Name: Intuit ProConnect: Firm Administration and Set Up
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T07:16:20.114Z
Duration: 1 h 8 s
Description: Intuit ProConnect: Firm Administration and Set Up

Transcript for "Intuit ProConnect: Firm Administration and Set Up": Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for being here with me today for this session called set up and affirm administration. This is for Intuit ProConnect TACS, and we'll be spending some time this morning, this evening, this afternoon, wherever you're at in the world, talking about some of the initial setup and administrative functions that you'll need to do or complete inside of ProConnect TACS. My name is Ross Olson. I am a senior solution specialist here at Intuit, which really just means that I get to help firms like yours solve problems. Now for this session, that problem may just be how do I get up and running in ProConnect? Or I'm new to ProConnect. What do I need to know to get things off the ground as far as being able to use the software, to use the program effectively? And that's what we'll be spending our time on today. Admittedly, not the most exciting or energetic of of topics, but we'll be doing this, hopefully, a way that keeps you I don't wanna say entertained. I wanna say it's gonna be a a sideshow act or something goofy, but at least something that will make this content, which isn't super, super exciting, at least informative, and so you're not gonna have to come back later and figure out what piece did you miss, why is this not working inside the software. Those are the things we want to avoid, and that's really the goal of this session. Let's take a look at the agenda to be a little bit more specific. We'll be here for about one hour. This session is, again, designed for those folks that are maybe new to ProConnect Tax, are getting set up for the first time. It's not intended to be a data entry or how to prepare a tax return session. This is going to be what are the things that we need to do behind the scenes in the software so that we can prepare a tax return? We'll look at things like your firm identifiers, which may be a little bit of a rehash if you're really familiar with some of these terms and acronyms, but for those of you new to tax preparation, or maybe someone who just need a refresher, we'll cover those first. We'll talk about how to verify your eFIN so that you can electronically file, and maybe even what an eFIN is, for those of you that maybe are unaware or not familiar with that. We'll talk about prepare information and getting those users and the the people that are going to be inside of your instance of ProConnect TAC set up so that they can actually sign in and start doing work inside of the software. And then we'll turn our attention to a few customizations or settings that will help as you're doing things like printing and keeping returns organized throughout the year, as well as being able to manage and see the data inside of ProConnect X more effectively. That's our agenda for today. Again, for about an hour, we'll be covering this content. As we go through this session, please feel free to ask questions to me and my team behind the scenes using the q and a, as well as using the chat to talk amongst yourselves, ask questions there. But again, if you're wanting to get a question or ask a question to someone from Intuit behind the scenes here, use the Q and A, that will make sure, and we'll ensure that it gets to us. Some best practices here, as you can see, recommend you follow these best practices, and also would appreciate if you took the time to fill out that survey, it'll pop up a little bit closer to the end of this session. As always, that helps us improve things over time. What you like, what you didn't like, all those are useful pieces to know so that we can refine this and make this a better experience going forward. You will be able to access this session on demand or recorded after it ends using the same link that you used today to access this session on demand. And quick just best practice too around any little issues, hiccups you may have in the platform, refreshing your web browser is always gonna be the recommended first step. If you have a little bit of some audio issues, some visual issues, usually that gets things going or gets things where they need to be. And secondarily, if you have a lot going on right now, if you're like me, tabs open all across the place, all kinds of applications open, it probably will work just fine if you if that's kind of your setup on your computer right now or your device. But if you started having some of those issues, maybe best to start closing out some of those things to make sure that you have enough resources to play this webinar session. There will be polling questions throughout today. I'll give you plenty of time to, answer these, plenty of warnings. There's not a surprise around answering these. And, when you see these pop up on screen, you'll see an option that will, allow you to answer them. So it won't be on the slide. I may have the question on the slide for you to see. You're not gonna click on the slide itself, but there'll be a dialogue box that'll pop up on your screen. You can check the button and press submit. Or when a poll is active, you'll find the poll tab between the chat and the docs tab. The docs tab is where you can get the handouts for this session, the presentation slides. The chat, as I mentioned, is where you can talk amongst everyone that's attending today, amongst your peers. So you'll see that polling tab go active as well. So if the chat's active, you say, man, I just can't see where do I enter this poll, look for the poll tab. That will be the default. And again, if you don't see the polling tab when a poll is active, you may wanna try to refresh your browser. This session is eligible for one CPE credit and zero IRS CE credits. You can see the requirements listed here. Make sure you answer the polling questions as they pop up. We'd appreciate you answering them all, but a minimum of one is the requirement as well as attending for that minimum amount of time. And then if you meet those requirements, you'll receive your certificate via email within forty eight business hours. If you don't see it, check your junk or your spam, and if you still don't see it, you can reply to that email address listed there on this slide. It's also found in the handouts in the docs tab. You can find this presentation slide there as well if you need to reach out. Just let us know what session it was, what date it was, and our team can help you get that certificate if it was not sent or somehow didn't find its way to your inbox. Quick disclaimer here. Listen, not a whole lot that we're gonna have around tax law or tax guidance, but just be aware that