Sole Practitioner Accounting and Tax Firm Vault and Folder Structure
Sole practitioner accounting and tax firms who use contract tax preparers to prepare client tax returns can use SmartVault to securely store documents and to share documents with clients, contract staff, and internal firm employees.
Based on the way you want to work, you can create your vault and folder structure in one of the following ways:
• Create a vault for each client. This model might work best for you if you have a smaller number of clients, such as 30 or less.
• Create an alphabetized set of client vaults, such as a Clients A - H vault, a Clients I- P vault, and a Clients Q - Z vault, or a Clients A - E vault, a Clients F - J vault, a Clients K - O vault, a Clients P - T vault, and a Clients U - Z vault. Then in each set of alphabetized client vaults, create a folder for each client. This model might work best for you if you have a large number of clients.
• Create a create a vault for each contract tax preparer, such as a Preparer 1 - Name vault, Preparer 2 - Name vault, Preparer 3- Name vault, and so on. Then in each contract tax preparer vault, create a folder for each client, such as Apple Appliances and Deepwater Diving. This model might work best for you if you assign clients to specific preparers.
In each client vault or folder, create subfolders for each yearly tax return prepared for the client, and then additional subfolders under each yearly tax return where the client uploads documents for the tax preparer to process, and where the tax preparer places copies of the completed tax return for the client to review and download.
You can also create internal firm vaults for each of the different functional areas in your firm, such as HR, marketing, finance, and legal, to use to securely store and share documents. If your firm uses QuickBooks as its accounting software package and you use SmartVault to electronically attach documents to QuickBooks entries, you can also create an internal firm vault to store your QuickBooks company file.
If you choose to create a vault for each client, your vault and folder structure could be similar to the following example:
If you choose to create a set of alphabetized vaults, your vault and folder structure could be similar to the following example:
If you choose to create a set of vaults by preparer, your vault and folder structure could be similar to the following example:
