Ask a CPA firm what makes busy season hard and the answer is rarely the tax law. It is the documents. The organizer goes out in January. Half comes back. What comes back is a mix of W-2s, 1099s, brokerage statements, K-1s that arrive in March, a photo of a receipt, and a PDF named scan0004. Someone opens every one, works out what it is, checks it against last year, and writes to the client about the rest. The preparer gets the file when that person is done, which is often the week the return is due.
That stretch, between the organizer going out and the preparer starting, is where an AI system pays for itself first in an accounting firm. Here is what it does, where the hours go today, and the order to build it in.
Where the hours go
Opening and naming. Every attachment, upload and photo has to be identified. A 1099-INT from the bank, a 1099-B from the broker, a 1098 from the mortgage, a K-1 from a partnership. The identification is easy for a person and tedious at volume.
Matching against last year. The best checklist for this year's return is last year's return. If there was a brokerage account last year and no 1099-B this year, something is missing or something changed. Someone has to notice.
Chasing. The email that says "we still need the following" and the two follow-ups after it. Written by hand, per client, from memory of what arrived.
Retyping. Figures from the forms into the tax software. Mostly accurate, occasionally not, always slow.
Answering "did you get it?" The client sent something last week and wants to know it landed.
What a system built for this does
Reads and names every document on arrival. An email attachment or a portal upload is identified, named consistently, and filed to the client. The figures on it are extracted and kept with the document they came from, so a preparer can click any number and see the source.
Compares to last year. The prior-year return becomes the checklist. Each document that arrives is ticked off. What was there last year and has not arrived is flagged. New documents that did not exist last year are flagged the other way, so the preparer sees the change.
Drafts the chase. When a client's file has gaps, the system writes the request: the specific documents, the date they were last asked, and a deadline. A person reads it and sends it. The follow-ups are drafted on a schedule the firm sets and go through the same review.
Answers the client. "Did you get my 1099?" is answered from the file, in a draft for the person who owns the relationship.
Hands the preparer a ready file. When nothing is outstanding, the client moves to the ready queue with the extracted figures ready to carry into the tax software. The preparer starts from a complete file, not from an inbox.
Why intake first, not advice
The temptation is to start with the interesting work: research, planning, drafting the advisory letter. Resist it for the first build. The cost of a wrong first draft of advice is high, the rules for what is acceptable are not written down anywhere, and the measurement is fuzzy.
Intake has the opposite profile. The before and after is visible in one busy season: days from organizer to ready file, documents still missing a week before the deadline, hours a week on chasing. A mistake costs a follow-up email. And the client file it creates is the record every later system, from reconciliation to planning, will sit on.
What to measure
Pick one number before anything is built. Days from the organizer going out to the file being ready is the honest one. Documents outstanding seven days before the deadline is the one partners feel. Hours a week on chasing is the one the staff feel. Measure it for two weeks before the build so there is a baseline, then every Friday.
What it looks like
We built a working demonstration of the tax prep side of this: client documents read on arrival, the file compared to last year, the chase drafted, the preparer's queue. It runs on sample clients and takes a few minutes to walk through.
If you want to know where your own firm scores across intake, production, chasing and ownership, the accounting edition of our readiness roadmap takes four minutes and ranks the opportunities for a firm your size.