Canopy Practice Management is designed to help accounting firms keep all parties on the same page. It includes essential tools for enabling communication between clients and your team.
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Drake Tax
Score 7.7 out of 10
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Drake Tax is a tax practice management software solution with features that help users prepare and process customers’ returns. Its scheduler enables users to manage schedules and appointments, and a front office mode is available for staff who manage appointments but don’t need access to the full Drake Tax program.
If you want to have an all in one solution for managing you clients (from sales lead to loyal client) this is the answer. We rarely have to use other systems to take a client from a lead to completing their taxes or representation case. It's also given us the freedom to switch our business model to focus on value added pricing and shift to be an advisory focused firm. If you want to pump out hundreds of returns and don't care about managing your clients on a long term basis because you're a quantity over quality shop, you may not find value in the software.
Smaller firms and new businesses with lower up-front budget/cash flow availability. In particular with less complex returns. This is a great starter software. The desktop version is the most affordable, it can be networked. I am not familiar with their online software, but because I use a laptop, I am still able to work from anywhere. If you have more complex tax clients, then a step-up in software will likely make more sense, an UltraTax CS might be more your style. While Drake has a lot of good tools, more expensive and complex programs like UltraTax are better suited with better integrations and sometimes higher-level knowledge at your fingertips.
As TheCPATaxProblemSolver, Canopy is a great timesaver in helping me complete IRS Offer In Compromises. An Offer in Compromise (OIC) is an IRS program that allows taxpayers to settle their liabilities for less than the full amount owed.
I use analytics contained in the state-of-the-art Canopy tax resolution software to calculate smart recommendations based on each unique case to arrive at the best solution and prepare successful cases.
Canopy tax has an all in one practice management software. It features Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Document Management, Workflow Management, as well as Billing and Invoicing
Connectivity with Outlook for email tracking - the connection is sometimes lost and there is no notification. You just look for your email trail and there is nothing.
Electronic signatures for multiple contacts on one document with some fields being optional would be a great help.
Being able to see contact transcripts in the client record view versus just the transcript screen would be more efficient.
Canopy works efficiently for all the companies, more so the CPA firms and other programs have no such advancement. The existence of an individualized client portal from Canopy is a remarkable step. Canopy records the due dates for a project and checks them when they are near or notifies the user.
Proconnect is pretty comparable to Drake Tax. I opt to use Drake tax because it is more affordable, both online and desktop, has better customer support, and it is not another Intuit product. Turbo Tax is okay for individuals or for someone doing just a few smaller returns. For complexity or larger practices, I think this tool makes no sense. It is very much part of the Intuit ecosystem and not ideal for any major complexity or larger volume of client tax returns.
