Create Reports from TaxJar Data in Looker Studio

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to TaxJar data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for TaxJar and generating reports from TaxJar data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for TaxJar, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live TaxJar data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to TaxJar. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested TaxJar data.

Configure TaxJar Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to TaxJar from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with TaxJar data from Looker Studio, we start by creating and configuring a TaxJar connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "TaxJar" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to TaxJar.

   To authenticate to the TaxJar API, first obtain the API Key from the TaxJar UI.

   NOTE: the API is available only for Professional and Premium TaxJar plans.

   If you already have a Professional or Premium plan you can find the API Key by logging in the TaxJar UI and navigating to Account -> TaxJar API. After obtaining the API Key, you can set it in the APIKey connection property.

   Additional Notes

   • By default, the CData connector will retrieve data of the last 3 months in cases where the entity support date range filtering. You can set StartDate to specify the minimum creation date of the data retrieved.
   • If the API Key has been created for a sandbox API account please set UseSandbox to true, but not all endpoints will work as expected. For more information, refer to the TaxJar developer documentation.
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add TaxJar Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to TaxJar data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live TaxJar Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new TaxJar data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.

2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account.
3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance
4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next

5. Now select a Connection (e.g. TaxJar1) and click Next
6. Select a Table (e.g. Orders) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue
7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.

8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.

Live Access to TaxJar Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live TaxJar data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating TaxJar data.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.