Name: Intuit Lacerte: The Fundamentals
Uploaded: 2025-10-22T20:16:05.837Z
Duration: 1 h 8 s
Description: Intuit Lacerte: The Fundamentals

Transcript for "Intuit Lacerte: The Fundamentals": Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for the session by Intuit accountants. This is be all about Lacert, and we're gonna be going over the fundamentals of the program. So thanks again for joining us. I think you're in for a good session. So I just wanna start off by telling you a little bit about myself. My name is Nick Boscia, and I actually inherited my family's accounting firm that was started in 1975. And I'm the managing partner now at Basia and Basia, my brother. The reason I bring that up is because we've been using Lacert since the very beginning. My dad was one of the first users of the software, and it does so much. When I first joined, we were learning all the new features, which we're gonna go through today from, you know, the basics, and I'm gonna also share some tips and tricks that I've learned over the years. I'm also known as the balanced CPA because what I'm really passionate about is helping other firms like yourself streamline their workflows so we could have a more balanced and fulfilling life. And I'm also an Intuit tax council member, which is a really exciting position to be part of because we're trying to keep making the software better and better for its users. Outside of that, I'm a world traveler. That's really what I'm passionate about, and I'm a bit of a systems nerd. So I hope you're gonna enjoy this session where I'm gonna kinda walk you through the software. And, again, this is gonna be the fundamental. So we're not gonna get too deep into the specifics, but I'm gonna try to touch on some important points. And I mentioned I've been using listserv since I joined my firm in 2013, but we've been our firm has been using it way before I started. So we'll start with some housekeeping, always important for the beginning of any session. The audio is gonna be streamed exclusively through your computer speakers, so make sure you're using those. We highly recommend using either Chrome or Safari to get the best experience, and don't use any ad blockers or firewalls. If you're having any issues, try using incognito mode and that you usually solve any issues. If anything freezes up on you, just refresh the page. That usually solves most issues that you might be having. And then just a note for the survey, at the end, when the event's wrapping up, you're gonna be prompted to take a short survey, And we really highly encourage you to fill that out because it it helps us a lot because we're trying to keep making the educational content we're putting out there more valuable and getting your feedback. We do look through it, so please fill that out. It's really helpful. And one last note that's important, the recording of this presentation will be available using the same link that you used to arrive here. So for some reason, you have to leave early or you miss a part, you wanna rewatch it, you will be able to watch this on demand. So participating in the polls. There's gonna be two ways to answer the polling questions. You're gonna see in the lower left area of the event when window a go to polls tab. Or once I launch the polls, I'll make sure I announce the polls when they're appearing. They should be right in the top right side. You'll see next to the chat window, a poll tab will actually appear. So just click the poll tab and but it should be popping up right on your window. And this will be eligible for CPA CPE credits. But if you're watching this live on the on demand, you're not gonna be eligible for CPU, which I'm actually gonna get into in a couple slides from here. But this is exactly how you participate in the polls. There will be two polls through this session. And just a little disclaimer that this session is educational in nature and shouldn't be construed as tax advice. As I mentioned on the CPE, you this will be eligible for one CPE credit and one IRS CE credit, but you will have to be attending for at least fifty minutes to receive your credit and answer the two polling questions. And you should receive your core certification within twenty four with that twenty four to forty eight hours. So what we're gonna cover today. So I'm gonna kinda take you through the beginning. If you're a brand new user on Lacert, you're just interested in testing out the program, seeing how it works, or if you're already using the program and you're just trying to learn tips and tricks how to operate faster, we're gonna cover all of that today from really the beginning with converting your data over into Lacert or starting a brand new tax return, how to how to input the data into the tax return, how to review the tax forms, as well as the diagnostic tools, analysis tools. There's basically a bunch of great tools in this software that when I first joined, I didn't know everything that it offered. We were using about 10% of what the what the software really did, and there's just so much to see and learn. And as I mentioned, it's the fundamentals. So we're not gonna go too deep into things, but what my goal is is to touch on all the important points. So when you get into the software, you're like you might highlight one thing that it might have said. You're like, oh, I wanna learn more about that. And there's tons of resources out there, so you can learn more about any of the topics that I cover today. So we're gonna also touch on the esignature, how to e file the return, and finding more help as I just mentioned. So the objectives are gonna be just so you could get a basic understanding of Lacert and how it's organized, and it's actually organized in a way to make you have a easy experience in preparing a tax return. And idea with any piece of technology, we wanna make it easy for you and for your team to learn. We don't wanna have a piece of software that's really difficult to use. So I'm gonna kinda show you how it's laid out to actually make you have a a great experience from preparing the return to getting it filed. And then at the very end, we're gonna identify just if you need any additional resources or anything you