Smart Links are a document gathering feature in TaxCaddy that play a significant role in tax document automation. Your clients establish Smart Links by signing into their financial institutions. Once Smart Links are established, they automatically retrieve tax documents on the taxpayer’s behalf the day they’re issued. Using Smart Links can help your firm:
- Retrieve documents needed for tax returns earlier
- Process documents quicker with Auto-Verification
- Reduce professional staffing needs
How do Smart Links work? Are they easy to set up? What do clients think about them? We’ll answer all these questions and more. Plus, you’ll learn how one firm is putting Smart Links to work for them.
Setting up Smart Links
It only takes a few clicks and some basic user information to set up Smart Links in TaxCaddy. Your clients must take the following steps to allow Smart Links to retrieve their available tax documents:
- Click the “Add Smart Link” button on the Overview page in TaxCaddy. Or, click the “Smart Links” button on the Documents page in TaxCaddy.
- Use the search bar or click on a logo to select their financial institution.
- Enter their username and password.
After your clients complete these steps, Smart Links will check their financial institutions once per day and automatically retrieve documents the day they become available.
See how quickly your clients can establish their Smart Links.
Reduce workload compression
Your firm operates more efficiently with timely information—but taxpayers often procrastinate. Automatically get what you need directly from financial institutions instead of waiting for clients to send it.
Smart Links make tax documents available to your firm sooner, which allows your staff to get started on returns much earlier in tax season. Automated document retrieval reduces workload compression.
Decrease verification time with auto-verified documents
If you use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to capture data from tax documents, Smart Links can help you reduce verification time. 1040SCAN automatically verifies tax document data retrieved by Smart Links. Here’s how it works:
- All tax documents retrieved by Smart Links are native PDFs (i.e., PDFs that are in their original digital format, never scanned from paper).
- Native PDFs contain an embedded text layer, which 1040SCAN compares to data extracted by OCR.
- If the text layer and OCR data match, there’s no need for human verification. The verification process is complete.
See 1040SCAN’s Auto-Verification in action.
Did you know? 1040SCAN’s Auto-Verification technology is patented by SurePrep and not offered by any other vendor.
Save on staffing by hiring paraprofessionals
Tax professionals represent a large portion of staffing costs and are difficult to find in today’s industrywide shortage. For both these reasons, it’s important to ensure their billable hours are used wisely. If your firm gathers exclusively through TaxCaddy and enforces Smart Links usage, 1040SCAN can auto-verify the majority of documents. This means paraprofessionals can handle workpaper preparation while your preparers focus on higher-value work.
Shifting time-consuming verification work to paraprofessional hours is more cost-effective. Freeing up professional time can alleviate the need to hire. To achieve these results, it’s important to aim for a 100% TaxCaddy onboarding rate.
Did you know? SurePrep customers who collected tax documents through TaxCaddy saw a 22% decrease in verification costs, according to the latest user data.
Improve client service with automated convenience
Automatic retrieval reduces time spent on emails and phone calls to track down missing tax documents. Your clients will appreciate this just as much as your staff. Smart Links also improve the client experience by taking one more item off your clients’ to-do lists.
After establishing their Smart Links, your clients can focus on other things, knowing TaxCaddy will automatically deliver documents to their tax professional. Your firm gets an earlier start on tax preparation while providing more convenience for your clients. It’s a win-win tax experience.
Discover more TaxCaddy features and learn how they can simplify tax time for you and your clients.
Visit Learning CenterReal-world results with Smart Links
WISE Financial Advisors values their clients’ time and strives for efficiency. Michael Weinberg, President and Founder, saw how the combination of Smart Links and 1040SCAN’s Auto-Verification feature could help the firm meet its goals and improve the taxpayer experience.
The biggest value is time. Right? That’s the most precious thing everybody has. This makes their life easier. This changes their experience.
Michael Weinberg, President and Founder, WISE Financial Advisors
For taxpayers, finding time to collect tax documents and answer lengthy questionnaires can be difficult. Smart Links upgrade the taxpayer experience WISE Financial Advisors delivers by saving their clients time and effort. By using Smart Links with every client, WISE Financial Advisors was able to maximize 1040SCAN’s Auto-Verification feature and hire paraprofessionals to prepare workpapers.
I am now able to hire non-tax professionals to do tax work. Experienced tax professionals are expensive. And all of a sudden, I don’t need that. I have a much simpler way.
Michael Weinberg, President and Founder, WISE Financial Advisors
Michael and his firm are dedicated to their staffing and workflow changes. With tax professionals in high demand, achieving the same results with paraprofessional staff has given the firm a significant advantage in a competitive hiring market. For the 2021 tax year, WISE Financial Advisors converted its entire client base to a digital, paper-free workflow that prioritizes Smart Links, native PDFs, and Auto-Verification.
Get the full story on WISE Financial Advisors and learn how SurePrep’s solutions have helped them transform their tax process.
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