Yes!  We would greatly appreciate it if you would call us or email us to let us know that you will be handling your needs through a different service or provider.  We promise not to make it awkward; we may be sad for a moment, but we just want to support you!  Letting us know will:

• Prompt us to remove you from our contact list so you won't receive any pesky reminders from us or messages asking for information.
• Support your move by allowing us to make sure you have all necessary prior-year information.
• Ensure we don't file an extension for you because we haven't heard from you and don't want you to get assessed any penalties.

The AICPA list of best practices for accounting/tax Firms encourages engagement letters on all client projects. But even more than that, we believe that it's a good internal policy to communicate with our clients, and we use our Engagement Letter to update you on anything new that we may have rolling into the next tax season. Although Engagement Letters are usually boring and full of legal jargon, we do our best to minimize the boring bits and maximize the stuff that really matters.

As part of our company policy, we require a payment method on file. You can choose an ACH payment method or use your credit card, whichever is easier for you. Once work is complete, you will receive an invoice from us and can choose to pay using a different payment method, OR we will use the payment method on file based on your preferences.

If an invoice is paid twice, you have two options. 1) The Firm can refund the overpayment less the credit card fee, or 2) The Firm can retain the overpayment as a credit on your account.

The Firm invoices for all work on the 1st and 15th of the month. So, your Work in Progress invoice is due even though the tax return or accounting work may not be completed yet. If we know that your project is close to completion, we will typically skip the Work in Progress invoice to save you the hassle of dealing with two invoices.

The IRS messes up a lot! Also, we're only human, and mistakes happen. March and April are a little hectic around here! Finally, some clients know that they will not file by April 15th and would prefer to extend regardless. Because of these three scenarios, as a courtesy to ALL our clients, we extend both individual and business entities free of charge. We typically start filing extensions in February/March. We view extensions as a type of "currency" with the IRS. They do not hurt you; they are a way to let the IRS know that you are aware of deadlines and intend to file your tax returns in a timely manner. Just because we extend you does not necessarily mean that we will not be filing your taxes by the original deadlines.

We require that you deliver your source documents to us at least one month prior to the deadline for your tax return. This allows us to better plan our workload, protect our team from burnout, ensure we do our best work, AND prioritize our client relationships. Our team works overtime during tax season, and having all the necessary source documents can sometimes be a struggle. Therefore, we prioritize clients who provide all the required information and do our best to complete their returns by the deadline. For all clients who provide the majority of the necessary documents for filing, we strive to complete their work as efficiently as possible, provided that requests for missing information are responded to in a timely manner. For all clients we don't hear from, we make a good-faith effort to contact them and will file an extension unless we've confirmed that they've decided to use another service. If a client brings necessary documents in after our cut-off dates and closer to the deadlines, we will do our best but will most likely be unable to file by the deadline. In such cases, those clients will receive an extension.

We have found that sometimes clients think that they are the only ones who bring us their documents after our internal cutoff deadline; unfortunately, that is not the case. If too many people bring in their documents after our internal deadlines and still expect us to file by the original due date, we have to ask our staff to work up to 80+ hours a week to get work out. So, bringing in your documents after our internal deadline costs us more to complete. We then pass those costs on to you.

We prefer to work with QuickBooks Online; however, as Intuit only supports the most recent three years of QuickBooks Desktop, we have made a difficult decision to work only with those supported versions. If you provide a QuickBooks Desktop file that is older than this range, we will restore your backup to the most recent version of QuickBooks Desktop in order to complete the work needed. We will NOT be able to provide you with a corrected backup copy unless you are willing to upgrade. Alternatively, we are willing to provide you with the reports you need to enter the changes that were necessary into your version, OR if we are able to log into your system remotely, we will gladly make the corrections for you. This time will be billed at our normal hourly rates.