One page organizer list of documents needed

[Tax1040]

Please consider a one page list of the documents and items needed from a client.  Many clients do not need/want to complete the organizers. We want to give them a list of all the specific W-2s, 1099s, they had last year.  A similar list is generated with the Link program but there is no way to get it as a printable list.  Other tax software offer this and I think it would be tremendously helpful. Thank you

[molewnik]

Hello, my input - what is on page 1 of this thread is perfectly good. In all honesty, it is more for the clients to have a checklist and us to have a checklist. Anyone with a Schedule C, E or F would need to be more detailed and hopefully would provide us with their ledger.

[Tax Dude_So Cal]

We are not programmers. We should not have to download "free software" to manipulate Lacerte's code. We are paying a premium for this tax software and a simple checklist should be provided as it is already in the Lacerte code. I don't understand why they are withholding this feature.

The checklist like the Pro Series example shown above would be perfect. And that is what most of us are asking for. We do not want a multi-page organizer as it can be confusing for some clients and unnecessarily wastes paper for the simpler clients. We can use the organizer for the more complex clients.

[KristineM]

I am just looking for a one page organizer that shows what a client had the year before so it can better enable them to get it to us all at once and not forget something. Client's do not like the large organizers.  They want something simple and I want something simple for them.  After one page, their attention is lost.  I agree that if they have a schedule C, E or F, that is a separate conversation. When we were on ProSeries, we used this checklist for all of our individual clients.  We can always make it a pdf.

[KristineM]

Now that we are heading into tax season, I was just wondering if there was any progress made on this?

Thank you!

[Strongsilence-CPA]

+1 for an update

If the 1-page organizer doesn't happen, what are your best practices for getting client information?

Meet in person to review?  

Additional charge for late information or discounts for early filers?

Intuit Link?  Not many of my clients like an electronic organizer. I need to promote it to more clients as I think it is worthwhile.  It has a feature to remind clients, right?

Other ideas?

[KristineM]

New software that has it is on the table for us next year.  I just don't believe they are going to get the job done, which is disappointing.  They also do not have a software feature that highlights what is missing from last year for an existing client that other software has.  Missing these options in Lacerte does leave room for errors due to missing information.  We have a person in the office that is going to try to extract the information that we are looking for.  I was checking one last time before she goes through the effort to try and make it happen.  

[Tax Dude_So Cal]

Tax season is well under way and it seems obvious we are not going to get this feature. It would be so easy for Intuit to provide since Intuit Link has exactly what we are asking for. Our office has no interest in using Intuit Link, so it seems we are stuck with either sending a "condensed" organizer (which is at a minimum 7 pages) or manually creating a list of prior-year items for clients.

[KristineM]

I couldn't agree more with this!