Transform Your Tax Season With Tech-Driven Organizers with Kristin Delfau

Okay, so let's just get started. Uh, walk us through who you are and what you do.

Okay, hi, I'm Kristen Delpho. I am a tax practitioner of almost 20 years, and I have 2 businesses. I have my tax practice, Delpho Tax and Financial Services, and then I also have another consulting and educational business, Her Money Solutions. Because I cannot take on all the tax clients in the world that I would love to. So I'd like to teach them instead and give them back to their tax people educated and with good questions and ready to go. So that's what I've been up to. I'm also in my tax practice because as a solo practitioner, I'm constantly trying to automate and make things easier because of workflow. And Getting things out in a compressed tax season workflow is key.

So definitely. Okay, so you're handling or managing 2 businesses at the moment. Would you say the tax practice is your focus, or are you more focused on streamlining that so you can then allocate more time to the other one?

Correct. So my tax practice, I'm not growing it anymore. I have the clients I love working with. We've been working together, a lot of them, for a very long time. And I love serving them, but I don't want to grow it any larger. And I want it to be focused so that my clients are getting always the best experience as I evolve. But it also allows me in not tax season to help other people. So I really am looking to grow Her Money Solutions so I can help more people outside of just tax season and tax, you know, the tax world, because there's so much more out there with financial planning.

Yeah, definitely. And I would assume maybe, you know, just putting words in your mouth, maybe The seasonality also played a role where maybe you have very busy for a period, but then you have all this time that you maybe consider other options.

Well, yeah, it depends on the tax year, right? Because if they pass those retroactive tax laws, that just throws everything out the window. But yes, the seasonality. I try to keep my tax practice as close to in-season as possible. Now, there will be extensions because people are waiting for K-1s. or they have extenuating circumstances. But I don't like to have a practice where I have a gajillion people and I have to put half of them on extension because I can't deal with them in season because there are only 24 hours a day. So I'm trying to use, you know, the, the skills that I've gained and the knowledge I've learned to help people throughout the year.

Makes sense. Makes sense. Okay, well, we know that where tax is a big part of its document collection and building organizers. So could you walk us through how were you doing that previously? Because we're going to be talking about a little bit of your new setup, but I'm wondering, how did you do that in the past?

Yeah, well, that has changed over time. So I went into practice on my own at the end of 2008, and my first tax season was in 2009, preparing 2008 returns. And it was funny because I started that year, I did 7 tax returns. I'm like, and I, well, let's be fair, I had a very new baby also. So I'm going, how am I going to do more than 8 tax returns a year? You know, how do people do this, right? And now I do 170. So obviously there's some process improvement there. Um, and in the beginning where I come from the practice before, we had used paper organizers and they were mailed out to all clients. So that's what I did because that's what I knew. And then as technology evolved, um, I started sending people PDF organizers because then I didn't have to assemble and pay for postage and all the time that comes with that. And I started using SmartVault, which ties to my tax software, and uploading the PDFs to the portal. Clients. Some of them I still mailed out, some of my older clients who liked snail mail, so I still did that. And then with the portal, what ended up happening is people would print them out and fill them out and either mail them to me or upload them back to the portal if they were technologically advanced. And then I had people who would ask, hey, do you have a PDF fillable version? Because they didn't— maybe didn't have printers, didn't want to deal with a 30-page organizer. And a lot of times the organizer, which was printed by my tax software, would customize for them to a point. So if they didn't have a rental property last year, they wouldn't be asked rental property questions. But the problem is, is then if they bought a rental property in the meantime, it didn't ask them rental property questions. So that— it was helpful because it would ask a lot of questions that I needed answered, but it wouldn't ask some of the crucial ones that I needed answered. And I would—

Interesting.

I would have to go back to the client and ask things. It drove me crazy. It didn't have an HSA option on it. So I'd have to remember, do you have an HSA? You know, to ask them that or look on their W-2. Is there an HSA I looking for, did you have one in the past? You don't have one any— you know, you had one, but your new employer doesn't have it. So all these little pieces started adding up. And as tax law got more complicated, there were more and more pieces that weren't part of this organizer. And I found myself, my process getting messed up because there were questions that weren't being asked, or the clients were really disengaging from having to deal with this PDF organizer and they wouldn't do it. They'd answer the questions and sign the engagement letter, but then I'm still having to ask them all the questions anyway. And—

Interesting.

