SurePrep — 1040SCAN PRO, 1040SCAN Organize

SurePrep - 1040Scan Pro, 1040Scan Organize
800-805-8582
www.sureprep.com

From the July 2011 Review of Tax Document Automation Systems

Best Fit:

• Firms where more than one person is involved in the return preparation process.
• Organizations willing to use SurePrep’s proprietary SPBinder documentation tool.
• Practitioners who are comfortable using paraprofessionals to handle the majority of the data input associated with a client.

SurePrep was one of the earliest entrants into the tax document automation field, and has evolved and extended its offerings to meet the demands of practitioners. SurePrep’s 1040SCAN application is focused on reorganizing the workflow inside of tax and accounting firms. Although there are portions of the application that are installed on a user’s local computer, the actual source document recognition is handled at SurePrep’s secure onshore data center. The application provides its own input screens for supported applications, which include GoSystem Tax, Global fx, Lacerte, ProSystem fx Tax and UltraTax CS. This design simplifies the use of data-entry clerks to validate the data extracted by the application, and also eliminates the need for these personnel to work directly with the tax application.

Core Product Functions/Features:

There are three key packages in the SurePrep 1040SCAN product line:

• 1040SCAN Organize – Scans and organizes tax documents for a client.
• 1040SCAN TRADES – Scans and organizes tax documents for a client; recognizes and extracts stock transaction detail from an unlimited number of pages to Excel for a fixed price.
• 1040SCAN Pro – Scans, organizes, and extracts tax data for a client into a file that can be imported into supported tax applications.

All three of the packages assemble the documentation into the proprietary SurePrep SPBinder application, which replaces Adobe Acrobat and related add-on applications with a single application designed for creating and annotating workpapers.

The 1040SCAN Pro application determines where to record recognized forms by looking at where the documents were entered in the proforma information brought over from the previous year. This technique makes it easier for inexperienced users to record information in a manner consistent with the prior year.

The company does not have a product that facilitates download and import of information related to securities trades from financial institutions. Both 1040SCAN TRADES and 1040SCAN Pro have a scanning and data validation methodology that analyzes, extracts and verifies this information based on scanned documents. With 1040Scan Trades, the extracted 1099-B data is exported to Microsoft Excel and can be imported into most tax applications. With 1040SCAN Pro the extracted stock transaction detail is exported directly to the supported tax software and does not use Microsoft Excel.

Paperless Workflow:

SurePrep’s approach to tax document processing is different from some competitors, with the 1040SCAN application serving as a data-entry application into supported tax products. The replacement of the data-entry screens native to the application permits better integration with their SPBinder workpaper documentation tool and also simplifies the user interface so that less experienced personnel can validate the information recognized by 1040SCAN.