this session is educational in nature, things can change quickly, and if something changes really rapidly, you'll wanna make sure that you're keeping up to date with that information outside of just this webinar session. So quick disclaimer there. And we're gonna have our first polling question here for about one minute, just to give everyone, make sure we've got it taken care of, and it's what is your primary reason for attending this webinar? So again, take about sixty seconds here to answer this question. Remember, as you're answering this question, you may see the poll tab that will appear between the q and a and the docs tab. You can go there to answer your question, click on it submit. If for whatever reason you're not seeing this polling tab right now or the polling pop up in the middle of your window, try to refresh your browser. That's usually a good fix to that polling prompt not appearing if that happens. And again, as a as a best practice, try to minimize the amount of applications you're using. And if problems persist, you may even try a different browser. Take about, oh, another ten seconds here to answer this question, and we will move right along. Okay. We're gonna wrap this question up and move on now. So thank you for answering that question. We'll have a few more. I'll again alert you to that, give you plenty of an opportunity or time to answer, but we'll go ahead and move on to our first section, as mentioned, which are those rather firm identifiers. Firm identifiers are where we're going to kick things off. These are sometimes a little bit of an alphabet soup where you've got a mixture of what are these acronyms, what do they mean? For some of you, again, very familiar. So we're not going to spend a lot of time on this. This is going to help us have that baseline of what are we talking about? What do we mean when we say these things? And then we can move forward with that shared understanding. And apologies if everyone already has a shared understanding, but it helps to make sure we're all on the same page. So first, customer account number. This is an Intuit firm identifier, this section we're talking about here. That is your customer account number associated with your Intuit professional tax account. So this is something that is gonna be related to your purchase for ProConnect Tax. If you're in ProConnect Tax now, maybe trying it out, but you haven't purchased anything, you might not see that customer account number yet. That's okay, there's no harm in that. Again, it's associated more to that purchase when you've made the purchase of the credits and the user access, you'll see that customer account number, and it's assigned by Intuit. So no one else, you know, no other entity is giving you that particular number. Another identity or identifier for your firm as far as Intuit's concerned is your realm. Your realm is also known as your QuickBooks company ID over in QuickBooks Online Accountant, and keep that in mind as well as you're getting things set up is that your QuickBooks Online Accountant account is connected. It's the same platform as Intuit ProConnect Tax. So in essence, you will share your realm or company ID across ProConnect Tax and the connected QuickBooks Online accountant profile or account that is set up there. So that information will be shared across. You won't ever have more than one realm associated to one customer account number or vice versa. So that's something to keep in mind as well. Always mention too at the beginning, if you're just getting started, if you're not quite sure, this is an important thing to check on early on to make sure that if you're using or utilizing QuickBooks Online Accountant, you wanna use some of those integrations with, you know, prep for taxes, making sure your clients are shared across those two locations. We wanna make sure that your realm in ProConnect tax matches your company ID in QuickBooks Online Accountant. That's something, an important thing to be aware of early because it's easier to get that adjusted sooner than after you started preparing returns and building your client database up inside of ProConnect Tax. So something to keep in mind there. Some additional firm identifiers now shifting from Intuit letters and numbers and IDs to more of on the federal side. These are probably more common, probably something you're more familiar with if been in the industry for a while, if you're not necessarily new to tax preparation or the business itself. The first we'll start with is the employer identification number, EIN. Something to be aware of just because it is something that can be entered inside of ProConnect Tax. Now if you don't have an EIN, it's not necessarily a requirement, but something that you could have associated with your business. Again, if you are operating as a business entity outside of maybe a sole proprietorship. Employee employer identification number. The second is your PTEN. The reason we have these both here is because they're often confused. You just have one for the other, so they're not the same. They are separate. Your PTEN is associated to an individual, and it's your paid per pay excuse me, preparer tax identification number. And for any paid preparer, you need to have this to prepare returns. If you're an enrolled agent, you have to have a p 10 as well. And you can see the link there again in the docs tab if you need to access this later to get a P10. You can apply for it, renew it if needed. Now you don't need a P10 necessarily to use ProConnect Tax, but if you're doing, if you're a paid preparer, if you're preparing returns for clients, generally it's gonna be required, but it won't necessarily be something that will limit you inside of ProConnect tax, especially if you're doing something like a non paid prepare or self prepared. Those options do exist inside the program, but this is probably something you're gonna want entered. And the third number that gets mixed up in these three, EIN, p 10, the third is the I don't EFIN, e f I n, very different ways depending on what it is, but EFIN is the way that I will typically describe it. This is your electronic filing identification number. Again, these three oftentimes are meshed together. One's referred to the other. We'll get documents that are for one when we really need something for the other. The electronic filing identification number is something needed if you're electronically filing returns in ProConnect. So there's consumer software out there that doesn't you don't need an eFIN. It's being filed through kind of a third party. In professional tax software, you are the transmitter. You're electronically filing, and that's where this eFIN comes into play. Excuse me. So that you can e file your client's tax returns inside of ProConnect Tax. If you don't have an eFIN, acting