Name: Intuit ProConnect: Automation & Workflow Tools
Uploaded: 2025-10-09T18:18:06.795Z
Duration: 1 h 2 min 8 s
Description: Intuit ProConnect: Automation & Workflow Tools

Transcript for "Intuit ProConnect: Automation & Workflow Tools": Hello, and welcome. Thank you so much for joining me for today's webinar. Today, we'll be covering Intuit ProConnect tax automation and workflow tools. This is one of my favorite conversations when it comes to ProConnect, so bear with me and my excitement today. My name is Alnisha. I'm a CPA, but I'm also the founder of Ace Group. My favorite title is mom. I'm a mom of three amazing, children, Ava, Savannah, and Elisha. I actually named this business after them. I'm based in New Jersey. So if you're also in New Jersey on the East Coast, make sure to say hello to me in the chat. And if you're not from the East Coast, that's okay. You can also tell us where you are from. I've won a couple of awards. They're listed there. My favorite award is probably being a cool mom, but I won a couple of other ones that you might be interested in. I am a mentor at my alma mater, and I think that's important to mention because of the way in which I'm I measure success, which is how how much control I have over my own time to do the things that bring me joy, to spend time, with the people that I love spending time with while also growing a business and doing things for a community that I really enjoy working with. So if you are here, of course, welcome. Who's gonna get the most out of today's webinar? If you are a tax professional and you are considering ProConnect tax, yay, you're going to do great here. We're gonna go through a lot of topics that'll, help you figure out exactly why you should be with ProConnect. If you are new to ProConnect, welcome. And you are familiar with the fundamental program concepts, this is gonna help you really get grounded in some of that built in automation. And if you are a current user of ProConnect and you wanna reinforce your understanding of data entry within ProConnect tax, this webinar is also going to be very helpful for you. By the end of our time together today, here are some things you should be able to do. You should be able to use Intuit link to have engagement letters signed by your clients as well as collect their information. You'll be able to use ProConnect to import client documents to minimize data entry errors, retrieve IRS transcripts directly within ProConnect tax. If you've not explored that yet, we'll go through that in today's webinar. And to evaluate how Protection Plus with ID theft restoration will enhance your client's security and strengthen your service offer. So if you don't currently have the capacity or the interest, because that's totally fine, to offer, tax resolution services to do any notice management for your clients, this offering is going to be very helpful for you. Now as far as participation goes, to make sure you get the best experience today, we wanna make sure that you know your audio is only gonna come through your computer speakers. If you can't hear me, first try turning your volume up. Refreshing your screen also can be helpful for resolving issues you may be experiencing. We strongly recommend that you use Chrome or Safari for the best experience. If you have a VPN or ad blocker that is going to negatively impact your experience, so just be mindful of that. As we get to the end of today's webinar, a, survey will pop up. It's a short, easy survey. Please take it. This helps into it to figure out if the content they're providing is helpful to you. And you will be able to view a recording of today's presentation. Shortly after we conclude, you're gonna use the same link that you used to access it just now. You'll use that, and you'll be able to see that recording. Polls. Everyone's favorite. You have two ways to answer your polling question. When the poll is launched, give it a couple of seconds. So once I announce it, if it doesn't pop up immediately, it's okay. Just give it a couple of seconds to load. It'll show up in the middle of your screen, and you'll be able to answer there. But you can also answer in the polls tab. So you can answer in either place to get credit. If you have any issues with the poll, be sure to send us a chat message. There are lots of wonderful people here to help with any technical issues you may be having. And we have put in some additional polls. So if you missed the first one or if you have issues with the first one, get some assistance in the chat as to how to make sure that you get one of the poll questions answered to get credit for today's webinar. But two places, you don't need to answer in both places. As far as credit goes, this session today is eligible for one CPE credit. In order to get that credit, you need to answer the polling questions in the two designated areas. So you're more than welcome to chat your answer, but you really need to make sure that you're answering in one of the designated poll areas so that it can count. You need to answer a minimum of one poll, but we'd appreciate if you answer all of them. And that also means you don't have to panic if you missed the first one. And you do also need to attend for a minimum of fifty minutes. Only live webinars are eligible. So if you were catching this webinar on the replay, and it's on demand, you're not going to be able to get credit for that. Once you have attended, you answer polls. You were here for a minimum of fifty minutes. You will receive a certificate. Normally comes in about two days. If you don't get it, you want to send an email to the email address listed here. [email protected]. Let them know the date that you attended and the webinar title so that they can help you with your, CP credit questions. Poll number one. This is poll number one. For some of you, this will be practice. For others, it'll be your minimum of one, but remember to answer all of the others. Poll number one, what is your primary reason for attending this webinar today? Is it to earn free CPE, exploring new solutions, solve a specific problem, general interest or education, or is it some other reason? Now if it's other, make sure you select other in the poll first either of the designated areas, and then feel free to tell us in the deck what is your primary reason for attending today's webinar. And while this is a pretty simple poll because there are no wrong answers, for any of the other polls, keep in mind the accuracy is not what we're seeking when we're doing the polls, it's interaction. So you don't need to have the right answer when you're selecting the other polls. Just make sure that you select the answer so that you can get your credit. Poll number one is live. I'll give you another five seconds or so, and we'll close this one out in three, two, one. So let's get started. Today's agenda, we've got a lot to cover, and not that much time together, but I promise I'll get you through all of it. Our focus today is on automation and workflow tools. I wanna show you Intuit link, my page, data automation within ProConnect, IRS transcripts, and Protection Plus. We'll go through a recap of all this information. I'll demo as much of it as I can for you, and then we'll do some next steps. ProConnect, in very short layman's terms, equals time savings. 