April 2022 Update

This month we’ve improved job recurrence schedules by making it easier to add, remove, and modify schedules in bulk. New changes include advanced account search and filters, helping you quickly find necessary accounts to which you can make necessary Jobs repeat at each desired interval.  Building on e-signature automation, templates automatically pre-select signers for single signature accounts, and you can now define signer priority for multi-signature accounts. Within documents, we’ve upgraded the UI to include the number of files folders contain. For larger firms, we’ve implemented the ability to add additional Firm Admins – replicating abilities previously only afforded to firm owners. Finally – the Firm Mobile App now supports @mentions in secure messages and account notes. 

Tax deadlines getting closer? We have so many wonderful updates that we can’t wait to share! However, we recognize it may disrupt your internal processes so until the deadline is over, we are not releasing any more new features. See you on the other side!

Let’s see what else we’ve been working on in the past month!

🤖 Workflow Automation

Custom recurrence schedules: advanced search and filter options

We’re continuing to make it easier for firms to set up Jobs to recur exactly how they want, when they want, with the predefined templates they want.

Firstly – we’ve made it easier to add, remove and modify Job schedules in bulk. As seen in the video below, firstly – you can filter for all accounts that meet certain parameters, select all, then modify them to select recurrence schedules, templates, assignees, and more.

More>>

UX: indicate conditional automation in sidebar

We’ve added visual indicators to quickly identify if automations are conditional and will only run if certain parameters are met. 

📝 Document Management

E-signature automation: signer priority and template library

We added the ability to set the desired sequence of signers throughout the document. This upgrade automatically retrieves signer information from the account.  For all accounts with only one signer, the template will automatically retrieve their information. For accounts with multiple signers, you can now set signer priority in the account, removing any extra clicks after applying a signature template. 

Additionally, the UI has been improved to put firm member signatures at the end of the ‘Choose signer’ list, putting client signatures first (more commonly used than firm signatures).

To help you get started, we added templates for commonly used forms (Forms 8879, 8821, and 2848) which are accessible via the Copy from Library button. You can utilize them as they are or edit them to your needs.

Read more about automating the e-signing flow.

Sneak peek: we are working on the ability to sign and reuse a signature for your clients, making it even quicker for them to e-sign documents in your portal.

Doc and folder counter

A new ‘Contains’ column indicates the number of documents and subfolders in a given folder. 

Folder templates restructured

Previously, when you applied a folder template, you received 3 legacy folders you didn’t expect. This has been fixed. Now, when you apply a folder template to an account, no excess folders will be created. You can modify folders as much as you want – the only required folder is a folder with read-write access for your clients (so they can upload into it). By default, it is named, “Client uploaded documents,” but you can rename it to anything you want. 

Example: You create a default folder template with folders A and B. Client uploaded documents will be there by default. Once your client, Bob Smith, signs up to your portal, his account will have three folders: A, B and Client uploaded documents.

As a reminder, you can apply folder templates to accounts as automations: as an example, for a firm doing tax, when you start work on your 2021 tax returns, you may want to add a 2021 folder to those accounts, along with uploading your 2021 price list PDF.

📞 CRM

Shortcode improvements

We continue to take steps to increase personalization in your client communications by improving shortcodes: “Hi [firstname]”. 

• Shortcodes are now unified across all elements of your portal: contracts, emails, jobs, etc.
• New date shortcodes: current (date, week, month, quarter, year), previous (date, week, month, quarter, year) and next (date, week, month, quarter and year).
• New ‘Service’ shortcode added to contracts.

As a reminder, you can add shortcodes to templates, one-offs and bulk actions. Previously sent elements (i.e a sent email or created contract) won’t change if you add new shortcodes to existing templates. 

Sneak peek: Firms will be able to use any custom account field as a shortcode in contracts, emails, messages. For example, you will be able to create contracts that say [companyname], [entity address], you can send emails with, “Your estimated payment is [q12022 tax due] and more! 

The whole list of shortcodes>>

💻 Applications

Request e-signature inside Windows app

You now can print 8879s (or any other file you want to have your client or team e-sign) directly from any tax program and request e-signature in the windows application without going to the web portal.

In future releases, we plan to add the ability to apply signature templates which are already available on the web application. 

More>>

Windows app multilingual support

TaxDome Windows desktop app is now available in 11 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Danish and Swedish. Note that the default language for the Windows app is that of your computer operating system.

Firm Mobile App: @mentions teammates

@Mentions help facilitate collaboration between teammates – when tagged, the team member will be notified and immediately put into the context of communication. Now, you can @mention your team members in Secure Messages and Account Notes in the firm mobile app.

More>>

📝 Client Portal

New checkbox: ‘Notify firm you are done uploading’

When uploading, clients are now shown a checkbox ‘Notify firm you are done uploading’. As clients often piecemeal document uploads, firms have been looking for ways to identify when their clients are done with uploads. We recommend using organizers or using client tasks (both of which, when complete, can move a Job forward and into your queue to review) but for firms who are not using workflow automation or TaxDome Lite users, this UI update that gives your clients an easy way to let you know they’re done directly in the upload window.

We plan more upgrades to make it easy for clients to let you know when they’re done, but we wanted to get this out ahead of the tax deadline. When clients tick the checkbox, a notification (email and Inbox+, depending on the user’s individual settings) is sent to account followers. 

🔥 Other

• New Firm Admin role. You can now grant admin rights to additional users (beyond the firm owner). Firm Admins will have the same access rights as Firm Owners, except for the ability to give and revoke admin rights of other firm members. More>>
• Printable reports. You can now print and export reports for Payments and Invoices. More about printing and exporting reports>>.          
• Resolve failed ACH payments. Unlike credit cards which are instantaneous, ACH can sometimes fail. ACH Payment rejects can be received up to 60 days after an ACH transaction: User’s Guide | CPACharge. In these rare cases, firm owners (and staff with access rights ‘Manage payments’) can now delete failed payments. More about deleting ACH payments>>.
• New TaxDome Academy course: How to automate your workflow. Learn how to set up, customize and tweak pipelines to automate your practice, saving $20k+ per year.

All of the above plus 83 more tweaks and fixes! Join our Facebook Community to ask any questions, request features, or just chat with your peers.

In case you missed it, here’s a summary of the major features that we covered in the previous post.