It just didn't— it was starting with the shift of technology. My clients' behaviors are starting to shift. And then I was finding that it just became more and more cumbersome. Like, there's got to be a better way to build something. And I have— there's a triumvirate of us, 3 tech people that we've all known each other for a very long time. And one fellow, he's like super techie. So I started picking his brain and he was using Cognito. And I'm like, interesting. This could be interesting. Let me explore.

Interesting. So it looks like effectively you were prompted by your clients to an extent and their own behavior to explore these options and influenced by your peer in this case to look into Cognito specifically. Did you consider any other options by any chance?

I did. I can't remember who they were at this point. Oh, the other thing that influenced me, I must say, is that my husband, who is really process-oriented in his job, when I told him I was really struggling with my process, he's like, Let's sit down. He's like, let's take your tax prep process from the moment you start thinking about it to the moment it's done. And we did Post-its every single step. Yes, it was painful. But then we rearranged the Post-its in the order that made sense. And we built a process map. And at each step, we looked at, is there a way to improve this? And if so, or what's the pain point? And is there a method potential for improvement? And from there, you could really start to see where the logjams were happening.

Yeah.

And we revisited it a couple years later. And I realized at At that point, the organizer was really causing me problems. And I, yeah, I did look at other systems, also some that were actually integrated into CRMs because it's like, oh, if I could get something all in one, I only have to go to one place.

Right.

But the hard part with the integrated CRMs is that the things that do everything tend to do nothing really well, in my opinion.

Yeah, we've seen that for sure.

So that's how I ended up with Cognito.

Interesting. Okay. Fair enough. Well, we'd love to see your setup. So if you are willing to share your screen and let us know how your organizers look today.

Yep. And so what I will do, I actually took my Delphi Tax one and I mocked it up to Her Money Solutions. So it's a little bit more generic for everyone. Um, let me just share my screen. Which screen? Uh, let's see here. Here we go. Can you see my screen?

I can.

Wonderful. So I can go into the build mode and show that, and then I can show it as a preview if that would help.

Yeah, definitely. Like, I've seen it from the client perspective too.

Yep. So in the build mode, I start— I really did a lot of thinking about this, and my colleague who has his built out, his is a little bit differently built out, but I did a combination. So The main goal for me with building this organizer was 2 pieces. One, to make it user-friendly for my clients so they actually answered my questions. And 2, that it follows the flow of my tax software because I want to be able to go into my tax software. On the front page, it asks all these questions, like all the demographic questions, but a lot of other things like, do you want direct deposit or refund? Do you want to have direct debit of what you owe, etc., etc.? So I built the organizer so it follows my software. So I'm not flipping around in my software to find stuff. That was a big thing. And then the other part was, and this, um, I had this colleague of mine and a couple others and also some, a couple of clients beta test it to see where they were getting stuck. And one of the most important things was to have the questions so that written in such a way so that the yes questions triggered me or the yes answers triggered me to look at it.

Mm-hmm.

Instead of yes, no, unsure, and then the yes sometimes mattered and sometimes the no mattered, just consistently answering in a consist— or consistently having it so the answers would jump out for me and matter. And so that was—

That's smart.

That was a huge thing. So I set it up so that there are certain things that are absolutely— anything with the red star, as you know, is going to be required. And we have it going through. I'm going to actually put this into preview mode so you can see what the client sees.

Awesome.

Coming up. That's very strange.

Perfect. But to summarize what you said so far, essentially you're trying to think both in terms of the client experience, but also in your own efficiency as you are going to take this information, put it into your software too.

Exactly. Because if, if it's efficient for the client and inefficient for me, then that's only helping half of us, right? So definitely we have the welcome page, and nobody usually reads the welcome page, so we tell them it's important to read it. And this, this I copied from my colleague: check this that you know you can save, because you don't want people going through this Not saving and getting mad.

