Table of contents
Tax season can be a grind. The classic document hunts, missing receipts and invoices, and the all-too-common late nights and weekends are a real test of patience.
But it doesn’t need to be. Instead of chasing down information as deadlines tick closer, let BILL automation handle heavy lifting for tax season prep.
The case for automated tax season prep
Keeping clients current for tax season with clean, consistent bookkeeping helps your firm:
- Increase efficiency: Avoid paper and digital “shoeboxes of receipts.” Automation proactively centralizes and organizes your clients’ tax-related documentation, making it searchable, on-demand, and audit ready.
- Build capacity: Automating tasks like data entry and processes such as bill approval lets your team reclaim valuable time to invest in higher impact contributions.
- Strengthen revenue: Additional capacity and efficiency helps expand bandwidth, which can lead to increased revenue. This is especially relevant for firms offering fixed pricing.
- Enhance client service: With documentation already in hand and organized, client conversations shift from receipt requests to results. Plus, comprehensive AP and expense documentation enables more tax insights based on that data. With automation of AP and expense management, you can better help clients manage cash flow and reduce tax liability throughout the year.
- Explore growth: With a financial operations platform, your firm can unlock growth opportunities with automated services such as Form 1099 filings.
Your tax season prep automation checklist
Ready for a smoother tax season? Here is your automation checklist.
- Assess: Identify bookkeeping roadblocks that can impact tax documentation. Examples include manually updating W-9s, tracking down expense receipts, missing bills or payments, or duplicative manual data entry between systems. These are all targets for automation that can make bookkeeping and tax prep more efficient.
- Select a platform: Seek a platform that automates tax prep-related processes like AP, spend and expense management, digital payments, 1099 filing, and document management. This ensures the data you need is included in one system, organized, and ready for tax review.
- Prioritize support: Look for software support staffed by experts in accounting firms and their technologies. No matter what time of year, you need quick answers if you have questions.
- Integrate: Start tax prep with more accurate data by connecting your financial operations automation software with other accounting systems. Automatic syncs to a client’s GL or ERP helps eliminate duplicative and manual data entry and resultant errors that are difficult to identify and correct.
- Train: Acquaint your team with the new financial operations automation platform. The more your team knows, the more they are prepared when there’s a time crunch. Your software provider should offer CPE-eligible certification programs that feature tax prep-friendly features like audit access for AP. Ensure you are sharing why the firm is adopting new technology, how it benefits team members, and how it impacts tax time. This checklist outlines helpful steps for change management.
- Onboard clients: Now that the team is ready to go, it’s time to onboard clients to the platform. It’s important at this step to emphasize their benefits—less work, better documentation, and greater visibility into cash flow. Plus, more data is automatically captured and ready for tax preparers. You can find helpful onboarding templates and resources here.
- Automate approval and payment and reconciliation workflows: Digitize and automate workflows for bill pay and spend management that are tailored to each client's needs and provide audit trails.
- Simplify vendor management: Prepare and provide Form 1099s to your vendors and file your Form 1099s with the IRS using the same software you use to pay those same vendors. Your platform should have a network of millions of vendors already getting paid through its system. The network empowers each vendor to update their contact and payment information—taking that responsibility off your plate. An added bonus: If your vendor is not in the network, your software provider will onboard them for you.
- Embrace continuous improvement: Set metrics, gather team feedback, and tweak processes to ensure successful ongoing results and to identify areas in need of refinement.
How BILL supports smoother tax seasons
Here’s how BILL automation helps you proactively collect tax season data.
AP/AR
- Receive invoices directly to your BILL inbox. AI codes them in real time.
- Track each incoming and outgoing dollar with digital payments and automate your clients’ payment approval processes.
- Automatically collect and store W-9s along with other vendor documentation.
- Keep everything audit-ready with permissioned access that details activities and documents related to each bill payment.
1099 filing
- Automatically collect and store W-9s in BILL and set them as 1099-eligible. You can also map expenses to the correct 1099 category.
- Instantly generate Form 1099s using data already in the platform and send them to vendors.
- File your 1099s directly with the IRS and deliver them to vendors—all in BILL.
Spend & expense management
- Make it easier to identify tax write offs. Automation prompts employees to upload receipts and AI codes the expenses.
- Transactions are captured in real-time and applied to your clients’ budgets, which means no more waiting 30+ days.
- Control extraneous spend by automating expense rules to support compliance.
“Completing and submitting Form 1099s through BILL’s 1099 Filing reduces review and update time, ensures data accuracy, and helps us meet those form deadlines. When BILL AP is paired with BILL 1099 filing, it amplifies our time savings, organization, and centralization." —Jennifer Klos, Supervisor Staff Accountant, Accounts Payable, at Creative Planning Business Services
Preparation powers tax season efficiency
It’s time to get your tax prep dialed in. BILL automation delivers on preparedness, efficiency, and client satisfaction. It also positions your firm to capture new service and advisory revenue streams with less effort or the need to add resources.
To learn more about how BILL automation can streamline tax season prep, request a demo or reach out to your account manager.