sooner is always better. It can take some time to get an eFIN, especially during busier times of the year. So you wanna make sure you take some time in advance to apply for this because it's something where you will not be able to electronically file without it. You can still use the TAG software. You can still prepare returns. You can even paper file if needed. There are requirements or stipulations around paper filing, but you can do that inside of ProConnect Tax, but if you need to e file or if you're required to e file, you have to have your eFIN before you can do so. We'll talk a little bit later about your eFIN and kind of talking about applying for that. So we'll come back to that before we move on here. Two final things here that can help too, just so you're aware. These are less commonly confused with those other three, the eFIN, the p 10, and the EIN, but these do come up as well. The first is your ERO pen. This is essentially the signature on the e file authorization page. It can be chosen by you. It's something where they recommend keeping it the same for all your clients in the season as you're signing this. The ERO is yourself, the electronic returner regulator. That's you. That's why you need an eFIN. So they kind of go hand in hand. And this is something that will be used in place, essentially, your signature on that 8879 or that e file authorization form. You pick it, at least part of it, the first six are always going to be your e f I n, your eFIN, but this is something picked for you to act as your signature. And then the flip side to that, the designee pen is something that your client can choose if they want someone other than you or the preparer to discuss that with the IRS. So it is essentially serving as that third party designee process. So there's that key information as far as those letters, acronyms, the numbers. Those identifiers are important. I wanted to dig in, hit those very quickly so that we have a common understanding. If you need a review refresher, you wanna click on any of those links that I had included in those slides so you can learn more about them. Again, find those in the docs tab. They may just be something you wanna say to refer back to later. I know that all kinds of search engines and AI exist to also help you find that information. But if you wanted that as a resource, you most definitely can utilize it, save this save these presentation slides, and you'll have that recap, those recap slides available to utilize. As I mentioned, we're gonna talk a little bit more specifically about one of those, which is the eFIN registration. For the most part, the other pieces we talked about, you can enter them, right, inside the program and we'll take a look. I'm gonna jump into the software too. But you can pretty much enter those without anyone else being involved. The eFed is a little bit different because it is a number that requires verification from Intuit before you can start electronically filing. Sorry, excuse me. This is something, and as mentioned, you have to register it into it. And the whole idea behind this, the reason why the rationale it's not just because we want you to jump through hoops. That's not the the intention at all. This is a a security measure to make sure that we're not allowing fraudulent filers to easily just submit a number and start filing with someone else's eFIN. And it also ensures that you're not having more than one person using your eFIN within our professional tax solutions. So it's just a security measure as well as a little bit of a licensing measure too because you're limited to one eFIN per customer account number per account. So you can't have multiple eFINs or multiple different firms or preparers using one product license to file returns from. So a little bit of a two part piece there. I can tell you from experience, the primary motive for this or function of this is that security piece, And it's also why we ask you to submit it for verification instead of just submitting it and rolling with whatever number you want it to go with inside of the program. Because if we want it to, we could just say that's your number and you can't change it. This verification step is more specifically for that security piece and making sure that we're reducing the chances of fraudulent filing using your eFend or other eFends, anyone's eFend that someone had found and is using maliciously. Now as I mentioned, you have to have this eFIN to electronically file. Your eFIN, it's not just applied for it and you're good to go. Your eFIN does have to be considered active and accepted. Right? So just submitting the application isn't enough and that's frankly not on us. If you try to e file with an eFIN that's not active or accepted, you won't be able to e file. Period. And it'll be it'll be turned away. The IRS will not accept it. So that's something to keep in mind too is when we do this verification process, we're also gonna make sure that your eFIN is where it needs to be in order to electronically file. You don't necessarily need to register your eFIN if you're not going to e file returns. Some firms do prepare returns that are only paper filed or they decide to paper file only. That can happen, and some firms don't have an eFIN. If you have already submitted your eFIN and you can e file, your name and address hasn't changed, you're not doing this every year. You're not doing this separately. If you're in if your customer account number is the same, you're able to e file under that customer account number, you don't have to resubmit your eFend documentation. That includes firms coming from ProSeries or LeCirc that have the same customer account number when they move to ProConnect tax, you don't have to resubmit your eFIN documentation. It's all associated or connected to your account, so keep that in mind as well. Now if you do need to change, and we'll talk about this too, I'm sure, but if you do need to change your firm name or address now or in the future, you do need to submit that. Again, I'll talk more about that in just a moment. There are one no. There's it says it's one of two. There are two different formats that you can use. You can use that EFIN acceptance letter. So you'll get that letter in the mail within the last twelve months, the calendar year. If you have that eFIN acceptance letter, you can submit that. Or if you go to the IRS e services page, if you have an eFIN that you've used for many years, more than one year, you can go to that IRS e services page and you can grab the eFIN e file application summary. Now you don't have to do that if you're it's not the only option. In other words, if you filed for your eFIN last month, you can also submit the application summary. The key thing to mention here is the only time you can submit the eFIN acceptance