Chasing the signature that is holding up a filing
Everything is finished. The return sits in a queue waiting on Form 8879 while the client is somewhere without a printer. Signing that form remotely carries an identity check built from questions about old addresses and past car loans, and a client who fails it a few times drops back to a handwritten signature and a scan. The chase needs to know which returns are complete but unsigned, and which channel that client actually answers. A text reaches somebody the eleventh email did not.
Everything is finished and the return still cannot be filed, because the signature authorisation has not come back.
The trial balance is the centre of this work, and most of the repeated labour is getting source material into a shape the trial balance can accept. Statements arrive as PDFs, receipts arrive as photographs, and bank data arrives through an aggregator that authenticates against a bank which changes its login flow without notice.
- DocuSign
- UltraTax CS
- Gmail
- Twilio
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if the return is not genuinely final and the request would go out against a draft. An authorisation form sent early creates a second version of the return in the memory of the client, and every correction after that has to be explained rather than simply made.
The constraint that shapes it
Tax return information is governed by a statute that makes disclosure or use outside preparation a criminal matter, with a parallel civil penalty, and consent has to be obtained in a prescribed form naming the recipient and the purpose. More on how this sector works.
A list of things that are missing, worked until it is empty. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Chasing a compliance file to complete
- Chasing a referral fee through to a closing you cannot see
- Asking for the replenishment before the retainer runs to zero
- Chasing medical records until the set is complete
- Getting a deposition on the calendar of every party
- Chasing the warranty credit the distributor has not issued
- How do I track which returns are waiting on a signed Form 8879?
- Why does my client keep failing the identity questions on an e-signature?
- Can I send a text reminder for an unsigned e-file authorisation?
- What do I do when a taxpayer cannot pass knowledge based authentication?
- How do I see every return that is finished but not yet signed?
Back to accounting and bookkeeping, or see how this is priced and scoped.