Yeah.

So, you know, who are you completing this for? Because sometimes I have clients who are elderly and their kids are handling it for them with the POA and all of the things that you need to have and responsibly, right? So this is how I set this up. And sometimes I have clients who summarize— they like to write me up a little thing about what happened in their lives this year. So I gave them a place to put a personal letter of sorts. Yeah, because they're like, oh, I started a new job, or You know, I, I had 3 grandkids or whatever it is, they can tell me all about it and they're opening 529s for them. They can put that all here, but they don't have to. So they go through this and it has a lot of conditional stuff. So let's just say I, I'm going to have to fill some of this out so you can see how it works.

Okay, go for it. Here.

There you go. Make up phone number. So one of the first things is in my software, sometimes people have an IP PIN, but they forget to tell you, and then you have to go chase them for the letter.

Interesting.

So do they have— and the ones who have it, they know, right? So then here, here's the number, and they want to give me the letter. They can put it right there. Because this follows the flow of my software and their driver's licenses. Oh, and by the way, you have to move up to the team level of subscription within, with Cognito.

You—

this whole document is encrypted. So everything that they upload stays protected. And that's super important because you're having people give you things with Social Security numbers on it, right?

Right.

So definitely the whole upload process is encrypted, download process for me encrypted. And so driver's license, because we have to update the issue date and expiration date, this would trip me up all the time because I'd go to the client like, their driver's license has expired. Now I have to go chase them. The return is done.

Now you wait.

And so I don't like doing that. So driver's license, no. Were you married? Well, that opens up the whole spouse section.

Yeah. Love it.

And same thing with the driver's license and IP PIN. Did you move? Because sometimes clients move and then they forget to tell you. Where'd you move? When did you move? Oh, by the way, did you sell your primary residence? Oh, can I have that home sale document, please?

I love that, you know, you have all this conditional logic so that the client kind of only sees what they need to see, because we just kind of— the whole point.

Yeah, because that way they're answering questions that they need. How do you want your refund? Because then here's the thing. Okay, you know, oh, you're getting a refund. Oh, do you want to apply it to next year's taxes? Because last year, you know, we did do some applying. This way I don't have to go back and ask them when it's done. They've already told me. So that's huge.

Right.

It's a huge time saver for me. And sometimes they want me to direct debit it from their bank account. And they want to do it themselves. That's fine. So we pick that. By the way, did your bank information change? Because this is also for my own protection. If they change their bank account and they don't tell me, then if it goes to the wrong place, then are they going to hold me accountable for it? But I asked you, and if you say yes, it did, or unsure, it's going to ask your bank name, your accounting number, and a copy of a blank check. So, or the information so I can update it.

Perfect.

And then foreign bank account stuff. Same thing. Did you buy or mine or sell any crypto? That's a big one sometimes. And this one I start— I added in here and then I made it conditional because one of the first clients who came in this year, under $20,000 of transactions and under 200 transactions. Guess what? He got a 1099-K from PayPal for $1,500. So I— the cool thing is, is that with Cognito, as you're going through this and clients are starting to fill these out and you see a problem or something didn't work, you can fix it on the fly and it'll fix it for everyone else.

Yeah, that's something you definitely cannot do with this snail mail method, right?

No, or a PDF. What am I gonna do, go change it for every PDF? No, but I can do it here. So then with kids, so now we get people have kids, right? Do they have dependents? Yep, here they can put their information in. But if they've been with me a really long time, do I really want them typing this out every single year? No. Yes, but I'm a returning client with no new dependents to add. So you don't have to go through all those machinations, right? Do you have daycare expenses or household employees? Some people do. Some people have. And when I say household employees, I don't assume it to only be kids and nannies because again, you can have elderly clients who have round-the-clock care. They're household employees.

Yeah.

So we do that and I go through this. Hey, did you, by the way, because sometimes you have teenagers, they work. Oh, do you want to—

Side hustles, right?

