Automating Tax Workpapers

As accountants, we have a deep-seeded need to have our workpapers organized, tied down, and consistent across every engagement. Some of that is driven by our nature (does your spouse use descriptors like neat-freak, anal-retentive, rigid?) and some if it is driven by the regulatory nature of our industry. And as much as we value that level of orderliness, most non-accountants do not value it, which makes billing for ‘workpaper time’ challenging.

Fortunately, technology has evolved to automate those tax workpapers in a neat, consistent way, which saves us hours of non-billable organization time.

Most firms are on the paperless journey, including scanning tax source documents to archive workpapers electronically. To super-charge your process, scan those documents at the beginning of the preparation process, instead of the end, and use a solution like Intuit’s Document eSort to automatically organize the documents.

Unorganized Workpapers:
Scanning source documents provides an electronic PDF that facilitates electronic storage, but can make it tedious to find the source document you need in a large PDF.


Versus Organized Workpapers:
Electronically organizing the workpapers labels the documents by type (W-2, 1099, etc) and payor, and automatically sorts the documents in the input order- making those PDF’s much more usable in the tax preparation process.



Here are the top 10 reasons practioners use Document eSort to automate workpaper organization:

1. Transfers the organization step from the preparer to technology, saving an average of 20 minutes per return
2. Reduces training time for new personnel and provides a bookmark map to enter the data into the tax return
3. Standardized workpapers for all clients
4. Consist workpapers across all preparers and staff
5. Faster data entry using an organized, bookmarked PDF
6. Faster review with organized PDF available at the point of need
7. Quickly access archived source documents and eliminate hunting down lost and mis-filed documents when clients call
8. Electronic storage is safer, easier to backup, and far more cost-effective to maintain than traditional paper storage
9. Work remotely and have access to the entire client file
10. Share the organized source file with clients to increase the value of the client deliverable.

Like anything worth doing, adopting new technology involves effort. Defining the office processes to support new technologies will require planning. In addition to scanning at the beginning of the process, you will want to equip preparers with multiple monitors and make sure you have a high quality, sheet fed scanner.

The benefit of this effort is increased productivity during your busiest time of year. And of course, satisfying your inner neat-freak.