How to set up TaxDome for a new firm

Start with your workflow on paper, not in the software

Before you touch a single setting, sketch how a client actually moves through your firm: lead, onboarding, documents in, work, review, delivery, invoice, done. TaxDome is a workflow engine, and everything below is easier once you know the flow you are automating. Ten minutes with a pen saves you hours of rework.

1. Firm settings and branding

Set your firm name, logo, colors, time zone, and your custom domain for the client portal. This is what clients see first, so make it look like you.

2. Add your team and set access

If you already have staff, add them now and scope what each person can see and do before they start working in client records. If it is just you, skip this step. You cannot assign a role to a preparer you have not hired, and guessing at permissions for a hypothetical person is work you will redo anyway. Come back to it the day you make an offer. Adding someone then is a ten-minute job, not a rebuild.

3. Custom fields and tags

Account types are built in, so there is nothing for you to design there. TaxDome already knows the difference between an individual and a company. What you actually control is custom fields and tags, and they do different jobs. Custom fields hold information you want to filter and sort on, like entity type, return type, or which software the client came from. Tags are the ones that touch your automations: a pipeline can add or remove a tag as work moves, and you use tags to target who gets what. That makes tags worth a little thought before you build anything, because you will be referring to them later. Do not over-build either one. Three or four you really use beat twenty you never touch.

4. Set up your templates

Build these before the pipeline, not after, because the pipeline is what puts them to work. Every automation you add points at something you already made: the organizer it sends, the engagement letter it asks a client to sign, the email it fires when the return is ready. If the templates do not exist yet, you end up building the pipeline twice. Start with the ones you use every week: the client organizer, a document-request task, your engagement letter, and two or three canned emails (welcome, docs reminder, return ready). Every template you make is time you never spend again.

5. Nail your document and e-signature flow

Set up your folder structure and your e-signature process, including KBA where you need it on signed returns. An automation that files a document needs somewhere to file it, and one that requests a signature needs a signing setup to use, so both belong here rather than after. Decide how married-filing-jointly signatures work now, before tax season, not in the middle of it.

6. Turn on invoicing and payments

Connect your payment processor, set your services and prices, and decide your policy: invoice on delivery, or require payment before you release the return. A pipeline can raise and send an invoice on its own, but only for a service that already exists at a price you already set. Get that in place and billing stops being the thing you forget.

7. Create your first pipeline (this is the engine)

Now that the pieces exist, wire them together. A pipeline is how work moves, stage by stage, with automations at each step. Start with one. A 1040 season pipeline is a great first build, and you do not have to start from a blank canvas: the TaxDome marketplace has pre-made pipelines, many of them free, with the organizers and tasks already wired in. Grab one that is close to how you work and adapt it to the flow you sketched, rather than inventing every stage yourself. Something like: Not started, Docs requested, In prep, In review, Ready to file, Filed. Then add automations one at a time. Do not try to automate everything on day one.

Rule of thumb: build one pipeline, then run one test client all the way through it. Make a fake account for this, not a real client. You will find something that fires at the wrong moment or asks for the wrong document, and you would much rather find it yourself than in front of someone who is paying you. Fix what annoyed you, then automate it.

8. Configure the client portal and mobile app

This is the client's entire experience of your firm. Test it as a client: send yourself an organizer, upload a document, sign something, pay an invoice. If it is confusing to you, it is confusing to them. Fix the friction before a real client ever sees it.

9. Set up Inbox+ (email)

Connect your email so client messages live next to the client record instead of getting lost in a personal inbox. This is one of the biggest quality-of-life wins in TaxDome, and it is easy to skip during setup. Do not skip it.

10. Import your clients and go live

Bring in your client list, assign account types, and drop them into the right pipeline. Start with a small batch, confirm everything looks right, then import the rest. Send your first real organizer, and you are live.

The mistakes I see most

• Over-building the CRM before running a single client through it.
• Automating everything at once, so when something breaks you cannot tell which automation did it.
• Skipping Inbox+ and the portal test, then wondering why clients are confused.
• Treating setup as one weekend instead of a system you refine over your first season.

You do not need it perfect to start. You need one clean pipeline, your core templates, and payments working. Refine from there.

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