Content area
Full Text
With 20 partners and 130 professional and support staff, Jenkintown, Pa.-based Goldenberg Rosenthal prepares approximately two thousand 1040s each tax season using ProSystem fx Tax. Those returns are now being saved electronically in PDF format, and stored in the Web-hosted GoFileRoom from Immediatech.
However, GR's plans for GoFileRoom extend beyond tax prep to include tax planning, estate planning, and investment review services as well. Chief information officer Salvatore DeRose notes that the document management system can accommodate a wide range of automatically imported or scanned-in financial documents: tax returns, 1099s, bank statements, stock certificates, brokerage reports, wills, deeds, and more.
"Ultimately, we would like one electronic store for all of these documents so that if you were to go to a client's house, you could download and store locally on your machine all the documents you would need for that meeting."
Goldenberg Rosenthal tax principal Frank Pileggi stresses that a key benefit of GoFileRoom is "it frees up mobility." That's important, he explains, because "When you can be in front of clients, that's when planning opportunities are created."
Tool Development
The popularity of online file cabinets within the CPA community testifies to the fact that many tax professionals also function as their clients' personal financial advisors, thereby generating a lot of documents. In response, tax software pubushers are developing tools or forging alliances to better serve their installed base in these dual roles. Developments include:
* CCH Tax Compliance, headquartered in Torrance, Calif., has just brought out GainsKeeper Pro, an online portfolio management tool targeted to tax preparers. Gain and loss information from the sale of investments can now be imported directly into CCH's ProSystem fx Tax.
* Dexter, Mich.-based Creative Solutions, publisher of UltraTax, has joined forces with ByAllAccounts to include the latter's WebPortfolio account aggregation engine within the CSI NetClient private portal. The aggregation tool is meant to give financial professionals a better understanding of a client's position vis-a-vis specific securities. In this way, the professional can better advise the client on how to strengthen the portfolio while minimizing potential tax liability.
* New York-based XciTek is looking to line up three or four tax prep software partners to carry its XciTax product, which automatically calculates the securities-payment and cost-basis data needed...