Client intake and task tracking for a small accounting firm

The organizer asks what you need to prepare a return. Intake asks whether you should open a file at all, and what you just agreed to do. Mix them and you get a prospect filling out a 1040 questionnaire before they have signed, or a signed client with no EIN on file.

• Intake happens once per new client or new entity, and again only when the service changes.
• The organizer happens every year for tax work, built from last year's return. See how to get clients to send tax documents on time.
• The engagement letter sits between them. No organizer, no books, no advice, until it is signed.

If a prospect wants a "quick look" at a notice or a sale, that is still work. Document it. Do not hide it inside a half finished intake form.

Keep the public form short enough that a person will finish it. Collect the rest on a call, then type it in yourself. Required on the form is the set you cannot open a record without.

AICPA's automation write up treats the form as the trigger: map fields into CRM, billing and document storage, then send the welcome. Test it with a dummy submission before a real prospect hits it. (How to build automations in your small firm)

AICPA's Annual Tax Compliance Kit treats an engagement letter as the contract that sets the services you will provide. The sample letters and the terms and conditions addendum were built with CNA, the endorsed underwriter of the AICPA Professional Liability Insurance Program. AICPA tells you to have counsel review them, and to consider your own carrier. The kit includes separate letters for a 1040, an 1120-S, a 1065 and other return types, plus a consulting letter when the work is not a return. Use the letter that matches the work. A 1040 letter does not cover bookkeeping. (Annual Tax Compliance Kit)

The AICPA Professional Liability Insurance Program has a plain warning: a new client, or extra work that sits under different standards, needs a letter. Extra work that takes real time or could matter, such as year end planning, needs a letter. A short addendum or email can cover a minor add on (another state return, a notice reply) if it states the request, your response, the fee, and that the original terms still apply. Texts are a bad place for that. (Do I really need a new engagement letter for that?)

Put this on the board as a gate, not a courtesy:

• No books, no organizer, no "quick research," until the letter for that service is signed.
• A second entity is a second letter, even when the owner is the same person.
• If they ask for something new mid year, stop and write. The board column is Scope change, not a private Slack.

One board for new work. Recurring tax and CAS jobs live on their own boards after this one is done. Columns are stages. Each card has an owner, a date, and an exit rule.

Stage 6 is where this board hands off to document collection or to the CAS close. Do not run those jobs as subtasks hiding on an intake card. If the firm is on TaxDome, the job that starts after Signed is the TaxDome client onboarding pipeline.

AICPA lists the onboarding automations that are worth building: create the record in CRM, billing and document storage, create the folder structure, send a standard welcome, notify the team, generate the engagement letter and send it through a secure channel. Alerts when the letter is signed belong in the same family. (How to build automations in your small firm)

Do those. Do not automate the yes. The owner still decides fit, fee and whether the second LLC is in scope.

• Form submit creates the prospect record and a card in Inquiry.
• When the owner marks yes, create the draft letter from the right template and move the card to Engagement sent.
• When the letter is signed, create billing, folders and the portal invite.
• When access is confirmed, create the first document request or the first CAS close card, then move intake to Live.
• A person still writes the fee, picks the letter, and reads anything odd on the form (related party, prior IRS trouble, "we think we are a hobby").

Illustrative. A six person firm takes six new clients in January: two 1040s, two S corps that want tax only, one bookkeeping plus tax, one "can you just look at this notice."

The notice is the one that causes claims when nobody writes it down. The insurance article's point is that the extra research needs a paper trail, not a memory of a phone call. (Do I really need a new engagement letter for that?)

Download the intake board. It has the form fields, the seven stages, owner, exit rule, and a row you can copy for each new client. Fill dates from the sent folder and the signature log, not from a meeting.