What do you use "input sheets" for?

[Karl]

I feel like I should know this and have possibly been underutilizing Lacerte all these years, but I'm going to fight past my Chris Pratt meme of "at this point, I'm afraid to ask" and finally ask.

What do you all use the "input sheets" that these checkboxes affect? Are they for staff data entry, review...? Why would or wouldn't someone want to use them?

[Strongsilence-CPA]

You asked what I thought of asking but didn't. 

[Amajane285]

We use them to make sure our CRM is up to date with any change of email, address or phone number that might have been updated during the tax return preparation. They get printed after a return has been efiled/accepted and a support staff compares them to the record in the CRM. 

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Hi, would you share about how many clients you have?

[Amajane285]

around 4,000.

[Karl]

Since I'm not sure which one of us you were asking, I have around 110 1040s and a dozen S-Corps.

[Karl]

This was helpful thank you! That's a good cross-check to do/have!

So since we're much smaller than your firm, I don't think that stage adds as much value for us. Our process is to ask for best contact info via our organizer in TaxDome each year. When my admin processes the organizer, she updates contact info in Lacerte and TaxDome before putting it in my prep queue.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Tax organizers and gathering information has become challenging so I like learning about successful alternatives.  I am about the same workload as Karl.

[Amajane285]

Yes, we tried to do it on the front end several years ago but things kept getting missed.  We have several different areas to update, 1. CRM, 2. Lacerte, 3. Quickbooks for invoicing, 4. SmartVault/client Portal (if email Changes), and 5. send it to our retirement/investment advisors if the client uses those services from us.  So after tax prep/season makes the most sense for our business model.

[George4Tacks]

I have used input sheets as a sorta kinda organizer for my very less than organized S-Corp, Partnership & Corporation. It has last year's numbers and a place for them to put their less than creative this year numbers. At least they were not my numbers. 

Back in the day - Input sheets were cut & pasted for the K-1 input on the 1040's. A very organized Lacertian from Sebastopol California submitted them to Larry & his cohorts and it showed up as an input sheet the next year. 

Oh boy, does that bring back memories. CP/M, 5.25 inch DS/DD floppy disks, Kaypro, Printronix Line Printer, 3 part pin fed carbon printer paper, a machine to separate the carbon paper out, with later NCR paper we had a burster, to separate the sheets, a huge table to collate the 3 copies of the tax return (praying Mike didn't get Beatrice's Schedule A, since not everyone got every form), leaving at 2 in the morning to be back at 8, ... Ah! the memories. It did beat the cost and time lag of a service bureau (send UPS on Monday, get it back on Wednesday, send corrections on Thursday, ...)