Honestly the organizer in Proconnect is horrible. I spend hours doing my own organizer so it looks better and has more information for my clients. I am embarrased to use the one in proconnect.
Implemented: Phased roll-out. Prior year worksheets have been released and we're continually adding improvements to this feature. Thanks again for your feedback!
Love the ability to send the organizer/questionnaire thru Intuit Link! I have had great client participation so far (much better than paper organizers) since they can complete this on their cell phone - especially younger clients. However, I spent a significant amount of time creating my own organizer template. The default template in Intuit Link is not adequate for most taxpayers.
What PTO has in Intuit Link is not an organizer but a laundry list of open questions. That wouldn't suffice and miss out a lot of details if you have clients that have moderate and complex returns.
I am very disappointed with the client organizers as well. I was hoping that ProConnect organizers similar to the Lacerte organizers which list prior year items and amounts and produce the appropriate worksheets based on the prior year returns.
The horrible organizers are the only thing that make me look at other software programs each year. ALSO not every client wants to use an online program. We need the ability to create professional and useful organizers that can be printed and mailed. Online only just isn't going to work for many many clients.
In an ideal world, I'd be able to instruct my staff to enter descriptions about what tax forms we have received each year (W2s, 1099s, etc) and then who they were from (1099-INT from First State Bank, K-1 from Scorp, receipts for charities etc) Then be able to print that organizer to a PDF so I could make additional edits if necessary.
Then for Business being able to ask for a copy of 1099s received, A/R summaries, Dec bank statements etc.
The organizer is the thing we put the most hours into by far. If ProConnect can fix that then I would expect us to stay, but otherwise I think my practice is outgrowing this software.
This is my first year with PTO (from ProSeries) but also not a fan of the organizer.
I like seeing the KPIs (progress indicators) on the Link dashboard but I don't like updating the status on questions to Complete just so I can see them as complete in the KPIs to get a quick view of the status for each client.
Many clients do not or will not match documents to their correct item in the document requests so they get added to the Unmatched only has a status of needs review - I should be able to assign the normal statuses.
Many clients don't want to answer all the questions when they don't apply or when they don't seem relevant. There should be a way for the client to indicate they have finished uploading documents and answering questions and are ready for me to prepare the return.
Anonymous
05-18-202109:26 AM
05-18-202109:26 AM
How hard could it be to integrate the organizer from Lacerte into ProConnect? This, in my opinion, is the weakest part of ProConnect. I still send customized, slimmed down packets of blank Lacerte organizers to my clients, as ProConnect's offering is a joke.
If you want Lacerte features, you have to pay Lacerte prices. If Intuit were to integrate all the good stuff from Lacerte to PTO....the prices of PTO would go up, substantially.
Anonymous
05-18-202110:50 AM
05-18-202110:50 AM
I paid for Lacerte for years, but sold my practice and only do less than 50 returns per year now. I tried Lacerte pay-per-return, but it was insanely expensive. Certainly not worth it. Adding a decent printable organizer is something that ANY professional tax software should provide. ProConnect still lacks many advantages of Lacerte, but at the price they charge for returns (or even an extension!), this is not too much to ask, and certainly would not justify a hefty price increase. With the amount of returns I do now, and even as complex as they are, I could get by with other Intuit tax software for less (some FREE) that also do not provide an organizer.
Seriously, if they took the time to create a crappy e-organizer, they could have just integrated Lacerte's organizer and been done with much better results. I would have paid an extra $5 per return for that!
We converted from Lacerte to ProConnect and the organizer is our biggest complaint. To the point we are seriously considering leaving. The ProConnect organizer should mirror the Lacerte organizers! My clients complain about not being able to get an organizer or that what they get only shows the tax income forms they had last year and does not give them the proforma for itemized deductions or rental schedules.
I have asked and complained when theTax year 2021 lacerate style blank client organizer pdf files answer was “no” for the “Lacerate” organizer to be incorporated into Proconnect every year FOR OVER A DECADE!!!
The policy change to charge for preparation of prior year returns a couple years ago rubbed salt in the wound and the SIGNIFICANT price increase this year for Proconnect is OBSCENE. Given the lousy first line support, Organizer problem mentioned above, and current price increase I always spend tome shopping and when I find an acceptable solution, I will bail unless these issues are addressed by Intuit.
Sadly, I often spend wasted hours on the phone with support while they flounder and often end up solving my own problem and teaching them about the software!
