Leveraging a strong workflow engine can ship the clever tax automation, management enchancment, and larger visibility tax groups must make extra strategic selections, mitigate threat, and efficiently orchestrate the whole direct tax course of.

The present state of tax knowledge assortment

Sadly, too many professionals are losing their time in the course of the busy tax season, spending as a lot as 80 p.c of their work hours gathering and coming into data, verifying its accuracy, and consolidating tax paperwork.  

A lot of the issue lies inside the truth that supply knowledge typically resides in disparate methods and codecs. That knowledge should not solely be collected, however verified for accuracy, and manipulated to be used. That’s assuming that not one of the crucial knowledge is lacking. 

Spreadsheets and guide processes will not be the reply for tax knowledge assortment and analyzation. That is time-consuming, extremely inefficient, and results in larger threat for errors. Tax groups are already underneath strain to handle elevated workloads and staffing constraints, whereas maintaining tempo with the complicated regulatory atmosphere. This additionally makes it tougher to exhibit worth and make knowledgeable strategic selections. 

“All of this culminates within the type of redundant opinions … all through the method as a substitute of standardizing every part to a singular assessment course of that’s materiality primarily based. They’re pressured to virtually assessment, at every stage of the method, the prior stage’s output due to all of this guide intervention and disparate knowledge sources alongside the way in which,” stated Corey Greene, Senior Outbound Product Advertising Supervisor, Tax and Accounting Professionals for Thomson Reuters. 

Continued Greene, “Along with that … there’s a necessity for a larger degree of management and visibility of the whole tax submitting course of each for threat discount functions but in addition enterprise intelligence functions. Actually lowering that situation of restricted visibility.” 

Methods to beat tax knowledge assortment challenges

Overcoming tax knowledge challenges and driving larger worth requires a collection of digital tax workflow instruments to drive the direct tax administration course of. Let’s take a better look.  

Automate and standardize knowledge circulate  

With the proper tax knowledge administration software program, tax professionals can automate and standardize the circulate of knowledge. This could considerably cut back company tax knowledge assortment and preparation time, and increase accuracy. When evaluating the proper knowledge administration answer, companies ought to take into account the next options:  

• The flexibility to standardize current tax packages and work papers with controls, validation, year-over-year knowledge recall, and automatic rollovers to scale back preparation time and circulate knowledge immediately from the supply to your tax functions. 
• Prolonged capabilities of Excel for acquainted navigation.
• Information saved in a central repository, permitting for straightforward assessment, consolidation, and scrubbing.
• Simply distributes and displays knowledge assortment requests.
• Automated and ad-hoc reminders to make sure well timed completion.  
• Safe entry for all inside and exterior sources of knowledge in your course of.
• Simplifies knowledge loading and reviewing. 
• Information mapped and transferred throughout the whole company tax platform. 
• API-enabled so you possibly can handle the whole course of utilizing the instruments of your selection, in addition to create customized dashboards with often up to date data. 

Management knowledge from one central location

As famous earlier, an excessive amount of time is spent trying to find correct tax knowledge throughout a number of functions and on guide manipulation earlier than it may be used for tax planning, provisioning, and compliance. A centralized tax knowledge repository for company tax knowledge helps unlock the precious time wanted for tax knowledge analytics and value-add work.  

The Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE Information Hub, for example, delivers the next advantages: 

• With an clever ingestion and classification engine, knowledge can robotically circulate into the identical system, irrespective of the dimensions or the format of the unique supply materials.
• Automated, no-touch tax knowledge assortment means much less time spent attempting to marry insights from a number of methods, with out the danger of guide error within the enter course of.
• Strengthen, classify, and enrich knowledge to supply additional worth. 
• Leverage enterprise knowledge nevertheless and wherever it’s wanted, all from one central location. 
• Visualize knowledge and use it for planning, strategizing, and reconciling with different methods.

Referring to the ONESOURCE Information Hub, Greene stated, “[It is] taking all the important knowledge as every stage of the workflow is accomplished and storing that in a centralized location — able to be considered by whoever wants it, able to be analyzed, or repurposed by whoever wants it — throughout all the functions concerned in that workflow.”

The right way to optimize tax knowledge assortment

Cease spinning your wheels and begin driving larger tax worth with a strong workflow engine that drives automation, improves controls, and delivers the visibility wanted to make strategic selections.  

Flip to Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE, which gives an automatic answer to your tax knowledge assortment wants. Rapidly retailer and entry up-to-date data, then benefit from its reusability throughout a number of inside methods and exterior functions. Begin now and see what a distinction an automatic answer could make.