Some in the tax and accounting profession
"Every year we have more and more clients sign up to use our secure portal for communicating and sending documents back and forth. This makes the tax process easier and more secure for our clients and us," said Gail Rosen, a CPA in Martinsville, N.J.
"We don't plan on adding new technology [but] we have a secure portal for transmission of secure data and e-signatures," said Morris Armstrong, an Enrolled Agent and registered investment advisor in Cheshire, Connecticut. "We have made it easier for people to pay us by adding Venmo."
"We're adding ways to deliver tax returns and financial information to our clients in a paperless manner, as well as improving the ways we receive data through the use of portals and online signatures of forms," said Scott Kadrlik, a CPA and managing partner at Meuwissen, Flygare, Kadrlik & Associates, in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Always changing
Armanino LLP recently launched Armanino Access, which James Nunes, the director of client experience for the Top 25 firm, called "our new digital client experience app," to an initial group of users on both mobile and desktop. With a dashboard, Armanino Access provides real-time status on client projects, direct messaging to the client team, milestone tracking, event registration, news updates and a virtual chatbot.
"It will continue to evolve as we proactively engage clients for feedback and begin rolling out the app to a larger group of clients," Nunes said.
Constant attention is a good idea for client portals, which can fail for many reasons,
- Some clients will always manage to find your portal confusing. Include a short tutorial or guide for every new client — and make certain that members of your firm are thoroughly trained so they can answer any questions.
- Portal developers are one group, clients another: The end user's experience is one of the most important parts of a successful client portal. Constantly survey clients about their experience, even if just with a single yes-or-no question before they log out.
- The internet constantly evolves, and clients will likely expect the same cutting edge from a firm's portal (even if those clients don't seem to like change). Constantly update content, clear outdated information and make commonly used tools, calculators and documents easy to spot.
That brings up how tech can also mean updating client behavior.
Many tax and accounting firms have experienced fantastic growth since March 2020, when the pandemic hit the U.S., and "They tell me they have more clients than they can adequately serve," Rita Keller wrote recently on her blog "Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders(
"You served clients well while working remotely. You took unusual steps to be able to do that. Mainly, you required your admin team to be in the office scanning documents so the remote accountants could work," Keller wrote. "What's wrong with that picture? Why not require your clients to submit scanned documents in the first place? Why not have a video that teaches them exactly how to do it?"
'Very few people'
Other tech changes continue for firms, some born of convenience and some of necessity.
Robert Seltzer, a CPA at Seltzer Business Management in Los Angeles, reported that his firm switched tax prep programs, "and it wasn't exactly smooth. This year will be easier for me and my staff as well as for our clients with the new system integrated for our organizers. We'll also institute more automation via scanning."
"I've been steadily getting more and more of my clients to emailing me," said Manasa Nadig, an EA and owner at MN Tax and Business Services and a partner at Harris Nadig in Canton, Michigan. "But for 2022, I'm going to be moving more of my clients to a virtual platform. We're working with Tax Dome [which] not only allows my clients to upload their workpapers to our firm securely, it also gives them the ability to send us secure messages. My clients who have been using this love it because they don't have to dig through their email inbox for all my emails and messages."
"Most communication is done via email," added Larry Pon, a CPA in Redwood City, California. "Of course, when it comes to tax planning, that is more effectively done in a meeting — either through the phone or video call. Since most people do not like to be stuck in traffic, face-to-face meetings are rare and now the exception.
"I notice very few people want to talk on the phone anymore," Pon said.
