Accounts vs contacts: the first dimension
An account is something you work with: a client, a tax return, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. A contact is a person attached to that account. The shift, especially coming from other software, is that one account can have multiple contacts.
Why this matters coming from QuickBooks or a spreadsheet
When I moved my firm from QuickBooks Online, a married couple was just "Mr. and Mrs." on one line. In TaxDome you add a new dimension: that one account has two contacts. It feels like extra work during the import. It is also the thing that unlocks everything after it.
What multiple contacts let you do
- Married filing jointly: send the return to be signed by both spouses.
- A business: the owner and the owner's bookkeeper as separate contacts.
- Set who signs: make one contact a signer and another not. On proposals, require everyone to sign, or just one person.
It is a small distinction, but it is the one people trip on, and getting it right is what makes signing, proposals, and communication behave the way you expect.
Why the import stalls people
People buy TaxDome and then sit on it because they cannot get through the import. It is not the simplest thing. If you are comfortable with CSV files it is manageable, but even I have botched imports. I once imported an HOA and accidentally set the same address on every unit, so all of them read "123 Main Street." So yes, it is fiddly, and that is normal.
Give yourself runway
Do not do this in January like I did. I joined TaxDome in December 2024 and spent two weeks watching every video in their education library before I relied on it. TaxDome is more user-friendly than its reputation suggests, especially if tech is your thing, but if you do not internalize the fundamentals you will miss a lot of features. Budget real time to implement, not the week before tax season.
The takeaway
Accounts hold contacts. Contacts can be signers or not. Get that one distinction, budget time for a clean import, and you have cleared the hurdle that stops most people. From there, the next thing to understand is jobs, pipelines, stages, and tasks.
Stuck on the TaxDome import?
The import and the accounts-vs-contacts setup are exactly where I help firms get unstuck. I am a practicing EA who runs my whole firm on TaxDome. Book a 1:1 session to get your import and CRM set up right, or bring your team for training.
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