Overview

The Online Interactive 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.

Logging into the Tax Organizer

In order to log in to the Tax Organizer, click the “Login” button on the top of your website. If you don’t see the “login” button, click on the “login” link located on the bottom of your site. If you haven’t setup your portal yet, please see Portal Help.

Now select the “Tax Organizer” heading and you will be brought to the Interactive Tax Organizer Menu


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Setting it Up & Email Notification

The “Setup Main Menu” link allows you to edit the information that appears on the welcome page of your Tax Organizer. Starting at the top, you are asked to enter a name for your organizer, i.e. “Tax Organizer”, “Forms Page”, “Forms”, etc. Remember, whatever name you choose will appear both at the top of the page and on the button or navigation link.

After you’ve made any necessary changes to the body text of the Tax Organizer Welcome Page, make sure to enter your email address in the space designated to send email notifications.

You can easily monitor your clients’ activity in the Tax Organizer by receiving email notifications when a new client registers, when a client starts a new tax organizer, and when a client submits a tax organizer. When you have everything the way you like it, click “Save”.



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Editing the Default Tax Organizer

You cannot edit a tax organizer on “Hold” or a “Published” tax organizer until you convert it to “Draft” status Click here for information on editing a tax organizer that is already published or on hold). A “Draft” tax organizer is an editable tax organizer that is still under construction and not viewable by clients.

Click the “Edit” icon, which is a pencil, in order to make changes to the default Tax Organizer.

In order to edit a question or section of the default tax organizer, scroll down to the questions and click the pencil icon next to the section or question you wish to edit.

In the Edit Question page you can re-arrange the section number or question number of the question. You can also change the text for the question and the type of answer field that it requires.

Make sure to check the respective boxes if the question is mandatory or you need to encrypt the response. It is a good idea to encrypt responses for highly secure information. However, the more fields that you encrypt, the slower your Organizer’s performance will be.

Click “Save” to save your changes and you’ll be brought back to the “Edit Form” page.


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Creating a New Tax Organizer From Scratch

A list of Tax Organizers shows up on the “Manage Organizers” page. To add a new tax organizer to the list, click the “Create a New Organizer” link.

Enter information such as the title of the tax organizer, a description, and confirmation page/email text.

A confirmation page is text that will appear after users submit their completed tax organizer. It is a good place to thank them for completing the organizer and you can also let them know that they can return to their tax organizer and edit their answers.

Select the checkbox titled “Send client confirmation email upon form submission with the following text:” if you’d like to have the tax organizer send your client a confirmation email.

Notice that you can enter the text for the Confirmation email. The Confirmation Email can be used to remind your client of any additional steps needed after completing the organizer like setting an appointment or sending a hard copy of receipts.

Enter the text for your default email that will automatically be sent out to any client who submits a tax organizer. You can also select whether you want the section and question numbers to display when a client views the tax organizer.

Now click “Create Organizer” and the new tax organizer shows up in your list of tax organizers.


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Uploading a New Tax Organizer

A Tax Organizer can also be uploaded using a CSV (Comma Seperated Value) file. If you want to create your own tax organizer, open Microsoft Excel and enter your organizer questions into the first row of the Excel table. Note: In order for a CSV file to upload successfully, all questions must be in a single row.

Once you have all of the questions entered, save the tax organizer as a CSV file. To do this, click Save and then select the option to save as a CSV file.

Go back to the “Manage Organizers” page of your Tax Organizer and click “Upload An Organizer Using A CSV File”.

Before the tax organizer can be created, you need to map the answer fields for each question in the CSV file. This is necessary so that the tax organizer can provide the proper spacing and options to correctly answer each question. Also, don’t forget to enter a name for your tax organizer.


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Adding a New Section and Questions

Now that we know how to make a new tax organizer, let’s learn how to edit it by adding a new section. In order to make edits to a Draft tax organizer, simply click the pencil icon next to the tax organizer you want to edit. You can edit any of the information that you entered when creating the tax organizer and you can also make changes to the sections and questions in the tax organizer.

Click the “Add Section” button and a new section is created where you can enter questions.

Now let’s add some questions to your new tax organizer by clicking the “Add Question” underneath the Section that you just created.

Start by either selecting the question number or accepting the default, which is simply in the order the questions are entered. The number 1.1.1 stands for Page 1, Section 1, Question 1. Select whether you want the question to be mandatory and whether you want to encrypt the response. Clients will not be able to move forward without filling in a response for a mandatory question.

