Rant - Electronic Documents

[Roberts]

I'm with John. If a client can text or email - they are my preferred client. I HATE sitting on the phone for 20 minutes hearing about their last surgery.

 

Have a client who is in the process of dying right now but for the last 10 years if he called and I asked "how's it going" his immediate response was "do you have an hour?" He was somewhat joking but if you let him he'd talk for an hour about his problems. Always had to keep him on track or he'd go off about politics or his hip or how horrible his kids are.....

[jklcpa]

I'm on board with the notion of keeping the clients out of the office and off the phone as much as possible and I *mostly* embrace the technology to do that.

That being said, I have one client that thinks of emailing and texting as extended chat sessions and as a replacement to a sit-down meeting, expecting very detailed answers to her questions about how the tax law applies to her situations and variety of deductions, and will 20-question me to death...one question at a time.  She got offended when I suggested that for expediency and efficiency, that I would appreciate if she could group all/most of her questions into fewer emails.   Honestly, it was so annoying that I considered dropping her as a client because answering to her satisfaction was like teaching a course on tax preparation.  All of that doesn't include the initial emails to send me documents and follow up email from her where I've requested missing information!  Then she questioned my fee after having to wade through, organize, and e-store the 2 dozen or so emails to properly document all that was said.  She made all of that even more difficult because she didn't keep a good flow of responding to the emails because she'd click reply to an earlier email after others of hers had come in and contained more information.

Maybe ^ this client is the exception, but this was so ridiculous that I found it to be a very inefficient way to gather all of her data and review my tax prep work.  My review of returns is a very thorough process, and I was particularly worried that I'd missed including some piece of data on her returns.

[Lion EA]

I have a new client just like that, a young guy.  I'm so tired of typing explanations on my phone.  I have repeatedly asked him for an email address, so I can type on my keyboard.  He only texts.  He's married to the one earlier that sent her documents via Facebook Messenger pictures.  I love email and hate telephone and office visits, but texting is becoming too time consuming.

[Gail in Virginia]

4 hours ago, Abby Normal said:

I would have refused to do the W2s without the QB backup.

I went over the bookkeeper's head and got the information, but really. 

[jklcpa]

 

10 minutes ago, Lion EA said:

I have a new client just like that, a young guy.  I'm so tired of typing explanations on my phone.  I have repeatedly asked him for an email address, so I can type on my keyboard.  He only texts.  He's married to the one earlier that sent her documents via Facebook Messenger pictures.  I love email and hate telephone and office visits, but texting is becoming too time consuming.

 

Lion, do you have a microphone that would convert voice to text? At least that might be easier and less time consuming.  My fat fingered husband has trouble hitting the correct letters on his phone so he uses it for his texting, then goes back to make minor corrections where it misinterprets his words.  

OK, so I went back and looked at this client's stored data. In addition to the multitude of actual documents and summaries she supplied, after printing out and highlighting emails to glean out the data needed for the return out from all of the other questions and answers she required, I had 7+ full pages of email correspondence that I saved. That was after eliminating the extraneous stuff.  I just gave myself a headache revisiting all of it again.   Ugh, just doesn't seem overly efficient to me!

 

[Gail in Virginia]

Really, I think  we all have efficient and inefficient clients.  Some will be organized and concise no matter what format the data is in, and some can't organize their way out of a paper-bag no matter how much help and instruction we give them.  I like technology, but given a choice I will take an organized client with paper copies over an electronic copies sent by the organizationally impaired any day.

[Medlin Software, Dennis]

2 hours ago, Lion EA said:

I have a new client just like that, a young guy.  I'm so tired of typing explanations on my phone.  I have repeatedly asked him for an email address, so I can type on my keyboard.  He only texts.  He's married to the one earlier that sent her documents via Facebook Messenger pictures.  I love email and hate telephone and office visits, but texting is becoming too time consuming.

I use google voice as a text to email system.  I can reply to all emails (even the text to email) via desktop keyboard, phone keyboard, or more often than not (since it is MUCH faster) voice response using my phone...  Cuts my time creating replies by a large percentage.

[Lion EA]

I guess I need to try voice.  But, then I'll be one of those people walking around talking to themselves.  Not to mention that most of my answers are not for public consumption.  If I wouldn't stand in the checkout line answering aloud someone's personal tax question or wouldn't take a brief break at a client's biz site to call a different client with a personal answer, then I don't want to use voice-activated messaging to respond to my clients unless I'm securely in my office.  As long as I'm in my office, I'll just email my responses.  Except for that H&W who ONLY text !!

[Richcpaman]

5 hours ago, jklcpa said:

I'm on board with the notion of keeping the clients out of the office and off the phone as much as possible and I *mostly* embrace the technology to do that.

That being said, I have one client that thinks of emailing and texting as extended chat sessions and as a replacement to a sit-down meeting, expecting very detailed answers to her questions about how the tax law applies to her situations and variety of deductions, and will 20-question me to death...one question at a time.  She got offended when I suggested that for expediency and efficiency, that I would appreciate if she could group all/most of her questions into fewer emails.   Honestly, it was so annoying that I considered dropping her as a client because answering to her satisfaction was like teaching a course on tax preparation.  All of that doesn't include the initial emails to send me documents and follow up email from her where I've requested missing information!  Then she questioned my fee after having to wade through, organize, and e-store the 2 dozen or so emails to properly document all that was said.  She made all of that even more difficult because she didn't keep a good flow of responding to the emails because she'd click reply to an earlier email after others of hers had come in and contained more information.

Maybe ^ this client is the exception, but this was so ridiculous that I found it to be a very inefficient way to gather all of her data and review my tax prep work.  My review of returns is a very thorough process, and I was particularly worried that I'd missed including some piece of data on her returns.

JK:

I told several clients:  "Send me the Info Once.  All at the Same time.  Put it in a file folder and send it to me at that time.    If you Piecemeal it to me, I charge you EVERYTIME I have to go look for your file."

That usually stops them.

Rich

 

[Abby Normal]

I changed my cellphone number awhile ago because too many clients were calling it and texting me. I removed it from my business cards and emailed every client explaining why. Call my land line, leave a message. Or send an email. We can save voice messages to the client's folder. I keep hoping someday I'll get to play one back for a client.

[Roberts]

I did fire a client 2 years ago for too many questions. I did his personal return and he gave me 10 questions which I answered. Then 10 more which I answered about 5 and then 10 more and said he needed answers to the other 5 also. Told him to leave and never come back. Seriously, I really shouldn't have to explain every freakin year how I determined the life expectancy of each item within your rental property. Why isn't his cable bill at home a tax deduction since he uses it for education (he watched those flip it shows on real estate)?

[Catherine]

I dealt with "piecemeal" clients a different way this year.  I had them sitting down (for other reasons) and told them when they send documents one by one we have no way to determine when we have everything.  So they will send an email once they have uploaded everything, and then and ONLY then will we download anything and start to look at their documents.

They actually had a reason for doing it one at a time:  they wanted to get items to me as soon as they came in, so nothing would be lost or forgotten.  And they understood the difficulty here, and I think the "we'll email once they are all uploaded" was a decent compromise.  We'll see how it actually works.