According to the IRS, 20-25% of Americans wait until the last two weeks before the deadline to prepare their tax returns. This equates to about 80 million people in the United States who procrastinate completing their taxes on time. This staggering statistic is often what leaves accounting firms in a state of chaos at the end of the tax season. However, by utilizing technology for proactive engagement throughout the year, tax preparers can improve client preparation to minimize that last-minute scramble come April.

Tax Preparer Automation Tools

Instead of picking up the phone and calling people individually, automation is a great way for accountants to quickly book appointments, send follow-ups, and reach out to a large audience. Simply automating your tax season meetings can offer speedy, accurate, and flawless levels of customer satisfaction for your company.

Automation helps to ensure firms can pay attention to their client’s needs, rather than tending to trivial, time-consuming tasks like following up on 1099’s or scheduling hundreds of tax prep meetings. By scheduling meetings on an automated process, accountants have more spare time to spend advising their clients, instead of doing paperwork and juggling outstanding items. 

How can tax preparers automate tax prep meetings?

Customers like having flexibility and independence, which is why automated scheduling allows them to select services on their own time, at their own pace, and make changes to their appointment as necessary. If your firm currently uses a CRM or virtual calendar to schedule with, it can easily be integrated with an online booking platform to begin your automation process.

At Phalsh Consulting, we build custom scheduling portals to add directly to your website that can be managed through our automation platform. By simply entering a customer’s name, phone number, and email address into your database, accountants can proactively reach out to their clients. Automation Platforms also has several pre-written messages available for use such as a “tax appointment email” template that sends out a calendar link to an entire database so customers can start scheduling their appointments in advance. With the implementation of these automated strategies, accountants can prepare for tax season ahead of time and avoid a hectic April!

How can tax prepares follow up on 1099s and W2s automatically?

We understand that tax season can be crazy, which is why at Phlash Consulting we work closely with our local accounting firms to schedule their appointments ahead of time and automate their follow-up process to ensure maximum efficiency. 

When clients “forget” to bring in their required forms, instead of attempting to naturally remember all of these outstanding documents, we set up an automated follow-up process for customers with missing items. We have found that this automated procedure saves accounting firms tons of time and allows them to concentrate on tax season without the distraction of outside tasks. 

In addition to using automation as a means of organization, you can also allocate tags to contacts within your database. For example, if a customer has an outstanding item, you can assign a tag to their account and then send a pre-written text blast to all of your clients with that same title tag filter in just one click. Once a tag is added to a contact’s account, you can also instantly add them to a follow up “drip” campaign regarding their missing forms or documents. 

When a customer interacts with the text, their reply can instantly be sorted into different funnels. These funnels trigger automatic actions that can stop the campaign on the customer’s initial response, remove the title tag from the contact, or take the individual off of the segment. Staying organized with title tags is how we help automate and streamline the booking and follow-up process for tax companies, accountants, and preparers. 

Taxes and technology are evolving at a rapid pace. However, the future is now, and automation is here to help! By automating your tax season meetings, the scheduling process for your clients becomes as easy as the touch of a button. 

At Phlash Consulting, we used web-based automation, analytics, and our team’s hands-on consultative approach, to help companies grow revenue, increase lead generation, and elevate client satisfaction. To learn more about our services or to schedule a free consultation click here, or call (301)-889-9782, we look forward to meeting you.