Yeah, they have their side hustles, they have internships. And asking about the dependents because the parents will just throw that in there. And, you know, the kid just got a job this year, but do you want me to do the return? Because if you're going to take care of it, I'm not going to waste your time asking you. You already told me, no, I'm taking care of it myself. So we go through, you know, did you work for an employer? Did you change employers? Did you receive any paid family leave? Whatever. That's all here. And in each section— and this I did differently than my colleague. He has one spot at the end where everybody drops all their documents. I prefer to have it in each section. So what's really cool is when people upload into each section, Cognito puts it in a separate file. So all the W-2s end up in one folder, all of the 1099s end up in another folder. I don't have to sort. It's all there, which is so cool.

Do you have a way to differentiate, for example, each type of document by per client?

Yeah, so here's what's cool. And I was trying to see if I could download for you and show you. But what's really interesting is, is when the way that Cognito does it, the folders that it creates per upload section are based on this title name. So each— so I figured that out. So I retitled it because it used to say upload here, W-2s, whatever, whatever. So when the file would download, it would say upload here. So they all look the same.

Right.

Now because I put the W-2 in the beginning, I know that that folder has all the W-2s and Earn income in it, right?

And I'll show you the same now.

Mm-hmm. And so let's go into the retirement. Same thing. That retirement folder is titled Social Security and 1099-Rs.

Yeah, I see. I see what you did there. Yeah.

Yep. And so each folder has its own section, which is just great. And because sometimes they'll forget to tell you about the Social Security income, interest and investment income. This this doesn't have a lot of dropdowns to it. Because I also was very trying to be very judicious about what is required because—

I was gonna ask you about that because I don't see a lot of asterisks in this particular one.

No. And the reason for that is, is because if they want to bounce around and look at different things, you can't move forward on any page until you've answered all the asterisk questions. So everything has an asterisk by it. People are going to get frustrated because they're gonna be like, I just want to go to the next section, and they may miss something. Does it create a situation where they can skip over a question by accident? Sure. But it's finding that balance between aggravation and getting the information you need.

Yeah, leaving some flexibility for, for the client.

Exactly. So here, if they upload every— their interest investment 1099s, again, that folder is going to be titled interest investment 1099, so I know what's in Stock options and grants. Um, this is— this one I built out on purpose because this always ends up being a sticking point. Unemployment income? Sure. Hey, by the way, what state paid you? Oh, did you get any alimony? How much did they give you? Oh, what was your date of divorce? Because as you know, the 1040s are at— you have to put in the date of divorce, right? And, and it's a lot easier for them to go look it up than— because they remember more than me go digging around in their files to figure it out. Yeah. So we've got those. Did you pay any alimony? Same thing. It brings up that date of divorce. Oh, K-1s. Always fun. So I ask them, is that K-1 usually issued by April 15th? Because some of them usually are and a lot of them usually aren't. So I know they're going to need an extension because they know. And then I can flag it.

It doesn't catch you by surprise.

Right. Or I'm sitting there going, okay, when is that K-1 coming? When I know, you know, because again, you have to remember, for X many hundreds of clients, when does this guy's K-1 come in? Oh, that guy's K-1 comes in. So there are some that I know they're not going to come till August, so they're going to have to be on extension. There's nothing they can do about it, right? Um, did you receive jury pay? How much did you receive? Because in questionnaires, people say, yeah, I had that, and then they won't tell you. So Hobby income. I have a details box here because that can usually be a little bit more loosey-goosey. You know, gambling income, etc., etc., etc. And did you receive any gifts or foreign foreign gifts? Trusts? Were you the beneficiary? And here is this extension. Is it usually the trust document going on extension? Because are you going on extension because the trust document is going to be late? Also foreign income. Because that can be an issue. Debt cancellation. So all of this, if they upload their documents here and they can always still use my portal and batch dump it, that's fine too. But they have this option here. Now, self-employment. Did you work for it? No, I didn't have my own self-employment business. Okay, great. But hey, guess what? Yes, it opens up a ton of questions. Yep. And so, you know, are you expecting any 1099s? You know, because sometimes they get some and they— for some income, but they don't for others. And like a lot of people, they'll have a mixed income. Some is 1099, some isn't. So this, at least we know what we're looking for so we don't duplicate. And then, are your books in QuickBooks? That way they don't— the ones who are really, really, um, good about writing everything out, if it's already in QuickBooks, I don't want them to handwrite it all out. It's there, I'll go look for it. Or they're there, but my bookkeeper hasn't gotten to it yet. So I know what I'm looking, you know, what we're looking for. If you're not using QuickBooks, now what? I'm using something else or I write it down in a spreadsheet, you know.

