A Client Portal is fast becoming a necessity for any accounting practice. Whether it’s a big player with 350 staff members or a tiny 3-person outfit, a CPA firm must choose a Portal solution.

The number one reason for this is federal privacy legislation, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, as well as state laws, both of which are stricter than ever regarding your clients’ financial and personal information. To stay in compliance, accounting firms must ensure that their clients’ data is protected.

Historically, many firms have relied on email to send files back and forth to their clients. But this poses two major problems. First, email is not secure. It’s relatively simple for users on either end to expose their inboxes to other staff; and while email is in transit, it sits unprotected on servers. Second, emailing large attachments, like QuickBooks files, is tedious at best, and impossible at worst.

Client Portals offer a secure environment, with multiple layers of security, where you and your clients can easily exchange documents and files and stay in compliance with the law.

Balancing Security with Ease of Use

The majority of Portals on the market will offer adequate security for your firm. It’s harder, however, to find a Portal that’s easy to use, for you and your clients. If your Portal solution is not user-friendly, then it will likely be ignored in favor of email, thus reintroducing privacy concerns.

So how do you pick the best Portal for your firm?

In this article, I present tips from CPAs using a variety of Portals to point out what works and what doesn’t.

Client Usability

The extent to which your clients feel comfortable using the Portal has a huge impact on the success of the technology for your firm. Simply put, if they don’t use it, then it can’t safeguard their data. It’s important to make sure the software doesn’t turn off any of your clients, because it’s your job to maintain security.

Retrieve Files Quickly

When researching Portals, ask the provider how easy it is for clients to download files you’ve placed in the Portal for them. An effective method is a notification email that alerts the client that a file is waiting for them and includes a link directly to the Portal.

Ideally your client would simply click a link in the notification email and the waiting file would automatically start downloading. However, this poses a major security vulnerability. Unfortunately, to keep the system secure, your clients need to log in before downloading the waiting files.

But the software must still be crystal-clear for your clients, or it will cause headaches for you and for them. Kara Haas, CPA, PA, of Englewood, FL, learned this the hard way: “Before I started using LeapFILE, I tried one product that was downright painful. My two most tech-savvy clients couldn’t remember how to download their files each time,” she notes.

Password Issues

One stumbling block when logging in to the Portal is that it forces the client to remember their password. Some CPAs report that this presents a difficulty. “Most clients do have trouble remembering their passwords,” explains Edward McNeil, CPA, Partner at Ercolini & Company LLP in Boston, who uses CCH’s ProSystem fx.

In addition, the ability to reset passwords for clients can present a problem. Chris Farmand, CPA, CITP, of Jacksonville, FL, says that he’s used a Portal where the username and password is set by the system, and it can’t be changed. Unfortunately, the username is the client’s email address and the password is their Social Security number – which Farmand believes is not secure enough. “It’s completely inexcusable for a Portal provider to set such obvious passwords,” he states.

Firm Usability

Initially you may think that as long as the Portal works for your clients, then it will be successful. However, it’s just as necessary for the Portal to be intuitive for you and your staff. As a service-based business, your time translates into your revenue. You need a Portal that pays for itself  by increasing firm efficiency.

Intuitive Filing System

If files aren’t displayed in a logical way in your Portal, then the time-saving features of the software will quickly be compromised as you scroll through hundreds of files. This is a headache for smaller firms; and for larger firms, who may receive hundreds of files a day during tax season, it can lead to virtual chaos.

DMS Integration

Farmand points out the benefit of a robust document management system (DMS) that works seamlessly with a Portal. He would like to find a DMS that allows him to share permissions with the Portal. This would allow him to simply check a box once to share the file with the client in a read-only format.

Password Strength

Just as it’s important to be able to easily reset the password for your clients, you should look for a Portal that allows you to reset your own password. If there’s ever a security breach – even if you just suspect one – you’ll want to immediately change your password to something more complex.