wanna dive dive deeper into. That's all gonna be available to you. So let's start with the first polling question. This should be popping up right on your screen. If it's not, again, look over by the chat window. There should be a little tab that pops up with the polling question. So just let us know what's your primary reason for attending this webinar. And I'm gonna leave this up for about twenty seconds just so it gives you time. If you miss the polling question, don't worry. We're gonna leave the polling tab open. So it might just be a lag time. So just keep keep an eye over by the chat window. The polling should pop up. If it's not there, try refreshing your browser. But, again, I'm gonna leave this open for a few seconds just to make sure everyone gets their CPEs. Alright. So I'm gonna keep this up for five more seconds. Just, again, try refreshing your browser, but just answer that polling question so you could get your CPE credits. And, again, there will be one more polling question towards the end of this session. Alright. So now let's get into the program or into the first part of of the session. So data conversion. So this is gonna be really important if depending where you are in your firm's journey, whether you're starting your firm from scratch or you're looking at Lacert because you want a more robust piece of software and maybe what you're using currently or previously isn't really cutting it for you. Lacert makes it easy for you to convert that data over to their software. I'm not gonna during the presentation, I'm gonna jump into the back software and actually show you how I use it and how you could use it. And but I'm not gonna jump into it for all this all the sessions, so I'm not going back and forth and making a a mess of the presentation. But, anyway, the data conversion tool is gonna essentially is a three step process. You're gonna back up your client data from your previous accounting software, upload all those files using the data conversion wizard. And if you see here, there's actually screenshots that show you go to the import section, the client data conversion section, and then you submit a conversion. Once you you submit the conversion, it might take some time. And then when the conversion's ready, you go right back there to to download all the clients and they should perform a write into your into your listserv software. So it's typically useful when you're using it for the first time and migrating over. Or maybe at some point in your firm's journey, you maybe acquire another firm and you get their data files to do the same thing. And again, if if this is something you're interested in and you want more help, those those resources will be available to you to actually walk you through the process. Then creating a tax return. So if you're just getting a brand new client from scratch and you need to make a make a new return for a client, Lucerne makes it very simple to add a client. So you could see in the screenshots here, you go to the client tab and the tax type is about bolded. And that's important because when you you have to make sure in the correct module, because Lucerne could handle a lot of different types of tax forms. So we have individual there, partnership, corporate, s corp, and you could see the list there. So obviously, when you're adding a new client, you wanna make sure you're in the correct tax type because hypothetically, if you're in the partnership tax module and you do add a client, you're gonna be adding a partnership return, not an individual. And for the purpose of this webinar, we're gonna go through everything just on a ten forty and individual return just for simplicity. But but just know that everything we go through is gonna be the exact same format across all the modules. So another thing that I like is when you see here, you could see, under the add the add button, you could hit control a, you could click add, or you could do control a. And I like using the hot keys because lists are actually puts it right there in your face. So these little tips could save you time. So you don't really even have to go in here. You could use the hot keys. And as we go through the program, you're gonna see these hot keys are listed everywhere. And I'm not a tech expert, so I'm barely use hot keys in my daily function of what I'm doing. But when I'm in Lacert, I use hot keys fairly often because I'm save it saves me a lot of time, and I don't have to memorize it. I just see it, and then I'm using these hot keys to add the client. And then if you look down this list, you have delete, renumber, copy. Copy is very helpful for me and my firm if we have to make an amended return or if a client's just looking for an analysis. They're like, hey, Nick. What would be what would the situation be if I had this income source or I changed to an s corp? And you could copy that return. I renumber it just so it's a little bit different than the original filing. And then I could play around with that return, and there was no issue with the original filing. But let's go to the next step because that's just creating return, which is simple. But we're gonna spend the majority of our time here in the next three slides. So you could you'll see the detail tab is essentially where we're gonna be entering all the client's data. So once we have that new client or existing client and we we're ready to prepare a tax return or your teams are ready to prepare the tax return, you're gonna be spending the majority of your time in the detail tab. So what I'm actually gonna do now, from now for the next three slides, from detail to the forms tab and the diagnostics, I'm gonna take us directly into the software because I think it's gonna make it a bit easier for you to learn exactly how I use it rather than just going slide by slide. So I have to just stop my screen share. Alright. So, hopefully, you could see my screen here. I'm gonna start in the client tab. This is where the screen share should start. So when you open up Lucerne, as I mentioned, you could add in the tax types and see the individual tab that we're in, add a new client. I just talked through that. But now, here's some sample data and I picked just one return