December 2023 update

2023 is ending on a high note with a handful of exciting December updates, including the release of Proposals and Engagement Letters (ELs), a new and improved organizer (forms) design, time-saving drag and drop in Documents, new updates to the QuickBooks Online integration, request e-signatures directly from your desktop in TaxDome Drive and more.

We want to make sure you’re ready for tax season: join our live bootcamp series (5 sessions, completely free) where a team of experts will walk you through hands-on workshops and answer Q&A. We’re also doing webinars on all of the biggest Q4 updates this December and January, so stay tuned for updates.

Sneak peek: 

Coming soon: three game-changing TaxDome product updates

• Two-way SMS: send and receive SMS messages directly in TaxDome, allowing you to meet your clients where they are — their phones — and communicate in a way that’s highly familiar to them
• TaxDome Marketplace: implement best practices with ease with a broad range of TaxDome templates made by accounting, bookkeeping and tax pros from across the world
• Redesigned firm mobile app: our new firm mobile app for iOS and Android is now available in beta!

Watch a video overview of all our new features and improvements:

📝 Proposals and ELs (engagement letters)

We’re excited to announce that Proposals and ELs (engagement letters) are now available for all TaxDome users. This huge new update allows you to set expectations, pitch your services and explain the value they bring, and secure timely payments — all in one place.

In our initial trials of Proposals and ELs, 70% of clients signed the same day.

Here are the key benefits that Proposals and ELs will offer your firm:

• Elevate your brand by adding multimedia elements (images, videos, etc.) 
• Fully customizable: name the document any way you want — Proposal, Contract, Engagement letter, Agreement, etc. 
• Require payment to sign with payment authorization, ensuring that you get paid on time, every time
• Send a list of services without adding invoices. Clients get a clear view of services and costs without the pressure of thinking about payment
• Schedule automated reminders to ping clients if they don’t sign your document right away
• Existing contracts have been migrated to the new interface — contract information will be in the “terms” section, which can now be renamed to “engagement letter” or anything else you wish

Watch the Proposals and ELs webinar we hosted last week and check out the Q&A transcript. You can also read everything you need to know about Proposals and ELs in our recent blog.

🗂️ Organizers (forms)

Redesigned to provide a seamless experience for clients

Get client information faster with a redesigned organizer interface, engineered for convenience and high completion rates. 

This includes:

• Dynamic progress bar gamifies client experience and increases submission rates
• An intuitive, seamless experience on both mobile and desktop
• Questions are grouped into clear sections for better focus
• Large buttons enable quick and easy answer selection
• Keyboard navigation, the ability to fill out organizers using keyboard only
• Improved navigation for your team: easily customize your organizer templates using our redesigned user-friendly controls

For your firm, the simplified, redesigned interface means higher organizer completion rates and less time chasing clients for important information.

Also worth noting: when your clients upload a document through the organizer, they can now select specific folders in their directory, which saves time spent on moving the documents to the destination folders later on.

These organizer upgrades are part of Project Apollo, our initiative to make every interaction fast, intuitive and effective. Read more about Project Apollo in our blog >> 

Embed videos in organizers

You can now embed videos into your organizers. When you need to give your clients information about how to answer a question or provide documentation, this will save time on your end and provide a more seamless experience for clients completing your organizers.

How it works:

1. Add a new Text Block when creating an organizer
2. Click the video icon next to the link icon
3. Paste the link to the video you want to embed and click Save

Read more about organizers in our help article >>

Sneak peek…

Soon we’ll be adding checkmarks to the firm view of organizers – a straightforward method for marking and locking responses that you have viewed or processed, giving you greater control over the information and documents your clients have submitted.

📧 Communications

Firm announcements

You can now easily show firm announcements directly in the client portal and mobile app. These announcements will appear when your clients log in — and will remain visible until they are deleted by your firm or the expiration date is reached.

To create an announcement, go to the Client portal announcement section of the Firm Settings tab. This feature is available to firm owners and admins only.

Read more about the new functionality in our help article >>

📚 Documents

Drag and drop your files directly to folders

We’ve upgraded Documents so that you can drag and drop files directly to folders, plus anywhere on the screen. It works when you upload one or multiple files. You can also drag and drop entire folders and all their contents will be uploaded instantly.

In addition to saving time, this new feature gives you more flexibility. So if you prefer to drag and drop your files into the window and then select your destination folder, you can also use that method to upload your files.

You can now use drag and drop in the global Documents section and within the Docs tab of client accounts.

Read more about uploading documents in our help article >>

➕ Integrations

Improved QuickBooks Online integration

Right in time for tax season, we’ve improved QuickBooks Online integration to increase the amount of data you can send from TaxDome to QuickBooks.

What we’ve improved:

• Sync line item descriptions: the TaxDome description field is now automatically synced to the QuickBooks description field for invoices
• Set up expenses for Stripe fees on TaxDome: you can now choose the Expense Account and Expense Category from two convenient dropdowns
• Automatically sync recurring invoices: recurring invoices will automatically sync and appear in QuickBooks Online when they are issued in TaxDome

Don’t forget that we also added another QuickBooks integration feature recently: classes and locations. If you set up class and location tracking in QuickBooks, it will be available in TaxDome while creating an invoice or invoice template. From that moment on, both the locations and classes of invoices you create in TaxDome will be automatically sent to QuickBooks.

Read more about QuickBooks integration in our help article >>

🖥️ Desktop app

Request signatures without having to log into the web portal

Request signature is a new action that you can perform in TaxDome Drive without having to log into the web portal.

In TaxDome Drive, simply right-click on the uploaded file and click Request signature. You will then be able to mark up the document to show your client where to sign, just like in the web portal.

This feature follows a handful of other TaxDome Drive updates that we announced last month in November. If you need a quick reminder, the update added the following actions:

• Link documents to specific jobs
• Mark documents as read for clients
• View documents in a web browser
• Seal and protect sensitive documents

Read more about TaxDome Drive in our help article >>

🎥 Bootcamps

Register now to join our year-end bootcamp at 1 pm EST daily on December 11-15. These are not passive webinars but hands-on workshops hosted by our team of experts at no cost. By the end of the week, you’ll be equipped with everything you need to kick-start your work with clients in TaxDome — and transform your accounting workflows. 

By joining, you’ll also get the chance to have all your questions answered live.

Here’s the agenda: 

1. First steps with TaxDome
2. Importing your clients
3. Customizing workflows
4. Testing workflows and setting up payments
5. Final steps, best practices and Q&A

Ready to take your practice to the next level? This bootcamp series has limited availability, so register now to secure your spot. And even if you can’t attend live, make sure to register to receive recordings of all five workshops right after the event.

🔥 Other

• Chats: link and unlink a Chat thread to one or multiple Jobs, as well as view a list of all Jobs linked to the Chat thread, helping you quickly see which Jobs belong to which Chat threads
• Email: team members can send emails to any contact via +NEW, Email, then Contact shortcodes, even with the NOTIFY toggled off
• Two Invoices updates: view PDFs of paid invoices with their corresponding email notifications. You will also have the option of viewing the number of overdue unpaid invoices as a number next to Invoices within client accounts
• Two Workflow updates: linked invoices and payments will have a link that you can click to conveniently view them inside the Job sidebar. You will also be able to see which templates are being used in pipeline automations, as well as to see a warning before deleting them

All of the above – plus 75 more tweaks and fixes! 

Expect more exciting new features next month. Until then, join our Facebook Community to ask questions, request features or chat with other TaxDome users. 

And in case you missed it, here’s a neat summary of the major features we covered in our November 2023 update.