Guide
Evaluating tax prep automation:What matters beyond features
A feature list shows what a tool is designed to do. It cannot tell you whether the tool fits the way your firm already works, whether your reviewers can check what it produces, or where your clients' documents go along the way.
Download the one-page PDF (286 KB)Before choosing a tool, ask every vendor three questions:
Question 1: Will it fit how your firm already works?
Evaluate whether it works with the folders, permissions and habits your firm already has, and whether a new staff member could pick it up without training.
- Does it work in the client folders you already keep, including ones synced from Canopy or Google Drive?
- Can documents keep arriving the way they do now, with no new upload step?
- Do its results land in your own folders, under the permissions you already set?
- Are your files moved or renamed only when you say so?
Question 2: Can you check everything it produces?
You sign the return, so every figure a tool hands you has to be one a reviewer can verify, and every gap has to be visible.
- Can every figure be traced to the page it came from?
- When a document's role is unclear, does it ask you rather than guess?
- Does a total that may be incomplete say so?
- Does it list only what arrived, never a form an organizer merely mentions?
Question 3: Where do client documents go, and who answers for them?
Your duty to your clients follows their documents, so find out who handles the pages, on what terms, and what the vendor commits to in writing.
- Who receives your clients' pages to read them, and under what terms?
- Do the vendor's own servers ever hold a copy of a document?
- Does it put in writing what IRC § 7216 and your written security plan need from a vendor?
- What happens to your records and its output when you stop using it?
Ask Taxably the same questions
A good evaluation looks at the whole job, not the feature list. Connect a folder of your own and see the prep sheet Taxably builds from it, or read how we handle your clients' documents in the Trust Center.
Taxably Connect runs on Windows 10 or Windows 11. A payment method is required to start using it.
Version 1.0 · October 2026. Download it as a one-page PDF.