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
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How To Setup Your Online Accounting System
1. Go to your firm’s website.
2. Enter your email address and password, then click on the button labeled “Go” found at the top of any page…
…or click on the link labeled “Login” at the very bottom of any page.
3. Now enter the login credentials for your Firm Administrators.
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