Training and Support

As with any complicated software, all firms need a certain amount of training and support, for them and for their clients. Be sure to choose a Portal that provides this. Can you get the support you need through phone, email, help files, and tutorial videos? Do you have adequate training information to send to your clients?

McNeil appreciates his provider’s phone support. He says, “CCH has a call center, which we use for all their products. They are usually very helpful.”

When it comes to training clients, CPAs use a variety of methods, from internal videos and screen shots to sharing the materials provided by the Portal provider. “We downloaded the user guide in a PDF format and attach this to the notification that goes out to the client when their portal is set up,” explains Amy Powers, Tax Manager at Grennan Fender Ruta LLLP in Orlando, FL, which uses ProSystem fx.

Remember, for a Portal to keep you in compliance with privacy laws, you – and your clients – must actually use it. When researching Client Portals, look in to client usability, firm usability, and support. Don’t let niggling technical issues prevent you from fully adopting this powerful tool, which helps you exchange personal and financial data safely, and keeps you in compliance with the relevant legislation.

by Brian O’Connell

By now most of us are familiar with Phishing. Cyber Criminals will send you an email telling you your PayPal or online banking account has been compromised and you need to change your password. The email includes a link to an official looking website where you are encouraged to change your password by entering your username, your old password, and the new password you want to use.

But it’s all a scam. The web page is a fraud and as soon as you enter your username and “old” password the criminals have it. Even as the web page you are on is thanking you for your help and apologizing for the inconvenience someone in China is buying plane tickets with your cash.

This scam is called “phishing” and it has been used to dupe innocent people out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

A new scam is afoot, and these criminals are now targeting AICPA members.
They are sending out official looking “complaints” in an attempt to spread a virus unto your office network. It’s unclear at this time what this virus does, but since it’s targeting tax and financial professionals it’s likely trolling your network for numbers that can used by identity thieves. Tax forms are easily flagged and contain names paired with social security numbers, occupations, incomes… literally everything an identity thief needs to know. The danger posed by a targeted attack on an accounting professional cannot be overstated.

The fraudulent emails are being sent out addressed to “Valued accountant officer”.
Don’t waste your time trying to figure out who sent it. To a casual observer it will look like it came from AICPA, but most likely it was sent by an infected machine. On closer examination the from field will be obfuscated. You won’t be able to track down the culprit by doing a forensic examination of the email.

The text in the email has been surprisingly consistent. It reads, “We have received a complaint about your recent involvement in income tax refund fraud on behalf of one of your employers. According to AICPA Bylaw Section 765 your Certified Public Accountant status can be canceled in case of the occurrence of filing of a false or fraudulent income tax return on the member’s or a client’s behalf. Please find the complaint below below and respond to it within 14 days. The failure to respond within this period will result in suspension of your CPA license.”

There is a link in the email mapped to a document called “Complaint.doc”. DO NOT OPEN THIS LINK.
Nobody is really sure what this is, but it’s certainly not a document. Most likely it contains a virus, but authorities have yet to identify exactly what it does.

The AICPA has instructed the public to leave these emails unopened.
In an official statement the AICPA has responded, “If you receive the email, delete it immediately. We have notified law enforcement of the incident and continue to monitor the situation.”

If you have already opened this file you are very likely infected with some kind of virus. Drop what you’re doing, manually update your anti-virus program and run it immediately. The AICPA is actually recommending that you take these steps even if you did not open the complaint link. If you’re not sure what program to run popular anti-virus programs include Norton, McAfee, AVG, Kapersky, Symantec, and Comodo. Don’t forget to manually update the application before you run it. Many modern viruses disable the auto-update functions of anti-virus applications.

AICPA has set up a hotline to call for help if you believe you have been infected or if you want up-to-date information. Call (888) 777-7077 and select option 1. You will be connected to an AICPA representative that will be fully briefed on the matter.

As CPAs, we serve the unique needs of governments and non-profits, individuals, and businesses from every corner of the private sector. They all turn to us to help them resolve some of their most complex, vexing, and urgent issues.