95% of ProConnect tax online users reported saving an average of almost forty minutes per tax return when using Intuit link. I know you're gonna say, how? How do you save almost forty minutes per tax return? Quite honestly, I think it's a bit more depending on how your practice currently operates, but here's how you're gonna save that time. You're not chasing down engagement letters. You're not printing them. You're not mailing them. You're not looking for them in a bunch of different places. You are going to create your template engagement letter in link. And when your taxpayer logs in, they're going to sign their engagement letter electronically. They're gonna complete their organizer, and they're gonna upload their documents. For some, if you are still mailing engagement letters, waiting for signatures, scanning, you you've already started racking up the time savings just by being able to do your, engagement letters electronically. And if you're mailing them, you also just saved on postage. When it comes to, checklists and organizers, we're also not going to have to mail those, and you're not gonna have to deal with them in a bunch of different places. So if you are currently letting clients send you information however they choose, they're mailing it, they're faxing it, they're dropping it in your mailbox at work, your mailbox at home, the wrong mailbox to someone else's suite in your building. If that is the case, not going to be the case anymore because you're gonna give them one central place to put it. So the amount of time that you would normally spend gathering documents, looking for documents, letting someone send you a document because the client sent it directly to one of your team members, and now you have to wait for them to get through their email to find it, not gonna be the case anymore. If you deal with a bunch of different, organizer formats because some of your clients write it in, but they have doctor like handwriting, and we all know that takes time to decipher, not gonna be the case. And then organizing. We know that organizing documents, it takes time. ProConnect, is gonna help you with that and into a link because it can recognize a lot of those documents and sort of help you place it in the area in which it belongs. You can track the progress of your client's completion of the organizer's signature on the engagement letter, document upload. You can track that status from one screen. And as returns are being worked on, you'll be able to also track the status of that. That is one of my favorite features. I will show you that in the demo. Alright. So automation and workflow tools. Let's start with, you know what it is, IntuitLink. So what exactly is IntuitLink? This is built into ProConnect. It is not a separate platform. It is not something that you add on or pay extra for. This is built into ProConnect tax. It is a secure cloud based client portal for engagement letters, organizers, and tax documents. Now I'm a ProConnector for life, meaning that I have only used ProConnect. So this is what I've been used to for quite some time. But I have talked to other tax practitioners who have and pay for three separate platforms for these three things. Some of them have gotten good and sort of, like, built them so they talk to one another, but I also know practitioners who have a separate engagement portal, where they're sending it in, like, an esignature platform, then somebody's gotta save it somewhere, a separate organizer, and then a separate place for their clients to upload tax stocks. You have this all built into ProConnect tax in one place. Intuit link is going to streamline your client and team collaboration. Everyone's putting the information in the same place. You can see this information as you're working through the tax return, and now you can even chat with team members within, link in Proconet. You're gonna be able to organize all the information you need for tax preparation. I I live by two screens. Anyone using less than two screens, I think you are a genius. I don't know how you do it. But that is so crucial for myself and my team when it comes to tax preparation and tax review. And for the most part, two screens is exactly all we need in order to prepare a tax return. Not a bunch of papers, not even three screens because of the way that the information is organized, and you can open information right from into a link. You're gonna significantly reduce back and forth emails by being able to talk to your team members from within Intuit link, but also by being able to chat with your clients. So your clients can comment. You can comment back to them right in Intuit link. You're gonna enhance the security of sensitive client information. So if you are currently I won't tell on you, but you know you know. If you are currently receiving tax information via email, that is not the most secure way. I would even say mail is not the best way, especially if, more than the people who who need to be able to see that information have access to that information. So by giving your clients one secure way now don't email it. Don't fax it where we can't control the eyes on it. Don't drop it off or send it outside of the office. Give them one place you are, significantly enhancing the security of their information. And then overall, improve your client experience. We actually find the clients like knowing exactly what we're asking of them and exactly where to put it. Because we've taken that away from them to have to decide. Am I gonna drop it off? Do I need to make an appointment to do it? They could decide to do their organizer at midnight if they choose. We're not looking at it at midnight, but if that's what works for them, it works for them. And the other thing that I don't think we talk about a lot is that they still have access to that information. So So when they're looking for their w two that their employer gave them three years ago, they can go back into IntuitLink and get it for themselves. Alright. Time for poll number two. Poll number two is going live. What is the cost for Intuit Links functionality? Is it included with ProConnect tax online? Is there no additional cost? Do you not know, but you're gonna guess that it comes without added fees? Or is it all of the above? Remember, we don't need accuracy, but we do need you to interact. So please enter this poll in one of the two places on your screen in the pop up or in the poll tab. And I'll give you just a couple of seconds. I hope this one