And I know that you make it like lighthearted, like a little funny too.

You have to because this is like really dry stuff, right? Nobody goes, yeah, I can't wait to do my taxes. This is so much fun. It's like going to Disney World. You know, you got to, you got to have some fun in this. Otherwise, yeah, what's the point? Um, do you drive? Written records. How many business miles? Because people will tell me their business miles, but they don't tell many— tell me how many total miles they drove. So I've got to go back and ask. I'm really considering making this part required because people are skipping that. Did you have a home office? Oh, let's talk about that. But if you didn't, moving right along. And did you pay any contractors? Did you send those 1099s? It's a little late now, but better late than ever, right? But my people, I also send them emails out. Do you need me to send 1099s for you? And then they tell me, but this is just in case. Oh nope, didn't drive for Uber. And then we go through, it goes through rental properties. It's the same concept as with the independent contractors. And I also put a section here though for, you know, did you use your rental property personally or for a vacation use? Because there are a lot of people who do have these mixed-use properties that they're Airbnb-ing sometimes, and then they Stay in it. So we need to have— we have to know about that.

I see.

And did you sell any of them? Because sometimes they sell them and they forget because it's very early in the year, or they didn't tell me, which is something to know. And do you rent out any property? These are required because I need to know. Health and medical, it goes through all of these sorts of things. How did you get your insurance? Because now if you have Marketplace, I need to know because I'm going to be looking for that 1095-A. Oh, and did you take any money? Here's my HSA question. The thing that drove me crazy. Did you take a distribution from your HSA? Because it wasn't in the old organizer, so I'd have to remember to ask them. So that was like the first question I think I built in here. I think I know I need to have that. So anyway, so it goes through, asks all these questions. Oh, medical expenses. Um, here's a thing. Did you have a lot of medical expenses? Yes, we did. No, we didn't. And sometimes Maybe. I don't know what a large amount means in my case because it's income dependent, right?

Yeah.

And what might be large for one person might be large— not feeling large for another, or vice versa. And if you make $50,000, large amount is going to be very different than if you make $500,000.

Yeah, I see.

So, and go through that. Yes, I had health insurance. Okay, see, it won't let you prompt through. And then other deductions, mortgage interest, all the usual charitable contributions. I also added this button, unsure if it will matter, because there are people who say, yes, I made contributions, but I gave, you know, $25 to, you know, Girl Scouts or whatever. It's probably now with standard deductions being so high, it may not make a difference. But if you tithe, it might make a difference.

Yeah.

So also something else my organizer wouldn't ask is, did you make any donations from an IRA directly to charity? Qualified charitable distributions, QCDs. I need to know. And sometimes the brokerage houses don't track that. I need you to track that for me. So the whole goal of all of this is to really cut down on the back and forth. Energy credits, telling them the things that might count for an energy credit, you know, oh, by the way, did you buy a clean energy vehicle?

Yeah.

Maybe, maybe not. And then education. Not everybody has kids in college or are going to college themselves or what have you, but we need to know The other thing is, did you use anything for anybody to pay for 529s? Because I've got grandparents who are contributing to 529s for their grandkids. So it's not the usual thinking, okay, the parents are putting money in or whatever and they're for the kids. If that grandparent is distributing 529 monies, they're going to need a copy of that 1098-T from the university as well, even though that kid isn't on their return. We need to be able to match it.

Interesting.

