Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/49996
TAX DOCUMENT AUTOMATION Reviews For Your Firm SurePrep — 1040SCAN Pro, 1040SCAN Organize 2012 OVERALL RATING BEST FIRM FIT Firms where more than one person is involved in the tax return preparation process with multiple levels of sign-off . It's also a good fi t for fi rms using the supported tax soſt ware who are willing to use SurePrep's proprietary data-entry and SPbinder tools. STRENGTHS • SPbinder has an impressive feature set for organizing & annotating PDFs, Word docs, Excel files & Outlook emails. • Depending on complexity & variety of source documents for each 800-805-8582 CCH a Wolters Kluwer business — ProSystem fx Scan 2012 OVERALL RATING BEST FIRM FIT Firms using other ProSystem fx applica- tions to prepare individual returns, as well as fi rms that want the OCR and organizing processes to run on premise with a fast turnaround time. STRENGTHS • With the right hardware & recom- mended scanning procedures, OCR processing should only take a few minutes, which is ideal for fi rms that want to scan & begin preparing a tax return immediately. 800-739-9998 GruntWorx, LLC 2012 OVERALL RATING BEST FIRM FIT Firms that want a user-friendly solution for organized and bookmarked PDFs of source documents, regardless of the tax and document management soſt - ware. T ose using the supported tax soſt ware will benefi t from the Populate product, and fi rms using Drake Tax should consider it because integration for Drake will soon be released. STRENGTHS • SaaS application with nothing to install locally & it will work on most devices 800-291-2136 8 January 2012 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com with a browser & Internet connection. • Simple & easy-to-use web interface for uploading & downloading documents. • New expanded rights management makes it easy to use in large multi- location fi rms. • Integration with Acrobat add-in Tic, Tie & Calculate. POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS • Service level agreement calls for max. of 24 hours to return an organized PDF fi le (average times were actually two to four hours during peak of tax season in March 2011 for Populate jobs). T is may make it unsuitable for "one-hour interview" retail tax preparers. • Forms with amounts that could be reported in various parts of tax return are populated to a point sheet instead of directly to tax soſt ware. User's placement of amounts in the tax soſt ware are not carried forward. PRICING GruntWorx is a web-based application that provides relief from the "grunt work" of organizing tax documents and data entry. Priced separately, the products offered are as follows: Grunt- Worx Organize, GruntWorx Populate , GruntWorx Trades and GruntWorx Gather. Pricing is on a per-use basis, making it an attractive option for firms wanting to test it on a limited number of tax returns without a big up-front investment in the product. The Organize and Populate products retail for $5 • Customizable Autofl ow Wizard is an easy validation process. Side-by- side view of electronic values & images from source documents is also convenient. • Off ers PDFlyer, a solid Adobe Acrobat add-in for annotating, bookmarking & repaginating PDF documents. POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS • Scan & organize process can be used with any tax soſt ware, but Autofl ow Wizard only imports data into ProSystem fx Tax. • Up-front investment in scanning soſt ware & hardware may make it cost prohibitive for fi rms that pre- pare a very small volume of indi- vidual income tax returns. PRICING ProSystem fx Scan is one of only two products covered in this review that off ers a version that can be installed on a fi rm's local computer or server. A web-based solution was launched in December 2011, with a 24-hour service level agreement for returning organized tax documents, but the average turnaround time is expected to be two hours for the upcoming tax season. Pricing for the ProSystem fx Scan application varies, with a starting price around $4,200. T e Autofl ow component is priced at $12 per return. T e SaaS version is sold in bundled quantities. return, fi rms may use 1040SCAN Organize, 1040SCAN Trades or 1040SCAN Pro, each priced accord- ingly. • 1040SCAN provides the fl exibility to skip certain processes. • Average turnaround time for the 2010 tax season was 22 to 25 min- utes, the fastest among the products reviewed where documents are uploaded by the firm & OCR completed by the vendor. POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS • New users may experience a learning curve. • Data-entry interface used to validate • SPbinder: $5 per engagement • 1040SCAN Organize: $10 per engagement (includes SPbinder) data is proprietary and diff erent from tax applications. Files created with SPbinder are also proprietary and cannot be modified with other common PDF editing applications like Adobe Acrobat. However, users have the option to skip the verifi ca- tion step & create an Adobe-com- pliant PDF instead of using SPbinder. PRICING SurePrep has many years of experi- ence providing accounting firms with scan, organize and populate tax products that have improved year after year. Pricing for SurePrep's products is as follows: • 1040SCAN Trades: $20 per engagement (includes SPbinder and Organize) • 1040SCAN Pro: $30 per engagement (includes SPbinder, Organize & Trades) Signifi cant discounts to these rates are available to users based on early season and multi-year purchase commitments. CORE PRODUCT FUNCTIONS/FEATURES PAPERLESS WORKFLOW INTEGRATION HELP/SUPPORT/TRAINING www.sureprep.com Read the full review of this product exclusively online at www.CPAPracticeAdvisor. com/10453930 Read the full review of this product exclusively online at www.CPAPracticeAdvisor. com/10453804 CORE PRODUCT FUNCTIONS/FEATURES PAPERLESS WORKFLOW INTEGRATION HELP/SUPPORT/TRAINING CCHGroup.com and $30 per use, respectively. Volume discounts are available for firms with a commitment of 100 or more uses. Read the full review of this product exclusively online at www.CPAPracticeAdvisor. com/10453920 CORE PRODUCT FUNCTIONS/FEATURES PAPERLESS WORKFLOW INTEGRATION HELP/SUPPORT/TRAINING www.copanion.com