TaxAdvantage

About Our Technology

a person working at home and doing office work

Sixty years ago, in the infancy of Tax Accounting, leading-edge technology was considered mechanical pencils and reusable carbon paper. You may not be familiar with such innovations! Today, anything more than a week old is most likely outdated. In the early years, adding machines were a luxury, calculators came along in the early 70’s, and computers followed in the very early 80’s. At TaxAdvantage, we embraced such advances as soon as they were available, but looking back, what seemed like giant leaps for our profession in those days seem like every day events today.

You only have to look at our website, www.TaxAdvantage.com, to catch a glimpse of our modern day leading edge use of technology. You can do such things as make an appointment yourself with your accountant, you can exchange documents and files anytime in total safety, you can read the latest news in the fields of finance and taxation, or you can log into your secure portal and look at your own information, again in total privacy and security. As a small business owner, you can handle all of your payroll preparation and payroll tax payment functions anytime, day or night. You can take care of all of your own bookkeeping tasks using QuickBooks right through our website, from wherever you may be. If you have a question, you may want to look at our Knowledge Bank, someone else may have already asked the same question and the answer may be posted right there for you. The list of things you can do interactively through the website increases almost weekly.

In our offices, and for our staff, technology is as vital as a pencil was 60 years ago. All of our client files are available to any of the assigned staff members all of the time, wherever they may be so you don’t ever have to be out of touch with your accountant. All of your files are scanned into our virtual file system and at their fingertips. Collaboration is key to an effective working environment these days and we are on that leading edge as well. Through our website, you can work live with us, just as effectively as if you were at our desk, sitting across from us in our office. Things like live chat mean you can always ask a question of us, if we are available we will answer immediately and if we are not available, you may leave us a secure message and we will respond ASAP. Maybe you want to prepare your own tax return, you can do so right through our website. Or maybe you want a professional on our staff to do it for you but you do not have the time to come and sit down at one of our offices with that professional. Well, you can schedule about a half hour and sit down online with that professional and have your tax prepared by us in real time.

All of this technology revolves around our secure computer server. It is not in our offices, it is located deep inside a secure computer center where not even we have access to it and the information it contains. Only authorized computer support staff are allowed access to the area and they are monitored by video camera and other security devices. We value the confidentiality of the information we store and protect it as much as is possible. Everything is backed up daily to another secure site hundreds of miles away from the server location, again as protection from a natural disaster.

Even our phone system, a VOIP cloud system, demonstrates our commitment to utilizing technology in a powerful way. Call any of our offices and your call will be handled by our virtual system. The extension you dial is transferred to whomever you wish to speak with wherever they may be during normal business hours. If for some reason they are with someone else, you will be able to leave them a detailed message that will be sent to them on their mobile device as well as their inbox on their computer, which is also a mobile device with them at all times. If you fax something to us, it goes straight into the laptop of the person to whom you have sent it. That is how you stay in touch when you care about your clients.

What’s next with technology? We only wish we knew. We do have several things on the drawing board and are keeping our collective ears to the ground, or now what is called the cloud, looking for even better ways to serve you Tax and Accounting needs.