Tax season is a whirlwind. Between juggling client communications, managing deadlines, and ensuring compliance, the last thing you need is a cumbersome e-signature process. Enter Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA) e-signatures—a secure, IRS-compliant method for obtaining electronic signatures on critical tax documents like Form 8879.​

At Keeper, we've seamlessly integrated KBA e-signatures into our Tax Suite, eliminating the need for third-party tools and streamlining your workflow.​

What is KBA, and why does it matter?

KBA is a security measure that verifies a signer's identity by prompting them to answer questions based on public records (think previous addresses or loan details). This method ensures that the person signing the document is indeed who they claim to be.

For tax professionals, KBA is a legal requirement. The IRS mandates KBA for electronically signed Forms 8878 and 8879, which exist to authorize the e-filing of an individual’s tax returns.

The old way:

Historically, incorporating KBA into your tax workflow meant relying on separate platforms, leading to:​

• Manual data transfers between systems
• Increased risk of errors
• Additional costs for standalone KBA services
• Disjointed client experiences​

These inefficiencies can obviously slow down your operations and increase the likelihood of compliance issues or overwhelm for tax teams, which is exactly why we built a KBA feature into our Tax Suite. Now, your firm can securely manage and verify signatures without leaving the platform.

The Keeper way:

Keeper’s e-signature features makes sending, signing, and verifying documents simple. The highlights include:

• Uploading documents directly from a client’s tax return page in Keeper.
• Adding multiple signers and customize the signing order easily.
• Customizing fields with various types (text, signature, date, etc.), ensuring all necessary information is clearly requested. Make templates so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each tax season.
• Optional KBA verification enhances security, verifying the signer’s identity through personal information and public records.

How it works:

1. Enable KBA verification simply by selecting "KBA signature required" from the Role drop-down when adding recipients.
2. Pay per signature: affordable pricing ($1 per signature in the US) covers the cost of verification.
3. Pre-fill optional client details (such as Name, Address, Date of Birth, and SSN) or let clients provide this information during the verification process.
4. Signers complete verification by answering KBA questions before being redirected seamlessly to sign their document.

Put simply: clients get a link, they answer a few simple questions, and they sign. They’ll automatically receive confirmation, and so will you. That’s it!

Stay organized and compliant

Once completed, signatures and related documents are auto-organized within Keeper’s Files tab, accessible anytime. Both you and your client receive notifications confirming the completed signatures.

Keeper’s integrated KBA e-signatures simplify your firm’s workflow, ensuring secure, compliant, and stress-free tax seasons. Ready to get started?

The post Simplify IRS Compliance with KBA e-Signatures in Keeper appeared first on Keeper.

• MCO cut their final review time by 85% using Keeper, resulting in 375 hours saved per month.
• Keeper centralized MCO's task management process, enhancing efficiency and providing comprehensive client insights in one place.
• Implementing Keeper's Client Portal increased client interaction, achieving a 95% adoption rate and reducing follow-up emails.

Building a niched practice

MCO Bookkeeping (MCO) was founded in 2018 with the goal of providing quality accounting services to a very complex and specific niche: UPS franchise locations. While growth was initially slow, MCO’s business began doubling each year starting in 2021 – and the bookkeeping team experienced the same growing pains that nearly every firm struggles with at some point or another. The volume of clients was quickly outpacing the systems MCO had in place, manual tasks slowed down the month-end close, and onboarding additional clients became daunting. If MCO was going to continue its impressive growth, it needed a new solution that was built specifically for large-scale bookkeeping practices.

Saving 375 hours per month with Keeper

The bookkeeping team at MCO was historically relying on dated systems and manual processes, and quickly discovered that the transition to Keeper alone was going to save them hundreds of hours per month across their large book of clients. In 2021, before MCO had subscribed to Keeper, bookkeepers at MCO could conduct a final end-to-end review of a client’s books in an hour and a half. Today, that process has sped up nearly 85 percent, and takes MCO’s bookkeepers as little as 12 minutes per client. Stretched out across their entire book of clients, that totals to roughly 375 hours per month of saved time.

Keeper’s integration with QuickBooks Online and the file review features that come along with that integration were key for increasing efficiencies at MCO.  “Before, we had to log into QuickBooks, which may take five minutes in itself,” said Mike. “You find your login credentials, get into the file, then pull up the transaction. Now, it’s all together in one spot – and that alone saves us a ton of time.”

