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Client document collection for CPA firms.
Your preparers cannot start a return until the client sends the file. So somebody senior spends their week writing "just following up" emails instead of preparing returns. This replaces that person's worst job with three emails that send themselves from your own mailbox. No portal for clients to log into, no new software for your staff to learn.
Tax season
The chase has a calendar, and it is not a forgiving one.
Every filing deadline is preceded by a few weeks where the bottleneck is not your capacity. It is a client who has not sent a bank statement. Firms lose three to five hours per client to document collection before a single return gets started.
S-corps and partnerships. K-1s that don't arrive here cascade into every individual return that depends on them.
The volume peak. This is where "we're still waiting on the client" turns into extensions you did not want to file.
The same chase, on returns everyone has already mentally closed. The easiest documents in your firm to forget about.
Setup takes about a week, and an escalation sequence needs a head start to do anything useful. A chaser switched on the week of a deadline is a chaser that sends one polite email and runs out of runway.
What gets chased
The same five tax documents, from the same fifteen clients, every year.
The ones that block preparation entirely
Nothing starts without them, so every day of delay is a day of your schedule compressing into the last two weeks.
- 1099s
- K-1s
- Bank statements
- Brokerage statements
- Prior-year returns
- Fixed asset schedules
The ones that block filing
Worse than source documents, because the work is already done and sitting there. Pure margin lost to somebody not opening an email.
- Signed 8879s
- Engagement letters
- Payment authorizations
- Extension approvals
- Representation letters
- Different documents, different rhythms. An 8879 gets chased harder and faster than a prior-year return. You set that per document type, once.
- Tone is set per client. The client of twenty years and the one who onboarded in January do not get the same third email.
- Partner-level items stay manual. Anything you would rather handle yourself is not on the list.
No storage tier, because nothing is stored. Attachments never leave your inbox. We track names, addresses and document titles only, never the files themselves.
Every email sends from your firm's mailbox with your signature. Clients never see a third party.
Clients reply to a normal email with a normal attachment. No link to click, no upload screen, no account.
You read every message it would have sent before a single real one goes out.
Getting started
Ten minutes of your time, then about a week.
From first call to live
The only real work on your side is handing over the list and deciding how your firm sounds when it asks twice.
Questions
What partners ask.
Will this annoy clients we've had for twenty years?
Only if your templates do. The escalation is written by you and it is per-client adjustable, so long-standing clients can be set to a gentler cadence or excluded entirely. In practice most firms find the opposite problem: clients prefer a predictable reminder to a partner calling them in April.
Does it work with our practice management system?
It doesn't need to. The chaser runs off a list (a CSV export, a spreadsheet, or whatever your tracker already is) and sends through your existing mailbox. If you later want it reading directly from your practice management system, that's a separate build once the chaser is earning its keep.
What happens during the busiest two weeks?
Nothing different, which is the point. It does not get tired or quietly deprioritize the small clients when the large ones are loud. If anything you will want to shorten the intervals as a deadline approaches, which is a one-line change.
There are cheaper document collection tools. Why not use one?
Because of what you are collecting. A self-serve tool works by sending your client a link to upload into its platform, which is why those tools price by storage: they are holding the files. For a signed engagement letter that may be fine. For a client's bank statements, brokerage statements and prior-year returns, it means a vendor you have never audited is now custodian of your clients' financial records, and that is a conversation with your partners and possibly your insurer. Nothing is stored here. The file goes from your client into your firm's mailbox, exactly as it does today, and the reminder that asked for it came from your address with your signature rather than from a product your client has never heard of.
Who is doing this if it's one engineer?
The build is one person, deliberately. It runs on your own mailbox and your own infrastructure, so it is not dependent on us continuing to exist. It is also month to month, so you are never locked into finding out.
Bring the list you are most behind on.
Fifteen minutes on your real chase list, and you will see which clients should already have been chased twice. If it isn't a fit, you leave with a cleaner tracker anyway.
Book a 15-minute callFifteen minutes, no obligation. Pick a time that suits you.
See how the document collection workflow works, or the same system for staffing agencies.