Anticipating busy season, accounting firms spend time preparing and printing engagement letters and client organizers. Gathering the information and signed documentation required to prepare taxes is an important and necessary step which often monopolizes a significant amount of staffing time.
In addition to this prep work, tracking and follow up with clients is a constant struggle. Often, deadlines loom, and clients still haven’t returned the necessary documents. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Busy season accounting work can be automated, thus minimizing the printing, mailing, tracking and follow up that normally occurs.
Getting Organized with Digital, Fillable Client Organizers
Whether motivated by doing things SALY (same as last year) or a belief that paper is the preferred medium for clients, paper organizers are still surprisingly common. But the time spent printing and mailing hundreds, or thousands of client organizers could be put to much better use in your firm.
Firm efficiency is vastly improved with SafeSend Organizers™, part of the SafeSend Suite™. SafeSend Organizers recognizes the static PDF client organizer generated by your tax system and quickly converts it to a fillable form. Easy and convenient to send to your clients, the fully fillable, digital organizer is also simple for clients to complete and return to the firm.
This automation solution saves time and money on the front end for your firm when printing and mailing tasks and costs are eliminated. On the back end, more time and money are saved when client organizer information is returned electronically and automated tracking and reporting features – including batch organizer reporting and expanded capabilities around source documents – reduce the follow-up time staff historically spend sending emails or making calls to gather information.
When it comes to preparing for busy season, accounting firms may think they have time savings covered by emailing clients a PDF copy of their organizer. Staff may be spending less time on the organizer process, but you’re passing the burden on to your clients! Putting clients in the position of printing that large document, filling it out, then scanning it back to your firm or mailing the hard copy is archaic in this day and age of electronic delivery.
Show your staff and your clients how much they are valued when you prepare for busy season by implementing the SafeSend Suite and utilizing the unlimited SafeSend Organizers feature.
Simplified E-Signature Experience is Engaging
The second big piece of preparing for busy season accounting activities is printing and sending engagement letters. Whether this is a step your firm still handles by sending hard copies to clients or sending electronically for signature, defining your services to your clients is important and getting the signed engagement letter returned from each client is a high priority.
Engagement letters can be included with the SafeSend Organizers package or sent individually. Specifically designed for sending one-off documents that require a signature, SafeSend Signatures ™, also part of the SafeSend Suite, extends the e-sign capabilities from engagement letters to all document types. Imagine the time savings when thousands of engagement letters can be mail merged and batch processed at the click of a button! Support all your firm’s bulk e-signature needs with SafeSend Signatures and experience significant monetary savings.
At the same time, you’ll simplify your tech stack and offer your clients an experience that is familiar, intuitive, and consistent. The dashboard within SafeSend Signatures streamlines the automated tracking and reporting, ensuring that your staff knows the status of engagement letters and all documents that require signature.
Automation Solutions Help Staff Accomplish More
These top two automation solutions help streamline busy season accounting preparation and set your firm up for a smooth transition into the new year. Going into busy season, accounting firms who embrace the power of automation will make the best use of time and reduce struggles with staffing issues.
Accomplish more with the staff that you have and stay on-track for a healthier, more balanced busy season. The SafeSend Suite provides solutions for client organizers and engagement letters as you prepare and gather information as well as addressing client touchpoints across the entire tax engagement.
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.
Already using the SafeSend Suite at the Suite Essential level? Join a demo of the Suite Preferred tier and learn more about SafeSend Organizers and SafeSend Exchange. Register for a Suite Preferred demo.