Lacerte Introduces Automatic Attachment of PDFs to Client efile Payload

You can now save six minutes per PDF attached, on average, by opting to automatically attach required PDFs to client e-file payloads. It avoids the hassle of converting required forms to PDF and manually attaching them to e-file.

Currently, there are about 192 different forms (across federal and state agencies) that can be attached as a PDF with efile. Today, preparers have to rely on critical efile diagnostics to identify and catch missing PDF attachments in efile. They use the ‘Forms’ tab to convert required forms to PDF and save them at a default location. They then navigate to the ‘Electronic Return Filing Attachments’ screen, attach each PDF form individually and apply the appropriate description.

Lacerte now identifies required PDF attachments for a client return (e.g. NY Form CT-399 in the Corp module) and then attaches the forms (that are generated within the program) automatically as part of the efile build process within the efile Wizard.

You can view the list of attached PDF documents for a return in the ‘Electronic Return File Attachments’ screen.

Stephanie Broyles, senior tax analyst programmer with Lacerte, recounted how a preparer in New York filed about 100 returns that required manual attaching of PDFs, and this new feature would save that preparer about 10.5 hours of preparation time. “In addition, 75 percent of preparers in our focus group required some assistance from Intuit Care in manually attaching a PDF,” said Broyles.

It is estimated that this new feature would collectively save Lacerte customers more than half a million hours in tax prep time.

The Lacerte PDF Auto Attach feature is enabled for all accounts by default. You can choose to disable the automatic attachment feature by going to Settings->Setup->User Options.

For more information, click here.