Tax season creates two major time sinks for firms: collecting information from clients and entering that information into your tax system.
This release addresses the first. It also lays the foundation for reducing the second in a future release planned for December.
What's Included in This Release
Pulling Client Details from ProConnect
SmartVault now has a deeper integration with ProConnect Tax Online, allowing SmartRequestAI to pull static client information directly from ProConnect and use it to prefill and customize the SmartRequest questionnaire.
The information pulled from ProConnect includes:
- Demographic information, such as name, DOB, SSN, and other applicable fields.
- Dependent demographic information, including applicable dependent details.
- Financial information. SmartRequestAI now looks at which income and deduction sources appeared in the prior-year return in ProConnect and pre-selects the matching income and deduction categories in the questionnaire.
Note: The examples above are not an exhaustive list of the information available through the integration.
Pulling this information directly from ProConnect means your firm will not need to already have a tagged prior-year 1040 stored in SmartVault in order to pull data into SmartRequestAI.
Nearly 150 fields in the SmartRequest questionnaire will be automatically prefilled with your clients' information already available in ProConnect, whether you send SmartRequests individually or in bulk. This reduces the amount of information your clients need to enter themselves.
Previously, the SmartVault and ProConnect integration was limited to routing documents to the appropriate vault.
With this release, client information can be pulled directly from ProConnect into a SmartRequest questionnaire, including for clients who are new to SmartVault, as long as the client exists in ProConnect and has been linked via the Client Matching Tool.
Before You Start: To pull client details from ProConnect Tax Online, make sure that:
- Your ProConnect account is connected to your SmartVault account. Without this connection, client details can’t be pulled from ProConnect. Not sure how? See the Client Matching Tool guide.
- Your clients are in SmartVault. Need to add several clients at once? You can bulk import your ProConnect client list using a CSV file. See Importing Clients from a CSV File.
Preparing and Sending a SmartRequest
See how it works:
Locate the client in Intuit ProConnect.
Go to the DocRequest sidebar and create a SmartRequest
- Confirm the Client IDs match.
- Create the SmartRequest.
What Data Transfers
Here's an example of what transfers when a client, John Smith, already exists in ProConnect. The fields shown below aren't exhaustive; they're a small sample of the static identity fields that carry over from ProConnect into SmartRequestAI. John's demographic and dependent information carries over directly, so he only needs to confirm what's already there.
For financial information, this release pre-selects the income types that applied to John last year, such as W-2 or rental income, so he doesn't have to remember and select them himself. The actual prior-year figures behind those income types remain blank in the SmartRequest questionnaire for now. This same ProConnect integration will expand in December to include prior-year data (see Coming in December below), making those figures visible so John can decide whether they're still applicable.
In ProConnect, the client info tab shows John Smith's name, SSN, Occupation, and DOB.
In ProConnect, the Dependents sidebar shows James Smith.
In ProConnect, Income shows W-2, Interest, Dividend, and Rental and Property Income
- Demographic Information.
- Dependent Information.
- Financial Information.
New to SmartRequestAI?
If your firm works in ProConnect but hasn't adopted SmartRequestAI, or isn't on SmartVault at all, here's what this means for you: your clients spend less time filling out intake forms, since their information pulls directly from ProConnect into the SmartRequest questionnaire. Starting in December, SmartRequestAI can also push completed questionnaire data straight back into ProConnect, saving your team the time of entering it by hand.
See SmartRequestAI in action with a quick walkthrough.
Using Lacerte? These same capabilities are coming to you in December. Learn what’s coming for Lacerte.
Expand All Returns to the Windows Desktop Client
As a firm user, you can now enable Expand All in the Windows Desktop Client to instantly view every subfolder and document in each vault. Expand All is off by default, and enabling it may degrade performance for large accounts. To turn it on, deselect the Opt Out of Expand All functionality checkbox in your SmartVault User Settings.
The Benefit to Your Firm: Expand All was previously removed to protect application performance. Since then, many firms have told us they rely on it to quickly locate older documents and see at a glance whether a folder contains data. Based on that feedback, it's back.
Enabling Expand All
See how it works:
- From the SmartVault Launchpad select SmartVault User Settings.
- In the pop-up under the advanced tab deselect Opt Out of Expand All functionality.
Coming in December
The capabilities below are not part of this release. They are planned for December, ahead of the 2027 tax season.
Pulling Prior-Year Data from ProConnect
The December release will expand the client data from ProConnect available in SmartRequestAI.
Unlike the static client information included in this release, which is automatically prefilled into the questionnaire, prior-year tax data will be presented below the applicable questionnaire field. This expansion will bring nearly 290 additional prior-year data fields into SmartRequestAI.
Your clients can then choose to:
- Use the prior-year information, or
- Enter new information
This gives clients a starting point while allowing them to easily update information that may have changed since the prior year. In the example below, a client who paid independent contractors last year sees that amount beneath the question and can choose to use it again or enter a new amount.
Push SmartRequestAI Data to ProConnect
The December release will introduce the ability to push completed SmartRequest questionnaire data directly into ProConnect to create a draft client return.
Data from all SmartRequest fields will be pushed into ProConnect. This includes information such as demographics, dependents, income, deductions, and business details like contractor payments.
Today, firms can use SmartRequestAI to collect client information, but that information still needs to be manually entered into ProConnect. This new capability will allow you to move that data directly from SmartRequestAI into ProConnect, significantly reducing the time and effort required to get collected client information into your tax system.
This represents a major expansion of what SmartRequestAI can do for your firm: not only collecting the information you need from clients, but helping move that information directly into your tax workflow.
This future capability addresses the second major source of manual work in tax preparation: entering collected client information into your tax system.
Lacerte Integration for Automating Client Intake
In December, Lacerte will receive the same capabilities described above for ProConnect in a single release: the ability to pull static client information and prior-year data into SmartVault, and to push SmartRequestAI data to Lacerte. Unlike ProConnect, where these capabilities are rolling out across two releases, Lacerte will get everything at once.
Why this matters: If your firm uses Lacerte, the December release will bring SmartRequestAI’s full capability set to you in one step. You’ll be able to pull static client data and prior-year data from Lacerte to reuse or update, and push completed SmartRequest questionnaires straight back into Lacerte to create a draft client return with no manual data entry. You’ll get all of it at once, without the staged rollout ProConnect firms are seeing across these two releases.
Release Summary
Available now:
- Pull static client identity information from ProConnect into SmartRequestAI.
- No tagged prior-year 1040 required for this information.
- Expand All in the Windows Desktop Client.
Coming in December:
- Additional prior-year ProConnect data displayed below the applicable questionnaire fields.
- Option to reuse prior-year data or enter new data for the current year.
- Push questionnaire data from SmartRequestAI to ProConnect.
- Full Lacerte integration: pull static client information and prior-year data from Lacerte, and push SmartRequestAI questionnaire data back to Lacerte.