SafeSend Gather Organization
For any firms that are utilizing SafeSend Gather - what are you doing to stay organized? This is our first year so we have multiple clients who are calling asking for paper organizer or want to send us in their source docs physically. We are keeping track of everyone asking for paper organizers in an excel for our tracking purposes to help us next year, even though they went through Gather they are not good candidates for it going forward. But, when it comes to clients who are getting through the organizers but want to send in physical source documents we're not sure the best way to keep track of them. We use GoFileRoom for our workflow processes and there is not, currently, an option to list that this client went through Gather so we can find their organizer in SafeSend. The admin team handles everything SafeSend related as well as client source documents.
Any tips on how other firms are handling the switching between mediums and platforms would be greatly appreciated!
Comments
We have an organizer WF in FirmFlow. The steps in it are essentially Not Started and Complete. I like to make a routing note when routing that to Complete. ex. "Sent via SS on 1/22/25" or "Sent via Paper on 1/22/25", "Organizer Set to None" (then we cancel instead of complete), etc.
Alternatively, you could make a step in your Tax Return WF for Organizer Sent and then do the same type of routing note.
We have been with SafeSend for 6 years and each year the client push back gets less. We send out a client email blast at the beginning of the year letting them know when to expect electronic organizers and let them know they can contact the office if they still prefer paper - we don't track from year to year because we want to keep pushing towards electronic. They are always hesitant at first. We also found that once people got used to safesend with returns, they were more open to safesend organizers the next year. We use both GoFileRoom and safesend. Our plan this year with gather is to upload the paper docs we receive in gather so we can better track the number of submitted docs and if enough is in to start work - then the whole package from gather is downloaded to put in gfr for retention/transmission to sureprep
We have an administrator log in daily and download the documents to a shared drive (each client has their own folder), and then we use our tracking software (Financial Cents) to track if it is all in, or still waiting, or if we submitted it to SurePrep. All the folders in the shared drive is where we keep all the downloaded documents, EL, organizer, etc.
We use UltraTax and in Setup / Client Communications you can choose how the client likes to receive their Organizer (and engagement letter) delivery, and the Return delivery. When I print out the ELs each year, whoever wants paper, it prints to paper. Whoever wants SafeSend, I print it to PDF and upload it. As far as the documents being sent in electronically and/or dropped off, we keep client folders on a shared drive until all documents have arrived. We also make lots of note in the Notes section of Practice CS.
Please sign in to leave a comment.