How Green Smart Living Achieved 220% Faster Filing & Reduced License Bottlenecks with IGEN

The challenge

As excise tax requirements emerged in the e-cigarette industry, Green Smart Living, a four-person vape distributor, quickly outgrew its existing tax software. Sylvia Kind, the company’s sole tax professional, who also managed accounting, HR, and office management, struggled to keep up with the new mandatory licensing and excise tax reporting.

“I didn’t want to sit and calculate excise tax for 16+ states. I just don’t have the time for that,” said Sylvia Kind, Head of Accounting. “I definitely didn’t have the horsepower to handle manual reporting.”

In addition to filing 16 monthly state excise tax returns and 29 PACT Act reports, managing customer licenses amplified the risk and workload.

“Before IGEN, our spreadsheets and books were prone to human error and could easily create operational bottlenecks, making it nearly impossible for a single person to maintain counterparty licenses,” said Kind. “I needed something I knew wouldn’t cause problems, and we needed a solution fast.”

The solution

Green Smart Living partnered with IGEN to automate excise tax filings, PACT Act reporting, and license management with Form Generation and License Maintenance. There was a quick time-to-value, shifting Kind’s focus from data entry to accuracy and efficiency.

“We had to find a solution that was more advanced with excise tax,” said Kind. “Integrating IGEN into our workflow was straightforward, and it works for us.”

Moving license management from spreadsheets into IGEN eliminated the risk of human error and kept the team proactive. Expiring licenses now trigger alerts, enabling Kind to request updated information with a click, eliminating operational bottlenecks.

“Tracking and storing license information with IGEN’s License Maintenance was a no-brainer. It’s one less thing I have to micromanage,” said Kind. “That initial warning is very helpful; I can take action right away without holding up orders.”

The results

By automating their excise tax compliance with IGEN’s Form Generation, Green Smart Living reduced a two-day manual reporting process to five hours of monthly work, freeing up time for other critical operations, such as accounting and HR.

“Being able to save that time it’s huge. I can finish all my filings in a few hours and move on to everything else I need to do, thanks to IGEN’s Form Generation,” said Kind.

IGEN’s License Maintenance gives Green Smart Living a single source of truth for customer data, enabling proactive compliance and fewer bottlenecks.

“It saves me time in and of itself because then I’m not searching in a million different places for information, and allows us to be more efficient,” said Kind.

With IGEN Green Smart Living:

• Has achieved 220% faster filing time per monthly cycle: 16+ hours reduced to under 5 hours per monthly cycle for both state returns and PACT Act reports.
• Reclaimed time to focus on business operations: As a one-person tax team, Kind completes filings quickly and now has more time to focus on other accounting tasks, HR, and office management.
• Reduced operational bottlenecks: Real-time license alerts and proactive license requests keep shipments moving.
• Eliminated manual license work: with a customer data repository that triggers alerts when licenses are expiring.