isn't too tough. I'll give you another five, four, three, two, one. And if you answered anything to the tune of it doesn't cost you anything extra, you are correct. So how do you get started in IntuitLink? Again, I mentioned that you can access it through ProConnect tax. I will show you that in a demo a little bit later. The first thing that I would do if I was brand new to ProConnect, I would go and immediately customize my link settings. I would add my company information, address, email for your firm, phone number, all those sort of things. I will put my logo in there. I like to create my own templates, and we modify our templates every year. And if you've been preparing or reviewing tax returns over the last seven or eight years or so, you know how many times we've had to change these organizers to ask questions based on new tax laws. So we review and update our organizers every year. Usually, in, like, October, November when things are nice and slow, so we're ready for tax season. We also update our document request. So if there's additional information based on a change in tax law, new deductions, new credits, we make sure to make those requests, as current as possible. And pro tip, we actually do our organizers by year. So we don't just modify the same template every single year. We make a new template every year. And here's why that's helpful. If you are working with a taxpayer and you're doing, some years back for them, if you only ever modify the template, meaning you only have one ten forty template, for example, and then you're going a few years back remember, I'm a mom. I have three kids. Every time I had a kid, I lost some memory. You're gonna forget things like, credits that were an option in 2021 that are not an option in 2025, whatever that may be. So what we do, we make and organize it every year, and we leave it. And then if we're working with the client on a 2020 return or a 2023 return, we send them that organizer for that year. And now we no longer have to remember, oh, what were those nuances in that year that we needed to be concerned with because it's already in that organizer. So I strongly suggest, creating your own organizer templates and creating them by year so that you take that off your team's mind and you put it on ProConnect to remember. Alright. I'm also going to update my engagement letter if I'm brand new. You can add whatever it is that you wanna add into your engagement letter, and then you can drop these little, like, template boxes in there. So if you see on the right side in this screen, that blue client name or that teal firm name, those are, little template blocks. So you put that there, and then when you send it, it'll be personalized. You can update the frequency of activity notifications. So we like to be notified on a daily basis who's been active in link that helps our office manager to check-in as needed with clients. She sees they've been active. She can go in and check-in with them with another template in the email. And you can also modify the invitation email. These are all the things that I would do before I even send my first IntuitLinX invite. That way, that back end work is done. Then you're ready to go ahead and send those invites to your clients. Now what does your client experience look like in LinX? One, they have really simple login options. So I think you can, like if you send it to them and they have, an existing profile in the Intuit ecosystem, it recognizes that. But they can also, like, have, like, a code text to them. Like, it's pretty easy for them to get in on their own. In the past, we used to have clients have to reach out to us. Like, oh, how do I get into IntuitLink? And I don't even think we had five people have issues last year. And if five people had issues, usually, it's because our clients have multiple email addresses, and sometimes they don't remember which email address it went to, so they think they haven't received their invite yet. Secure information sharing. Security is super important to, accounts alike, but very important to us. We take that very seriously, and we let our clients know how important it is. So being able to share information back and forth securely, super important. I actually think it has a pretty easy to use interface. It's intuitive, but I will show you if your client is having any issues. There is some, instructional information in link for them to access, takes the burden off of you as the practitioner. They get both video and PDF guidance to give them additional information as to how to navigate it. Although this isn't technically in link, they are oh, actually, this part is, but esignature in general is outside of link. But within link, they are able to esign their engagement letters. When they get their, engagement letter, they're gonna just type their name at the bottom, and that serves as their esignature. So that is within link. But, of course, you have some esignature options for tax returns outside of link. We'll talk about that. And then they have multiple options to provide documentation. So they can upload it. They can pull it from, Google Drive. They can connect to, like, their brokerage or their employer even and download the w two or the ten ninety nine directly. So they have several options. They can take a picture, and they can access this from their phone. It literally is meant to serve your client in whatever way would be useful and helpful to them so that you can get the information you need to prepare an act a tax return accurately and efficiently. So let me show you what this looks like in Intuit link. I'm just gonna switch over to a little video so that I can walk you through it, but I'm going to talk you through this. You can also access this video by clicking the link at the bottom of this screen. So let me switch to show you something I think you're gonna love. So what I did was send myself an invite to Intuit link so that I can record what that experience looks like. Because I know that if you use Lync, you know what it looks like from your end. We don't necessarily know what it looks like for our clients. So we actually send ourselves invites every year just to make sure that we like how things show up, and it helps to sort of read it and feel it from the client's end. But here's what it looks like for your client. Don't mind that it's in all lowercase. That's how I send it to myself. It will it will show up in whatever case you put, so capitalize your client's names. But here's what it's going to look like from your client's end. So here is that video and that PDF download that your client has access to to see how to use Intuit link. Here is our engagement letter. This is template, so our client's name shows up at the top. Your client's gonna read every word. I promise they'll type their name and sign, and they have the ability to download it. It is time stamped so that you know when