Setting Up Status and Milestones

Milestones

Milestones are planned events that occur during the tax preparation process. They can be set at the account (federal return), recipient and state return levels. Milestones keep track of the date an event occurred and the resource (user or process) that caused the event to happen. Milestones can be used to gather statistics and other historical information. Typically, milestones are of interest to those who monitor the entire tax preparation process rather than to tax preparers who complete the day-to-day work.

Milestones are often described as occurring in the past. For example: Review Started, Review Finished, Return Processed, Return E-Filed, and Tax Letter Mailed.

Statuses

A status is the level of progress achieved in working toward the completion of each milestone in the tax preparation process. They can be set at the account (federal return), recipient and state return levels. Statuses differ from milestones in that statuses are conditions or situations rather than events. Typically, statuses are of interest to tax preparers because statuses provide workflow progress information.

Statuses are often described as pending or in progress. For example: Ready for Preparation, Preparation in Progress, Waiting for Information, Ready for Review, In Review, Ready for Filing, or Awaiting Audit.

Tracking Documents with Status and Milestones

Status and milestones are specific to each document prepared. For example, a separate status and set of milestones can be used to separately track the following:

Documents for each year. Setting an account status for the current year return has no effect on the account status for the subsequent year return.

Documents for each child account of an insolido account for each year.

Each state return filed for an account.

Each beneficiary letter. Separate status and milestones can indicate when each letter is mailed or if there is a delay.

Each document prepared for accounts that process 1099 and 1041 returns or 5227 and 1041 returns.

Planning Status and Milestones

The key to planning statuses and milestones is to identify only what you need to track. Start simple. You can add status and milestones later but it may be difficult to remove a status or milestone after it is used. Before you add status and milestones to ONESOURCE Trust Tax, organize them using the Milestone Setup and Status Setup worksheet tabs in the ONESOURCE Trust Tax Tools Setup Microsoft Excel workbook.

When deciding what to track, first identify the account (federal return) milestones that are important to you during the tax preparation process. Remember that milestones are events and they track dates and resources. For example, you may want to track the following for a federal return:

When the return was processed.

When the return was completed and ready for filing.

When the return was filed with the IRS.

When the internal folder was updated.

After you identify the account (federal return) milestones, identify the account (federal return) statuses used by tax preparers as they work on their accounts. Statuses are typically used by tax preparers to indicate the next task to complete or to provide a reason why the next step cannot be completed. For example, before the first milestone (Returned Processed) is reached, a tax preparer may need to find the accounts that have not been started in order to prepare and review the worksheet. After the worksheet is reviewed, the return will be ready for preparation. But, the return cannot be prepared if there is missing information. Since the account (federal return) status should be able to show this, you should include one or more Waiting for Information statuses.

After you identify the account (federal return) status and milestones, identify the status and milestones at the recipient then state return levels. When deciding recipient and state return milestones and statuses:

Consider where the preparation process diverges from the federal return preparation process.

Keep status changes to a minimum to avoid burdening tax preparers with too many places to indicate status changes. For example, an account has four recipients and two state returns in addition to the federal return. It may be an unnecessary burden to the tax preparer to require marking the federal return, the four recipients, and the two state returns when a worksheet review completes or to change the status for the federal return, the four recipients, and the two state returns if the account cannot be processed because an outside K-1 has not been received.

Use recipient and state return status and milestones to track printed documents rather than the preparation process.

Using Automatic Features

You can have ONESOURCE Trust Tax Tools automatically set the status and capture the milestone information simultaneously. For example, a status can automatically change to Return Ready for Review when federal tax return processing completes, and the date the processing request was submitted can be captured to associate the status with a Return Processed milestone. Similarly, you can set a status to automatically change when the federal and/or state return is submitted for e-filing and capture the date.

SuperBank Associations

If your PAN is grouped together into a SuperBank association for register definitions, your status and milestones will apply to all of the PANs in the SuperBank association.

Adding Status and Milestones

After you identify your account (federal return), recipient and state return status and milestones, you are ready to add the information to ONESOURCE Trust Tax.

note

Only Trust Tax users who were granted the Can setup customizable Status and Milestones (Tools)
user right can access the Status and Milestones pages in ONESOURCE Trust Tax.

To add your status and milestones:

Select SETUP
, Customize
then Status
. The Customize Status
collapsible section on the Status page displays the account (federal return) statuses by default. The graphic below shows the Section
drop-down list, which you will use to move to the recipient and state return statuses.

Use the account (federal return) status information you entered on the Status Setup worksheet tab in your Microsoft Excel workbook to complete the account (federal return) status fields under the Customize Status
collapsible section.