No. If you have an outsourced IT provider, they are only required to attend the installation appointment.

You will receive an email from SurePrep Customer Support with a calendar link that you can use to schedule your installation. The email will also contain a link to the IT Questionnaire, which you should complete before your appointment.

You will receive an email from SurePrep Customer Support with a calendar link that you can use to schedule your installation. Please save this email and reply to it if you experience any issues after installation. SurePrep’s customer support software will automatically CC your Account Executive on this thread.

You will receive an email that includes next steps and detailed onboarding instructions, including the Onboarding Training Timeline and a SurePrep Advocate Questionnaire.

Please complete the Questionnaire at your earliest convenience and return it in the original Excel format. Along with your Questionnaire, please provide your availability for the Kickoff Meeting. The Client Success Project Coordinator will schedule the Kickoff Meeting with your Advocate Team.

The Kickoff Meeting is a 45-minute introduction to your Onboarding Specialist, who is part of your Client Success Team. We recommend that all Advocates attend. Prior to the meeting, all Advocates need to review Kickoff Meeting videos in SurePrep Academy, our onboarding expectations, the completed SurePrep Advocate Questionnaire, and the User Login List. We will schedule your future onboarding meetings during this time, so if any Advocates are unable to attend, please ensure that you can access their calendar availability.

In general, attendees can join meetings from anywhere, provided they have the SurePrep software installed. During the Kickoff Meeting, only the Advocate who worked with SurePrep Customer Support during install needs to have the software installed. This Advocate will be asked to screenshare.

We recommend viewing the prerequisite Kickoff Meeting videos because they give you a beneficial “sneak peek” into the onboarding process, but viewing the videos is not required.

You should contact your Onboarding Specialist. Your Onboarding Specialist is your primary contact for the duration of the onboarding process, which ranges from the Kickoff Meeting to the Go Live Meeting.  

During the Kickoff Meeting, your Onboarding Specialist will help you decide what’s right for your firm. If you choose to complete the 1040SCAN and TaxCaddy onboardings separately, you will first attend all 1040SCAN meetings, then all TaxCaddy meetings. If you choose to combine the 1040SCAN and TaxCaddy onboardings, you will attend the meetings in an order that mirrors the flow of the SurePrep tax process. No matter which option you choose, you will attend all the same meetings and receive a full onboarding experience for both products. The only difference between the two options is the order that the onboarding meetings take place.

Although we always aim to accommodate our clients’ availability and training requests, we plan one meeting per week for the following reasons:

1. We find that one meeting per week allows users ample time to work through the prerequisites prior to the next meeting. If meetings are too close together, we see a tendency for Advocates to miss the “homework” step, which leads to a less productive training session.
   
2. We find that meetings exceeding 90 minutes tend to cause attendees to lose focus and miss important information.
   
3. We are invested in your long-term success and have developed the training outline with your success in mind. Therefore, we feel that whenever possible, it is best to limit meetings to one per week. However, we are open to discussing your situation should you need an exception.

The number of meetings will depend on the product mix your firm purchased. Please consult the chart below. Keep in mind that Leadsheets Training is covered in a separate 90-minute meeting and is not included in these tallies. The first meeting is always the Kickoff Meeting, and the last meeting is always the Go Live Meeting.

Although we recommend that all Advocates attend the onboarding meetings, we do record each meeting and can provide the recording upon request. The Lead Advocate should always attend for the sake of continuity. If the Lead Advocate cannot attend, we should reschedule.

The key attributes of an ideal Advocate are as follows:

1. Someone who is excited to adopt technology to improve the firm’s processes.
   
2. Someone ready to be the voice of the office. Advocates will bring others’ questions and concerns to a common table.
   
3. Someone who is approachable by others and capable of garnering consensus from all staff levels.
   
4. Someone who is well-versed in the firm’s internal processes. Someone new to the firm is not an ideal candidate.
   
5. Someone who learns well and can attend every training session. Advocates will later provide training to others at the firm and become an in-house touchpoint for answers and solutions.

The Lead Advocate role should be assigned thoughtfully. This individual will be responsible for understanding how SurePrep solutions integrate with your tax workflow from start to finish. They will be the go-to person for all questions and communications between our teams. After onboarding, they will become the lead trainer for all other local users at the office.

The key attributes of an ideal Lead Advocate are as follows:

1. Someone who has extensive tax knowledge.
   
2. Someone who is technologically savvy. At a minimum, this person should be familiar with the firm’s current tax processing workflow.
   
