Intuit, maker of QuickBooks, has harnessed the popular app Karbon to create the new Intuit Practice Management, planned to be available for tax year 2020. With it, tax professionals will be able to navigate Intuit ProConnect Tax Online and Lacerte to scope work, automate data collection, scale client onboarding, anticipate bottlenecks and automate recurring work.

Karbon is a practice management solution and advanced work and communications platform designed to enable a collaborative place for accounting firms and professional services to manage workflows, communicate with teams and more.

Enhanced and expanded capabilities with a subscription to Intuit Practice Management include:

• Automated tasks: One centralized, searchable and shared cloud-based location for all client activities, including emails, notes, time tracking, documents, projects and tasks. It also adds conditional rules to trigger activities as work progresses. Intuit Practice Management’s email integration works with Office 365, Gmail and Exchange.
• Optimized workflows: Users can manage capacity with a visual snapshot of all work in progress, identify bottlenecks with performance analytics and keep up-to-date with shared timelines of all activity per project.
• Integrated templates: Tax professionals can standardize tax-specific tasks with templates for common tax returns such as 1040 to corporate, estate or trust, allowing users to start and work on a tax return directly within Intuit Practice Management. The integration allows users to access the tax return through deep links, track status of the return based on actions, and activity within the tax workflow of Lacerte and ProConnect Tax Online. Users can also standardize common processes with templated checklists and connect to customer relationships management programs, proposal software, time tracking, industry tools and more.

“We’re continuing to build meaningful relationships with trusted partners like Karbon to make sure tax and accounting professionals have the tools they need to reduce compliance work and help their clients thrive,” said Jorge Olavarrieta, vice president of product management at Intuit, in a statement. “With Intuit Practice Management, firms can now increase their team’s output with a centralized, collaborative work management platform deeply integrated with their email, and the tax software they know and love from Intuit.”

“This partnership gives accounting firms something they’ve never had before, combining their best-of-breed tax and compliance software seamlessly with their professional-grade practice management,” added Ian Vacin, chief customer officer and co-founder at Karbon, in a statement. “For the first time, they can streamline their workflow from end to end, allowing them to work more efficiently, make better-informed decisions and improve client service.”