to kinda take us through this webinar just so you have an idea of how the forms are gonna work. But once we add that new client, we're gonna go into this sample client. You double click it and it's gonna bring you to the detail tab. Or you could simply click the detail tab. In LeCerte, the cool thing is there's a lot of different ways to get to the exact same point. So I'm gonna show you all the different variations, and everyone likes has their own way that they like to operate the system. So I'll just show you my preference. Here, you see actually this at first, it might seem overwhelming. There's a lot going on here. But once you look at what you're seeing, it's actually designed to make you have an a better experience using software. So as you see here, this is actually the table of contents. And what it does, it breaks out general here, and then that you have the tabs right up here that match, and they correspond. So there's two ways to get to the same places. So if I wanna get to the client information tab, I could go over to general tab, or I could just click right here. So now you're gonna see this example client. I picked New Jersey. I'm in New Jersey. Full year resident of New Jersey, and I also added over here, they're in New York. So commonly where if in you're the state of New Jersey or New York, a lot of times we're doing a multi state return. Important to know for the client detail tab because you're gonna go through and you could add as many states as you need for that specific client. And it's really easy to add the client to add the states directly here, but we're not gonna do that right now. If you need on this left navigation bar basically, when we're working in here, you're gonna see the left navigation bar, and this is the main input screen. So this is the shortcuts. So the different states and anything bolded along the side are data fields that have been entered into. So as we scroll through, you know, you got a married joint couple that we're going through all demo data just so you could see the experience. And I'm gonna go back to the table of contents just so you see how we move around in the software. And realistically, most of my day when I'm preparing returns, I'm jumping all around Lacert and they make it very easy to go back and forth where I need to be. We have our dependence tabs, miscellaneous information such as direct deposit. You have little red red markers here to show critical diagnostics or things that have to be addressed before we file the return, which we'll get more into later. We have the invoicing and as I said, everything bolded here is gonna be things that are in use in this specific form. Another way you could view is along the bottom navigation bar. So we have the contents and then these tabs here are all the specific items that are bolded up here, and it's a quick jump to these additional screens. So if I wanna get right to the client schedule c and I'm not in the if I'm in another screen, it's very easy for me to get right over the schedule c right down here just so you could see a little bit of how you could jump around the software. So I want to start with, you know, a common thing. I'm sure most of your clients are gonna have w twos when you're coming. You need to prepare their tax return. Obviously, we're entered the w two. Any income sources, deductions, credits, and you see that's all along the top bar here. So income, deductions, credits. On the w two screen here, we have his employer and her employer. We have it broken down by one is working in New Jersey earning wages and one's in New York earning wages. It does a great job of handling complex returns, allocating state wages to different states. Over here, again, the left navigation bar is just gonna be for quick review of all the different w twos, all the forms here, and then in the bottom section, you're gonna see all the bolded details that have been filled out. You can also hide these if this is overwhelming for you. You could hide the left navigation bar. You could even hide the grid here and just have this screen. I prefer having both. Once you get used to it, you know all these are just shortcuts just to make your life a little bit easier when you're preparing a return and get what you need. So typically on the grid view, this is, I think, more for a reviewer level to make sure, alright, everything overall looks good here. But on a data input, you're gonna wanna be entering down in this section. You allocate the wages by state, and they make it fairly simple to go through. And then you also have the state wages if different, because a lot of times in a state like New Jersey, some some items that are deductible federally aren't deductible for the state, so we have to make sure we're putting the state wages here if it's different. I'll show you another screen. A client has interest income in this section. You could see how it's allocated by coding here, taxpayer versus spouse. So this first last savings bank, the taxpayer has the bank interest, whereas on the Chase Bank, we have the spouse allocating the interest. Why this is important is you could actually break out if it's a married filing separate return versus joint, and it could do a quick analysis to see if it makes sense for them to be married filing separate if you do all the inputs correctly. Then you have, obviously, in the income section, all the different source of income. As you see here, one thing I really like, especially they I think they make it extremely user friendly. So if you were to if you were interested in using Lacert and worried about the change for your team, I think it actually is very easy for someone new to understand. So let's just say you have maybe an intern or a first year hire, and they see a $10.99 dividend form, and they're not exact exactly sure where to go. You could actually see it's broken down here, and it kinda gives you some guidance just to make the experience a bit easier to use the software. So that's one thing I really like about it. On the deduction screen, you have things like IRA contributions, Roth IRA contributions. I show that just because I'm gonna show later in the screen once we get to the forms how all this