When it comes to running a firm with a large volume of clients, the team at MCO agrees it is paramount for quality to stay consistent with quantity. By leveraging Keeper’s Automatic File Review Reports, the bookkeepers and reviewers have additional confidence that they are delivering the cleanest and most accurate books possible. These features, paired with MCO’s robust use of the internal chat functionalities, allow the team to provide seamless, quality work while still scaling the business as a whole.

“We’re able to have one supervisor manage upwards of 175 accounts, whereas prior that number may have been half."

Navigating task management for hundreds of clients

Before Keeper, MCO relied on a general CRM system along with QuickBooks Online to manage over 500 franchise clients. Working through these tasks, sifting through tons of client information, and reconciling individual QuickBooks files generated confusing and problematic administrative work that took away from the bookkeeping at hand. 

“We had a ‘square peg, round hole’ mentality,” said Mike Greenblatt, Partner and VP of Operations and Strategic Development at MCO. “We built something within our CRM that worked, but we eventually grew out of it. It was too manual, too many tasks, too many items – and the system was not built for the actual close itself.”

After implementing Keeper and working with their Customer Success Manager, it was clear that they had found a solution that was well-suited for large bookkeeping teams. Instead of flipping through their task management system, CRM, Teams chat log, and QuickBooks Online to complete their monthly work… they could simply login to Keeper. 

Keeper’s ability to support every aspect of the month-end process was incredibly valuable to MCO. The bookkeepers could look at a client’s close page from top to bottom for immediate context by viewing previous internal chats, checking in on client portal communications, and using Keeper’s file review reports to catch errors automatically (without ever opening QuickBooks Online.)

Mike observed that with previous practice management tools, the tracking of tasks felt like an afterthought; teammates were simply checking off tasks with little follow up. “In contrast, Keeper is a system where we use the task feature to efficiently get our close done. It gives us an enhanced level of understanding on a very large scale.”

Engaging 500+ clients on Keeper’s Client Portal

Beyond the increased organization of tasks and saved time MCO experienced using Keeper, the team also benefits from the Client Portal to all their clients. Before using Keeper, MCO’s communications with clients were largely email-driven. While the team did set up automatic notifications through their CRM at the time, MCO’s bookkeepers found themselves having to follow up with individual, one-off emails to clients. Mike observed that this process took time away from the month-end work at hand, and failed to encourage true engagement between the client and their financials.

Mike and his team quickly came to the conclusion that Keeper’s Client Portal would become the single location for their clients to answer questions, submit documentation and access their financial reporting packages on demand. By giving their clients a dedicated platform to interact with their accounting team and the status of their books each month, MCO found a way to make their large practice feel smaller and give clients a truly personalized experience. 

For many large firms, changing systems can seem like a tricky undertaking. However, MCO proves each day that investing in new, intuitive practice management platforms can make all the difference in service quality and client participation.

“Since moving to the Client Portal, we have seen a 95% adoption rate from clients, as well as a rapid increase to our day-to-day communication with clients,” said Mike. “We also saw heightened engagement in their finances.”

Looking into Keeper as a large firm? Here’s what you need to know.

For larger firms that are interested in Keeper to manage a high-volume of clients, Mike offered up a key piece of advice: “Dive into it. The real value of Keeper is seeing how all the features are interconnected, and how they work across multiple teams, individuals, and tasks.”

Today, there are several practice management systems on the market that help keep firm owners organized, but lack the ability to shrink the work size itself. With Keeper, large practices can distribute the work efficiently and give supervisors the ability to oversee their team’s work on both the micro and macro levels. 

“Selecting Keeper for our business has been the right decision. It’s made a tremendous difference in terms of growth and efficiency.”

The post How MCO uses Keeper to manage 500+ QuickBooks files per month appeared first on Keeper.

Automating Workflows with Keeper

Dan Luthi and the Ignite Spot team are all about making accounting accessible and intuitive for businesses across the United States. Combining top talent and tech is crucial for creating automated workflows that help reduce the administrative burdens – allowing Ignite Spot to focus on the “big picture” for their clients.

Dan and the Ignite Spot team go beyond just numbers. With their advanced tools, they help clients make informed and proactive decisions. One of the modern software platforms used to help achieve this outcome is Keeper.

The post How Keeper Helps Ignite Spot Run Quality Control for 200+ Clients appeared first on Keeper.