letter is if it's with dated within the last twelve months, But at any for any person, any firm, you could submit the application summary, and that will work regardless of when you applied for your eFNP. So not to confuse this knot, you have to submit the the acceptance letter if it's in within twelve months. You can, or anyone can submit the application summary for that eFIN verification. Here's what that e file, eFIN application summary looks like from the IRS e services page. So you can see the dot here. It's highlighted that the status that of this eFIN is accepted and that the eFIN is active. Let me switch over here so you can see this more in a full screen view. That would be a little tiny, but this is what it looks like. Also wanted to call out when you're doing this. Now we have resources that, you know, can share how you can share this with us. There's there's articles and video guides for this too outside of this session. I wanted to call out, you'll notice towards the top of the application summary, it says print and home. Print and home. It's where it says it's underneath where it says application status in orange and to the right of the application summary header, you'll see print and home. That is where you can click on print to print this as a PDF. That's what you need to submit. Print it as a PDF, and then you can submit that PDF for your eFIN verification. That's the easiest process to do this with. Some firms will do a screenshot. That can work too, but make sure you have the entire eFIN application summary and you're not cutting off any of the key details there, especially showing that your eFIN is active and that you have been accepted as an electronic return originator. As I had mentioned earlier, there is one eFIN per can. So again, this is again more of a licensing but also security. We don't, you know, usually isn't the case that firms will have, you know, a location will have several eFINs to file from, but also from the point of licensing is it's not allowed to have multiple eFins per account. So keep that in mind. You're doing business as name, your DBA, and your address will be reflected inside of ProConnect the exact same way that it appears on that application summary. If that's not the way that you want your name or that's not the address that you would like to appear inside of ProConnect Tax, you'll wanna make sure you first update it with the IRS via the e services, so where you go to apply for your eFIN or where you access that e eFIN application summary page. Update your firm name slash address there. Reprint it as a PDF and submit it, and we'll change your name and address in the software to match what is on that updated eFIN application summary. So again, not terribly complicated process, but it's something to be aware of. Some another caveat here that gets asked quite a bit if you are changing your EIN. So if you get a new EIN, maybe you've reorganized your business, you've merged, connect, whatever, you have a new EIN. You can go into the IRS e services and change your firm name and address. But if you change or need to change your EIN, you'll actually just submit a request for a new eFIN. So you'll need to reapply to get a new eFIN. So if that applies to you, remember, my recommendation is act sooner rather than later because when it gets busy, it can take longer to get a new eFIN accepted and approved. Make sure you're going through that process, applying with your new EIN, your new business entity. You don't have to change your customer account number. You don't necessarily have to change your realm or your company ID. But if you do need that new eFIN because you've changed your if you've changed your EIN, you need a new eFIN, which does necessitate you applying for a new one and going through that verification step again in order to electronically file. So keep that in mind. If you do change your EIN, we'll have to go through this process again, kind of similar to as if you were starting for the first time in regards to the eFIN. Your next polling question now, yeah, I said I'd give I you some time, so we'll give you about a minute here. What are we asking here? We're saying, is it true or false that changing your firm name or address in the program requires you to submit an updated eFIN application summary? So take about a many years, I mentioned, to answer that. I'm gonna take a look at some of your questions in the chat if there see if there are any. And if you do have any questions, again, you don't have to save them to the end. Feel free to ask throughout the session today, But I'll take a quick peek here while you're answering that polling question. Right. Now it's a good there's a question out there. Think it was sent to to me or my team here. You know, so can you have more than one EIN associated with an account? Generally, the a good rule is that if you have more than one EIN, you'll actually need the same number of eFIPs. The number of physical locations that you're filing from will equal the number of EFINS that you need. So if you're an office that has three or four locations, you will need three or four EFINS. If somehow you're organized with multiple EINs, you'll need an eFIN for each EIN. And remember, you'll also need a customer account number. You'll need a separate account for each of those eFINS that you're needing to register that you're filing from. So there's not a way to have multiple addresses for a firm in the software. There's not a way to have multiple EINs or eFINS. So keep that in mind as you're considering or wanting to utilize the program. And then if you need to make any changes, it's simple as making the update first with the IRS and then making that change in the software. So to answer this polling question, it is true. Again, maybe one small asterisk there. Again, there's no wrong answers here. It's just a participation piece. But if you are not electronically filing, you don't have to an eFIN just to change it. It would be that option to select to say, I'm not electronically filing. I don't have an eFIN. Here's what I would like my firm address to be or my firm name to be. So there's no requirement for firms that aren't electronically filing. But again, if you're e filing, you have that eFIN, you need to adjust that application first and then submit it to us. And through that process, we'll adjust your firm name and or address. Okay, moving on now to preparer information. Preparer information, just as we had firm identifiers, these are going to be pieces that pertain more to the individuals or those folks, those users inside the software. So when you're adding a preparer, these are separate from users. A preparer, that's the person whose name is going to appear on the return. You can have more than one preparer inside of ProConnect Tax. You may only have