by Rent-A-Center for $1.65 billion.
We were brought on to manage sales tax compliance for Rent-A-Center's 2,000+ locations too.
That's what it looks like when sales tax stops being a liability and starts being handled.