Of course, clients retain CPAs because of our experience and expertise in knowing how to save them money and grow their assets, but most CPAs also know that there’s something more that underlies all of this.

Our clients entrust us to provide solutions to some of the biggest problems they face because we offer them peace of mind. CPAs are paid to be flawlessly organized, trustworthy, and responsible in resolving client issues, and equally so in handling sensitive client information.

Why We Need Client Portals

The unique level of responsibility that comes with acting as stewards of our clients’ most sensitive information has made the use of secure, Web-based client portals an absolute necessity for all CPAs. Client portals allow a secure, streamlined, and customizable alternative to email for the transfer and storage of sensitive information, as well as an interactive platform in which to engage and collaborate with clients.

Since their introduction, client portals have been used to:

• quickly and easily transfer large files, including QuickBooks files;
• a way to receive client source documents and make completed tax returns available to clients;
• invoice clients and collect credit card payments; and
• provide a real-time environment in which to update payroll information for payroll clients.

The Question of Security

Using a password-protected client portal is tantamount to having a safety deposit box for each client’s files that only the client and his CPA have a key to. Many client portals include the same impressive 128-bit SSL encryption used by banks and other financial institutions to ensure that only authorized individuals have access.

Portals are also extremely reliable, usually offering the assurance of network uptime in excess of 99.9%.

CDs and Thumb Drives: A Real Advantage?

The transfer of traditional hard copy files to digital media has been in practice for years, and it’s a great way to reduce storage space, save cost, provide an environmentally responsible alternative to paper files, and add redundancy for backup purposes.

However, digital media of this kind has always had the same intrinsic flaws: information on hard drives, CDs, and thumb drives cannot be easily accessed or updated by individuals in different locations.

And because most email won’t allow more than 10 MB of data to be transmitted, larger files stored on CD or thumb drives have had to be sent by courier. This has meant a lot of extra expense and often unacceptable delays, not to mention the inherent security risk.

Due to these limitations, digital media has NOT been a great improvement from the archaic paper filing systems used years ago.

But with client portals, both the client and his CPA have immediate access to files anywhere in the world, as well as the ability to make real-time updates.

Client Portals Get Rave Reviews

Since most clients are familiar with Web-based systems – taking advantage of similar systems that have been in place for years to review bank statements and pay invoices –  they are quick to embrace and adapt to the use of client portals when working with their CPA.

In fact, they are so widely used now that many clients have come to expect client portals and show a strong preference for them over more archaic and less secure methods of payment, data transfer and storage, and real-time collaboration.

Find more accounting information, like details on how to become an accountant and CPA requirements, on AccountingEDU.org.

Looking for a way to make tax season simpler? Our Tax Organizer just got its annual makeover and is ready for the 2011 tax season.

This next-generation Tax Organizer is a dynamic web application that allows your clients to organize their tax information online, saving you time when preparing their taxes. You and your clients can securely access your client’s tax information anytime from anywhere, eliminating the time and expense involved in mailing paper organizers.

As always, the fully customizable Organizer offers you a secure way to catalogue your clients’ documentation and returns from year-to-year. Encouraging your clients to use the Tax Organizer can save you both the hassle of driving around town to deliver paperwork, and saves you the hassle of having to manually enter their information into your tax software.

Interested in learning more about the Tax Organizer? Click here to watch a video.

We hear the feedback. We hear it repeated over and over again. It’s important to you to be able to securely exchange files with your clients all year round – and critically important during tax season.

The demand on the Client Portal at the end of tax season this year far exceeded our expectations and our over-worked servers couldn’t keep up with increased workload.

So we revamped the Client Portal Server infrastructure to quickly scale up to meet the extremely high demand of tax season.

The new Portal server infrastructure utilizes state-of-the-art fault-tolerant load balancing. So when demand is high more servers are quickly brought online to handle the workload. Then after tax season when demand falls the load balancer allows us to take a few servers offline so we can keep your costs down.

