APIs can be leveraged to enhance productivity in a broad range of tax and accounting initiatives – step-by-step – adding up to substantial time savings. The typical workflow for tax preparation involves several stages, with many opportunities for automation. Take a look at the following examples:
- Collecting and inputting data
Your tax team might have data in a CRM – a client ID, an entity name, and so on – that can be synchronized automatically with CCH Axcess through an API. In fact, if you want to make a change to that data while still inside CCH Axcess, you can – and that change can be populated back into your CRM without additional steps. - Reviewing returns
Using APIs, you can take information inside a return and “push it back over” to a workbook, work papers, or other source documents. Essentially, you can put source data and calculated return data side-by-side to help inform reviews that identify discrepancies or other issues on-the-fly. - Delivering returns
More and more tax teams are relying on portals to deliver returns. APIs can help streamline time-consuming manual tasks, like publishing of PDFs so clients can sign-off on returns. - e-Filing
As the returns you prep near the finish line, you can put APIs to work in transmitting e-filed returns to the IRS, monitoring return status, and downloading ELF status history automatically as returns are accepted. - Advising
Tax returns contain a lot of data – and it's often overlooked when it comes to business intelligence analysis. APIs pull data out of returns that teams can use to inform strategies (for example regional incomes of S Corporations by industry codes) to help identify points of market strength or weakness.
Getting started with APIs is not as hard as you might think. Take a look at the different applications and data in your firm, and identify opportunities to streamline. Fill out the form below to download our Beginner’s Guide to Getting Started with APIs in Tax. Then visit the Wolters Kluwer Developer Portal and get to know the APIs and associated data that are available. Start with a small project and build from there. Over time, you’ll be able to improve experiences, reveal new opportunities and bolster the bottom line.
