CPA Practice Advisor - 28

TECHNOLOGY IN PRACTICE

Tax Process Debrief Checklist

AS ANOTHER APRIL 15 passes, the opportunity arises to look back at what went well and
what didn't, and to identify opportunities for improvement for firm members to research,
pilot, and implement during the summer extension season. Many firms have a formal tax
season debrief process where they survey tax team members with a series of meetings
and questions, but an additional variation to consider is to actually walk through the

ROMAN H. KEPCZYK, CPA.CITP

Director of Consulting
Xcentric, LLC.
roman.kepczyk@cpapracticeadvisor.com

production process in detail and discuss bottlenecks and propose alternatives.
Below we identify a number of
tax process opportunities/questions
for firms to consider during their
debrief process. We also highlight
specific survey findings that are
trending according to the 2019 CPA
Firm Management Association
(CPAFMA) Digitally Driven survey
(https://bit.ly/2vEcx2s), so firms can
see how they stack up against peers

28

MAY 2019 ■

and prioritize projects for future
implementation. After conducting
an overview of the busy season, we
suggest firms inquire and discuss in
detail each item below.
Managing Workf low: How
well did the firm's workflow
tools manage production
processes this year? Good
workflow applications allow

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every firm member to know the
status of work, what is assigned,
and how the firm is doing overall.
By default, this means utilizing a
digital tool that is updated in real
time, which the CPAFMA survey
found 79% of firms had implemented
prior to this busy season. If workflow
is not functionally optimally, is it
because firm personnel need train-

ing, the application was not installed
properly, or does the firm need to
adopt a new application?
Data Accumulation: How well
did client source document
ingress work this year? Was
there a difference in efficiency
between physical paper and
digital file accumulation that would
warrant a change in process or
training of clients?
Document Review: Firms
should track the receipt of
client documents within
workflow including the process to review for completeness and management of missing,
requested items. Did the document
review process create any issues
or bottlenecks this year and were
the appropriate level of personnel
assigned to each client?
Source Document Scanning:
How well did our scanning
processes work this year? Did
we have adequate personnel
and equipment resources?
The CPAFMA survey found that 76%
of firms utilized an application to
organize and bookmark client source
documents, which promotes adherence to a single firm standard.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR): More than half
(56%) of firms in the CPAFMA
survey were also using an
OCR tool to capture data from
client source documents and inputting the data into the tax return. Is
the firm using OCR tools and how
could this process be improved?
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