So those are those sorts of things. Estimated tax payments. Did you make them? Tell me how much you paid. I'd like to know. It can change the course of your tax return. And I also, I made it freeform because you could do it where you set it up where it's like a date and an amount, but this way it's just less tabbing. I don't know. We'll see how that goes. People seem to be okay with it so far. And finally, additional, before we get to the engagement letter, I did additional planning, tax savings and planning opportunities. Let me ask you these questions now because then I don't have to think as hard. It's March. I don't want to think any harder than I already am thinking. So are you interested in these things? I don't want to ask you about a SEP or a Roth or whatever if you don't have the money for it, because you're going to get annoyed with me every year. Kristen, I told you I can't afford to make a traditional IRA. I don't want to make a Roth, whatever. This way they can just tell me and I don't have to remember who's the one who, who always likes to do it. And here are the people who do them every 3 years or whatever. It's all here. And do you want to discuss college planning? Or are you having any of these things going on in your life that I should know about so we can take a look at '24 while we're doing '23 so there aren't surprises for either one of us? So there's that. And then I built my engagement letter in here.

Interesting. Because that's interesting. I didn't expect that. Is there a particular reason you decided to like build into the organizers?

Yes, because I, my procedure is, is I don't start tax returns until I get the signed engagement letter. That's— and my, also my E&O software, my E&O carrier requires that I have engagement letters. And one of the other procedural issues I was running into was that with the engagement letters needing to be signed before I file a tax return, I have to look and see, okay, did this person at least print out the signature page of the engagement letter and give it to me? Do I have to go back and check? And if I didn't have it, now I'm going to have to bundle it with the e-file form. This way there's no bundle. It's done. It's all built in here. Everything, the lovely 7 pages of it. And then they sign because you don't need knowledge-based authentication. You don't need KBA for an engagement letter. That's only for, you know, it's for e-file forms. So this way I can collect it up front and then it's done.

Perfect. Let me ask you a couple of questions, kind of like a little bit of like before and after. How are you sending these and when are you sending these?

So it's a link. It's actually an email. It's a link to the organizer. I haven't stuck it on my website yet, but I probably should. Um, but I initially emailed out to clients, here's the link for the new interactive online organizer. And then I also keep it in my signature. So if anybody's like, where's that organizer? For the first couple of years, I suspect I'm gonna— I copied off the bottom of my signature and say, here's the link. By the way, it's in my signature because people don't read people's signatures, right? I try to make it red and, you know, hey, look here. But like arrows, arrows. Blinky arrows. I should probably do that, but they have it. And then if they are working on it— oh, this is something to show— is that if you have to come back because you have to go make dinner or you've got your kids or you have a work call, you can hit save and it will email you a link to what you've already done. So the client has it. I don't know why it's not—

oh, it's maybe because of this preview.

Yeah, but it'll, it'll send it to them.

Mm-hmm.

So they can pick it up where they left off.

Love it. Love it. Interesting. How long did it take you to put this together? Roughly? I guess you had a little bit of a kickstart with your All Organizers, with your peer setup, but I'm curious to hear how long it took you to put this together.

It took me on and off, I want to say, I wasn't working on it like 8 hours a day or 10 hours a day. It was like an hour here, an hour there when I had had a little bit of time and I'd walk away from it so that I was looking at it with fresh eyes. Over the course of a— I did it on and off over a couple of months. So I would probably say in order to get it to where I am though, in aggregate time, I would probably say 8 to 10 hours.

That's fair. I mean, you're gonna get a return on that. You probably already have.

