Keep your systems. Connect the workflow between them.

A CPA firm of this size typically runs five to eight systems that each own part of the document process, bought at different times, from different vendors, on different editions. What any one of them will connect to depends on the edition your firm is on, the permissions your administrators can grant, what the vendor’s terms allow, and whether the resulting connection is reliable enough to run unattended during filing season.

None of that is knowable from a product name. It is knowable from your instance, and that is what scoping is for. A firm that has been promised an integration before anyone looked has usually been promised something nobody checked.

• Client portals
• Microsoft 365, Outlook, and SharePoint
• Google Workspace
• Practice-management systems
• Tax and workpaper systems
• Document stores
• Approved model or extraction providers

• CCH Axcess
• UltraTax
• GoSystem
• SurePrep
• Canopy
• Karbon
• TaxDome
• ShareFile
• SmartVault

Connection options may include an approved API, connector, import and export, monitored intake route, or reviewed handoff. The available method depends on the product edition, permissions, vendor terms, and reliability requirements.

Which of those applies to a given system is a scoping question with a written answer, not an assumption carried into a build.

If a system lacks a reliable, approved connection method, the workflow may stop at that boundary, use a reviewed handoff, or be rejected as unsuitable.

The last of those is a real recommendation, not a formality. A brittle connection to a system that was never meant to be automated costs more to maintain than the work it saves.

Every system named in scope gets a written answer before the fee is fixed: what the workflow needs from it, which connection method is available, what permissions that requires, who inside your firm grants them, and what happens if that route is not reliable enough to depend on.

• A named connection method per system, or a documented reason there is not one.
• The permissions required, and who can approve them.
• The external providers involved, and which party contracts with each.
• Where a reviewed handoff replaces a direct connection.
• The systems recommended against automating, and why.

That document is what your IT reviewer reads. It is also what makes the fixed fee possible: a fee agreed before anyone has looked at the systems is either padded or about to be renegotiated.

None of this requires preparation work. It is what makes fifteen minutes enough to tell you something useful.

• The systems involved, and their editions if you know them.
• How documents actually arrive today, and through how many separate routes.
• Where a person currently reviews or approves.
• Anything IT has already ruled out, and why.

• Undocumented circumvention of a vendor’s interface.
• Shared or borrowed credentials.
• Any method prohibited by the vendor’s terms.
• Promising an integration before the constraints have been reviewed.