your client reviewed and signed it. Next, it's gonna kinda guide them through the questionnaire. As they answer questions, you'll see that little green checkbox letting them know that, okay. You answered that one. Your client's gonna fill in the information. Now they can always skip a question. They can come back later if they're not exactly sure. They can check off if something doesn't apply. They can comment. So if they have a question or they needed to give you some additional information, they're able to comment. And then they can just move on to the documents. So they could have gone back to that main screen or they can just continue to progress. Now here are some ways that they are able to get information over to you. They can get their w two there by entering some information. They can get bank documents, investment documents, loan documents. They can upload from a cloud, account. They can take pictures from their phone. They have several options to get this information over to you. Now this is what happens when I click that little w two from my employer. I enter the EIN, and if my employer participate, I'll be able to pull my w two directly from their, platform. The same will happen with similar experience for bank or financial institutions. You're gonna search for your financial institution. You'll see if you see it on this list. Right? Several showed up when I clicked on PNC. But you'll search for yours, and similarly, you'll provide some information in order to look up your forms. Lastly, you can pull information from your Dropbox or your Google Drive account as well. Now when you are moving through your documents, you could either have a done that or you could go through the requested items. We ask clients to mark does not apply if it doesn't apply. And once they think they're done, this is important, we want them to click I think I'm done, that blue button that you see in the bottom right corner. Here's why that matters in our workflow. We actually record videos at the start of the tax season, letting clients know, hey. Here's how tax season is going to work. Here's what you need to be prepared for so that you are in, you know, the lead when it comes to getting your information into us in a timely fashion because we have, pretty tight deadlines. Our deadlines for submissions are typically thirty days before the filing deadline. We know what the IRS and the state say, but we know what we need to be able to prepare, return without burning ourselves out, hiring the team out, all those good things. We let them know that we will not look at this because we want to reduce the amount of touches until you click I think I'm done. That for us triggers, hey. Someone needs to go in and take a review, a first pass at this to make sure that what we expected to receive from the client based on the checklist is here in the documents, and then we can queue our clients up for tax prep. We're not going to look at our clients into a link submissions every single day. We queue up based on them clicking I think I'm done. That is what we trained our clients to do. What that does is give them a pop up that says, hey. I would like to notify my account and then I think I'm done or actually, no. I'm not done. So that's what Intuit link looks like for your client. I will switch back so that we can go through the rest of our slides, but I do hope that was helpful. Alright. So, the Tax Pro experience in Intuit link, I will show you this in the demo. But you have a dashboard that's gonna show you real time data collection status. So I think this gets overlooked a lot, because when every time I tell someone about it, they're like, oh, I didn't even know that was clickable. So I'll show you what that looks like. But those little bubbles next to your client's answers in your view, those are actually statuses. So you can change those statuses and that blue little bubble, the blue bubble for us internally indicates that a preparer has reviewed it and input it. At that blue bubble, it locks the return. And here's why that's important for me at least. I'm an auditor at heart. That's how I started my career. I'm a very trust but verify girl, and I like to know that we have reviewed it. Green for us means means reviewed. So blue is prepared, green is reviewed, and the client cannot go back and add anything to that specific question or that document request. This is extremely helpful in the event that your taxpayer forgets a document, or answers the question incorrectly. You all reviewed it in your tax review process with the the taxpayer, and now they're saying, hey. You left this off my tax return. Something needs to be amended. Our practice says if we did something, we are amending it at no charge, of course. But if you legitimately just did not tell us something and that is what is causing the need for an amendment, that is not going to be at no additional cost. There will be a cost associated. So this just makes sure that your client cannot sneak something in on you and you were not aware of it. It also helps to reduce the number of touches and was this prepared or was this reviewed. So I find those little, statuses to be super helpful. I talked about that mark as done feature. That's what we use to prioritize work. You can change the status of the request in link to complete. So when you send it out and the the taxpayer starts working on it, the status is going to be in progress. You can change that to complete because then it's gonna take it off your dashboard. Doesn't delete it, just gives it a different status so that you're only seeing the clients who are truly in progress. And that becomes immensely helpful as we draw near to a tax deadline. The client activity fee with time stamps, also really important. Again, auditor at heart, I like a little proof around that. And then you're able to move, rename, and download documents all within link. So we do use an internal naming convention, blame it on the auditor and me, but I like reference number. I like consistency in file names. So we are able to rename documents as needed directly from link. Alright. So Intuit link recap. I love it. I hope you love it. Here are some things that we went over here. One, it's already included at no additional cost. You have link. You already if you have ProConnect, you have link. You're not paying extra. You're not adding it on. It's already there. You have the customizable checklist and document organizers. And if you really wanna win, you are going to organize those by year so that if you have a client that you're working with on a prior year, you send them that specific organizer for that year. You have the ability to track the status of the organizers from one screen. I will show you that. When you change that little orange bubble next to the request in link from orange gray means no one's done anything to it. Orange means someone has answered a