Oh yeah, it's like, it's fantastic. And the thing is, is that The logic that they use, this is what really impressed me about them. And I'm not, you know, an affiliate for Cognito at this point. Maybe I will be someday. But the thing is, is that the logic is so easy for non-tech people because I have some technological experience, but I'm not a tech person by any means, right? I've just been doing my own tech stacks before I knew they were called tech stacks. You know, I love that term. I think it's so cool. But the thing is, is that Cognito is made There's a logic to it. And it's, it's very simple to understand once you understand their logic to work through the workflow. And I will say, and I've told them this, their support is fantastic. It's not instantaneous, but they give you really thoughtful replies. And you feel like they've thought through a lot of the things that other softwares may not have thought through. So I'm like, how am I going to do that? Interesting. Is that even capable? Is that even possible? Oh yes, why there it is. I just had to look it up. So I have been seeing the return already through my early tax filings because I don't have a lot of people who come in in January because that's just not the nature of my practice. But the ones who have come through, it's like I pull out that organizer. I'm like bam, bam, bam. I confess I still print them out and take hand notes. We're still there. I like my little writing on things. It's just who I am, but I'll print them out. But I can go through really quickly and take notes and flag things. I've got red flags for clients that they have to deal with and blue flags for me to make me aware. So I can go through very quickly and see where, where things are. If there's a complication that I need to know about, oh, I just downloaded all the documents, something's missing. It's so much faster. And so much less mentally taxing because it's all there.

Yeah, definitely. It's something that we've definitely seen helps a ton, um, especially the tax people, especially when they're not doing like the books as well, or they need like all of this stuff to be accurate. Um, I had another question for you. What happens after they submit it? You get a notification. How do you look at the data? Tell us a little bit about what, what happens after.

Yeah, sure. So with— as soon as they submit, I get an email notification that Cognito, oh, look, there's a new organizer that's been completed. And what I did is, is in my Outlook inbox, I created a rule called Cognito Organizers Received. So as soon as a new organizer pops up, it gets automatically rerouted into that folder. So I can check every morning and see who has submitted new organizers.

Interesting.

And I know what's there. Once I actually— and then I created a second folder, which was organizers downloaded, because otherwise you're going to have all these organizers and you can't remember who you've downloaded and who you haven't. So as soon as I downloaded them, I dragged them into the organizer downloaded folder. So all I can see are the people that I still need to, you know, bring over their organizer information. And I created a whole SOP about how to do this. My SOPs are so much fun. I'm like, it's just so nerdy. I know this is so nerdy. But it's just basic little Excel things that say, okay, remember, here's the process so you don't miss a part because it's in the middle of tax season. You're busy. You're doing 20 things at once. Let me make sure I hit all these points that I needed to do so that my process stays flowing.

Yeah, definitely. Love it. Well, is there anything else you want to bring up? Maybe what suggestions would you have for someone else that's still doing pen and paper? Um, any, Final thoughts?

Yeah, the more you can really get things into a safe place in a portal, in a cloud, and get away from the paper as much as possible, your life will feel so much lighter. I did Operation Shred, I called it, back in 2017 because I used to store all kinds of paper and locked filing cabinets and the whole rigmarole. And one of my colleagues was like, Kristen, You gotta get it together. You know, you can't be storing all this paper. I'm like, I know you're right. And we— and I knew we were probably— oh, actually, I started in 2017, and then by 2018, we knew we were going to be moving. And I'm like, I am not dragging this filing cabinet with me. No, not happening. So I, I got everything scanned. The more you can work on your process, and maybe during the middle of tax season is not the to do it. But if you can evaluate at the end of season and say, hey, where were our really big logjams? What was really tripping us up? And go through one of these process mapping exercises so you can figure out where those bottlenecks are and release them. It will change your practice. Like this has been, since I started using this form and a couple of other integrations, this is probably the first tax season since the 2017 season. that, which, you know, we're filing in 2018, that I've really felt excited to do this work again. Because in '18, we had moved. '19, we had some health issues in the family. Um, '20, you know, we were dealing with COVID And '21 and '22, all this stuff. And it felt so heavy to do this work. And then in the meantime, the slew of new laws came through with all of these bits and pieces that change. And so really evaluating your process and having something where it's dynamic, like with Cognito, like I said, if I need to fix something or change something, I just go in and fix it.

Yeah.

That's awesome. I think that also looking at practices as what a 21st century practice looks like is really, really helpful. And talking to guys like Isaac who are there to help you fix these tech stack issues And particularly the hard part is, is if you bought a practice and the people have been working a certain way for 30 years. Yeah. And now you're trying to modernize them. That's a whole nother animal.

Yeah.