It is a good idea to encrypt responses for highly secure information. However, the more fields that you encrypt, the slower your Organizer’s performance will be. Encrypting causes the server to pause to encrypt and unencrypt for viewing in-tax organizers. Therefore, encrypt only those fields that require encryption in order to maximize your client’s positive online experience.

Enter the question and then select what type of question it is by clicking the pull down menu. It is important to select what kind of question you’re asking so that the Tax Organizer can provide the correct spacing and support for answers. Let’s say you want to add a short answer question. Scroll down until you find the question type that says “Open Question (short answer)”. If you want to add a Yes/No question, select “Radio Buttons (Yes/no)”.

Once you have entered all of the sections and questions that you want the tax organizer to contain, click the “Save Changes” button and you’ll be brought back
to the “Manage Organizers” page.

If you want to preview exactly what the tax organizer will look like when you publish it, click the Preview icon, which is a picture of an eye. Note:
The place markers (i.e. “Organizer Title”, “Page Title”, “Section Summary”, etc.) will not appear in your published tax organizer. They are simply in the preview
to
assist you in designing your tax organizer.

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Publishing – Putting on Hold – Drafting a Tax Organizer

Once you have your tax organizer the way you like it and you want to make it available to your clients, select the box next to the tax organizer title and then hit “Publish”. To publish more than one tax organizer at once, select as many boxes as necessary next to the tax organizer titles.


If you no longer want a tax organizer to be available to your clients, select the box next to the tax organizer title and click the “Put on Hold” button. If you don’t need to make any more changes to a draft tax organizer, you can put it on hold using the same process.


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Editing an Already “Published” Tax Organizer

Let’s say that you have edits that you want to make to a “Published” tax organizer or a tax organizer on hold. In order to convert the tax organizer to Draft status, you must make a duplicate of the tax organizer. Click the edit icon next to the tax organizer you want to duplicate and then scroll down to the bottom where it says “Duplicate Form”.

Enter a title for the “new” tax organizer and then hit “Duplicate”.

As you can see, the original tax organizer still exists on the “Manage Organizers” page, but a duplicate with Draft status has also been created.

Note: Once a tax organizer has been “Published” it can not be edited without making a duplicate copy.


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Managing Client Accounts

Click the “Manage Responses” page in order to monitor your clients tax organizer submissions.

Adding/Editing Client Accounts

Clients are organized in a comprehensive list including their name and optional client number. The pencil icon next to a client allows you to edit that client’s Login Information.

Clients can be added to the Tax Organizer by creating a Portal Account for them. Help on how to
do so can be found here

Emailing Client’s Login Credentials

You can email your client’s login credentials directly to them by clicking “Email Login Info”. This is a useful tool if a client forgets his/her username and password.

Removing a Client Account
If you want to delete a client’s account from the Tax Organizer, click the “Delete” button. Otherwise, click Save and you’ll be brought back to the “Manage Responses” page.


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View/Edit Client Response

Click the Submissions icon next to a client’s name to view a summary of the client’s activity.


From this page you can see which tax organizers a client has viewed, completed or are in progress. By clicking “In-Form” in the Review category, you can view the date that the tax organizer was submitted by the client, and view and edit the client’s responses.


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Exporting Client Response Data

“CSV” (Comma Separated Value) allows you to see your clients responses in a table format and export the data to another software. To export a tax organizer response in CSV format, click “CSV” under the “Export” column. You can either save it to disk or open it with the default application, Microsoft Excel.


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Importing Client Data

You can also import client data from your computer or tax programs. In order to import client data (anything from name, address, phone numbers to social security numbers) into the Tax Organizer, you must save/export the data as a Microsoft Excel CSV file.

Note: In order for a CSV file to upload successfully, all questions must be in a single row, and all answers must be in a single row directly below the question row. The CSV file should look like this:

Once you have a CSV file on your computer that contains the client data you want to import, click “CSV” in the “Import” column.

Click “Browse” and search through your computer until you’ve found the CSV file that you want to upload. Click “Upload File” and the CSV file will be uploaded into the Tax Organizer.

Before the CSV file is fully uploaded into the Tax Organizer, the questions must be mapped. Mapping the CSV file responses is important in order for the Tax Organizer to determine which answers match up with each question.

