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let me read this quote the accounting profession particularly tax is currently defined by how we request information and how intelligently we can do so and nowhere do we see that more than in the tax intake process that is just around the corner that wasn't actually that this is this is actually a encyclopedia so through s z now the holy grail for an accounting firm right now is a single platform for asking client questions intelligently that will integrate back with the rest of your stack i'm talking about pro forma tax data pushing categorizations back to your accounting system a client facing web experience with optional authentication hot take right there imagine a world where a mass blast went out to every one of your clients in january and asked them for every single thing you needed for a tax return what no more taking time out of our tax season just to build a list of items you need the client to provide where the month then close was a combination of automated document requests alongside accounting categorization support alongside tax return questions a tool that does this well is the sort of thing that will fundamentally change our profession and you know what it it isn't a thing there's there's not a way to do it right now but we can get part way there and that's what we're talking about today let's look at the tools on the market today none of which are really designed to do all of these things but which one or which combination of those tools can get us closest we're gonna judge them on four criteria and remember we're pulling a bunch of stuff off the shelf here and just trying to plug them in for these purposes a lot of them do other things as well one templated requests requests a whole bunch of standardized questions you want to send to a bunch of people dynamically generated requests so can i merge data in to create a customized list of questions tax integrations will pull data from attack software or push data to it yeah right and accounting integrations pulling data from your ledger and pushing data back to it so first let's take a look at tools for accounting firms the usual suspects can we talk about how bad windows bluetooth is this thing works like 50 of the time so let's just acknowledge this cord is here it's gonna be here for the rest of the video okay first up carbon i know all you carbon thumpers just jumped out of your chair so how does carbon work for tax and accounting intake carbon does a lot more than those things in box triage it's project management but is it going to make my life easier when it comes to tax or counting intake so let's go through the four criteria we're looking at in each of these tools first templated requests yep it's a thing so carbon has a client-facing portal a whole library of boilerplate templates you can use to either manage tasks internally or even the client-facing tasks now in the case of carbon's ui is going to be one giant list which in the context of like tax intake can be a lot if you got a questionnaire with 40 50 questions and then a bunch of documents you need it's a massive list so maybe not the best user experience how about dynamic requests i'm going to give this one a sorta there's not really a way to do it in vanilla carbon but they did just release their api finally bravo and i'm going to award anybody that puts out an open api a kinda at the least because the world needs more open apis and it means you technically could pipe in your own custom stuff now to make this even more accessible for people hopefully we get a little better zap your integration tax integrations not really but i'm giving them a sort of because they got the api and we're gonna do the same for accounting integrations next up lissio tired of chasing clients for documents so lisio's kind of an all-in-one messaging doc swapping task management portal but when it comes to tax and accounting intake is it going to make your life easier templates yes you can set up client-facing templates kind of similar to what carbon does similar to carbon is going to be kind of one giant to-do list but that's a lot better than where a lot of firms are living right now dynamic requests i don't think so beyond templates i don't see a way to dynamically generate to-do's based on a data set and i don't believe there's an api available right now either integrations beyond a couple e-sign and document management integrations you don't really have the ability to bring your own third-party tool and pipe tax or accounting data in or out of this one so i'm gonna give it a no on both now remember these tools do a lot of things but we're assessing them specifically for tax and accounting intake here client hub modern practice management built for cass one stop client portal amazing mobile app templated requests i think so dynamic requests no such luck no api either in terms of bringing your own integrations not a lot of flexibility there so tax integrations is a no but you can set up a qbo integration that will pull in client tasks for each transaction coded to an uncategorized account that's going to show up in the client's dashboard and it'll actually let the client categorize the transaction okay but i think this is still a good thing tax caddy the most fully featured option specifically for the tax space there's really nothing else like it in the space right now templated requests you can push like questionnaire type lists to clients via tax caddy for dynamic requests not really but they do have an api so we'll give them a sorta tax integrations yes that's kind of their thing beyond there it's not super flexible you don't have any control over the user experience so this one's going to strike out on any sort of accounting integrations so not much in the way of accounting integrations for this one but we are going to give them a sorta because they have an open api all hail open apis keeper you seen this one yet it's like project management that talks to your qbo really interesting idea for templated requests you've got both project templates and closed templates you've got a client facing aspect of this app so they're hopping in and doing work with you for dynamically generating requests i think we're out of luck here and no open api yet it's very early days for this tool though tax integrations that's a nope counting integrations a big yes uncap yeah this is a tool that's really purely for oh we're getting help from clients to code your transactions they're rolling out qb desktop and xero support as well so will it let you do templated requests nope dynamically generated requests not even slightly tax integrations but accounting integrations this one knows what it does well and it does the heck out of it and spoiler alert the solution that's going