@Jim-from-Ohio I know exactly how you feel. It's so much easier to sit down with someone, sort out the docs, and ask all the questions you need (for the most part anyway). Going back and forth is very time consuming but I learned to deal with it because that's how things were even before internet, with expats and foreign nationals having difficulties gathering documents from different parts of the world. Back then, when we had DGI's, those were mainly for shoe box returns.
I have to agree OSI is problematic. These suck in a lot of time, especially when things come in piecemeal.
In terms of docs not being legible, I can't complain too much. Like I said recently in another post, the scans and jpeg files we receive now are of relatively decent quality compared to things that got faxed over in low resolution. After a while, you get pretty good at making out those subtle differences between 5 and 6, 8 and 9, etc.
I do have to flip between screens with those uploaded documents. Marking things up is a bit more tedious than handwriting for sure and I can't denote audit trails for both source and destination like I could in a paper file. But I also save time by not having to create paper files that need to be organized and maintained whenever new documents come in. And because we no longer have any more printed copies of anything, we don't have to worry about shredding documents, draft returns, etc., and disposing of them securely. So, there are pros and cons to both systems.
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Still an AllStar