stuff flows through into the forms. So if you were if you put do all the user input puts accurately, the form forms are gonna be complete and final at the end after you do your final review, and you're essentially done with the return. So I I went to the itemized deductions because I wanted to show a use case that I think is helpful. So one cool feature that my firm loves using is I'm sure you have had the experience when a client doesn't give you all necessarily all their tax documents. And as you're going through it, you're entering all the data, but then you realize at the end, oh, I never received the real estate taxes. So they have this cool tool called missing data, which we use all the time. As we're going through return, we do our final review. You could right click, do a missing data here, and it's just a way for you to identify in the software things that are missed that you know you need to follow-up with the client. Because we all know clients aren't always gonna give us every single doc document picture perfectly, and then the return is gonna be completed. One thing that you can't see in the demo that I really like about the software is if you see here the prior year amount, if this was perform a perform a client from the prior year, if I did the return in last year and now I'm doing this return this year, all the prior year numbers will show here. So it almost it makes it a lot easier to identify when something's missing. So if I'd I'll let my team know if something seems to be missing from if they had real estate taxes last year, most likely they have real estate taxes this year, especially if they have mortgage interest down here. So we leave a missing data, and I'm gonna show you later how we're able to easily send a email to a client with all the missing data items. So it's really good for helping you wrap up a tax return. We got dependent care credits, any other credits in this section. And I would say those are the major things with the detail tab that you're going in and essentially preparing the return. So, again, if you wanna use a table of contents, if that's the way you like, or you could use the bottom navigational bar here to see to take you exactly to anything you've entered into the return. So as I mentioned, we're gonna go right from the tax soft we're we're I'm not gonna bounce back into the the slides. I'm just gonna go from the details tab, and the next is gonna be the forms tab. So you'll see where we started this presentation. We were starting the clients tab adding a new client right here, and now we go into the detail of this client, which we just went through, and now we're gonna go into the forms tab. So now this is gonna be the actual tax forms that we're gonna be submitting to the IRS, sending to the client, and saving in our records. So I like the way the navigation is set up here because it's really designed to make it easier for you. We know we're starting here, and we're gonna basically be going across the bar here till we get to the end. Not that we're gonna get through all that in this presentation because we simply just don't have enough time, but just showing you how it's designed to make you have a easy user experience. So now we have the tax return here. You could see everything was done completely, correctly. You see here, I placed this check mark. But if you're depending how you like to do your review at your firm, a cool feature is you're going through reviewing the return, and you're like, alright. I'm checking it soft. I review the w two. Is there correct? And you could check all the numbers. Alright. The taxable income looks good to me. And this is basically an audit check, so it shows you reviewed everything. What happens if if someone on your team, let's say, after your review went into the return and made a change or made an adjustment, anything that was changed would turn red. So for example, if I went into the w two and change a number, this check mark would turn red. It's basically a note to the reviewer that something has been changed, so you probably have to rereview there. So that's a cool feature. Another thing I like working with is the jump to input screen. So let's just say, for example, the second born child here, the social you eyeballing, like, oh, the I think that social's off. You and you you might be new or you might just want a quick way to get to that field to modify it. You could simply right click and go jump to input, and it's gonna take you right there to make a change on the social security number. You're gonna be able to do that really on almost all fields except fields that are calculated. So like taxable income, it's it's gonna show you all the things that make up it, but I would typically, anything that you could jump to is gonna be a field that's editable. If there's no jump to input screen, it's basically a calculated form that there is no jump to input because it's multiple things adding up into one of those numbers. You're gonna see we could go through the whole return. We have our information in here. You could simply slide the return, and it it will get you to the next forms and schedules that you could see along the side. Another important point is you have this show all button right here. So if you leave that unchecked, you're gonna see all the forms that are actively being used on this return. And again, the view that is on the detail tab is gonna be very similar to the forms tab, which makes it easier to navigate. So you could sort sort here to get to jump the forms or along the bottom. You have same options to jump to the same forms. So whatever. It's really a personal preference. I like using this bar. But then if you do a show all here, you're actually gonna be able to see every form that you need. Most you probably won't be using, but a good example where this might come into play is if a client's asking you about their itemized deduction. I was like they're like, am I close to my itemized deduction limit? Well, I don't know. The form is not gonna generate if the standard deduction is greater because we wanna give our clients the greater deduction. But I'm still able to show all forms, come into the itemized deduction screen, and see