Use case: a three-preparer firm that changed nothing
A small firm on TaxDome and Lacerte adds Taxably without touching its stack: one watched workstation, prep sheets on the shared drive, reviewers who stop alt-tabbing.
This is an illustrative walkthrough of the workflow Taxably is designed around, with invented names and a made-up folder. It is not a customer story; real reviews will live on the reviews page when they exist.
The short version
- One workstation runs Connect; everyone else just reads PDFs from the shared drive.
- The prep sheet is keyed to the return's structure, so it reads the same next to Lacerte as next to Drake.
- Review starts from a packet with flags, not a folder with surprises.
Now a firm, call it Hartley Tax Group: two partners, one senior preparer, an admin, about 900 returns. TaxDome for client documents and e-signatures, Lacerte for prep, a network share for everything else. The stack works, and nobody wants a migration in January.
Taxably's footprint here is deliberately small. Connect goes on the admin's workstation, the one machine where TaxDome's drive and the network share are both mounted. That is the only install. The partners never touch it.
The flow, unchanged and changed
Documents keep arriving exactly as before: clients upload to TaxDome or hand the admin paper to scan. What changes is what the preparers find when they pick up a client. Instead of opening the folder, they open the prep sheet that Connect wrote to the share: contents page first, sections in the order the 1040 wants them, originals embedded behind each divider.
The senior preparer works a return with the prep sheet on the left monitor and Lacerte on the right. Box values are on each document card, so entry is transcription, not archaeology. When a K-1 disagrees with last year's count, the cover already said so.
Review night
The partner reviewing returns used to spend the first ten minutes of each file reconstructing what the preparer saw. Now review starts from the same packet: skim the cover, check the flags, spot-check cards against the embedded originals one bookmark away. The judgment is all hers; the assembling is done.
Nothing in the firm's client experience moved. TaxDome still sends the engagement letters and collects the signatures. Lacerte still files. The firm bought the layer between them, the one nobody sells: the sorted, verified, review-ready pile.
Why this shape of adoption matters
Most intake tools ask a firm this size to re-route clients through a new portal or commit to a per-return contract before the value shows up. The watched-folder model means the trial is private: point Connect at one client folder, read the first prep sheet, and decide. If the firm walks away, the folders are exactly as they were.
See the prep sheet for yourself
How it works shows what a real prep sheet holds, built from a sample client folder.
See how it works