Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/382390
22 September 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com GREAT PRACTICES FIRM FOCUS: DARRELL LAYMAN, CPA D a r r e l l L a y m a n made a bold move t h is yea r, a nd at the riskiest time: ta x season. With a broad vision to s i g n i f i c a n t l y i n c r e a s e w o r k- fow efciency across his frm, Dar- rell Lay man, CPA , (w w w.darrell- laymancpa.com) transitioned from a desktop document management system to the cloud. " I h a d t w o g o a l s i n m i n d , " Lay man ref lected. "I wanted any- time-any where access for both frm locations, and I wanted to reduce t e c h n o l o g y c o s t s ." H e s a y s h e ach ieved bot h adopt i ng a cloud- b a s e d d o c u m e n t m a n a g e m e n t s y stem t hat worked w it h t he ta x system he uses. "Moving to the new S m a r t Va u l t f o r I n t u i t L a c e r t e allowed me to achieve both." Lay man has used cloud portals for years, primarily to securely share ta x ret urns and other documents with clients. A nd then in December of 2013, he was notifed about a pilot program to test a new integration b e t w e e n s ol u t io n s — d e l i v e r i n g integrated document management plu s a c l ient por t a l for se c u re l y sh a r i ng t a x ret u r n s w it h c l ient s directly from his tax sofware. "I had been waiting for this inte- g rat ion, so I ag reed to be a bet a tester. I transitioned about 80 clients during tax season to the new online process. It was very successful — the entire ta x preparation process was so much more efcient." Lay man approached the transi- tion from desktop to the cloud very thoughtfully. As one of the frst beta testers for the integration, he worked with a small sub-set of his client base a nd a l s o c o l l a b o r a t e d w i t h t he developers periodically during ta x season to ensure a successful process A nd, it was successf ul…ver y suc- cessful. In fact, things progressed so smoothly that Layman is currently in the process of transitioning his entire client base to the cloud. Layman explained how easy it is to work with today's cloud technolo- gies, emphasizing ease of implemen- tation. "Technolog y today is made for self-starters and DIY-ers. A Winning Season Layman's initial goal when he made the transition was to improve ef- ciency with the tax work fow…and that's exactly what happened. " T h e i d e a w a s t o d e v e l o p a streamlined process. Working with our desktop document management system, there were many extra steps. However, afer adopting the cloud, many of these steps were eliminated. We no longer had to print the pre- parer copy to the DMS, print a sepa- rate cl ient copy for upload to the p o r t a l , o r c r e a t e a l o n g l i s t o f Firm Saves Time by Integrating Cloud Document Management with Tax Software By Kristy Short, Ed.D Daryl Layman, CPA (center) with frm staff.