The days get shorter, the nights cooler, and the focus turns to gathering client information for tax and accounting professionals. Tax automation solutions that help firms—and their clients—get tax ready have improved significantly since the days when the only option was mailing out a paper tax organizer.
Automate your tax process to streamline procedures within the firm and give clients a much smoother, efficient way to supply the necessary data and source documents needed to complete their taxes. Providing a great client experience results in happier clients and staff, as well as increased business.
Engagement Letters
Sending engagement letters to clients may be the first step in your firm’s tax journey. Ensuring all the engagement letters are e-signed and returned is an important responsibility of the admin team. Whether engagement letters are sent individually or combined with the information-gathering portion of getting tax ready, automation solutions simplify the process.
A tax automation solution that gives firms the ability to mail merge and batch process thousands of engagement letters at the click of a button saves time for the admin team. Automated tracking and reporting features, along with automated reminders, keep staff in the know with the status of each engagement letter and reduce or eliminate follow-up emails and phone calls, saving even more hours of staff time.
Gathering Information
One of the most time consuming steps of gathering information and source documents has been the hours spent creating and mailing paper tax organizers only to play the waiting game—and the multiple-reminder game. The information-gathering step is vastly improved for both firm staff and clients when using tax ready automation solutions.
Firms benefit by saving time and paper. They also realize significant workload savings through the elimination of tedious, repetitive tasks. At the same time, they are able to elevate the experience for their clients with a powerful, yet simple, digital solution.
An automation tool that is designed specifically for the tax and accounting profession—including a digital, fillable tax organizer and customizable document request list—make gathering information to get tax ready fast and easy. Streamline the process for your firm and your clients when you automate the common manual steps associated with collecting the source documents and data necessary for tax prep.
Streamline the information-gathering process even further by including the engagement letter with the tax organizer. Implementing a tax automation solution that offers firms the option to make the engagement letter signature mandatory prevents clients from filling out the organizer without signing their engagement letter. This ensures tax organizers are returned with signed engagement letters—eliminating extra follow-up calls and emails.
Secure File Exchange
Implement a tax automation solution that includes a better way to do business—secure file exchange that is free of password frustration. The best tax automation solution keeps core features of traditional file share systems—like large file transfer and secure document exchange—and enhances the process with features like easy-to-use Microsoft® Outlook add-in, file encryption, and document restriction.
Clients appreciate knowing their documents are transmitted securely to your firm. They love not having another password to remember! Admins are relieved knowing they won’t have to answer multiple calls requesting password resets.
Staffing Relief
Less than 1% of the 250 top CPA firm leaders polled in a survey from alliantTalent indicated being able to find the necessary staffing. Nearly 80% are increasing their use of technology and almost three quarters are offering fully remote positions.
Firms adopting tax automation solutions that address pain points at each step of the tax engagement relieve much of the stress their staff experiences. An e-sign solution designed specifically for the tax and accounting profession will support engagement letters, consent forms—or any other documents requiring a signature—and have mail merge and batch processing capabilities as well as reporting and tracking.
Eliminate the printing and mailing of paper tax organizers with a tax automation solution that provides the ability to send clients a fillable form—a static PDF of their tax compliance software-generated organizer. Staff and clients will appreciate a tax organizer that can be completed electronically—with the ability to securely upload source documents—all in one place.
When your tax automation solution also includes a live tracking and reporting dashboard, staff can easily stay on top of where each client is in the tax engagement. Staff stays in the know with the status of each client and spends much less time sending follow up emails. When you automate the tax process, you free up time for tax teams so they have more time to focus on revenue-driven tasks.
Client Experience
Providing the best experience for clients is at the core of everything a firm does. Clients are accustomed to online experiences. From shopping to banking, the ease and convenience of completing tasks on their phone—when and where they please—is the new normal. Disrupting their digital flow with an antiquated paper tax organizer is a client-service roadblock. No matter how attractively your firm bundles it, receiving a heavy paper organizer package in the mail isn’t going to light up your clients’ eyes.
Interactive and intuitive, a digital tax organizer client experience that allows clients to provide information electronically, upload source documents securely, and even ask questions right on the tax organizer will wow clients. They will appreciate electronic notifications and reminders if there are outstanding source documents or engagement letters. The ability to easily upload or sign and return documents makes the whole process easier and more convenient for them.
Customizable Solutions
Tax automation solutions replace the manual, time-consuming steps and the best tools provide customizable solutions that keep the interactions with your clients personal.
With the customizable solutions in the SafeSend Suite®, challenges relating to time and printing expenses—and the myth that digital solutions are impersonal—are solved. SafeSend Organizers™, part of the SafeSend Suite, tackles all of the information-gathering pain points, is easy for staff and clients to use, and best of all, there is nothing to install and no passwords for clients to remember.
“We were able to use SafeSend Organizers to make our own custom organizer. You can remove or add a question year-over-year, it’s a one-time effort and then it’s done.” — Dalton Sweaney, Managing Partner, GSA, llp
The automated tax journey begins with solutions that help clients and firms get tax ready and improve tax preparation time. Firms experience a more streamlined process and provide clients a superior experience when they utilize the industry leading SafeSend Suite of tax automation solutions:
- Engagement Letters – SafeSend Signatures™
- Tax Organizers – SafeSend Organizers™
- Assemble & Delivery – SafeSend Returns®
- Secure File Exchange – SafeSend Exchange™
- Extensions – SafeSend Extensions™
Schedule Your SafeSend Suite Demo Today
SafeSend Returns is the flagship solution in the SafeSend Suite and a multi-year winner of the CPA Practice Advisor Technology Innovation Award. SafeSend Returns eliminates the manual, labor-intensive elements many tax departments experience producing client-ready tax returns.