With each new year comes a wave of new technologies aimed at helping tax preparers work more efficiently through tax season.

"We see the use of scan-and-fill technology increasing for more efficient management of client source documents; more firms utilizing Web-hosted or Software-as-a-Service solutions to allow staff anytime, anywhere access to software and client data; and an upswing in portal adoption," explained Scott Fleszar, senior director of strategic marketing at the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters. "Those technologies will drive workflow efficiency and improve staff utilization in the coming tax season."

Below are some of the top tax technologies that tax preparers should be considering to make their filing seasons more productive.

SCAN AND POPULATE

Vendors have advanced from just capturing images and producing indexed PDFs, to extracting data from W-2s and 1099s and populating the appropriate fields in tax return software.

"In the last several months, we've seen a lot of momentum. We feel firms are catching up to the hype," said Ed Jennings, chief executive of tax document automation provider Copanion. Copanion's GruntWorx product identifies and bookmarks scanned source documents, and its GruntWorx Pro enables firms to upload scanned source documents in batches and receive a single PDF for use in tax preparation.

New this season is GruntWorx Trades. "It allows firms to calculate short-term and long-term capital gains and losses, to identify any trade missing a cost basis and to easily import trade details into their tax preparation software," said Jennings.

With four tax seasons behind it, SurePrep's 1040Scan has been used to process more than 125,000 tax returns. 1040Scan's population capabilities integrate with the GoSystem Tax RS, ProSystem fx Tax and Lacerte tax preparation programs to automatically extract data from scanned documents for preparing client 1040 returns.

"If the CPA firm is not looking at this technology, they should be. Plain and simple, scan-and-populate allows for the auto-population of the tax return input screens with little or no human intervention," said James Bourke, New Jersey-based WithumSmith+Brown's partner-in-charge of technology.

WORKFLOW TOOLS

"More than an efficiency tool, workflow management software captures all the unstructured data necessary to effectively manage the practice during tax season," said Mark Albrecht, CPA, MST, founder and chief executive officer of XCM Solutions.

The latest version of XCM's Web-based workflow management software gives firms greater flexibility in standardizing processes across the firm.

"Instead of six different partners having six different ways of doing things, XCM enables firms to establish a standard approach for various types of tasks, such as a 1040, and then automatically apply that process globally to all 1040s," Albrecht explained. "This ensures that a firm's best practices are followed in every applicable instance, and thereby creates greater efficiency across the practice."

In October 2008, WithumSmith+Brown deployed XCM's workflow solution for every work product that was processed by the firm.

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