How to Automate Canopy

Canopy holds the whole client, not just the return

Canopy is cloud practice management software for accounting, tax and bookkeeping firms, and it replaces the filing cabinet, the task list and the client email thread at once. Everything about a client sits in one record: the contact and the entities, the documents, the engagement letter, the tasks and their owners, the time logged, the invoice, and on the resolution side the IRS transcripts and notices attached to the case.

Firms run from a solo enrolled agent up to a multi-office practice, and the work is seasonal with a high client count. One preparer might carry three hundred returns. A resolution specialist carries fifty cases, each a negotiation with the IRS that runs for months and is judged on dates.

The client portal is the other half of it. Clients upload documents, sign engagement letters and returns electronically, and pay, without an attachment landing in anyone's inbox. When that works, the firm's email stops being the system of record.

Tax season is a chase for documents nobody sent

The tax is the small part. The rest is waiting on other people.

A return sits at ninety percent because one K-1 has not arrived. A resolution case cannot move until the client sends six months of bank statements, and they have sent four. An installment agreement was accepted and now needs a payment every month from somebody who does not open post. A notice arrives with a thirty-day response window, gets scanned into the wrong folder, and resurfaces on day twenty-six.

Meanwhile somebody is checking things. Whether a return was accepted or rejected. Whether the state has issued its own notice on top of the federal one. Whether the penalty abatement request has been worked. Whether the refund the client keeps ringing about has actually been released.

Each check is two minutes and a login. Across three hundred clients in April, it is somebody's entire job, and it bills nothing.

Canopy

State notices found before they escalate Each state portal checked on the same rhythm as the federal record, so a levy or a new balance is not a surprise a month after it landed.

Rejected e-files caught in days, not weeks Returns filed but never accepted, listed with how long they have sat, because a client who thinks they are finished will never tell you.

One chase list for every missing document Which client owes which item, how overdue it is, and a reminder drafted in the firm's own wording rather than a generic nudge.

Transcripts arrive because Canopy is wired to the IRS

Canopy automates more of this than most firms use, and the transcript tooling in particular is the real thing.

With Form 2848 or 8821 on file, Transcripts and Notices pulls up to twenty years of IRS transcripts in a few clicks rather than working the portal by hand, pulls in bulk across a client list, and compares versions so a change on an account shows up as a change. Pulls can be scheduled at intervals, which is how a firm watches a client's standing without watching it. The notice side ships pre-built response workflows that are refreshed every year. Tax workflow automation carries an engagement from the first document request to the final payment, and the client portal handles the requests, the signatures and the money.

The ceiling is the federal record and the firm's own walls. Transcripts are the IRS, and only what the IRS publishes as a transcript.

A state department of revenue notice, a balance on a state portal, an e-file acknowledgement in the preparation software, the client's payroll provider, a lien on a county recorder's site: none of that comes down that pipe, and all of it changes what a case is worth.

A client file that keeps its own deadlines

State portals, county recorders and the e-file queue can all be read weekly, whether or not anyone in the firm remembers.

Every open resolution case checked weekly against the state's portal as well as the federal record, so a state levy is not discovered a month after it started. Installment agreements confirmed as still in good standing, with a missed payment raised the week it happens rather than the quarter it defaults.

Returns filed but not yet accepted, listed with how long they have sat, because a rejected e-file nobody opened is a late return attached to a client who thinks they are done. Refunds still not released, so the answer is in hand before the client rings a third time.

The document chase is the other half. Which client is missing which item, how long it has been outstanding, and a reminder drafted for each, worded like the firm rather than like a system. Deadlines counted forward from the date printed on the notice, not from the day somebody filed it.

Then the money. What the engagement letter said, what has been billed against it, and which resolution clients are behind on fees while their case keeps consuming hours.

Preparation runs overnight, filing does not

Somebody in the firm still opens the state site, reads the balance and writes it onto the case. In April that somebody bills at a rate which makes it an expensive way to check a web page.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the portals your firm already logs into, reads what changed since the last run, and puts it on the client file in Canopy or onto the worklist your team works from in the morning.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, under a policy that can be locked to the sites you name. Nothing is filed, submitted, paid or sent to a client without a person approving it. A tax filing is signed by a preparer.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.