# Chasing tax documents without chasing them — build checklist

Know which client is missing which document, and ask for exactly that — once.

Roughly three weeks, and it must be live before January or it is worthless until next year.

## Before you start, read this

Do NOT build this if any of the following is true of you:

- [ ] 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.

If none of those apply, carry on.

## 1. Prove you can hear the trigger

- [ ] Your practice management system: A document is uploaded to the client portal
      Find what your vendor actually calls this event before you write any code.
      We have not verified the name, and guessing it wastes an afternoon.
- [ ] Your e-signature tool: An engagement letter is signed
      Find what your vendor actually calls this event before you write any code.
      We have not verified the name, and guessing it wastes an afternoon.
- [ ] Log one real event end to end before building anything on top of it.

## 2. Build the steps, in this order

- [ ] 1. Build the list
      For each client, last year's return says which documents this year's should have.
- [ ] 2. Watch the portal
      Every upload is matched against that list.
- [ ] 3. Ask for the gap only
      A weekly email naming the specific missing documents. A client who is complete gets nothing.
- [ ] 4. Preparer sees the board  (A PERSON DOES THIS — build the queue, not the decision)
      One view showing who is ready to start, so work is picked by readiness rather than by who shouted.
- [ ] 5. Stop at three
      Three unanswered weeks and the client moves to a partner call list.

## 3. Keep these jobs with a person

If your build quietly takes any of these over, you have built 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.

## 4. Before you turn it on

- [ ] Run it in report-only mode for a week and read every message it WOULD have sent.
- [ ] Decide who gets paged when it stops firing, and prove the page works.
- [ ] Write down what "it is working" means as a number you can check next month.
- [ ] Confirm you have consent for any message this sends to a customer.

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Generated from the recipe at https://ustechautomations.com/recipes/accounting-tax-season-document-chase
by seo/scripts/v1-gen-recipe-checklists.js — do not edit this file by hand.