question, either you or the taxpayer, and then blue and green are going to lock it so the client can't sneak something in. You have those time stamps. The documents are all in one place. I cannot stress how helpful it will be to not look for documents everywhere. And then your client can go back and access those documents at any time, which is going to reduce the number of requests that your team gets from clients for documents that they receive first and should be keeping track of. So after this recap, let's look at another poll question. This is poll number three. Poll number three is live. Which Intuit link feature could help you most streamline client data collection? Is poll number three? Is it the fact that you have a secure portal with easy access for clients and team members? Is it collecting the data all in one place reducing significantly reducing the chance of missing something? Especially as tax season progresses and paper starts to pile up if you do operate with a lot of paper, or you start to slow down on being able to check mail, or the fax machine runs out of paper if you still use, like, that sort of fax machine. Could it be that? Is it the ability to import many tax forms? We will go through the forms that you can import, which will significantly reduce data entry. A lot of tax season, for a lot of firms, is spent entering data. So is it that option? Or not having to resend tax documents to clients two years later when they need their own w two, which was initially issued to them and should be on file in their stuff. Which of these four, I'll give you just a couple more seconds. Any of them are accurate for purposes of interacting for CPE credit. We'll both this out in three, two, one. Alright. So let's talk data automation. I think we talk about automation a lot, but I I would like to get into a little more detail on the why and the how. I think you know the why. Right? Why are we automating data entry? We wanna save time. We we don't have enough time, not just as accountants, but as humans. And I think that today, people are expecting a lot more from their accountant. They don't just want the compliance part. They want our advice. They have, more complex income streams. Right? We we don't exist on just one income stream. We don't all just have one employer. People are doing a lot of different things. People are moving. People work in different states than they live, more often now than ever before. So we need additional time so that we can be available to our clients in the manner in which they currently need us. We need to increase our level of efficiency. If we can significantly cut down on minor errors, we save so much time. We save time on notices. We save time in the amount of time it takes to review a tax return. Everything gets back to saving time. We don't get more of it. We wanna make sure that we're increasing accuracy. We want our clients to know that we take their data entry and their tax preparation seriously, and we want that to be accurate. Right? They they come to us for a certain level of accuracy. All of these things help us to create capacity because we're not getting more time. So we have to sort of create more time so that we can focus on value added services, being available to our clients to provide proactive advice, being able to do our continuing education. These things all require that we get better and quicker at doing our compliance work. And then overall, we need to reduce mental strain and burnout. And whatever that means to you, that means to you. So if it's creating time to have some quiet time, to spend time with your family, to eat a balanced meal, to go to the gym, to go to bed, Whatever that means for you, this is how we're going to get you there. Now how do you do this in ProConnect? The data collection workflow. This is one of the biggest value adds when it comes to ProConnect. The way the information is coming in in one place, helpful. The ability to import so that you're doing less keying and more reviewing, helpful. Being able to move through the ecosystem. Information from QuickBooks online accountant can feed into ProConnect. K one from a partnership or an expert tax return that's been completed in ProConnect can be imported. Right? The more information that you can enter without having to actually key it in or type it in twice will help you to get that automation benefit. So how's the information going to come in? It's gonna come from your client uploads. That's where I hope the majority of your information comes in from your client. But that doesn't negate the fact that there could be some spreadsheets that need to be imported. Yes. You can import some spreadsheets like depreciation, for example. And then there are account and uploads. In our firm, most often, what we upload on behalf of our clients, are, like, estimated tax receipts. We like to see everything in one place. We often play a pretty big role in our clients' estimated tax submissions, and we do our best to not have them upload information or provide information that we already have. So for our entrepreneur clients, do not upload your balance sheet and profit and loss statement. We did the bookkeeping. Don't give us anything that we have. We don't wanna create more work. If we played a role in submitting your estimated taxes, don't send those back to us by way of portal. We will make sure that that gets in the portal. Again, we'd like to have everything in one place. These things will all go to your input drawer. I consider that import drawer to be into link, which when you're in a tax return will appear on the right side of your screen. And then from there, you are going to input that information, which is all housed in one place, one little virtual folder, into the tax return. So how is this going to work? Your client is going to send documents to you via Intuit link or you're gonna upload on behalf of them. You do have the ability to bulk import documents that have been put into Intuit link into the tax return. This creates a little workflow for you. So what's going to happen is, a screen will pop up and you will go through those documents and verify. Is this the information that you wanna upload? Yes. Here's where it's going. I agree. And it'll just gonna move you through the documents. You can do this for up to 10 documents that are marked as importable. ProConnect will automatically identify the document type and whether or not it can be imported. How will you know if it can be imported? That little lightning bolt icon, says, hey. You have the ability to save some time. You can move lightning fast here. When you go to an input, a screen where there are dots available that can be imported, that lightning bolt icon will move a bit to let you know, like, hey. Here's an option for you to save some time. And then after you import that document, the imported fields will be highlighted in green so