But it's possible. Some of it's baby steps, but you can do it.

Definitely. I actually met with a firm recently that they told us that the processes haven't changed since 2027. 2007. So I was like, wow, 2007. It's been like almost what, 17 years doing the same thing in the same way.

And like, I saw one of my colleagues who was online who was showing pictures of all of the boxes of organizers that he's mailing, like boxes and boxes of paper organizers. And I'm like having minor coronary issues looking at this. Oh my gosh. How many man hours did that take? And how much did you spend in paper and ink and postage to mail out 300, 400, 500 organizers? I mean, if he still likes to do that, God bless him, but that just feels so heavy and unnecessary.

Yeah. And I don't think clients like it anymore. I mean, maybe there's exceptions, right?

But yeah, I can tell you in the 170 returns that I do this year, I mailed out 3 organizers. 3.

Yeah, interesting.

And there are people who I know who just— there, I've got one lady who just doesn't use a computer, period. That's it. Computer, nothing. So fine, cool. The other 2 email me, but they're not comfortable with document uploading, not comfortable with doing the online stuff. Fine, I'll send it out to you, no big deal. Just fill it out and send it back. So I have now, yeah, 3 people who send me paper documents. Everybody else is online. And it's also good, honestly, environmentally. Yes, I still print things out. So yes, there's that part of it, but I'm getting better. It's getting better. But it's these things that we can improve in. You don't have to change everything at once. Just try one thing. Try it online, an online organizer, organ— you know, have somebody build it if you're not comfortable building it. You can sure as heck hire a teenager who would love to do this stuff. I have actually an internal organizer in Excel that I use to track, you know, to enter all the data and then feed it into my tax software using macros. Oh, that's another thing, macros. Isaac, if you want to talk macros another day, we can totally talk.

Go for it, definitely.

Do it now or you talk another day?

I mean, that probably, that's like, like a topic for another day, but I'd be curious to hear maybe a slight overview what you're using it for.

I'll give you a taste of macros. So A colleague of mine, he's now I believe 81. I met him many, many years ago and he was playing around with macros to get data from into a into our tax software because the software that we use does not play nice with things like SurePrep or Gruntworks. So you can't import anything unless you use their proprietary system, which I don't find works very well for my purposes. So he started building macros and he taught me a little bit using Macro Express. Like. Oh, this is interesting. So then I started building, and we can talk about this another time, macros for phrases, because there's some things that we type out to clients over and over again. I can build baby macros like that. And so my son, who he's, he's 16 at the time of this recording, he's like, he was one of the ones entering stuff, data into these spreadsheets, paid on a W-2, done the right way. But he was doing this. He's like, Mom, I don't like the way these spreadsheets are set up. I'm just going to rebuild them. I'm like, have at it, kid.

You have your— you have my permission.

Go for it. And so he did. And then I'm like, but I don't have the time to learn— me, Kristen, I don't have the time to learn how to do all these other macros besides these quick little ones. So I gave it to him. I'm like, hey, can you figure this out? He's like, just give me the manual. It's easier than me watching videos. So he read it. In 2 hours, he had started doing it. He started building the macros. And so if My point is, is if you as a tax practitioner are not comfortable delving into this world, find a techie kid because they find it a challenge. You pay them for it, they're going to be thrilled. They're making money and they're learning skills, and you're happy because you're getting to where you need to go.

Yeah, it's a win-win for sure.

Yep, yep.

Well, Christine—

Oh, one last thing. Incognito, you can start with the free version and build it out until you're ready to go with the paid version. That's what I did for a couple of Because I was playing with it and learning it. But when I was ready to move on to get the encryption and all of that, that's when I moved to the paid version.

Yeah, so you can kind of play around with it until you're kind of comfortable with the setup.

Exactly. So anyway, there you go. That's the last thing.

Awesome. Perfect. Well, Lova, I appreciate you sharing your setup with us. Definitely some efficiencies that I hope you leverage for the next several years, hopefully. So with that said, thank you for sharing.

Awesome. Thanks, Isaac. It was great chatting with you.

Perfect.