Intuit ProConnect Tax Content “Making a Difference”

For tax Year 2015, Intuit® ProConnect™ has a mission to help accountants save time and grow their tax practice. Taking a customer-back approach, the Tax Content Group has helped make this happen by proactively acting on customer feedback gathered through various customer-facing mechanisms. At the end of the day, this feedback translates to enabling preparers to start filing returns earlier and keeping them in their workflow, free of disruptions.

Timeliness

One area of opportunity was around tax content timeliness, specifically around delivering the right tax content when needed. Prioritization principles were developed to enable teams to more easily identify critical work and dependencies that would lead to preparers filing returns earlier. As of the end of January, the tax content teams released about 300 more forms and 66 more e-filings than in tax year 2014, at this time.

Completeness

Another area the teams focused on was tax content completeness, specifically around adding new forms and e-filings that were disrupting preparer’s workflow because they were not available. For tax year 2015, the tax content teams has added more than 70 new forms and 70 e-filing types for Lacerte® and Intuit Tax Online, as well as more than 60 new forms and 60 e-filing types for ProSeries®.

Features

Finally, the development teams worked to introduce two new features that will improve preparers’ workflow by eliminating confusion, enabling early filing and saving the preparer time.

“E-File Only” Watermark (Lacerte and Intuit Tax Online only):

In previous years, some customers interpreted the “Do Not File” watermark to mean that the forms could not be filed at all, both print AND e-file. As a result, some firms were unaware that, in certain situations, they could have electronically filed a return all along. Additionally, in visits with firms and follow-up studies, it was revealed that taxpayers who handed a client tax return copy with a “Do Not File” watermark thought that the return was filed before it was ready. By replacing the “Do Not File” watermark with the “E-File Only” watermark, when the circumstance permits, it removes that confusion and avoids embarrassment and the need to explain what “Do Not File” means.

PDF Auto-Attach Capability (Lacerte only)

The PDF Auto-Attach feature will now attach forms generated by the program that are required to be part of the electronic return as a PDF.

This powerful feature works in conjunction with our extensive set of diagnostics to determine when a form attachment is required, generates that form as a PDF and includes it with the electronic return when electronically filed.

Again, all of these initiatives and features are in service to save the preparer time and allow returns to be filed earlier, while also providing a better experience to preparer’s clients.