that you can easily identify it. Now it will not be like a big bold grade. Those sort of be, like, outlined in green so that they stand out and then you can very easily identify. Okay. This is what I've imported just to make sure that you are double checking or even triple checking that that information, imported correctly. Some wins when it comes to data automation. Of course, we're gonna reduce the manual data entry by way of importing or even OCR features. You can import uploaded documents. You can import documents provided by your client. You can do direct imports of information. So for example, a w two. If you input the EIN on the w two screen and it has the ability to connect with that employer, there'll be a pop up. Hey. You can enter some information from that very w two. And if that information matches, which it should, sometimes it is box one wages. Sometimes it's the EIN. Sometimes it's the the import code from the w two. You're gonna input that information, and it's gonna pull all that information and drop it into the boxes. And now look at you. You are a reviewer and not the person entering the data. If you completed the business return within ProConnect, you will be able to import that k one. Right? It already exists in the ecosystem. It's in another tax return in ProConnect. You'll have the ability to import that directly into the tax return. Because you are doing this inputting, this reviewing versus keying, you are going to significantly reduce the potential for data entry errors. Sometimes data entry errors exist solely because we're retired, solely because we're surviving on foods that really aren't meant to beat our brain. Right? Because we're accountants and tax season really is just too short. This is going to help to mitigate some of those errors. Last but not least, it creates capacity for more detailed reviews. A lot of times people spend a lot of time on the data collection and the data entry, and then the review is, like, eleven minutes. It'd be a lot easier to spend eleven minutes on data entry and not that you'll do all of your returns in eleven minutes. But the point is it'd be much more efficient to spend less time on the data entry so that you can really give a tax return, a thorough review, the review it deserves, the review that gives you the opportunity to identify perhaps potential tax planning opportunities. Alright. So which tax documents can be imported? This is changing, all the time. Right? Because technology is moving fast. But here's what you can currently import into ProConnect. Now just keep in mind that if this is like a a terrible, like, picture, that's gonna be very difficult to import. The system cannot read that. But this if this is a w two PDF that was obtained directly from the employer and dropped into, ProNet, it's going to be able to import it. As well as dividends and unemployment and interest and two ninety nine, miscellaneous, These documents can all be imported. The only thing to know about the ten ninety nine b's, it needs to be imported using the tax import feature and k ones need to be from business returns that were prepared within ProConnect. Now spreadsheet uploads. You can import certain information from a spreadsheet dependent on the return type. So regardless of the return type, fixed assets, you can import via a spreadsheet. Schedule d dispositions, you can import, right, straight across the board. For partnerships returns, you can import partner info. So if you have a partnership with a ton of partners, that's gonna be helpful. The same with shareholders or beneficiaries depending on the tax return. So that information already exists in a spreadsheet. It can be uploaded into ProConnect using that very spreadsheet. The ability to flag numbers slash sales for review, this is gonna make your review more efficient. Right? Again, as we get through tax season and we start to get a little more tired, this is a big deal to me because it's gonna reduce the number of touches and the speed to resolve open items. So we can flag items that we need to come back to, that we need to review, that we're missing information for. We use this a lot for estimated figures. For example, if, a taxpayer is expecting a k one from a partnership return, we don't prepare, and we are estimating the figures there so that we can calculate some estimated tax payments or a tax payment to be submitted with the extension. We flag that. That way when we come back to that return, when we have the actual k one, we know exactly what was an estimate because they were all flagged. So we go back, we update those fears, we unflag it, and it will track that it's been resolved. It doesn't just disappear into thin air, so you can even see what's been flagged and then what was later resolved. I will show you that in the, demo. As much as I can show, I promise to show you. The integrated esignature workflow. So earlier when I was saying you can esign engagement letters, that's through link, but you can also esign tax returns. So here's the thing. When we first started preparing tax returns, while we were using ProConnect, we were sending tax returns separately to be esign because you probably already have some platform. Right? Maybe you're already using DocuSign, so you say, hey. Why would I pay twice? Here's why you pay twice. This is quicker. This is more convenient. This is easier to track. You have knowledge based authentication. You have automate automatic reminders for your client to sign. So fast, so quick, so easy. When you think about the time it takes to download the tax return, set it up in a separate platform. Hopefully, you have some sort of knowledge based authentication set up there. Drop in signature boxes. Right? Send over to your client. Get them to sign it. Get it back. Download it. Put it somewhere. That adds up. Right? If if all you saved was an hour a day by using this integrated workflow, That's five hours. If you work a five day work week, I don't. But if you do, that's five hours a week that you get back to do whatever, to work more if you so choose, five hours of rest, five hours of time to clear your mind, whatever you chose to do with it. This is a major time saver, and it's not that expensive. It's so inexpensive that I don't exactly remember how much it cost. But quite honestly, it doesn't matter how much it cost because we're just not doing it as a firm without that integrated esignature workflow. It saves us so much time. Now we don't do a ton of tax returns, but if your firm, for example, does a thousand tax returns and all you saved was ten minutes per tax return, I think you'd save more. That's a hundred and sixty seven hours saved over forty four forty hour work weeks. Right? That's something like a big deal. 69% of completed esignature transactions through Intuit tax products were finalized in less than twenty four hours. If you were mailing these forms to be