Once imported, you can view the submission by clicking “In-form” or print by clicking the print icon.

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Adding a Seminar

To add Seminars to your page, please follow these steps:

1) Log into the Firm Portal (click here for instructions) and click on Modify Website.

2) At the top of the page, click on the Add Page button.

3) In the “Add A Page” screen, select Seminars from the list and click the “Add” button.

4) Click the Edit Seminars box, and you will be able to change the way your seminars are displayed (in list form).

The option we’re most interested in here is the New Seminar option. Click this button to add a new seminar to the list.

5) In this window, you will see many options, explained in detail below:

Seminar Title: This is the title of the seminar. For example, “Learn QuickBooks the Easy Way!”
Seminar Date & Time: The date and time on which the seminar is to be held.
Location (City, State) A brief description of where the seminar is to be held, generally “City, State”.
Cost: The fee you wish to charge for admission to this seminar.
Your E-mail: The e-mail address where people can contact you for more information about this seminar.
Brief Description: A brief description of the seminar.
Detailed Description: A full, detailed description of the seminar.

6) When finished entering the seminar details, click Save

7) Click Publish and your seminars will be updated on your webpage.


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Seminar Usage

When visitors to your site click on Seminars on your Navbar, they will see a page listing all the seminars you have entered:

When a visitor clicks on the title of the seminar, (in this case QuickBooks 101) they are presented with the following page:

As you can see, this page displays detailed information about the seminar and also presents a form for the visitor to enroll in the seminar.

When the user fills in the form and hits the Sign Up button, the information inserted into the form is automatically added to a database of registrants for the specified seminar (using the unique seminar filename you specified when initially adding the page). Two e-mail messages are then automatically sent out: A confirmation to the registrant, and a notice to your e-mail address.

If a PayPal E-mail is specified in the original setup of the seminar, a “Pay Now” button will automatically be displayed so that users may pay securely using a Debit or Credit card.

If no fee is specified for this seminar, the user will simply be presented with a “Thank You” screen.


Note


Seminar Administration

Go back to Site Manager and bring up your Seminars page.


When you click the highlighted box, a window pops up that shows you a list of your seminars. From this window you can create new seminars or edit existing ones.


Click the link that displays the number of subscriber(s) to you seminar. This presents you with a list of people that have signed up to attend the seminar. You can see who has paid, how many people are attending and the contact information for each participant.


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Client Self Registration

Clients can register themselves via the Client Self-Registration Form. The link to this form can be found
on your Portal Login Panel.

All a client has to do to sign up for Portal access is fill out their contact details and preferred password.

After clicking “Register” they are directed Portal Login Panel, and notified that their request is awaiting verification.

How To Verify Client Registration

Login to the portal as an administrator. The default administrator account is admin@yourdomainname.com and the password you signed up with.

Click on “awaiting verifications“.

Click on the user to verify or delete them from the system.

After clicking “Verify User” click on “Edit Users” to make changes to the client’s contact information, password and access rights.

When you are finished click “Save“.

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Default Permissions

If you have a set of Portal applications you would like to be immediatly available to every self-registering client once they’ve been verified, you can easily set it up so you don’t need to manually check off each application in the access rights section.

Start by clicking on “Firm Administration“.

It will default on the “My Account” tab. When you scroll down, you will see the Default Client User Access section just below the Portal Login Information. You can now check off the different application you want to be available by default when a client signs up.

You can also do the same for your Firm Users, whose access rights you can find directly under the clients’ section.

When you are finished click “Save“.

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Default Notifications

You can also customize a pre-set email notification for the File Exchange so you don’t need to manually add one in for every client who signs themselves up for the Portal. Everytime a new client registers themselves and you verify them, the firm user of your choice will be set to get notifications of their Secure File Exchange activity.

Start by clicking on “Firm Administration“.

It will default on the “My Account” tab. When you scroll down, you will see the Default Notifications section just below the Default Firm User Access. Select the Firm user of choice from the dropdown menu that appears when you click on the notification box. That user will get emails whenever a new client uploads something to the Secure File Exchange, unless you set them otherwise in the Add/Modify Client Users section.

When you are finished click “Save“.

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Additional Resources:

Client User File Vault Help

QuickSend: The Quickest Way to Receive Client Files Securely

Quickbooks–Free Off Site Backup

Free Screen Sharing Makes Helping Your CPA Clients More Efficient








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