Understanding Engagement Letters in Lacerte

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What is an engagement letter?

An engagement letter is one designed to reconnect with your client for the upcoming year. Many preparers will send these out in the fall, to ensure their contact infomation for clients is still accurate.

Some preparers will also include a signature line and request the client sign and return it to confirm they will be returning to the preparer for the upcoming tax season.

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How to send an engagement letter?

There are several different ways to send an engagement letter. Many firms use fuctions available in Lacerte to send the organizers, but some also use outside solutions.

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As part of the Organizer:

When creating and sending your organizer, you are able to include an engagement letter. By default the engagement letter is suppressed in the organizer options. To select an engagement letter:

1. Go to Tools ⮕ Organizer ⮕ Print Paper Organizer
2. Select the Complete or Condensed organizer
3. Select Organizer Settings
4. Select the desired Engagement Letter from the dropdown.
5. Select OK

If using the Partial Organizer, or E-Orgnaizer: While going through the process, you will see a Document Options section that will let you select an Engagement Letter.

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Using Intuit Link:

If you use Link, you can include the Engagement Letter alongside the Quesionnaire and Checklist for the items you send to your client. The engagement letter will be available for them to view in their To Do items, with the option to download it as a PDF.

When completing the item in Link, the taxpayer will be prompted to type in their name, and either Accept or Decline the letter.

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Using eSignature:

Due to firms commonly requesting the taxpayers to sign and return the engagement letter, we have seen firm use eSignature to send them the engagement letter. Due to the letter varying by firm, eSignature isn't able to automatically generate the form like it is with e-file signature forms. To send an Engagement Letter using eSignature:

1. Create a PDF of the Engagement Letter
   • If you created the Engagement Letter in the Organizer, you can print a Partial Organizer to PDF and select only the Engagement Letter to include.
2. Select the desired client on the client list
3. Select the E-File menu
4. Select Intuit eSignature
5. Select Request eSignature
6. Uncheck all checkboxes for the signature forms
7. Select Next
8. Select Engagement Letter from the Select document type dropdown
9. Select Browse, and browse to your PDF
10. Select Next, and follow the wizard to send the e-Signature.

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Other methods:

Some firms prefer to use other services for managing their communication with clients. This can be functions of a client portal service they use, or can be an outside email service such as Mailchimp.

When using these outside solutions, you may want to export the client information from Lacerte to generate a list of client names, email addresses, and other key information. For information for exporting client information, see this article.

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How do you create an engagement letter?

Engagement letters can be created in an outside program such as Microsoft Word or Google Sheets, or from inside Lacerte. When creating the letter inside of Lacerte, you can utilize keywords similar to when editing the client letter. When creating the Engagement Letter in Lacerte, there are two locations for the engagement letter.

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In the Organizer

The traditional location for the Engagement Letter is in the Organizer.

1. Select Tools ⮕ Organizer
2. Select Edit Documents
3. Select Engagement Letter
4. Select the desired letter, or create a new one
   • Single Window Default has a layout to match our Single Window mailing envelopes
   • Double Window Default has a layout to match our Double Window mailing envelopes.

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In Intuit Link

With the addition of Link, a second location was created for Engagement Letters specific to Link.

1. Select a client from the client list
2. Select Tools ⮕ Intuit Link ⮕ Invite client to Intuit Link
3. Select Edit under the Engagement Letter section
4. Select the desired letter from the dropdown, or use Add to create a new one.
   • When first accessed, Link would copy the Engagement Letters from the ones created in the Organizer.

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Outside of Lacerte

Some firms prefer to use outside programs to generate the Engagement Letter to leverage additional functions. While Lacerte offers the ability to generate Engagement Letters, it does not have all the same features as a dedicated document creation program such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Microsoft Office is able to perform a Mail Merge to combine an Excel document of client information such as names and addresses, with your document created in Word.

While Google Docs does not appear to natively support it, there are addons available to perform a mail merge.

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