to tick all of these boxes is not going to be a solution it's going to be a combination of the things that are best at x y and z lastly hello old friend i think this is the tech stack for 90 of firms you're looking at it so let's assess it on the same criteria templated requests yep dynamic requests i'm going to say sorta because this has got pro forma data in here so it is contextual but if we want to add anything besides that we're out of luck tax integrations i guess that's a yes it's integrating on the front side nothing's going to push out of it to your tax side accounting integrations this one's going to surprise you there's no accounting integrations now one sidebar here before we look at non-accounting tools every tax software vendor now has their own solution to this or they're building their own solution to this intuit link's probably the most mature one right now it's available if you're using pro connect or the cert we've got onvio now i'm only digging into the platform agnostic tools i don't like going deeper into the tax software ecosystem myself because it's going to be more platform lock-in and are those the people that are going to build the future of the whole client experience maybe it's definitely a no that was why i made that face we're looking at non-accounting tools and i couldn't think of a better place to start so how far can an off-the-shelf tool like this get you let's assess it on the same criteria can airtable do templated requests yep you build out a base and any of those fields can be part of a form form has conditional logic where you can hide ones unless they say yes so it actually does that pretty well can it ask dynamically generated questions questions from data that's been merged in a table is not great at that tax integrations this is where these tools are a strong sorta because they've got great apis so you kind of build around them whatever you want if there's a data accessibility issue it's not airtable's fault it's the other side same story for accounting integration is a strong sorta next up type form the sexiest web forms on the internet airtable really more of a database tool type form from day one has been a pure form builder templated requests there may be no better way to do templated requests than typeform from a user experience standpoint dynamically generated requests yes unlike most form builders with typeforms api you can build a custom form from scratch via their api not just get a link to one you already built or grab some responses but build a brand new form from scratch with their api which means in the nature of what we do if you have a thousand clients that need a different intake experience typeform can do that for you definitely a higher bar but it's possible tax integrations like the third table that's going to be a strong sorta due to the api same story on the accounting integrations content snare if you read my newsletter you know i love this one it is a beautiful combination of form builder and document request tool and it's designed for one of one requests not one to ten thousand requests which is what most form builders are designed to do this was designed from the ground up for custom requests to your clients so templated requests easy peasy dynamically generated requests i'm gonna give them a sorta because the way they do their templating is very granular the layout of the client experience is like pages and then sub sections and any level of that hierarchy can be templated so it makes it pretty quick and easy to generate different types of requests based on the underlying circumstances of that person tax integrations i'm gonna give them a sorta no open api yet but they do give you the data in a helpful format you get csvs it has a zapier integration where you can grab the responses but you're limited to what that zap your integration supports same story for accounting integrations that's going to be a sort of last but not least i know a lot of people like this one cognito forms it's got a bit of a different take on online form building it's not like a single feed of question by question kind of things it's almost like building out more of a page it's got a lot of bells and whistles so templated requests yes it's literally in the nav bar templates dynamic requests sorta it's got kind of like a built-in database sort of thing where it can dynamically make changes to the forms and pre-fill things based on the data that you pre-load into it but it doesn't go as far as each of the questions being totally custom based on some other data set so far really type form is the only one we've got that does that tax integrations a respectable sorta same story on accounting integrations just because of the overall maturity of the product zapier integrations not too hard to get that data in and out of there so there are our 11 tools like i said at the top none of these really do all of these jobs and they aren't designed to so if your goal is to have something that's going to integrate back to both your tax and accounting systems your job probably isn't to pick the one that gets you closest but the right combination of tools to cover all of your bases without creating a super fragmented client experience for example let's say you don't want to fuss with apis you want something to support your clients straight out of the box for tax the only great options right now are tax caddy and that old crusty paper organizer unless your tax software has their own built-in option right now but commit to those kind of at your own peril so then for the accounting side you're probably looking at client hub keeper or uncapped these are the ones that are going to push data back and forth to your accounting ledger in the case of client hub or keeper that's qbl in case uncat you're looking at qbo zero and grand qb desktop if your clients will be fine logging into another system client hub may be the most fully featured here but if you like the project management aspects of keeper that may be your best bet and if you want drop dead simple for your clients look at uncap it's all done via a magic link they get via email it's not really a fully fleshed out portal it's hey just hop in and answer these couple questions now the overarching concern here for me when i pick what's right for me what's that client experience look like right your workflow matters but it can never come at the expense of the client's experience if you step to my newsletter there's a link to a data table with all these tools links and all that so you can choose your own adventure and next week we'll be wrapping up the intake series with how to start putting that stinky website to work i see you crappy accounting firm website subscribe below to make sure you don't miss that one and i'll see you next week [Music] you