With tax season in full swing, millions of Americans are scrambling to make sure they have all of their important documents ready to hand over to their accountants. From W-2s and 1099s to business expense and charitable donation deductions, everyone has a plethora of documentation to provide in order to properly file their taxes and get the best discounts possible. That can add up to an abundance of information attached to just one person for one tax year.
Just imagine what it would be like to be responsible for hundreds, even thousands, of individuals’ and businesses’ tax documents. For tax preparation firms and CPAs, this is their reality. From January to April for regular tax preparation (not to mention the extension period for those who don’t file on time) tax preparers are hard at work making sense of their clients’ earnings and deductions for the previous year. If these files are only available to them in paper form, it can be extremely tedious to sort through each document.
Paper records storage was a necessity for accountants before the days of digital records management, but such a method is simply not efficient in the digital age. However, it isn’t enough to simply create digital folders to store clients’ scanned documents. While that might eliminate the need to spend money on paper storage, it doesn’t streamline your processes or provide for file standardization and searchability. Without a records management solution, scanning and storing client files digitally is basically replacing the paper file mess with a digital one.
The best solution is a document management strategy that captures your clients’ documents, extracts important data to enhance searchability, and routes the documents to an ECM system that allows for organized document storage and easy retrieval via search.
Here are some features of PSIcapture’s solution that simplify document management for CPAs during tax season:
- Capture: Transform scanned images into readable text.
- Database Lookup: Have info on existing clients in your database? PSIcapture lets you connect to those internal systems to use data you already have, simplifying your workflow and saving you time.
- Classification: With the array of various types of forms you’re bound to receive from clients, sorting them prior to capture is an unnecessary hassle. With Classification, you’re able to scan as many different document types as you need, and PSIcapture will recognize the configuration to automatically classify each document. If a document type is new and has not been configured yet, PSIcapture’s Accelerated Classification Engine (ACE) allows for on-the-fly configuration during the workflow, either by building rules with point-and-click/dropdown lists or automatic configuration based on existing information in your connected databases.
- Data Extraction: Extracting data from documents is instrumental in increasing the search functionality of documents once they are exported to your repository. Full page OCR to make the document searchable is important, but it doesn’t go far enough in helping you find documents quickly. PSIcapture provides several features to automate this process, including Advanced Data Extraction and Table Extraction.
- File Naming Structure: Keep all your client files organized and optimized for search by creating a consistent file naming schema. Once you’ve established the structure for naming files, PSIcapture can automatically name them accordingly.
- Migration/Publishing: PSIGEN is able to push documents into more than 60 different ECM systems, allowing for serious flexibility when it comes to deciding which solution best fits your needs.
Ready to take control of your documents and have your best tax season yet? Contact PSIGEN today to find out how we can help your tax preparation firm get ahead.
