Question 1

What is the best way for CPA firms to collect tax documents from clients?

Accepted Answer

The approach that holds up through a busy season is a single secure portal where the firm requests specific documents, the client uploads them in one place, and both sides can see what is still outstanding. The alternative most firms fall back on — email threads plus a spreadsheet — breaks down precisely when volume is highest, because there is no shared view of what has arrived and no record of who was asked for what. Altiro is built around that shared checklist: you request the documents a return needs, the client sees exactly what is missing, and reminders go out without anyone on your team writing them.

Question 2

How can CPA firms reduce time spent chasing clients for documents?

Accepted Answer

Most of the chasing is not one big task, it is dozens of small ones: noticing a document has not arrived, writing the follow-up, remembering to write it again a week later. Automating the reminder is what removes the work, because it takes the noticing and the remembering off a person. The second change is giving the client a checklist rather than a request, so they can see what is outstanding without emailing to ask. Altiro does both — outstanding items are visible to the client, and reminders send on a schedule you set.

Question 3

What should a CPA firm look for in a client portal?

Accepted Answer

Five things worth checking before you commit. Whether clients can use it without being walked through it, since every confused client becomes a support call for your staff. Whether the firm can see what is outstanding across all clients at once, not one client at a time. Whether documents are encrypted in transit and at rest, and whether each firm's data is isolated from every other firm's. Whether reminders are automatic or something a person has to trigger. And what onboarding actually costs in time and money — setup fees and long implementations are common in this category and are worth asking about directly.

Question 4

Is email a secure way to collect tax documents from clients?

Accepted Answer

Email is a poor fit for tax documents, for two reasons. Messages are typically stored unencrypted on mail servers and on every device that syncs the mailbox, and attachments containing Social Security numbers, W-2s and bank statements end up scattered across inboxes with no way to retract them. Beyond security, email gives you no record of what was requested or what is still missing, so the firm ends up rebuilding that state by hand every season. A portal keeps documents encrypted in transit and at rest, keeps them in one place per client, and keeps the request list authoritative.

Question 5

What is a client document collection portal for CPA firms?

Accepted Answer

It is a secure website your clients log into to send you the documents a return needs. The firm creates a request listing the specific items required, the client uploads them, and both sides see the same list of what has arrived and what has not. Better ones add intake forms that gather client information up front, automatic reminders for outstanding items, and a single dashboard showing every client's progress. The purpose is to replace the email-and-spreadsheet method with one place where the state of every engagement is visible.

Question 6

How does automated document collection help during tax season?

Accepted Answer

Tax season compresses a year of document collection into a few weeks, and it is the follow-up that scales badly — the same firm handling four times the clients has to send four times the reminders, by hand, while also preparing returns. Automating collection changes what your team spends the season doing: the request list, the reminders, and the tracking of who has responded all run without a person driving them, so staff time goes to preparation and review. It also means nothing is silently missed, because outstanding items stay visible instead of living in someone's memory.

Collecting client documents: common questions