Anyone who's ever worked in an accountant's office is familiar with the annual ritual of the Tax Organizer. For many firms this yearly tradition is still a nightmare. The office basically shuts down as skilled workers are pulled off their normal duties to print, collate, bind, stuff, address, and mail these massive 15+ page documents. These are red days for a CPA firm, with lost productivity aggravated by the added expense of materials and postage.
Everyone in the office hate this pre-tax season ordeal. It's bad as bad for your office morale as it is for your bottom line to have your highly skilled accounting and administrative staff delegated to copying and envelope stuffing.

Fortunately technology is sparing many firms from this dreaded annual regimen.

More and more providers of websites for accountants are offering built in solutions to these issues.

For five years now almost all CPA websites have included downloadable tax organizers in PDF format. This has represented a significant improvement over snail mail and can spare your firm from these headaches. There are some minor issues with this solution, but there is one huge flaw with the solution that hurts participation. In order to use this solution the client needs to print out the PDF, fill it out, and fax it back. If the client doesn't have a FAX machine they are expected to mail it back. There's no way to include a self-addressed stamped envelope in an online download.

This complaint has been addressed in the latest generation of Online Tax Organizers. More and more accounting websites are incorporating tax organizers into their client portals. This completely eliminates the need for paper. The client can now log into his client portal over an encrypted connection and fill out his tax organizer right on the website. This system does not use email to transfer confidential client data and is completely secure. It saves automatically each time the client moves on to the next page. The client can fill it out at his leisure from any computer with an internet connection, and once submitted the data becomes instantly available.

The best of these systems can even be customized.

This is an exciting new technology that will forever banish the dreaded annual "tax organizer shut down" and increase client participation. Contact your CPA website provider today and find out what kind of solutions they offer to help you streamline your tax organizer distribution.