signed, you already know how long that's gonna take, and it cost you postage. Right? Postage, time, scanning, all those things add up. This will work out to be less expensive. I promise. The chat feature with team members, this is new ish. Not that new, been around for a couple of tax seasons, but this is just another opportunity to collaborate within the platform. You can start a conversation. You can add a title. You can add a comment with a lot of characters. You can attach documents. You can mention others. And if you mention someone, they're gonna get a notification that they've been mentioned on a tax return. I will show you what that looks like. Alright. So here's where I'm going to stop and demo some of the things that I have mentioned to you. So I'm just gonna switch over to ProConnect and show you as much as I can there. So I will stop sharing here and instead share my screen. Okay. So we are in ProConnect. We start really just at this tax return screen. As I mentioned, IntuitLink exists right within ProConnect. So if I just click on IntuitLink here on my left navigation menu, here's my Intuit link tax portal. When we talk about customizing those settings for link, so I know you see settings up here, and then you also see settings here. These settings are specific to link. I can update my firm information, my logo, organizer templates. You're gonna get these quick start templates. They're good. We have a pretty robust template. Our questions are, like, I don't know, 45 to 50 questions, probably about 30 to 40 document check documents in our checklist. Not all of them apply, but we try to be pretty specific there. But you can create your own template. So click on create a template, and then you'll get a brand new organizer here. You'll edit your engagement letter, drop it in. You have those little template, template holders, those placeholders there. Questions, add whatever question you want to add. You can do questions with, yes or no boxes. You could do questions with an answer box. You really have a lot of flexibility here. And then your document checklist, you list it now as you choose. We we try to lay ours out with, like, personal information, then income, then deductions, then credits, then refund or balance too so that it just feels like a more natural flow for our clients. Now if you were to send, that's what I would do first. Right? First and foremost, I'm doing my link settings. When you go to create a new request to send to a client, they need to be a client in ProConnect. Right? Because you're not gonna create a client from here. I'm going to send. This is a demo account, so some of the things you see here, won't exist when you are working in a real account. But here's what I do wanna point out. ProConnect will personalize a checklist for prior year client. So if this was a client in the past year, what it's going to do is create questions based on documents that they had in the previous year. We don't ever send personalized checklists simply because sometimes clients are super literal. So if you say please upload your w two from Intuit and they no longer work at Intuit, every now and then a client just won't upload a w two because they think you only want the w two into it. They think we have a lot of access to their documents. I will always instead send them the templated. So let's see. Where's our oh, let me select the template. Maybe I should start there. I will always send them the individual organizer. So those are those little ones that I was playing around with For custom that I did nothing, I will always do individual organizer. And then here, I'm gonna select use template, and then they get all of the questions from the template. I click save. I click continue. You won't see that because you'll actually be set up, and then I go ahead and send it. I'm just gonna take that reminder off because I don't know where I'm actually sending this test to. But that's how you send that request off. The status here is invited. Once the person begins working on it, you'll see the status move to in progress. And once they click I think I'm done, the status will move to needs review. We organize based on needs review. So when we're looking at who needs to be worked on, we're doing needs review, and these are organized by last active. So that's how we're picking who we need to work on. Alright. So then you can create a tax return right from here. This one, I believe, already has a tax return created. Yes. This one has a couple of tax returns. So I'll start with the test that I sent myself. I'll click on open tax return, and because no tax return exists, now I'm able to create a tax return. I can name it whatever I want to name it. It was selected that it was a ten forty return, but if it wasn't, I could change that. And now I can work right from here to start doing my tax return. On the right hand side, that tax organizer, here's my Intuit link. All the information that my taxpayer input is right here. Here's that little orange bubble that I was mentioning. So what's happening on our end, as the review as the preparer is preparing the return and inputting the information into the tax return, what they're doing is changing this little status button here from needs review to ready for entry. Right? Now me, as a reviewer, what I'm able to do here is see that they did this. No change here. No change here. I can come back to link here, and now I could see that this is changing colors. Right? So blue means someone is working on preparing it. Green means someone is working on reviewing it. Now I'm adding all of your tax returns here. Being able to see the change in the color wheels is going to give you an idea of where you stand. I can see that only one engagement letter has been signed. No one started to work on this because everything is either in needs review or not answered. Here, I can see that it's begun to be worked on. As we near the end of tax season, our expectation is that we're seeing a lot of blue and a lot of green in that status box. Now when you want to import information, I'm just gonna open this tax return. If which is not the case. But if there were a partnership or an escort return completed here, I can go to k one import. I have not put a Social Security number there, but that is how it's linking. Hey. You do have a k one here because we see that Social Security number on your 1040, and we also see it in the 1065 or 1120. So you will select the tax return, but it will say, hey. We don't see a k one for this person here. So if I went to Bob Sanders, for example, which does have a o Social Security number there, and I just tried to search for this is the only return where a k one possibly could exist, and they'll say, hey. No. It's not there. If I looked for another one that I know he's not associated with, it says, yeah. I see that return, but no. No. No. Based on the socials I see in this return, I