AI Practice Management Takeover
Tax season is busy and often times our practice management either makes it busier or takes a back seat to the endless return prep that comes over the next couple of months. Disorganized and manual practice management processes can slow down your tax prep, or worse, result in lost clients.
Implementing automation to help reduce your time spent on things like your inbox, new client leads, and data collection can make a huge difference in a busy schedule this tax season. Tools like AI and ChatGPT can be cost-effective ways to put automation into place quickly to address your practice management needs.
Creating forms and templates is one fast and easy way to use ChatGPT and cut your administrative time. ChatGPT can create a fillable template for almost anything you can dream up. Consider asking it to create a new client intake form for a tax practitioner and then also ask for it to create individual and business return organizers and questionnaires for you. These templates can easily be imported into tools like Jotform. Jotform is a low-budget solution to automate your forms collections and the links can go right on your website or in your email signature where it helps to remind clients and prospects how to best get their information to you.
ChatGPT now syncs with a long list of apps, including Zapier, and can also give you instructions about how to use Zapier to build zaps right into your existing software and tools. Zapier can automatically create new contacts in your CRM from the forms that are filled out online, creating an automatic contact bank for you to follow up with clients more easily and leads.
Zapier has integrations for popular accounting tools like QuickBooks, Xero, Canopy, TaxDome, Dext, and Karbon. Zapier can also help track client payments easier with connections to Stripe and PayPal. Transition your inbox into an automatic workforce with a zap to Slack and generate tasks and messages directly from your emails to help better track your workflow throughout tax season.
If you’re not sure where to start, ask ChatGPT what the most popular accounting firm Zapier zaps are and for instructions on how to set them up.
The endless automation and connections can be overwhelming, especially when we’re looking at saving ourselves time instead of getting stuck in a technology hole. To stay efficient but gain some time back, try to focus on building in just three automations for tax season that mostly centered around the automatic capture of information that would normally be a manual process or take multiple communications with clients. This single step could save you hours during the busy season.
Christine Gervais
Christine Gervais is a licensed CPA, using her skills to help businesses grow and achieve their fullest potential. Christine has a Master’s degree in accounting from Southern New Hampshire University in addition to holding her CPA license for over a decade. Notably, Christine is a nationally recognized speaker providing education to other CPAs on how to best serve clients as well as instruction on a wide variety of topics for business owners on how to maximize success. Christine prides herself on the value she can bring to clients with her extensive tax knowledge and providing strategic, forward-thinking financial strategies to help clients grow. When not behind her desk, you can find Christine spending quality time with her daughter and stepson or tending to the family’s excessively loved farm animals.