How to eliminate the 1040 tax workflow bottleneck for reviewers, managers, and partners

Looking back on yet another stressful tax season, we are hearing a lot about the continued bottleneck and pressure on reviewers, managers, and accounting firm partners. You can automate the 1040 preparation easily with technology, but the review still has to happen.

How much is ‘old school’ costing your firm?

The checklists…the ticking and tieing or clicking through dozens of connectors…the over-auditing of every return. Can you afford to spend your time deep in the weeds of every tax return? As accountants, have you ever done the calculations on how much money (and sanity) you are losing by investing time on technical reviews that could be spent on advising and consulting instead? Or, better yet, how many good prospective employees are avoiding public accounting because of the tax season perception (and reality in many cases) of grueling work weeks?

Is there a better way? A way to modernize the 1040 review to drive efficiency and accuracy into the process and relieve exhausted tax accountants?

Yes.

There is a way.

…to remove hours at the manager and partner level from the 1040 review process, and…

…to have assurance that each 1040 return is correct without over-auditing it.

Which results in…

… Reclaiming valuable billing hours at the manager and partner level to focus on business development, marketing, and higher value services.

Modernizing the 1040 review process is simple.

You have 2 very viable options for modernizing the 1040 review.

1. Prove outcomes instead of double checking inputs.
2. Outsource the 1040 review.

Prove Outcomes.

Simply, start at the end. Prep the return the way you do today- scan/auto-populate, outsource, hand key. Then stop. Move to the end of the process by creating an independent expectation of the return’s outcome. It’s fast, efficient, and will expose the land mines immediately. It will also allow you to skip right past tieing out totals that are already correct, because those are automatically proven.

Some firms have reconciliation spreadsheets built for this purpose, and that is why TaxExact was created for a smoother, faster user experience. Simply scan in the prior year 1040, and add the totals for the current year in order to see the variance. Once the current year totals are populated, compare the TaxExact summary screen with your tax software’s summary screen. Errors, omissions, and discrepancies stand out immediately.

The magic question…wait a second, aren’t you just doing the return twice?

No. If you are using a tool like TaxExact designed to expedite proving outcomes, with OCR built in for adding prior year data…it’s much faster and more accurate than the old school ticking and tieing.

Outsource the 1040 Review.

Imagine being able to outsource the entire technical review to an onshore tax expert who delivers proof back to you of all totals that have been verified as correct and highlights all discrepancies with diagnostics. No, you aren’t dreaming.

Now imagine being able to provide proof to a client that their return has been reviewed and is accurate. How much time would it save you to be able to quickly final review a 1040 return inside a review software that gives you all of the information you need for an advisory conversation with a client?  According to our clients, reviewing 1040s is where the bottleneck is. If you can automate as much of the 1040 workflow as possible, your valuable time can be re-allocated to advising and consulting. Which is what your clients really want- in addition to assurance that the return you file for them is correct.

Verified, by TaxExact is a service dedicated to reviewing 1040 returns, making it effortless for firms to securely upload source documents along with a preparer’s copy of the return to a secure portal. Our 1040 review experts do the rest using TaxExact technology for the review. They deliver the reviewed project with diagnostics (and verifications of all correct totals) back to the firm.

You have options.

With options for eliminating the tax season review bottleneck, tax and extension seasons can become more bearable. And, when firms are having fun vs stressing out, it is a lot easier to attract talent as well as clients who want proactive advice beyond compliance services.

Want to know more and get access to a free trial of TaxExact? Click here to schedule a quick demo and get a free trial.