one. That's fine. But you need to make sure you include these key details. Make sure you have their name, their email, their ERO PIN, their PTEN, and any state identifiers that they may need. As I mentioned, not all ProConnect users are preparers, but all preparers are going to be invited as a user. So users are the more broad term for anyone that's going to be inside of ProConnect Tax. Anyone who signs into ProConnect Tax will be a user, but preparers are more of a special type of user. They're the people or the individuals whose name, their details are associated with the return as the paid preparer. So keep that in mind as well. You can always update any preparer information you need. There's no verification step, no process for that. You're able to do that in the software on your own to add those preparers. If you're missing something, there will be a diagnostic, it'll be an alert to let you know we're missing that ERO pen or your P10 if you've marked it as a paid preparer return. So keep that in mind as well. Let's actually jump into the software. We'll take a little bit of a closer look at some of these pieces that we've been talking about in particular, that prepare information and as well as some of the firm information too. Here we go. So we're inside ProConnect TACS now. I'm gonna zoom in just a smidge so we can see things hopefully a little bit better. And as mentioned, all this exciting stuff down here, we're not gonna be spending too terribly much time on that. Maybe a little bit later with organization, how to find things. But, we're gonna be spending, at least the beginning here, we're spending our, we've been spending our time in this gear icon under settings. And, this is where you can find that prepare information and the firm information. We're gonna come back here for the users eventually. Let's start here is where we left off and we were talking about at the beginning, the firm information. So here you can see firm name, address, phone, federal ID. You can edit this information if you need to, but this is not going to be something, again, editing this information is not the verification process that will have as as listed here in the middle column that shows EFIN verification, this is the firm name that will print on the return. So as you can see, even though I've entered a separate name as my firm name here, which can be be something that will print maybe on the letters or you can have it print on some of those settings outside of the main tax return. This firm name is going to be what's associated with your firm, with your ERO, you as the electronic return originator, your eFIN number here as well. You can't change these. This is where you have to update eFIN information. And notice on this right hand side here under Firm Information, you'll find some helpful links for how to apply for an eFIN, verify your eFIN, updating that, and assigning a default firm contact. In fact, that's kind of what we'll look at next under Settings. Under Prepare Information, this is where you can add preparers. As I had mentioned, not every user is going to need to be added here, but this is where you can put their key information in, their designation, and then their contact info, their phone, their ERO pin, and their contact information, their credentials potentially. I will say, I always mention this, usually you do not need to enter their social security number here. My recommendation or best practice here is go ahead and leave that blank. If you need that, you'll get a diagnostic for most filing. That's not required. P10 will be here as well. You also need to make sure you check the box that you verified that P10. And then also notice the state credentials of the state numbers that will be applicable to those of you filing in certain states. Looks like New York and Oregon are the main nope. And California are the main ones listed there. So entering this information for the preparer will add that preparer and you can also go back here if you need to to edit or delete preparers and notice that you do need to have someone as the default contact, that primary default contact. What this will do is that if you do not select a preparer for a return, it's gonna default to this paid preparer. So keep that in mind. It'll default there. Again, you'll get a diagnostic too if something is missing. You can also search if you have many paid preparers, you can search through this list of preparers here. We're gonna be spending some time in just a moment in this next section, the manage and invite users section. Rather than jump right out and jump back in, just a quick overview here. As mentioned, the individuals entered into this particular screen or user management are going to be anyone. Anyone that needs to log in to use the software that will need access to ProConnect, that will need access into a tax advisor, and potentially even QuickBooks Online account. Remember, is a shared environment, a shared space, so this is where you can manage those users in particular. So we'll come back to that in just a moment. Let's shift things back over here to that particular topic in manage and invite users. So here's a link you can click on in the presentation slides, And this is where you can go to see this, you know, after the fact today, if you'd like to review this process, you don't have to remember it, right? It's not about a memory. It's not a memorization game to remember exactly what was done here, but this at least will give you a guide in the future if you need that. This is something too where it's not terribly complicated, but there are a lot of different roles and permissions. Having a resource or something that you can refer to, because you're not doing this all the time, this may be something that you go and manage, maybe initially set up, but then occasionally throughout the year, maybe just at the beginning of the tax season as you're kind of getting new individuals set up, or at the end of tax season if you're removing permissions or taking individuals out. So you probably won't have this, you know, perfectly memorized, so a resource like this is helpful. And also I'll show some of those guides or helpful links inside the program as you're doing this as well. As I've mentioned a few times now, anyone that signs in to ProConnect will need to be added as a user. Anyone associated with QBOA, with that QuickBooks Online company ID, will be in there as well. They don't necessarily need to have permissions that enable full access to both, but you'll see those users listed kind of across the platform or across that realm. There are different levels of user access in ProConnect. There's standard access. Standard access is included. It's kind of the default. You don't have to pay or have an advanced user access fee associated with everyone within