don't see it for that person. Also gonna help you with not importing the wrong k one to attach return. That's where you would go to import a k one that you've prepared in ProConnect to the tax return. Now when it comes to inputting from your tax organizer, if you have documents that are available for import, again, you'll see that little lightning bolt. You'll see this import here letting you know this information can in fact be imported to the tax return. Because that is sample information, I'll leave that there, and I'm just gonna really quickly put in a number here so that I have a figure on my tax return. And when I'm reviewing this tax return, again, I wanna reduce the number of touches to a tax return. So as a reviewer, as I'm reviewing my forms, I add a tick mark there. I've reviewed it. Right? I I know I've looked at it. I come back to input return, and let's say somebody changes this. Now I'm not done reviewing yet. I have some open items that I need to take a look at. When I go to check the return, I'm looking for just my open items. Look. This tells me I have unresolved check marks that I need to be viewing because somebody changed something. When they change, this used to be 10,000. Another, like, little fun thing to keep in mind when you are looking at information in Crokinet. You can also flag, as I mentioned. So let's say I put this all here. I'm just gonna go to the details and flag this. Anything at flag is going to show up here in flagged items. Once I resolved that oh, yeah. It does actually need to be 10,000. I can resolve that, and it'll move over to the resolve tab. And here's where I can comment to my teammates. Can you double check interest? And I can name this whatever I wanted to name it and post, and this person would receive an email. So just a couple of little, ProConnect and Intuit link hacks to pay attention to. So let us go back to transcripts. Alright. So before we get to transcripts, we have one more poll. Which data automation feature are you most interested in using this tax season? This is poll number four. Is it the spreadsheet import? Is it the import of all available documents? K one imports? Or any and every feature that will save me and my team some time and mental capacity. Poll number four is live. Any answer is a good answer. I'll give you another five, four, three, two, one. Alright. So transcripts. If you didn't know that this was available in ProConnect, it is also a new ish feature. You have quite a few available transcripts that you can select, but you do need to have the power of attorney on file with the CAB unit at the IRS. You cannot currently file that through ProConnect. So make sure that's on file. Make sure that you have an irsdot, id.me account. Make sure that the client's name and social matches what is on file with the IRS. When you are requesting transcripts, you'll select the transcripts that you want. As I mentioned, you have quite a few. You'll select the years that you want those transcripts. It'll sync here. I tried to select a 119, transcripts, and then it'll let you know which ones were complete versus which ones you weren't able to get. Perhaps it's not available. Perhaps you do not have the authorization for that specific year. It will give you, the summary of what you were able to pull. You can access the IRS transcripts in ProConnect. So where you see the menu for tax returns and tax plans and documents, they'll also be the IRS transcripts tab. This is where all the transcripts that you downloaded will appear. You can sort that list by name, tax year, type, any updates, and then you can also, from the actions column, download, rename, or delete transcripts. So if you haven't pulled transcripts in ProConnect yet, definitely give it a try for a taxpayer that you have the authorization for. Protection Plus is also a really helpful tool to give you a little bit more capacity if either you don't have time for tax resolution or notice management, or you just don't have the interest. Protection Plus is there to support you. So it's affordable first and foremost, and it offers peace of mind for both you and your clients. Three quarters of taxpayers would actually choose a taxpayer who offers some sort of audit protection over one that does not. The tax protection plus team does have bilingual team members, both EAs and CPAs. They also provide you with the marketing kit, and they have firm level protection. Something that is kinda new. Now in addition to ten forty protection, they also offer business return coverage. In addition to the tax protection plus offering, there's also the ID theft restoration, and this is included. So you don't have to pay extra for this. Your taxpayers get twenty four seven around the clock access to ID restoration advocates. If IDs were stolen, something is going wrong there, they're gonna get notifications to banks and agencies. They'll get fraud alerts on their credit records, and they get daily credit monitoring from all three bureaus for six months after there's been any report of ID theft. Your last and final poll is on the screen. If you have missed all four, I don't know how, but this is your chance to make sure you get it. Would you like a personalized sales demo or consultation about what you've learned in today's training event? Yes. Please contact me or no. Not at this time. Enter in the poll window or in the big screen where it is showing up. Either one is perfectly fine. I'll give you another five, four, three, two, and one. Alright. So our recap, because I know we covered a lot. We talked about how you can use Intuit link to manage data collection, create efficiencies, minimize your manual data entry because who wants to do that? We got better things to do. Skip the logins if you're going somewhere else for transcripts. Get those directly from within ProConnect at no additional cost, and increase your client security, strengthen your tax offering if you wanna add on that protection plus. You do have supplemental materials and handouts. Make sure that you download those. And if you're not ready to be done with the learning, you do have support and community available to you. Make sure that you check out the, accountants community for workflow recommendations, for product recommendations, or to connect with other tax pros like yourself. If you want more training like you received today, you can access the education resource center. If you wanna read some articles about all that's happening in the tax world, check out the tax pro center. The link is provided here. I hope you found this webinar to be helpful. Again, make sure that you get those supplemental materials. Take a look at those. Watch the video again about link, and cheers to all the efficiencies you're about to get now that you use ProConnect, and you are using all the features available to you to make your workflow smooth. I'll talk to you soon. Be well.