We’ve also worked on the software to increase speed and reliability with absolutely no sacrifice to the security you’ve come to expect from the Client Portal. Your files are still protected by 14 layers of security. Including “all time” file encryption to keep your data safe during transfer, storage on the server and in backups.

Most CPA and accounting practices have embraced email as a reliable and safe form of communication. This is unfortunate since email isn’t really all that safe. A lot of accountants are actually using email inappropriately and putting their client’s private data at risk by posting stuff like tax returns and QuickBooks files to emails. Protect your clients. Never assume that email is a protected way to convey sensitive info. When you send an email to someone it doesn’t go straight to it’s destination. It passes through a dozen or more mail servers, and these mail servers are popular targets with hackers and malware. This arrangement makes email vulnerable to interception by what’s called a “man in the middle” attack, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. These third party servers are completely outside of your control and have no accountability even if they are poorly or incompetently maintained. Even well tended mail servers can play host to Trojans that will quietly forward your emails to a hacker, most likely by posting them to a website.

All it takes is one hacked server along the way to intercept your email, and you’ll never know what happened.

Some email providers offer an added layer of security by encrypting messages, but this doesn’t prevent the file from being intercepted. Encrypted files are extremely hard to open if you don’t know the key, but given time a hacker will be able to get it open. Encryption does nothing to prevent a file from being intercepted.

Don’t get me wrong, email is a very valuable tool for an accounting firm. It’s unrivaled in speed, convenience, and expense. Accountants send hundreds of emails every week and most of these these messages don’t include private files. The problem only rears up when these firms email information that’s considered confidential. If the wrong people get hold of them documents like tax returns can seriously harm a client. Because accounting firms prepare taxes they are considered financial institutions. This actually makes emailing private information a crime. The federal law governing the security of financial is called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law provides stiff financial penalties for accounting firms and other financial institutions that fail to adequately protect their client’s data.

For the most part we’re talking about security here rather than privacy. Just be aware that in order to be compliant with the law you need to protect both. Privacy is about protecting your clients’ identities. It’s loosely tied to security in that it’s often considered a subset of authorization, but privacy breaches usually involve a business deliberately selling client information to a direct marketing firm or similar third party. Where privacy is about keeping the door locked, security is about the lock itself. Security is the actual online authentication and authorization protocols that networks use to protect information and the audit system used to verify the overall system’s effectiveness.

The best solution for this issue can be found in most commercially available CPA websites. Document portals are now commonplace. All of the best accounting firms make use of these systems and they are available through almost every CPA website provider.

Portals come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common. These great tools let you exchange files with clients quickly, easily, and safely. Unlike email a portal transfer encrypts the data and transfers directly from your server to the website’s. This eliminates the chance of your file passing through any third party servers and keeps the chain of information accountable and under your immediate oversight.

Don’t mistake this as a crass sales pitch. If you have a website through CPA Site Solutions than you already have access to a first rate portal system. If you don’t… well, I’m definitely not the only designer selling these features. Frankly, all the best CPA websites furnish a secure transfer system.

What I’m trying to do is recommend that you look honestly at your firms policy on emailing confidential information. If you don’t have a formal policy create one and make sure everyone at your firm knows it. If a client realizes these risks before you adapt your procedures there’s a very high probability you’ll lose them.

If you haven’t already done so stop broadcasting your clients private personal information by email right now. Get a secure portal and USE it.

Q: What feature of CPA websites skyrocketed in popularity in 2010, with usage increasing nearly 550%?

A: The secure Client Portal.

That’s right. Once misunderstood and unappreciated, the Client Portal is finally enjoying the adulation it deserves.

Small business owners, taxpayers, and other accounting clients are smartly using the Portal to increase convenience, efficiency, and security.

That’s fantastic, and we’re delighted, because we know it makes your lives as accountants easier, too.

But what about the clients who still don’t see the benefit? How do we convince them to make the switch from email (which is cumbersome and, more important, not secure) or snail mail (which is just too slow in this day and age) to exchanging and storing files in the Client Portal?

We thought we’d let your clients see it in action – with a video.