your firm. And standard users of that this level of user access, you're they're gonna be able to do that data entry work, use e signature, invoice, reach out to support. There's more functionalities they have here. It's essentially those individuals that are going to be working in the program, but they don't need more of the advanced features like being able to e file and print the return, utilizing Intuit Link so that collaboration hub to send out requests for documents, sending the K1 packages or grabbing IRS transcripts directly from the software, also reporting in the Intuit tax advisor client report. That's something where if you need those more detailed pieces, you would need to be set up as an or invited as an advanced user and those advanced users seats or access grants, those are purchased again so that you can decide how many individuals in your firm need that advanced access. Up to 10 and then it's unlimited. So if you if you need 10 or more advanced users, don't pay for the eleventh and up, It's 10 or more, but keep that in mind as you're using the program, not everyone needs to be an advanced user, but you, everyone will be in at least as a standard user. And, the link here on this slide will explain more about those roles, but I'll also show you that inside the software. Client access is kind of the final piece to inviting or managing users here and this is where you can just tell the program what clients does each person, each user have access to. And so in ProConnect Tacts, if you don't have access to a client, you don't see them. It's as if they do not exist to you. So if you wanna invite someone and assign them access to five clients, to them ProConnect will look like it only has five clients included. It show everyone's tax return or everyone's profile, but they can't click on it, it just won't show it. It'll be as if they do not exist to that user inside of ProConnect tax. You can make individuals inactive. You can edit them. And be aware too that sometimes there are inactive clients that exist that you may or may not need access to as well. So sometimes your client list is divided by those users that are or those clients that are active or inactive. And the same is true for your people that you invited. If you've made someone inactive, you'll be able to manage them as well. So we already started looking at that. Let's actually shift back over to that particular section. Perfect. So here are again the user access or kind of the list of users that we have. Notice that I can edit any of these to go in and make changes if needed. When you're adding a user for the first time, you'll have to put in their contact information, first, last name, and email, and this is where you can assign roles. As I mentioned, advanced, advanced, advanced, you'll see those three levels. Those are the advanced user access and again, not everyone needs to be an admin, right? Maybe just tax, maybe tax and books for QuickBooks Online Accountant, but those will give them the full permissions inside of ProConnect TACS. If they don't need those full permissions and are more of a standard user, they could still have that standard all access or no access, limited customers. All of these roles, and there are a few as you can see, are listed here in the role descriptions. So you can see in this list a little bit more about what you'll need to know to assign individuals. In general in general, you're probably going to want to stick or I would, it's not want, it's most firms that I work with will use either one of the three advanced roles here or the standard roles, generally all access or no access. Again, you can see here in the description what that means or what each of those means but your standard all access essentially is gonna give you full access to QuickBooks Online Accountant and ProConnect TACS, whereas the no access will give you some permissions for QuickBooks Online Accountant, but no accounting features and will let you utilize ProConnect Tax as a standard user. Notice too, and this is actually really helpful, you can see that some of these have suggested roles. So maybe for your tax data entry folks, that standard no access would be where you'd wanna be. But then if you're up here into, you know, you're the owner or you're an admin, you're staff preparer, maybe you need advanced tax and books access. And for you owners and partners, you should probably have admin, advanced tax and books admin access. But these descriptions will help you determine how best to assign those roles to users. The final piece here too, I get into the, or the second to the penultimate piece here, guess, the second to last, is that you do have some ability to customize some of these permissions to say what do and what don't you have access to. Those are gonna be dependent on what your role is. So you can get a little bit more specific or if you'll excuse the phrase in the weeds or granular, people call it, you have some finer controls around permissions too. Not complete, you know, specific controls as you see here, you're not able to adjust this for your standard users because that's for advanced users only but you'll have the ability to adjust some of these pieces within here like external integrations. For example, if you wanted this individual to have external integrations, you could check the box to allow for that in this permissions section. Now the final piece here before we move on, is as I mentioned, as you're inviting clients, you'll see your entire client list below. Now maybe you want them to have access to every client. Perfect. Just check the box. If not, if there's select clients, you can search for them here to find them and you can click on their name to give them access. And now if you invite this client, they would just have access to those two clients that you've checked or more. So you're able to adjust that. Now you can include additional rows here if you wanna see more clients and also you can include your inactive clients as I mentioned. Be aware of that because you may want to, you know, there's inactive clients, we might wanna assign to them or not be assigned to them. That's something to be aware of as well. But this is where you can edit that client access. All of this can be changed later. So as a best practice, generally, it's recommended to add a user and start with more restrictive permissions and add them as needed if you're not quite sure. Not for everyone, right? You're the firm owner, your partner is being invited, sure, they can have access to everything. But when you're inviting individuals, generally it's better to start with less permissions and add more as they need it instead of giving them the full keys to the castle type of an experience. But that is the managed users or the ad users process inside of ProConnect