exactly what's going on here. Obviously, as I mentioned, we're missing that real estate taxes, so that's not there. So this isn't final, but now I can see here their standard deduction is clearly much greater their than their itemized. I just share that because that's one of the use cases that our firm that we do get a question about, but you could see all the forms regardless. But typically, I'm keeping this off. You see here as well, we're in you could see clearly we are in the federal forms, and these are all the federal forms here broken down and then the page number. So if it's multiple pages, you'll be able to jump the on this left navigation bar. Then you also have all your state returns. So if you jump to New Jersey, now same exact concept, you're gonna have all the New Jersey forms that you need. Something's not generating that you think should be getting generated, simply check this, and then you could go dive into that as well as New York in this use case. So those are a lot of the important things that you would wanna know about the form screen. So depending on your workflow process in your firm. Another as I'm going through this, I'm thinking about really important things that I use on a regular basis, especially in tax season. I really like the letter here. So you could customize this letter, however, which way your firm prefers. But we're saying this to a client is typically a summary, and I kinda touched on this, but it shows their their refund. If they're do a refund, we're setting it to directly deposit into their bank account as you could see. Their the wife is eligible for SEP IRA, so you're breaking all that down and just letting them know the due date it's it's required for them to submit. So this is saving me a lot of time because it just explain to the client in a high level what needs to be done, if anything, on their part. The one spouse, as I touched on briefly in the detail tab, the one spouse is putting 7,000 to an IRA. The other one is putting 7,000 into their Roth IRA. I also put the health savings account. You could put a one in to show the maximum. So, like, I'll show jump over there. So the health savings account. They have a family plan, and I go HSA contribution. Because a lot of client times the clients will say, hey. What's the most I could put in? And whether it's the HSA or their IRA, if they're over the limits, the the software will automatically do the calculations. That's just me jumping a little bit back and forth. But now you go into the forms tab, and now you could see they can contribute the 9,300. So I'll have to make sure that that client actually does that before the deadline. You break you roll scroll down here. We have the New Jersey details. They have a balance due. It's gonna be directly withdrawn from their bank account. I know I'm going through this. Maybe it's important or not to you, but I we use this on a regular basis within our firm because not a lot of times our clients are going through and understanding the full tax return. They want an overall summary. And then you're also gonna get automatically calculated estimated payments for the clients. So I just wanna jump into the letter real quick because these are just things that, as I mentioned, we use all the time. And really my goal for this presentation is just so you could get a base understanding of how to navigate the software. But along the way, I wanna give you some tips and tricks that might be ways to improve your firm and make you operate smoother in tax season. So then the next screen that we wanna jump into is the diagnostics. So as I mentioned, we've been bouncing basically straight across here from clients over to diagnostics. I went through because this is demo data, there were a lot of pop ups that weren't really relevant, just stuff that should have been completed on a a regular return, but I wanted to show how the diagnostics tool could really save you a lot of time. So it basically identifies you have it broken down by critical diagnostics. These are diagnostics that have to be completed to efile the return. So if you don't clear these, you won't be able to file the return because they're critical diagnostics. Where you look in the second section here, it's informational diagnostics. Where the informational diagnostics are simply just helping you, and it might identify something you might have overlooked or something you might double check. But, technically, you can move forward even if there's informational die diagnostics. But I'll give you a few examples of things that might be helpful to identify. The client has children, so you wanna verify that due diligence requirements have been met. When you click this, it'll hyper it'll take you exactly where you need to go. For here, the routing number, I had this client set to autopay their taxes. We basically set that to auto direct deposit or or to automatically pay their refund. Excuse me. We we basically have it set the for all of our clients that we either want to direct deposit the refund or we want to auto pay their taxes. Just simplifies the process for everyone, especially the client. But on this case, I didn't have the direct deposit information. So I click here, and it's gonna take me exactly where I need to go to enter that data, which is nice. So I have that set. You don't have to set that. I put the missing data because that would have been a note to me to make sure I follow-up with the client. And since I'm on that, I'll jump right to that diagnostic. You see on informational diagnostics, we have a missing data tab. So what happens if I click this? It's actually gonna bring up all the missing data items that I need from the client before I finalize this return. And what it does, it pulls their it pulls their email, drafts a basic email. You could edit this as you need, and I could send this right over to the client. So it's a really nice way as you're preparing the return. Anything that you know is missing, instead instead of trying to memorize everything, you put those missing datas in, and then you could send that over in a clear concise email to your client so we can get that return wrapped up. Some other ones that I would like to show. So