New Client Portal Page for Your Website – Now with Video

If you think your clients need a bit more nudging to register for your secure Client Portal, then consider adding our new page describing the Client Portal.

It includes a one-minute video that shows just how clients use the Portal to exchange files with you.

Here’s how the new page looks:

And here’s the video:

Learning something new by reading about it is fine… but watching a video works much better. Being able to see how easy the Client Portal really is – how few clicks it takes to navigate and how intuitive it is – helps clients embrace it.

How to Get the New Page

To take advantage of this new page and convince more of your clients to use the Portal, either ask us or do it yourself:

• For our Gold and Platinum clients: give us a call at 1-800-896-4500, email support@cpasitesolutions.com, or leave a comment below. We’ll get the new page added within 1 business day.
• For our Silver clients: all you have to do is remove the old Client Portal page and add the new page with the video. Read this Help file for instructions on how to remove and add a page. The page is called “Client Portal.”
• Sole Proprietor or Multi-Partner Firm? If you’re a sole proprietor, you can add the video that uses “I” language instead of the default “we” language. That page is “Client Portal (Sole Proprietor).”

A Note on SecureSend

The video refers to SecureSend, which was formerly known as QuickSend. SecureSend allows your clients to quickly and securely send files to the Client Portal without having to log in to their account, or even have an account. It’s an even easier way to use the Client Portal – and it’s totally secure because it retains the Portal’s 14 layers of security.

If you have not yet added SecureSend to your site, you should add it now so that the video makes sense to your clients.

Silver clients, read this Help file to learn how to add the page, and read this Help file to see how to change the name of the page from QuickSend to SecureSend.

Of course, if you’re a Gold or Platinum client, we’ll take care of this for you.

Questions? Just Give Us a Call

If you’re unsure of the benefits of adding the new Client Portal page, or you’re unclear on how to do so, just give us a call at 1-800-896-4500, or email support@cpasitesolutions.com. We’re here to help you.

What other tactics have you used to “sell” your clients on the Portal? Let us know with a comment, or post your suggestion on our Facebook wall.

New best practice technology for CPA websites provides a secure online way to transfer information that solidifies client relationships and positions firms as leaders in their field

Winooski, Vermont, May 10, 2011 — CPA Site Solutions reports that client portal usage among their accounting clients increased 548.8 percent this year with 508.13 gigabytes transferred.

Client portals on CPA websites are used to securely exchange important tax documents with clients through their website. More secure than email, every client portal is password protected and includes access to tax data, financial statements, source documents, and software applications such as an online document management, interactive tax organizer, online accounting, and email marketing.

“Client portals are a cutting edge technology that has been well-received by our accounting firm clients,” says Brian O’Connell, President of CPA Site Solutions. “They are a valuable tool that positions an accounting firm as a technology leader.”

CPA Site Solutions expects the client portal trend to continue based on the dramatic rise in the use of client portals from 2010 to 2011 on their own clients’ accounting websites. During the 2011 tax season 235,729 files were transferred, up 277 percent from the 2010.

Number of Megabytes Transferred to the Portal

• Tax Season 2010: 92,876 megabytes
• Tax Season 2011: 509,701 megabytes

Number of Files Transferred to the Portal

• 2010 Tax Season: 84,987 files
• 2011 Tax Season: 235,729 files

For more information about how CPA firms can benefit from adding client portal technology to their CPA website, visit http://www.cpasitesolutions.com/youget/cpa-website-tools/vault-file-exchange.php.

About CPA Site Solutions

CPA Site Solutions (http://www.cpasitesolutions.com) provides websites for CPA, Accounting, Bookkeeping, and Tax Preparation firms nationwide. We offer personalized websites, dedicated webmasters, a secure Client Portal, an emailed Client Newsletter, copywriting services, search engine optimization, online advertising, and 110 additional features for over 5,300 clients.

Follow Us:

*Facebook: www.facebook.com/cpasitesolutions
*Twitter: www.twitter.com/cpasitesolution
*YouTube: www.youtube.com/cpasitesolutions
* CPA Websites Blog:  www.cpasitesolutions.com/cpa-websites

Click here to watch a video about how to use a client portal.