Tax. And I have my next polling question for you. It is another true false, so it's a coin flip, not all ProConnect Tax users will necessarily be preparers. However, all ProConnect Tax preparers will need to be invited as a user. True or false? Again, take about a minute here to answer that question, and then we will move on. Our next stop on the agenda is going to be more in those settings space, getting some things configured as far as printing, statuses, viewing things inside the program. So we're past some of the setup as far as you've entered the key information for your firm, you've entered the key information or invited those users and preparers inside the program. Now we're moving next to potentially the final piece of this initial setup and administration and getting some of those settings, those print settings, those customizations, and also some basic organization of how to find things within the program and then we should be completed for our session today. So we're gonna move on from this polling question and start in that neighborhood of settings with print settings. So let me shift things over here to our print settings. Now these print settings, to be clear, in case you're curious why maybe this isn't working on older returns, this will start or begin with tax year '22. So if you're in the '21 or earlier programs, you won't necessarily have these full settings, so keep that in mind. It's just a quick disclaimer. As always, or at least for this session, I've included a link here to a guide that will help you with print settings so you can update them. But to break this down very briefly, there's three different levels of print settings that you can adjust. This is what will print with the return or what will print with that setting. So you can decide form order, forms that will be generated, that type of thing and you can adjust it for three separate levels on a client copy level, on a preparer copy level and on the government copy or sometimes called the filing copy. So, some things you may wanna include for the client, you don't wanna have on the government copy. Same is true for the preparer copy. You may want things there that are not on the client copy or the government copy. All those adjustments can be made and you can see kind of a quick overview there of what those mean. Pretty self explanatory. But these settings can be adjusted inside the program. And we're gonna jump right back in. So we wanna take a look at that, those print settings so you can visualize what that looks like. So let me share my screen again inside of ProConnect tax. We left off here on the user management and again we're spending our time in the settings and in this case we're gonna go over into print settings. As mentioned, this is for tax year '22 and forward and here you can see the settings that we can adjust for the different return types. So you'll notice to adjust these you can decide what type of form set you're wanting to adjust and then down below, you'll see the different copies you can toggle between or adjust between. So for example, the default client copy may have some of these worksheets, the preparer copy will as well, but the government copy will just have more of that GIL information, of course won't have the client correspondence. But you can navigate between these three tabs to adjust what this is or what is included. If you click these chevrons or these carrots, you can expand these areas to further add some of those sub topics. So for example, in the client copy, in the general category, we will give them the tax summary and the financial transaction summary, but we're not giving them the diagnostics or the override, that sort of thing. If we wanted to give them those, we could check the box if we wanted that to print with the client copy. But that's how you can manage what will be given or what will be printed when you print that client copy. The same is true, you know, for prepare a copy. In this case, yeah, we do want those diagnostics, but I don't really need the tax summary in my copy or maybe I do. Actually, I would like that. I'm gonna go ahead and make that adjustment. The final piece to this is being able to click on these and drag them. So if for whatever reason you wanted certain information appear before or after, so maybe right at the top here, I have the summary and the diagnostics. I actually, for my client copy, would like that to appear first instead of the correspondence so that it more closely matches the preparer copy so they get the summary information first and then they get their correspondence. Or you say that doesn't make any sense, I wanna give them that client letter first, let's go ahead and keep that at the top. You can use this to adjust the order that these will print for those various copies. Saving these settings will save this for this tax return type. If you need to make any adjustments in the other types, would select that type and make those changes the exact same way you did with that initial type. So that's how you can adjust those print settings and very quickly here just to reinforce that if I just open one of my clients here and go to the final section of file return, this is where you can print the return from. Now this one's got a few things outstanding before we'd want to do that, but this is where you can choose when you're printing and we'll talk more about some of these customizations too with the print settings. This is where you can choose what copy you want to print and what client letter you would like to print. The client letter is actually our next topic and we're gonna move over to that right now. The client letter, as we saw, is a section on the return that prints. It can be included or not depending on the copy or the type of return you're being print, but you can customize those letters. Now by default, the letter inside of ProConnect Tax will be dynamically built or customized based on what's going on in your client's tax return. So it's already going to be customized by default, But maybe you want to adjust some of the wording, remove some sections, include some extra pieces. You have full range to customize this letter to say or look however you would like it to look with a few considerations. So before you start, again, as with the print settings, this started with capture 22 and earlier, only admins, so your general users advanced or basic, cannot create or modify any templates. They're shared with everyone in the firm, English only, and there's no images that can be added. So you can't insert pictures or image files into the letter. They're already printed, so this is a default thing. You don't have to turn this on by default, but you can edit these letters to say what you need them to say. The structure of these letters are basically organized by sections. So