When I started my practice, I gave clients the option of signing or not signing the authorization form. Honestly it took more time to explain to them what it was and what the benefits were. I also did not require an engagement letter from all clients. After reading posts on this board, I set up an “Engagement Package” print set in Taxcycle that includes both the Engagement Letter and Authorization request in one PDF document. ALL new clients MUST sign off on my Engagement Package before I will accept them. I haven’t had any complaints about it. I added a perpetuity clause to the engagement letter so I usually only require new clients to sign.
By the way, I also require photos of government issued ID to be sent to me with the signed Engagement Package as I operate primarily online.
PS. We do new engagement letters for each year for every client. We had push back from a few old clients (30+ years with the firm) when we went to annual engagement letters, but a couple years after no one even blinks about it.
I have found this to be the case! I have made up an instruction sheet for clients to authorise our business through My Business Account Rep, and instructions for them to set up My Business Account if they don’t have one. I find it EXTREMELY handy to just give them the sheet and have them follow the instructions rather than trying to explain the process to them.
I always get the authorization request for all clients and have found that doing a quick review of their CRA account can lead to a lot of goodwill if you find any uncashed cheques they are eligible for. I also do annual engagement letters for all clients.
The printing is hit and miss. I always print to PDF and have several different PDF printing options, include Microsoft Print to PDF and Adobe PDF, but even if I send it to a printer, the image is still blank. Seems it initially works and then after going through several clients doing batch reviews from one client to the next client in RAC, the print option in the browser suddenly fails (using the EDGE browser) and doesn’t work for any more clients. But it’s only on specific forms like the Client Summary. Works fine on other RAC pages like printing the NOA’s. I pretty much have to terminate my connection, close my browser, and restart a new connection to get it activated again. So rather than doing that, I simply SAVE as an HTML complete page so that I don’t have to go back to the client file later. I haven’t explored if this issue exists with other browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or Opera.