I would be interested in hearing how others are using Doxcycle with staff? This is my first year using TaxCycle and I am trying to decide if using DoxCycle will be useful or just cause more grief this tax season.
I would like to hear what others have done – using staff. I can see the benefits if you are on your own.
We have scanners at every desk and everyone is set up with dual monitors.
How are you tracking that everything gets scanned in? Some documents come in electronically, some via CRA and some come in old fashioned paper? Some even come in on fax, which tends to be poor quality and in my test DoxCycle couldn’t handle that at all.
How do you make sure there isn’t duplicates? Or items missed?
I only tested one client, but it does look like it’s almost as much work okaying everything as it is just typing it in.
I am looking for processes and appreciate any one who shares their experience and tips from last year.
Michelle, yes the perception is it is easier to just type it in; however, it is using Doxcycle to add controls to the system and have less errors is my process.
I will not get into all the details but I will give you general idea of what i did last year.
We produced a transmittal sheet for the T1 production that includes the steps we are following on one side and a questionnaire for the client to fill out on the other (address changes, email, foreign disclosure confirmation etc);
I have a junior scan the slips into the file and check the numbers signing of with the first check mark that they have checked the numbers and added boxes as required. Signs off appropriate section of the transmittal;
The file then goes into production, the actual preparer, checks the numbers again with a different colour check mark and posts to T1 and then completed the return signing off appropriate parts of transmittal;
The review compares the actual slips to the slip summary actual donations to donation list, actual medical to medical summary etc. Finishes the review section of transmittal;
Client comes in signs the T183, the return is filed, we stamp the transmittal with an "efiled’ stamp and then scan into doxcycle with the signed T183
return is done, all required documentation is in doxcycle for pre or post assessment reviews and I do not need to go looking for it.
edit
As for your question about poor quality faxes, I use them and find that my junior staff needs to edit a bit more and add missing boxes. Scans are usually fine even if they are below the 300 dpi. Again the junior staff adds the missing boxes descriptions etc.
The only time I stray from the above is when the client sends me all the slips in an email. Those cases, I will open the file myself and drag the pdf from the email into doxcycle and note it on the transmittal and let the junior staff continue from there.
One last thing, if the client has a lot of medical or donations, I tend to run a tape of the donations and major medical categories scan it into doxcycle, group the items together. The tape is defined as a donation or medical receipt, a box is added to the slip and posted to Taxcycle rather than each individual receipt.
It would be nice if Doxcycle came up with a consolidated posting or a way to post all rather than one at a time
I am sure you are going to get a lot of different scenarios on how people are doing things. We have been using scanning since 2010 and scanning/OCR since 2011 with a competing product, but have switched this year to TaxCycle/DoxCycle. The improvements in efficiency compared to before we used scanning/OCR are significant, and we expect that to improve this year with the added flexibility that TaxCycle/DoxCycle adds.
Our office has 6 professional staff that prepare tax returns and 2 support staff. We all do our own scanning and use pretty much the same checks and balance we did with paper. That is, we compare current year slips/schedules to the prior year and contact the client if things appear to be missing. We are using the pre-season letter this year and hope that will remind clients of things they sometimes forget.
After scanning the preparer validates the OCR info and posts into TaxCycle. Once the preparer has optimized the return, he/she runs control tapes from the DoxCycle file and matches the taxable income and the tax paid (deducted). At this point the file goes to review, where the tapes are confirmed and optimizations/planning is given a second look.
At this point the required items are printed and we meet with the client to for signatures, etc.
The system has been working quite well for us and we do not feel we have any less control than when we used paper and keyed manually. One of the differences in our office compared to James is that the preparer is involved in the file throughout the process, and generally have a continuity with the client so we each know what was dropped off and what we are expecting to see.
As James noted, at first blush, the perception might be that you won’t be more efficient, but our internal stats indicate we are. Further, there are additional savings after the return prep when CRA does a pre- or post-assessment review as our support staff can easily put together what CRA is asking for.
We watched Wednesday’s Webinar on DoxCycle as a group to make sure we were all up to speed. At the end Elizabeth suggested that if you have been using TaxCycle and not DoxCycle, you might want to give it a try. All of us watching agreed. Based on our experience, it’s a no-brainer for us. We can’t understand why someone wouldn’t use it.
Interesting that you should mention that, because we are just designing a way to do a consolidated posting of all the information obtained from TDD. What we’re hoping to do is apply what we learn from this to DoxCycle as well after this Tax Season is over.
Thanks for the outline of your process. This is helpful.
yes @matthew, we do that too. The documents are usually reviewed first by the preparer before going to be scanned. The only reason I use a junior staff is for the addition of boxes and name editing. Figure the preparers time is better spent doing the return; however, when things get busy or the return is more complicated, we tend to bypass the junior staff and scan ourselves to complete the return since we all have scanners a our desk. The junior staff also updates addresses, emails and phone numbers from the client side of the transmittal.
@james1, I didn’t mean to make it sound like you and your staff didn’t have continuity with the client (after reading what I wrote it sort of sounds like that). I was intending to point out that preparers in our office do our own scanning. This is really because our professional staff outnumbers our support staff.
All of the “best practices” we have seen for scanning/OCR for T1 prep always suggests having junior/support staff do the scanning and validation. We found over the years that in our office situation it doesn’t work efficiently. The take away, I guess, is that every office is unique and what works in one office may not make sense in another. But once you get a system working in your office, you will be more efficient using the combination of TaxCycle/DoxCycle than just using TaxCycle. It might take part of a tax season to get there. It’s like most other software changes, there is a learning curve and in this case, it is worth a bit of inefficiency at first because you will save time after – every year.
office has multiple terminals with only one scanner networked. Any issues with scanning slips and having it attached to the right T1 return through DocCycle? What is the process that you use when you only have one scanner that is shared in the office?
We have desktop scanners on every desk. One scanner would cause a bottle neck as far as I am concerned; however, you maybe able to have one person doing the scanning like my post above. Unfortunately, we only use that process for easy returns. When things get really busy, we also need to use our desktop scanners