you have each sections that are going to be included either by default or only when that is relevant. So I mentioned it's created dynamically or custom for your client. Something like the hello or the salutation or the signature, it's always gonna be there. But other sections like amount owed or estimated payments, they would only be included on a return that has an amount owed or that have estimated payments. So that's what I mean by dynamically generated. When you're customizing these letters, you can insert keywords. These act like placeholders or can insert data inside of the letter that's pulled from the tax return itself. So moving back into that section here, let's do that where we left off. We'll start here again a little bit towards the end, but you can see inside of the tax return itself, we have various letters, the original and maybe some edits that I've made or that we've made as a firm that I can pick from here to choose from. Now I can go to this review letter settings, or again my gear icon will also take me to the client letters if I need to. Reviewing those letter settings are where you can make these adjustments. So notice that I'm in the ten forty. I can go back. I can see more information. I can customize this copy if I need be. In fact, let me just jump back to my list of templates. So I can see the original letter, this will be included by default. I can make a copy of this so that I can customize it, I can view it and when you make a copy, which is what we see here, I can then take that copy and customize it. Well, in this case, I made a copy that I'm gonna customize. Here is where I can look at this information on screen and adjust how I want it to appear. So I can choose, you know, just the general orientation or the alignment. I can adjust information. Here's an example of a placeholder, deer, you know, and then we have the brackets where it's gonna pull that from the return itself. And if I want to edit any of these, so there's a balance due of here's the placeholder for how much is due, I can just type any additional words as needed and if I need to insert a placeholder in any of these sections, I can do that. So if I wanted to include a placeholder for their federal overpayment with their amended return or here is what your vacation home depreciation is for this year. Inserting these into this letter will insert that placeholder so that when this generates, when this federal tax due section generates, it will include my edit and a placeholder here as well. So that lets you really get into this to customize it how you need. My recommendation for this is use the default letter as you're getting started And then if you need to make any changes, something doesn't quite look right, see where that is coming from the letter, what section is that part of, and you can come into this section and make an adjustment. You don't need to make an adjustment that would necessarily apply for everyone, it becomes your new default, but maybe you wanna make that adjustment for this client or that type of client, you can do so and you can have multiple different templates here. So you may have templates for your Schedule C clients, your business clients that have certain activities or certain inputs or data that you need from them or need them to be aware of so that will allow you full range of customization as well. I think our final section here as we get ready to kind of wrap things up, our final two are the tax return filters. These are the ability to adjust what returns you're looking at inside of ProConnect Tax. So you're able to filter your tax returns by return type, by e file progress, by e signature status and by the return status, which you can customize and edit to be what fits your firm's workflow the best. You can also sort by who is assigned to the return and those assignees are something that you can use outside of who the paid preparer is, but who's working on the return. It gives you a little bit of a practice management element of assigning the return until it's complete and anyone at the firm can go and click on their name, for example, and see which returns have been assigned to them. Now, instead of jumping Yeah, no, this actually is good. It looks like we're where we need to be as we wrap things up here. So a quick jump in the program to highlight these filters or this basic client workflow management as I've called it, we will go ahead and jump into or back into ProConnect Tax for I think the last time here and we'll be able to see this from the tax return hub. This is where you can see those filters at the top, as I mentioned, by return type, by e file progress, e signature status, return status, and assignee. And the two elements here that I want you to be aware of primarily are when you're looking at by return status or any of these filters, you can click on these boxes to further see below just those particular quality. So in this case, by return type, all by default, but if I just wanna look at my ten forty, I can filter to that. If I wanna see my e signature status of those that are complete, I can do that and I can go into my settings and go into my client statuses and adjust those to include as many statuses as I need and all those statuses can be assigned directly here on the return. Any of these that are do not file, extended, new client, whatever these statuses are that you want them to be, you can create those and then have those as the filter. And then finally, by assignee, we'll let you see who's working on this return, who is this assigned to, so that if you're wanting to see, let's see here. I have people at my firm. If you're wanting to see, for example, oh, okay. I only have Katie assigned to me right now. You can do that. And then when you're done or wanting to switch this over, you can change who this return is assigned to from this view, but also from within this return, you'll see a signee at the top along with the status. So you can make that change here on who the return is assigned to as well as what the status is without having to jump into the tax return hub. But this functionality allows you to easily navigate between ProConnect tax as you're looking at clients inside the program. And that brings us to our final polling question and it is, would you like a personalized sales demonstration or consultation about what you learned in today's training event? So if you're just considering ProConnect tax, you wanted to see kind of the basics of getting started, go ahead and answer yes here. If not, no is fine. Again, there's no. You're not disqualified if you say no here. Just wanna make sure that if you do have additional questions, you have an outlet to get someone to reach out to you. And we're gonna go ahead and just wrap things up here since we are at time. So some final piece