these are these are, again, the critical and then the informational as we scroll down here. The taxpayers allowed to contribute to the Roth IRA. This is important when your clients are reaching the over the modified adjust gross income. They might say, hey, Nick. I contributed 7,000 to my IRA, but they make too much money. Now we have to have the conversation being saying, you over contributed. You're actually not allowed to contribute to a Roth IRA this year, and it'll actually give you that informational diagnostic. Then we have a conversation client. Something like this. Please verify if you have any digital assets. So we all know that we have to fill this out. We have to ask our clients now if they have digital assets, and it'll take you right to the section where you need to fill that information out, whether they do or did not. So those are just things that are informational that, hey, just a reminder, you should check this out. Where here, you have New Jersey state liability from the year prior. So if I didn't perform with the last year's data, it'll say, hey. We need some of this information. It could actually affect some of the penalty calculations on the return. So, again, there's tons. It would take me forever to go through all of them, but it's important to look through the diagnostics before you file a return. It's essentially there just to make you a better preparer and make sure you're checking all your boxes before you file that return. You could filter it the way you'd like. If you wanna just go by federal only or New Jersey only, typically, I just keep everything open and kinda go through it and mark it off if it's addressed. If you clear it, it should just disappear. And then you also have overrides. So any overrides you made in the form in the in the details tab, so you do override any fields that typically, you try not to override a field. Here, I overrode the invoice, so that's completely fine. But you don't really wanna use the overrides unless it's absolutely necessary. So going on to the next tab, just kinda going across here. If you're following along in the slides, we're just going through the next three slides. So this is diagnostics and analysis. So the analysis tab is a really cool tool that is gonna give you a breakdown. What it does, it's pulling the data directly off the tax return you prepared and then give it teeing up any discussion points that you might wanna have with your clients. So I'm not gonna go through all these, but that basically breaks it down by category. And it's really nice because you could have discussion points depending how much advisory you're doing with your your clients. It gives you talking points and just tease it up right for you. Tax tips, comparison on their schedule c for comparison flags. So it's a pretty cool tool. So I definitely recommend checking out the analysis tool. You could also put the analysis in the forms here, and it actually writes it all up for you. So, again, this software is very modifiable and customizable to your needs. Alright. So I think now I'm gonna jump out of the software and go back into the presentation. So just bear with me one second. Alright. So just wanted to kinda dive in there because I feel like showing you the software to see how it works is really important, and you see how user friendly it really is. We're still gonna be showing you screenshots as we go through the presentation, but just for the ease of the presentation, I'm not gonna bounce back and forth. So I think that was, like, the meat of showing you how it views, how you could run through the different screens. And, again, as I'm going through this, like, if you have questions, please put them in the q and a because it's really helpful because we'll make sure we we are helping you, answering your questions. And, again, there will be tons of resources if anything I went through too fast and you want further explanation. So we encourage you to, you know, put questions there. So on the trial balance utility, this is a great tool. I'm not gonna demo it, as I mentioned. But, essentially, any it's it really helps you with any year end tax clients that you have. So whether it's a schedule c, a rental property, or, you know, any businesses you're doing the books for, you could export the data from almost from most accounting softwares into Excel. And then what you could do is import the trial balance directly into the trial balance utility tool. And essentially, what it's doing is automating the prep process from Excel directly into the tax software. It also in imports directly from QuickBooks and EasyAcc as you could see. So, essentially, what it's doing is when it's a little bit more time intensive, year one, for a year one client. You get that trial balance. What you're doing is basically mapping all the accounts to the proper entries in Lacert. Once you have that set up, every year that information will save. So essentially, you if you did this for all of your business clients, you'd be able to input that trial balance utility and prepopulate the return every year instantly. But really the hard part in the beginning is just doing that mapping. So determining if that is a good fit for your firm, you could also get more resources how to do this. So I highly recommend checking it out. As I mentioned, we're using a lot of technology on our day to day. And if we're not tapping in or at least knowing all the things it offers, it does us a disservice. We all I'm sure we all have technology that we don't know everything about, but we use it for what we like. And just knowing it's out there is good to know. So the esignature tool is something that I really love. We weren't using it from the beginning, but collecting eighty eight seventy nines and getting that e signature to e file the return could be a bit time consuming, and this just completely streamlines the process. So I really like it because I could show I could see once I complete a return, basically, the our workflow is get paid, prep the return, send it for review, and then get the esignature before e filing. So we're go basically going in the flow of this presentation, the workflow of typical tax season. So esignature makes