I refuse to pay the ridiculous prices for “Lacerate” and hope Intuit finally gets the memo and corrects course to fix the organizer and other problems mentioned…
For those who haven't already, please comment below the features you'd like to see prioritized as we review the functionality of the ProConnect organizers. We thank you for your time and insights!!
The e-organizer (although many of my clients don't want to have to electronically do this, they prefer paper) would be somewhat sufficient if the individual simply had tax forms to document all income or deductible expenses. However, the e-organizer is awful and does not provide any assistance for clients with Schedule C income, Schedule E rentals, itemized deductions, etc. The clients need a listing of income and expenses specifically that they had the previous year as even just a checklist of whether they have covered all of their bases. The e-organizer only says "upload all of your Schedule C income and expenses" or "upload of of your rental income and expenses for this property". The clients need the specific details/placeholders. For example, 2020 rental income $xxx,xxx with a space to enter 2021 for the same. 2020 Homeowners insurance $x,xxx and enter 2021. 2020 Repairs $xx,xxx and enter 2021. They need the previous year's numbers for a frame of reference. The Lacerte organizers were fantastic for this. Our clients are left floundering when it comes to data they have to compile themselves with no organizer/checklist since it is not reported on an IRS form. We're paying just about the same now for PTO as we were with Lacerte but getting less for it.
The organizer is absolutely unacceptable. I would be embarrassed to send it to my clients. This shouldn't be too complicated to fix. In the current form it is basically a list of documents needed.
I was told ProConnect is basically the online version of LaCerte. If that is a true statement then it shouldn't be hard to replicate the programming for that organizer into ProConnect.
1. Basic Questions about last year. Did you have cryptocurrency, get married, sell property etc.
2. An area for there current year contact information
3. Dependent information
4. Last year information should be listed for all income and expense fields
5. Income fields
6. Schedule A fields; Property taxes, Mortgage insurance, chartable contributions etc.
7. Day Care Expenses field
8. Schedule C; Income and Expenses
9. Business Use of Home
10. Auto/Mileage
11. Schedule E; Rental Income and Expenses etc.
13. Schedule D.
12. Blank area they can fill in with additional information or questions. etc. etc.
Anything that they can have on a tax return should be available on the organizer.
It should populate based on what they had last year. If they don't have a schedule C then the schedule C information shouldn't show up on there organizer. We also should have the ability to print a blank organizer.
The ProConnect organizer is very weak. It would be nice if the ProConnect organizers were similar to the Lacerte organizers which list prior year items and amounts and produces the appropriate worksheets based on the prior year returns and the organizer could be saved in pdf form. Majority of my clients don't want to upload their information, they want to compile their information with the help of the organizer. Especially clients with small businesses (sch C) or rental property (sch E), they prefer to have a form with prior year information to help them organize their current year information.
The issue I find with the PTO organizers is that they are simply not flexible. Instead of bombarding a client with a 100 question question, I use a modular approach based on topic area. For example: Child related tax deductions, and the questions are relevant. It is easier on the client to think of responses when they are shepharded through broad topics instead of zig zagging across. This is especially helpful when you need to go a second level of deeper interrogation after discovering something like passive activity during the Level 1 topic sweep.
If a client has multiple businesses, I prefer to send questions related to each business, even if repetitive.
Bottomline - we are looking for the ability to create multiple organizers. This should be higher priority, because like others, I look at other products simply because the organizer experience is horrible.
Implemented: Phased roll-out. Prior year worksheets have been released and we're continually adding improvements to this feature. Thanks again for your feedback!
One issue on this that would help a lot is for us to be able to enter in prior year returns and then print the prior year worksheet. Right now the prior year worksheets only print for efiles, but it would be very helpful if we could also print them for efile rejections, or some other market.
I have new clients in 2022 and I'd like to have my team enter in the 2021 tax return into ITO so that we can print the prior year worksheets for 2022. This would allow us to more easily onboard new clients and purchase more tax returns. I understand there may be an additional cost for this and I'm fine with that.
It would be nice to create an organizer that you can customize/condition to particular questions.
Example: Is this an MFJ return Y/N? If answered yes it populates the questions for the spouse's information questions. Instead of leaving it open and making Single/MFS/HOH clients go through questions they don't need to waste time reading.
@IntuitGabi When will this be a possibility as this request was made over a year ago and has 92 votes?
I pretty much consider prior year worksheets unusable in its current state. Will there be any improvements to batch download worksheets or anyway to make them easier to deliver to clients? Coming from the product world, I cannot understand releasing something that is not an mvp.
