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by jassen bowman
tax resolution systems
timely review of irs notices is very important for a tax resolution practice.
more on tax resolution: measure your business metrics | building your dream team | quoting tax resolution fees | 12 rules for phone calls | lead generation marketing must happen daily | 3 checklists for office communication | what to say on phone calls about fees | use checklists to manage your tax firm
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these checklists also apply to faxes and voicemails.
process mail checklist
- have a specific person assigned to get the mail each business day.
- sort mail by opening priority. irs notices and any payments or other correspondence from clients are “a pile” mail.
- for irs correspondence:
- log the notice into crm system by notice number and irs notice date (usually in upper right corner of notice).
- calendar any action items based on your processing intervals.
- e.g., calendar cdp filing date for 10 days before the 30-day deadline upon receipt of a letter 1058.
- calendar action item deadline.
- for levy notice, inform licensed representative directly.
- for items requiring signatures, insert to client paper file and pass along to licensed representative. calendar response deadline.
- for irs document requests, assign to admin assistant for that client and calendar deadlines.
- for client correspondence:
- for new client paperwork, proceed to client intake checklist.
- for payments, follow internal payment routing procedures.
- for other correspondence, determine relevance to active case and assign priority based on nature of correspondence.
- log into case work management system.
process voicemail checklist
use the following to process through all your voicemails.
go through each phone line that you use in your business and complete the following checklist.
first, log in to crm system.
phone lines:
- mobile phone
- office phone
- 24-hour recorded information line voicemail. this usually arrives in email so you could also process it during process email checklist (below) instead if you prefer.
- google voice. this usually arrives in email so you could also process it during process email checklist instead if you prefer.
- home phone (if you use that for business as well)
use this checklist for each phone line and message:
- check to see if the person calling is already in your crm system.
- if they are not already in crm, add them.
- if you will be replying to the voicemail with an email response, copy the email into your crm system.
- if you are replying to the voicemail with a phone call, make notes about the message on the contact in crm.
- once you’ve made your notes in crm, make sure you set a followup task for when you’d next follow up with this contact if they do not reply first.
- update in crm to note any new information, roles or status in our system. for example, if we learned this person is a cpa, tag them as such in your crm application.
process email checklist
use the following to process through all your emails for the day. you really should only be checking and processing email (at most) twice per day, but working through it to get an empty email box at that time.
- log in to your email account and process through each email.
- when replying make sure you make note in crm application and create/edit a task for when you’d like to follow up with that contact if you do not hear back from them.
- if you are using google’s gmail as your email, you should archive emails as your process them so that you have an empty inbox. read “getting things done” by david allen for more information on why you should only handle items once.
- if you use a crm system that automatically logs your emails (we’re currently using contactually.com), then this makes the contact tracking much simpler.