Sounds like a lot of fiddling to little gain, and potential for "gotcha" moments down the line.  Okay, they are new clients to your firm.  You file them from your firm.  Done.

Without jumping through a ton of hoops, you could do things like create duplicates of your Preparer info lines further down in the list, and use those for the new clients coming over.

For example, your existing staff records are Preparers # 1-99.

You create copies in the 201 to 299 range, exactly the same info (1 == 201, 99 == 299).

  Entries for normal clients are in 1-99.

  Entries for clients from that firm are in 201-299.  Same name/# at bottom of 1040, but you can see at a glance how many are from each company.

If you take on more firms' clients you can do the same again in 301-399, etc.

Robert Kirk

LTUGtools