Cullari Carrico CPAs & Advisors
Jay Soojian, CPA and member at Cullari Carrico LLC CPAs and Advisors recalled the chaos of tax season before SmartVault was implemented. “Our biggest issue with our previous document management system was that it just couldn’t handle a firm of our size. It crashed a lot during tax season.”
A forty-plus employee firm, Cullari Carrico offers a long list of services and supports a large client base. Because of the firm’s size, leaders needed a powerful system that would run efficiently and support staff during tax season.
In 2015, the firm’s existing document management system (DMS) was being retired, so research began on a replacement. Leaders narrowed the decision down to two solutions: SmartVault and eFileCabinet. Both systems rated high, but it was SmartVault’s seamless integration with the firm’s tax software that pushed it into the winner’s circle.
“It is a great solution. We are a paperless firm, and because SmartVault seamlessly integrates with Lacerte, we can maintain an efficient electronic tax process,” said Soojian. “Integration with Lacerte was key in picking the new document management system.”
Soojian recalled a smooth migration to SmartVault as well. And when he encountered what he termed a “small hiccup,” he even got some personalized support from SmartVault’s CEO. “I reached out to Eric [CEO] about a migration issue we were having. He got back with me right away and worked with us to correct it. That’s a level of support you don’t get everyday.”
Feeling the time savings
According to Soojian, prior tax seasons were time draining due to multiple crashes of the firm’s previous DMS. Not only were interruptions detrimental to productivity, but it required time and attention on the part of Soojian and IT personnel.
“I was often pulled away from work to assist IT staff each time the solution crashed. This consumed many hours, and greatly slowed workflow during our busiest time of year.”
Soojian says that SmartVault has relieved the crashing issue and saved the firm a great deal of time. “I do know that we’ve saved many hours now that we are on a solution that can handle our workload and doesn’t crash on us. Lost hours really add up when you consider down time from crashes and time spent by staff trying to resolve the issue.”
“It is a great solution. We are a paperless firm, and because SmartVault seamlessly integrates with Lacerte, we can maintain an efficient electronic tax process.”
Next steps
Having experienced great time savings just a year into using SmartVault, Jay Soojian has a vision for improving the firm’s tax workflow further. With a sound digital tax workflow in place, the firm scans source documents up front, sends them through Tax Import (an OCR solution), and then files organized bookmarked PDFs within the document management system.
“The next step is to integrate SmartVault with our OCR solution so that bookmarked PDFs are automatically filed in the right place. This will eliminate a step for us and accelerate efficiency further.”
To date, SmartVault has proven to be a valuable asset to the firm of Cullari Carrico. And as staff faces a coming tax season, being armed with SmartVault as their secure document filing and storage solution offers peace of mind.
