CPA Trendlines

… On a CD platter, that is. One St. Louis CPA takes his clients a step closer to paperless.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Every year after tax season, Joe Eckelkamp convenes a full-day off-site “debriefing day” with the staff of his St. Louis CPA firm. “We discuss what we did right, did wrong, want to change or want to keep the same,” he says.

At last year’s meeting, they decided to reduce the paper processed in the office and to enhance the client’s tax-return package with paperless alternatives. Indeed, all but five of the firms were e-filing.

Eckelkamp’s tax prep package, one of the market leaders, already provided more than enough paperless capability. But he wanted to move slowly, adopting a three-year plan to go paperless with clients, whether that meant online, e-mail, PDF, CD or some new media yet to be discovered.

This year, for the 2006 filing season, Phase 1 was launched.Much to his relief, and some surprise, a lot of clients are loving it. For one partnership with a 1,500-page return (including the k-1s), the client said, “You mean I can avoid all that paper? Super!”

The firm had already been e-mailing tax returns in PDF to corporate clients for their review and to third parties like lenders. “And that was very well received,” Eckelkamp says.

So for 2006, Eckelkamp’s tax season organizer transmittal letter told clients that they would be getting their tax returns on CD-ROMs in addition to the traditional printout ? unless they requested otherwise.

The reaction? About a dozen people refused the CD offer and about a quarter of all clients reacted, Eckelkamp says, “with something close to ‘that would be cool.’ And once we tell them how they might use the electronic copy later themselves,” he added, “the acceptance rate goes way up.”

The rest of the client list has yet to be heard from and Eckelkamp will be surveying all clients this summer for their preferences. But next year, Eckelkamp hopes to tell clients to choose one or the other medium, or he’ll provide both “for a small surcharge.” In fact, he’s hoping to save enough money on the processing that he can offer a discount to paperless clients.

At the same time, he’s also planning on offering to scan and store all source documents and returns, available anytime to clients through his Web site.

For those clients who wanted to preview a preliminary return, Eckelkamp e-mailed it to them in PDF, prominently marked “draft”. Once the client cleared the return, Eckelkamp’s team ran a final review, and started the final assembly: a paper printout, burn the CD, check the CD and package in preprinted tax return folders, already marked with how the client wants to receive the product.

So far, so good. “We have not received any complaints or mismatches, as yet,” Eckelkamp says, adding: “?knock on wood.”

[First published by the AICPA]

Posted June 19, 2006