Client portals on CPA websites allow for secure exchange of important tax documents. Clients use them to upload files and then you download them so you can get to work on their account.

But during busy season your clients are uploading a lot of files through your CPA website’s client portal.

Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of who is sending which files to whom.

Maybe you’re frustrated because you don’t have time to navigate through all of these files to figure out which ones have been uploaded most recently.

Some of our clients mentioned these frustrations and we listened.

We figured out a solution to the problem that will not only simplify your workload during busy season, but all year round too.

It’s called Quick Download.

Quick Download is a terrific new feature for your CPA website that eliminates confusion about which files your clients have uploaded most recently so that you can quickly download the client files that you need right now.

To launch the Quick Download application just log in to  your file vault and click on the Quick Download folder.

Quick download is easy to use too.

Once you open up the Quick Download folder you can quickly scan the files to see who has uploaded which files most recently. Then you have the option to either download the files or delete them.

Quick Download makes it easier to keep track of your clients.

Try it now!

If you have any questions about the Quick Download feature, please call a dedicated webmaster at 1-800-896-4500, or email us at support@cpasitesolutions.com.

Do you need a CPA website? All of our service level plans include secure client portals featuring the Quick Download application. Sign up now and get a 2-month risk-free trial.

Brian O'Connell, President

We all spend hours each day surfing the Web. We use the Web for business, for social activities, and for entertainment. It’s become a way of life.

Because so many of us are online so much of the time, we’re often lulled into a false sense of security. The truth is, there are cybercriminals out there – hackers who want to gain access to our hard drives, steal our personal information, and use our computers to perpetrate their crimes.

Needless to say, tax season is not the time to suddenly find yourself a victim of identity theft, or even to face the annoyance of having your computer run slowly or unreliably because of a virus.

The good news is, there are simple measures you can take to keep yourself safe.

Probably the easiest among these is choosing the right browser.

Use Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or IE8

I recommend using one of the three major browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Internet Explorer 8.

All three protect against phishing, malware, and pop-ups. Here are brief definitions of each threat:

Phishing - Phishing sites are counterfeit bank or credit card sites designed to look identical to the real ones. Their aim is to trick you into giving up your personal information, like your credit card or Social Security numbers.

Malware - Malware is short for “malicious software,” and it encompasses a variety of software or program codes – viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, and so on – that access your computer without your consent. Malware can be a minor annoyance – or, depending on what you stumble on, it can be downright criminal in function.

Pop-ups – Pop-up ads are advertisements that open a new window, usually a small one, and demand immediate attention. They’re generally more annoying than dangerous, but if you accidentally click on one, you could be redirected to a harmful site.

IE6 or IE7 Are Not Secure – Time to Upgrade

At this point, Internet Explorer 6 is nine years old and simply does not provide the security you need in today’s online environment. In fact, Microsoft, who owns Internet Explorer, is attempting to eradicate IE6. Internet Explorer 7 is not much better.

If you want to keep yourself safe as you surf the Web, upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, or use Chrome or Firefox. All three give you a warning screen when you’re about to click over to a suspicious site, and they scan all downloads for viruses, among many other safety features.

Upgrade Here for Free

It costs nothing and takes only a few minutes to switch browsers…

Download Google Chrome

Download Mozilla Firefox

Download Internet Explorer 8

Here’s a handy page explaining how to move your bookmarks from one browser to another.

Stay Safe This Tax Season

We’re heading into tax season, the busiest time of the year for accountants.

Why should hackers be allowed to disrupt your productivity and potentially steal your identity? Don’t take any chances. Upgrade your browser today and protect yourself against cybercrime.

And while you’re at it, sign up for a CPA website and take advantage of all its time-saving features – a secure Client Portal, a monthly Client Newsletter, a Dedicated Webmaster, Search Engine Optimization, and 100+ additional features.

You get the first 60 days free!