Stop chasing documents and start chasing deadlines.
IG Digital Lab, Sacramento builds tax preparers and bookkeepers the part of the season that should run itself: a secure place for clients to upload documents from a phone, a per-client checklist that knows what is still missing, and reminders that chase on their own.
Ten weeks carry the year.
Preparer hours are fixed and cannot be bought in February, so every hour lost to chasing paper is an hour of billable preparation that never happens.
The organizer comes back half filled
You send a checklist; the client returns four of nine items and assumes it is handled. A corrected 1099 lands after the work is nearly done.
Documents arrive through every channel but the intended one
Photographs by text, PDFs by email, a folder handed across the desk. Emailed tax documents put Social Security numbers into an ordinary inbox.
The front desk answers the same six questions all day
“Are you taking new clients?” Each one is thirty seconds of information and five minutes of interruption, at the exact hours a preparer needs a block of quiet.
Finished returns wait on a signature
A return can be complete and still not filed, because the client has not signed the e-file authorization. Nobody follows up, and the same thing repeats in October.
Eight months of silence
From May to December the client hears nothing at all. In January they are a stranger comparing prices.
What we build for a tax or accounting office
Take the pieces that match your bottleneck. We do not install all of it at once.
A secure client portal
Clients photograph or upload documents from a phone into their own file. Staff see one queue instead of four inboxes, and nothing travels as an email attachment.
One queue instead of four inboxesWorkflow automation
Engagement letter out, reminder ladder by client type, an automatic nudge for each missing item, and a signature chase that stops the moment the signature arrives.
Reminders that chase on their ownAI for calls and chat
Takes routine calls in English or Russian, says whether the office is accepting new clients, lists what to bring, reports what documents are on file, and books appointments.
Answers the same six questionsWebsites and web apps
Credentials, services, pricing approach and an intake form, so a new client can start before the first phone call.
Intake starts before the callServers and support
Monitoring, backups and someone to call, because an outage in March costs a different amount than one in July.
Monitoring through the seasonWhat we do not do: write into Drake, Lacerte, UltraTax or ProSeries where the vendor exposes no interface. We tell you before you pay which of yours connects. The assistant never answers a tax question; it routes them.
How the work goes
Free audit first. Then a scope, a fixed number, and one process built end to end.
Free audit
We map one client's journey from first call to filed return and count the touches a person makes that software could make instead.
Proposal
Scope, a number from the bands below, and a build order that puts the season-critical piece first.
Implementation
Built, then tested on a small group of clients before it faces the whole list. You approve every message that goes out in your name.
Support
Monitoring, seasonal tuning before January, and a report of documents collected on time versus chased.
What it costs and how long it takes
The audit is free. Build in the off season: a portal started in June is tested by October and ordinary by February.
The intake portal alone, or the reminder chain alone.
- Secure document upload portal
- Or the missing-document reminder chain
- Typically 3 to 6 weeks from kickoff
A full client portal with signatures, statuses and integrations.
- Portal plus signature chase plus reminders
- Tax-software integration where an API exists
- 6 to 12 weeks, tested before the season
Bespoke software, built from scratch.
- Multi-system builds and custom integrations
- Full DevOps and a security review
- Shipped in slices, with support after launch
3 to 6 weeks for a standard build, 6 to 12 weeks with integrations, 8 to 16 for a full portal. Full price list, including hosting, is on our pricing page.
Who this is not for
We turn away work that will not pay off. Here is who that usually is.
- Offices filing a few dozen returns a year, where a phone call is genuinely faster than any system.
- Firms whose tax software already includes a portal that clients actually use. Do not pay twice for the same thing.
- Anyone wanting a vendor to be their security program. We build to your plan; we do not become it.
- Anyone expecting a guaranteed number of new clients next season. That is not something we or anyone else can promise.
Common questions
Answers to what tax preparers ask before signing on.
Can clients upload documents from a phone without an account?
They receive a private link, photograph the document and it lands in their file. An account is optional. This matters because most missing documents are missing for one reason: the client was not sitting at a computer when they remembered.
Does this connect to our tax software?
Sometimes. Drake, Lacerte, UltraTax and ProSeries differ in what they let outside software read and write, and some allow nothing. IG Digital Lab checks yours during the free audit and says plainly whether you get an integration or a clean export you drop in.
Is a client portal secure enough for tax documents?
Documents move over encrypted connections into storage with access control rather than through email, and AI features run without retaining client data for model training. That supports the security plan a paid preparer must maintain, though the plan itself stays yours to write and follow.
Will the AI assistant answer tax questions?
No, deliberately. It answers administrative questions such as hours, what to bring, whether documents arrived and appointment times, and refuses anything resembling advice, passing it to a preparer with the caller's details. The office sets that boundary before launch.
When is the wrong time to start this project?
February and March. Nothing new should enter an office running at capacity. May through November is the right window and leaves a full quiet season to test against live client files before the first January call arrives.
What does the system do during the off season?
Quarterly estimate reminders, extension follow-ups before the October deadline, bookkeeping check-ins and a mid-year note that keeps the office in view. Eight silent months are why price shopping starts every January, and this is the cheapest part of the build.
Hear it for yourself. Then decide.
Call the demo line and walk through a real intake call, or book a free walkthrough and we'll show you exactly what your office would look like running on this system.
Ready to transform your business?
Tell us what you need. We reply the same business day.