Digital Grocery Bag of Receipts

[dascpa]

For year's I've stated the pros and cons of client portals. Yes, I can handle clients all over the world. Yes, I have fewer meeting. but I also cannot control when stuff comes in. I cannot control bad scanners, crooked pictures, etc.

For those of us old to remember clients bringing in a grocery bag with all their receipts, it's gotten worse, just in the cloud. Every doctor's bill, every prescription, every weekly daycare receipt is now uploaded in a separate file - no matter how many times I tell them I want summary lists only. You keep the receipts, I get the summary. I don't care that you're on blood pressure medicine and anti-depressants.

Client uploads over 900 one-page files. So I tell him the tax prep bill is going from $300 to somewhere between $3,000-$4,000.  Yup, I'm the bad guy. I just love clients....

[IRonMaN]

I don't use client portals, but a couple of days ago I had the equivalent of the grocery bag drop off. I spent about a half hour to find that the only applicable tax documents were four W-2s.  There were two 1098s in the pile but they totaled just a little more than a buck 50.  But the good news is, this is the client that shared their colonoscopy pics last year, so I guess we have a slight improvement since we didn't include any personal pics this year.

[Just-Lisa-Now-]

I hate virtual clients with a passion.  Takes me 2-3 times longer to get one of their returns completed than if the client was right here at my desk.

[rbynaker]

But at least you got to attach the colonoscopy pic to the efiled return last year, right?

[IRonMaN]

I used it as a schedule C attachment. 😀