NEEDS LIST
Efficiently providing information and answering questions is critical. This allows us to move faster towards adding value and using our budget for the greatest impact. Please see below for the tips and framework that is crucial for maximizing what we can do for our clients.
You can find general needs list which follow the order of our standard work-flow and value adds starting at the onboarding process. These vary slightly depending on our General Client Classes.
Important
A project can get held up on missing 1 EIN number for a daycare, having easy open questions about a possible foreign account, or not getting back to us on charitable contributions. The faster we pull together the basics, we can then get into planning and tax advisory.
Tips on Providing Documents
- Use the PDF scanner tool that is free in the file sharing app (avoid images when possible).
- Have one important document per PDF such as 1 W-2 instead of multiple.
- Use descriptive titles such as W-2 2024 Square, CA, for Bob Barker.
Tips on Answering Emails
- Block out time to carefully review the request and try to respond to all items within the same email, even if that means an overall delay in response (answering half the questions at a time via your phone for example rarely helps the overall process move faster).
- Keep everyone on the same email chain that typically may have last names and the project description.
- Occasionally we double check or even mistakenly triple check items. Best to re-provide or direct us to the information.
- Keep the email back and forth to a minimum by bulk processing the responses and avoiding responses like, “Ok cool” or “Got it” as invariably once the back and forth starts to get over a quantity of 20 the billing tends to inordinately increase without a corresponding value add.
Things to Avoid
- Please avoid providing pictures, especially multiple pictures that makes up one document.
- Please reserve text and calls for the most urgent situation (lending, acquisitions, unexpected deadlines).
- Everything we do is documented within a file, so please avoid providing meaningful info via text as this is difficult to organize.
Needs List Based on Our General Client Classes
Standard Individual
Profile
- General complexity
- Planning & Advisory needs
- High income
- Rental ownership
- Investments
- Multi-state
- Disposition planning
- Foreign disclosure support
- Benefits from value adds