ShareFile notification overload

Key tips and advice the working tax pro can use.
#1
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I get flooded with the notifications this time of year. I want to create Outlook inbox rules to move inbound notifications of client uploads to one folder and client downloads to another. But seems the Citrix ShareFile notifications combine both in same email.

Can I break them up somehow so I get the upload notifications (which are important) from the download ones?
 

#2
zl28  
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what software do you use?
 

#3
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Outlook 365 and small biz ShareFIle subscription. I still haven't gotten response from Citrix Sharefile support if there's a way to separate client upload notifications from download notifications. Then it wb easy to make an Outlook rule.
 

#4
zl28  
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do you use Lacerte or Profx?
 

#5
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Go System for 2018. 2017 and prior was combo of UTax and ProFx.
 

#6
zl28  
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was going to see if had lacerte or proseries...i have proseries....they have something called Intuit Pro Link...which act like a secure portal...but they send you 1 email a day listing all the people who updated their 'file',

The portal also shows a list or everyone in date order who entered info.

Lastly, there is a checkbox next to each document....so if someone sends me a few things on jan 25 and a few more things feb 2 and a few more things feb 10.................i can enter the data intermittently and check the box to indicate i entered this data - don't look at this tax doc again.

Has more features, but those are the tops ones.

Huge time saver.

Maybe your software offers this or will offer it.
 

#7
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Z, I'm envious. Citrix does not offer that for Go System. Go System, at least for 2017, didn't even offer e-signing. Could be if one used Go FIle Room, for a mere several thousand dollars/year minimum, they offered a proprietary portal.

I have to create a subfolder for each client for each year for each of their entities just to move files I've already downloaded. A huge time sink but still better than email chaos.
 

#8
zl28  
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Thompson Reuters is pretty prices; do you need download notifications? you can unclick the box so you dont' get download notifications. I used to go nuts with the Citrix Sharefile also.
 

#9
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For me, once past the hefty first year "training fee" which would be unnecessary if GST had just normal documentation, GST cheaper than UltraTax because I have relatively few clients but a high percentage in multiple states. GST charges me a fixed $40 per client regardless of number of state returns. And it is a true cloud app, that is very stable compared to the never ending system issues I had with local network versions of UT and to a lesser extent ProFx.

My Citrix Sharefile subscription includes a weak ass version of what you describe. "Workflows" is a rigid checklist that reminds clients of documents I need. I can't change priorities. Only for documents no other collaboration/communication.

Reading your post, prompted me to go back to the Citrix Sharefile portal settings. Basically only two relevant settings for notifications:

One turns off notifications to me for when I upload or download. Duh

The other sets frequency of email notifications ranging from real time to once a day or so. I changed it to twice a day.

But nothing that separates notifications to me of clients' downloading from their uploading. I could turn either of those notifications off on a folder by subfolder basis. But that's not good idea.

Really the Intuit dashboard is much better than Citrix email approach. (though I would not want to use Intuit for client communication. What happens if you change tax software providers?)
 

#10
zl28  
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how bout this...alot of website have a portal....i think www.getnetset.com does.....would that be an idea?
 

#11
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the vendor of that site is bundling Citrix ShareFile. At first I thought the vendor value added a dashboard for notification/upload download tracking, but I didn't see it on closer look. So same notification overload issue as I have now with ShareFile. The vendor seems to be another accounting/tax prep website provider claiming superior canned content but not the workflow functionality you're getting from Intuit. (and on the downside, looks like the cloud file retention max of 3 years is lower than what I thought was the unlimited one that Citrix ShareFile gives to direct subscribers.) Thank you for the suggestion.
 

#12
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My main beef w ShareFile is that it is very very timeconsuming to set customer permissions on subfolders if the permissions are different from parent folder permissions. there is a feature called "group something" that might help, but seems that you have to set the permissions folder by folder, user by user. e.g. parent folder gives client permission to view, download, and get notificaitions.

One child folder "Tax year 2018" for client to upload docs for me, and me to upload drafts and docs for client to get. Client gets view, download, upload, upload notifications. They can delete their own uploads.

Three grandchild folders: CPA uploaded in 2019; CPA download in 2109, Filed w Govt.
Client gets no rights to the uploaded folder. Client get view and downolad right two CPA download folder. Client gets view, download, and download noticications rights on the "Filed"

Can't use ShareFile templates for that.
 

#13
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The irony of all that setup and permission setting of ShareFile, a client's family wealth office manager volunteered to help me reorganize ShareFile folder structure because not only was I forcing her to do my work by retrieving pdf's online or scaning but I was turning her neatly organized paper and computer folders into a jumbled cloud shoebox. (there are separate ShareFile folders for each of 2 trusts, 1 family partnership LP, 2 kids, and the parents. Under that folder by year etc as dsecribe above. Another set of folders at highest level for Fed only copies for lender requests.

She explained how her personal cpa also uses a portal, PowerVault?, but has subfolders by year, within that by the same tax return categories as the cpa's web organizer. The office manager enjoys completely filling in the web organizer.

Stumped me for a bit but then realized that of course throwing all the pdfs to be ocr'd into a single folder would seem nutty to a someone used to efficiently organizing paper documents or documents to be manually input.

I showed her how the physical sequence of pdfs is irrelevant when they're OCR'd and then bookmarked automatically, as long as the docs are properly sequenced themselves. If you're not using OCR to create the bookmarked pdf workpaper set, I could see a slight advantage having the pdfs organized by category. But using a tool like Tic Tie Calc it just take a few minutes more to mover the docs around into desired sequence.

I kept my mouth shut and did not mention that modern doc management systems don't try to mimic paper filing systems. They use meta data, tags, filters, sorting to organize docs.
 


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