Last-minute frustrations, particularly close to deadlines, may be a familiar part of doing business for tax and accounting professionals, but Friedman & Huey isn’t satisfied with status quo. They continually strive to innovate and improve their internal processes. The firm recognized one of the more cumbersome processes was the paper assembly procedure for tax returns. Simple 1040 returns alone were taking up to 30 minutes to print, assemble and staple – then there were postage costs.
Looking for Ways to Innovate
They developed an innovation team to focus on merging automation processes with the accounting work. One of the innovation team members, Leizel Acres, a tax accountant at Friedman & Huey, attended a SafeSend Returns webinar and fell in love with the idea of the product. “I prepare and review tax returns, but I try to be on the innovation side, always looking for new, tech-savvy things,” Acres commented.
She shared the webinar with the innovation team. Around the same time, a group of Friedman & Huey partners returned from a conference and were excited about a great product they had seen called SafeSend Returns. That’s when the firm began to look deeper into SafeSend Returns and then Senior Manager of IT Services, Benji Kramer, attended the SurePrep Transform Conference where SafeSend was co-sponsor. Together, the team saw all the benefits SafeSend Returns could provide for the firm.