Chasing tax documents without chasing them
Know which client is missing which document, and ask for exactly that — once.
What goes wrong today
In February a firm sends the same generic "please send your documents" email to 300 clients. Half have already sent everything. The other half do not know which piece is missing. Preparers spend the season on email instead of returns.
What starts it
- Your practice management system — A document is uploaded to the client portalDescribed rather than named: we have not verified what this vendor calls the event, and inventing a name would waste your afternoon.
- Your e-signature tool — An engagement letter is signedDescribed rather than named: we have not verified what this vendor calls the event, and inventing a name would waste your afternoon.
How it runs
- 1Build the list
For each client, last year's return says which documents this year's should have.
- 2Watch the portal
Every upload is matched against that list.
- 3Ask for the gap only
A weekly email naming the specific missing documents. A client who is complete gets nothing.
- 4Preparer sees the board
One view showing who is ready to start, so work is picked by readiness rather than by who shouted.
a person does this - 5Stop at three
Three unanswered weeks and the client moves to a partner call list.
What a person still does
None of this runs unattended. If it did, we would be selling you something else.
- Decides what last year's return actually implies about this year. A sold rental property changes the list, and only a person knows that.
- Makes the partner calls for clients who have gone quiet.
- Reviews every return. None of this touches the work itself.
Skip this if…
- You have fewer than about 75 individual returns. A checklist in a spreadsheet beats this.
- Clients send documents by email rather than a portal. Matching email attachments to a document list is a different, much harder build.
- Your prior-year data lives only in PDFs. Deriving the expected list from PDFs is where this quietly fails.
Build it yourself
Roughly three weeks, and it must be live before January or it is worthless until next year.
Download the build checklistWant this one built for your setup?
Tell us what you already run and we will tell you honestly whether this is worth building for you — including when the answer is no, which is what the skip list above is for.