it super easy. As you can see in the screenshot, you go to e file, esignature, and you just shoot the esignature right after the client. It's very seamless. And what it does, it's gonna generate the $88.79 for federal and then all necessary states, and then attach like a watermark copy of the return. So now the client's actually signing, which is how they're supposed to, signing eighty eight seventy nines, all the states with all the copies showing that they reviewed everything, and now your $88.79 saved right into the cert. There's a, diagnostics a dashboard. Excuse me. There's a dashboard where you could see all of it at once. The way I show you I have my list set up is you could customize all of the columns, which you might have saw right when I shared my screen earlier. You have all the columns of what you'd like to see, and I have my esignature as a column directly into my main screen so I could see exactly what clients have e have esigned, and then it makes it really easy to e file all the clients in bulk. Because once they're esigned, we know they're good to go. So the esignature, if anyone out there has difficulty collecting $88.79, I promise you that this will completely streamline and change that that process for you, and it makes it so easy. Once in a while, a client has might have an issue with the knowledge based based authentication, which is required for the for an esignature, with the IRS, but there's alter alternative mode modes to get them signed. So highly recommend checking out the esignature. And the e filing process. So once we go through all the processes, get the esignature, e filing is a breeze. You have the right here, if you could see, you have the client tab and right next to that is the e file tab. You're gonna go right down to start the e file return wizard, and it just walks you through exactly how to e file your tax return. And it's gonna file all the federal and all the necessary states, and then you could follow the process once it's e filed. If you didn't clear any of those critical diagnosis, you're gonna get an error, which is actually a good thing because we don't wanna file a return that's not ready to be filed. So those will automatically get rejected, and the diagnostic tool will actually show you what issue has not been resolved so we can make sure we get that cleared up and get the return filed. Another cool part with the e filing tool is if you file a bulk of 10 clients, you'll be able to clearly see if they're getting direct deposit, if they're gonna auto withdraw their their payments, if they owe money, if they are due to pay mail a paper check. It will all be clear in there on one screen so you see what's going on. Because we try to as I mentioned, we try to do everything electronic just to make everything streamlined. But you'll be able to track the statuses along the way while you're going through the e file process. So now when you e file, if it takes a day or two days, you'll get notified when they're accepted, but more importantly, you'll get notified if there's a rejection notice. So what will actually happen is a pop up will come up on your screen and show you all the accepted, and hopefully, we're getting all accepted when we're doing our e files. And you get that one reject, it's gonna show up in red, say this return was rejected, and you dive into the return, and the diagnostics tab will show you exactly why it was rejected. One might be a social security number was typed in incorrectly, or they forgot to provide the ten ninety five a for their health insurance, or whatever it might be, which is a nice tool because we don't wanna file the return. We wanna make sure we get those those items addressed as quick as possible and get the return filed accurately and on time for the clients. Also, if you if you see, like, basically, the design of the program, it makes it super easy. So now we're in the e file section, and if you could see here, you have request the esignature, start the e file return wizard, and then step three, they number it exactly for you. You could get the e file acknowledgment statuses. So you could go in there. Those are gonna automatically pop up and those updates can be pushed to you. But if you're curious and you wanna get in there sooner because the client's asking, you could receive the updates and get the most updated date data as you push or pull to get that information. And then step four, print the e file acceptance letter if that's part of your process. So laid out perfectly exact steps that you're supposed to follow. If you look down a little bit here, you're gonna see the there's the extension wizard. So I don't know about you. We try not to do a ton of extensions, but some clients obviously need them. So they make it very easy to file extensions for our clients. And then there's a separate e filing wizard for amended returns as well as filing estimated tax payments if you're doing that for your clients as well. But that's built right in the e file section there. And again and I'm going fairly quick through all of this. We don't have a huge amount of time to go in in detail, but you could get more resources, more tutorials, and trainings on all of this. The print settings. So I don't have to jump into the software to show you this because this screenshot is pretty much what you need to see, but you could customize your print settings any which way you want. Over the years, we've modified it many times. You could change the ordering. When you go into the option section, everything's customizable, but you have the print settings here. And when you go to file, print a tax return, you have these four options preselected or preset, which is nice because you have the prepare review copy, which might just be for you and your team to make sure you're reviewing, the prepare file copy that typically you're saving into your records, then the client copy. We typically make a simpler return for the client because they might not need all the depreciation schedules and all the extra calculations that might overwhelm them. So we try to make a simpler copy for the client. And, again, this is just how we do it, not that anyone has to follow what we do. And then there's