How to build your first TaxDome pipeline

First, write your process on paper

Before you build anything in the software, write your process out from A to Z: how a client comes in, the work, the review, delivery, billing, and the follow-up. A pipeline is only as good as the process behind it, and ten minutes with a pen saves you hours of rework. If the words jobs, stages, and tasks still feel fuzzy, start with the four dimensions of TaxDome first.

Start from a template, then make it yours

You do not have to build from a blank canvas. TaxDome has a marketplace of pre-made pipelines, many of them free, with the organizers, chats, and tasks already connected. Start from one and customize it to your process. One caution: once you commit to an organizer, reuse the same one year to year. Switching organizers breaks the prefill from last year's data, so pick one, then stick with it.

Stage 1: Welcome email and proposal

Creating the job sends out the proposal or engagement letter and a welcome email. Use tags so a new client gets the new-client email and a returning client gets a different one. The proposal has to be signed by the client, and you set the job to move automatically the moment they sign.

Stage 2: Waiting for the organizer

On entry, this stage applies a folder template, creates the organizer, sends it to the client, posts a chat message explaining how to complete it, and updates the client-facing status. Build your organizer with conditional logic so it only asks what is relevant: if they say they sold a home, it asks about the sale; if they pick 2020, it asks the COVID questions, and if they do not, those questions never appear. That beats the 45-page organizer where clients key in their own W-2 boxes and create a mess.

Stage 3: In prep

When the client submits the organizer, an automatic message thanks them and sets a timeframe, and the status flips to "in progress." Put a task here to actually prepare the return, and assign it to whoever preps. This is where the "a task at every stage" rule earns its keep: without it, the pipeline just displays work instead of moving it.

Stage 4: Review

A review stage with a task for the reviewer. TaxDome also lets you mark organizer answers as reviewed, which locks them from further client edits once you have entered them into the return.

Stage 5: Invoice and signature (and my billing opinion)

You can run all your billing inside TaxDome. One feature it got known for: lock the document to the invoice, so the client has to pay before they can view the return. The invoice pops up first. It is good billing hygiene, and it stops the client from seeing the result, not loving it, and running off to their cousin who "does taxes."

My own take: I bill up front, at the start of the engagement, as much as I can. Here is why. Clients value the work before they pay, and it is easy to devalue it after. For me it is the opposite. A client drives me a little nuts until they pay, and once they have paid I am happy to do anything for them. Billing up front gave me a much happier tax season. Pick what fits your firm; TaxDome stays agnostic either way.

Stage 6: E-file

A task for the filing process, which you can assign to an office manager or whoever files. When the 1040 is complete, the automation adds the "returning client" tag and removes "new client," so next year they are already sorted before you lift a finger.

Stage 7: Post-filing (the stage most people skip)

This is my favorite stage, and it is the one most people leave off. At the end of an engagement I:

• Clean up any unbilled time sitting there, and either write it off or send one more invoice.
• Grade the client A, B, or C, so in the off-season I can pull that data and decide who to keep and whose price to raise.
• Send the review-request email automatically. This one matters. Look up Y10 Tax Solutions and you will see a lot of five-star reviews, and a big part of that is this single automated email that goes out at the end of every engagement. Marketing belongs in the system too.

Build it, run five clients, then automate

Do not try to automate everything on day one. Build the pipeline, run five real clients through it, then automate the steps that annoyed you. And test it as a client: create a demo account with your personal email and walk the whole thing from their side. If it is confusing to you, it is confusing to them.

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