3. Someone who has a thorough understanding of the firm’s goals and expectations.
   
4. Someone who has the authority to enforce change.
   
5. Someone who can participate in all meetings, including all onboardings and trainings. This person will be a key member of the training process and act as a liaison to the SurePrep training team.
   
6. Ideally, someone who easily adapts to change and exhibits both leadership and motivational skills. 

SPA refers to SurePrep Academy, our learning management software (LMS), which houses all the learning assets for your onboarding journey.

Your Account Executive and Account Manager will remain your primary contacts. (Your Account Manager will reach out shortly after onboarding is complete.)  If you feel that your team needs additional training, please reach out to your Account Manager, who can help you schedule time with the Client Success Team. SurePrep is invested in your long-term success. We are always here to empower you and help you achieve your goals.

Our team purges SPA accounts that have been inactive for 6 months. If a user’s account was deactivated due to inactivity, you can ask your SurePrep Account Manager to readd the user. As long as a user logs in at least every 6 months, they will retain indefinite access to training videos.

Yes. To unlock the webinars, users must first complete the prerequisite videos. We assign all users the same learning plan so that they can understand the SurePrep tax process from beginning to end, which helps them understand their own role in it. For example, a high-level Reviewer might find it helpful to understand why data populated in a particular place inside the binder. The videos that cover the Review Wizard would provide that clarity.

Self-Guided Onboarding is a series of videos, followed by scheduled live webinars. The webinars reinforce the key takeaways from the series of videos. Users must complete the prerequisite videos before they can register to attend a webinar. However, users may continue to watch videos if they have not yet attended the webinar for the previous section.

In addition to the videos and webinars, you will be assigned an Onboarding Specialist who will perform check-ins on your firm’s progress. We also offer two open office hour sessions each Friday from 10-11 AM EST and 3-4 PM EST, which your team is welcome to join to ask any questions they might have.

The Self-Guided Onboarding timeline is solely dependent upon your firm, as you are responsible for enforcing completion of the videos and webinars.

Please reach out to your Client Success Project Coordinator or your Onboarding Specialist. They can verify whether the email on the User Login List is accurate.

If the email is accurate and the user still does not see the email in their inbox, please ask them to visit SurePrep Academy (academy.sureprep.com) and click on the button that says Reset Your Password (SurePrep Clients Only). After they enter their email address, our system will resend the link. It comes almost immediately, so please ask the user to check right after submitting. The user should follow the instructions in the email to create a SurePrep Academy password.

Once you return the completed Advocate Questionnaire, ALL USERS listed on the User Login List (Tab 3) should receive an email inviting them to SurePrep Academy (SPA) within the next 2-3 business days. This email will come from LMSAdmin@sureprep.com, contain login credentials, and provide access to prerequisite training videos. Please ensure this email address is “whitelisted” and tell your users to expect the email. If anyone does not receive the email, please let us know. It is important that everyone has access to SPA during onboarding.

We request role assignments so that we can assign role-specific learning assets during onboarding and in the future. For example, Reviewers do not need to complete every asset in the Preparer learning track. Additionally, Advocates receive an extra “Admin Setup” training.

The Advocates are assigned the same training assets, except for an additional training titled “Admin Setup.”

The Advocate Questionnaire provides a detailed description of Other User roles (non-Advocates) on Tab 2, as follows:

1. Preparer: These individuals prepare tax returns and perform data entry into tax software. At the conclusion of their training, Preparers should understand how to prepare a tax return in SPbinder, including organizing non-standard documents, annotating workpapers, and reviewing data.
   
2. Reviewer: These individuals review tax returns. At the conclusion of their training, Reviewers should understand how to review a return in SPbinder. This includes reconciling the tax return to the source documents and leveraging SPbinder’s review tools, such as Annotations, Notes, and Signoffs.
   
3. Administrator: These individuals are responsible for SurePrep product front-end processes. Their duties may include sorting source documents, scanning images, and submitting information to SurePrep. Administrators will also learn how to verify data captured by 1040SCAN’s Optical Character Recognition, unless your firm chooses to outsource verification with 1040SCANverify.

If someone in your firm acts as both Preparer and Reviewer, you should assign them the Preparer role. The Preparer training path includes most of the Reviewer training assets, plus additional assets for Preparers.

Yes, that is acceptable. Firms sometimes need additional Advocates for a variety of reasons. For example, firms with multiple offices may want at least one Advocate from each location.

To add extra Advocates, simply add more rows to the first tab of the Advocate Questionnaire.