a government filing copy, which is the file that goes with the e file. The preset settings are pretty much what you need, but if you wanna modify it, you know, you could go in and change it any way you like. It's also pretty cool because what you could do when you select complete return, you could have all four copies print at once, which saves you a lot of time. Or if a client needs something specialized, you could go into the partial return and then slick select exactly what forms you need. Sometimes I have a client go, hey. Could you send me my schedule c? There's no preset for that. So we go into partial, and I could select the schedule c, send that over to them. You have all the options whether you're printing it through a printer, to a PDF. We actually use SmartVault, which once you integrate SmartVault, that'll be an option for the printing on the return. And we could really bulk print all of our returns directly to SmartVault, all the copies the client can access it twenty four seven. We're trying to become paperless to streamline our operations, so that's a pretty cool tool. But just do having these print settings does save us a lot of time. So And then finding help. So you're gonna have a lot of ways where you could get additional help. You don't have to call call in support every time you have a question. There's so many ways to get the answers you need. There's a help tab, and you could jump right into the help center. Again, they have all the hot keys. You hit f one to get to the help center, and then, you also could find more in your my accounting dashboard. Some other cool ways to find help is when you're actually in the software, you could hit f one and that'll pop up. That'll be a find or you could use control f to dive into anything and do a deeper search, had where to find an input. So there's, like, a lot of cool ways to find help. Obviously, I've been using the software for many years, so I don't use the tools as much as needed. But when you're first using it, there's just a lot of shortcuts to get you where you need and help you get through all of your issues seamlessly. So just a quick review of everything we covered. I know it's a lot, and I might have went all over the place because I like using the software. I've been using it for a long time, so everything's second nature to me. And I'm like, oh, let me throw this idea in there and that idea. But, realistically, we start with the data conversion. So if you're looking to switch listserv, which I obviously rave about because I use it, data conversion is gonna save you a ton of time. From creating a return, it's very simple to add a new return. A lot of most of our returns were performer performing over from the prior year, so there's not a lot to do there. Going through the details tab, how we're input putting the data, how to streamline the process, and how to get to the forms tab, which we're gonna basically going across the top and just going through all the different fields. We could do our review from the forms, then there's the diagnostics tool to save us a lot of time and clean up any issues that might be on the return. And then if you wanna go a step further and do an analysis with your client and show them any tax savings opportunities or things that you identify, there's analysis tool. The trial balance utility to help you streamline a year end tax client, a business client, typically. The esignature is gonna save you a ton of time just collecting those $88.70 nines. Then Efon, the return is simple and there's so much way so many ways to find extra help if you need it. So the next steps, again, we're gonna have a survey link at the end of this session, so it's really helpful if you could just fill that out. Let us know what you wanna hear more of, things that you like, things that you didn't like, so we could keep getting better and better and give you what you actually want. And don't forget to save the handouts. So let's jump to polling question two, and this is gonna be the second and the final polling question. But basically, just wanna know if you are interested in Lacert and you wanna learn more about it, just answer yes to the poll and you if you would like to get a call from a specialist. So I know depending where you are in your journey, I don't know if you're already set on the cert, you're trying to learn more, but there's people out there who could walk you through it and let you know if this is the right product for you. So I'll leave this up for a few seconds because I wanna make sure that everyone gets their polling questions in, everyone gets, their CPE credits. And, again, any other questions outside of this, just throw it in the q and a. So I'll keep this open for a few more seconds as we're wrapping up here. Alright. I'll close the poll. And, again, if you missed it, it should be in next to the chat window, so just check there if you missed it. So, again, just wrapping up, your CPE certificates will be should be emailed within the next twenty four to forty eight hours. Just wanna thank you for joining me today, and I'm also gonna show you some extra tools where you can find extra help. So there's the support Intuit account support. So the hyperlinks are there so you could get answers to your tax questions right from Intuit accountants. And then there's also a community where you could get workflow recommendations and connect with other peers in in our industry. So definitely check it out if you haven't been there before. And then if you're looking for more free training or resources, there's the education center where you're gonna get more live and recorded webinars just like today. We Intuit has a lot of virtual conferences, which are great, or their self based modules. So there's tons of free resources, so definitely check it out. And then we also have the tax pro center where you'll see the trending news and and updates. So it's definitely check it out. But other than that, just wanna say thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed. I hope I gave you one tip that might save you a ton of time over the next few tax seasons, and, hopefully, this is helpful, but I really appreciate you being with me for this hour.