Customer Success Story: Sher & Co Provides Clients with Fast and Accurate Tax Projections Using BNA Income Tax Planner
CPA Firm Employs Income Tax Planning Software to Provide Stellar Service to Expanding Customer Base
Challenge:
Provide a wide variety of tax forecasting and what-if analyses for a continually growing client base in a constantly changing regulatory environment.
Solution:
BNA Income Tax™ Planner
Results:
Flexible and accurate analyses, tangible time savings, and superior customer service.
From Company Man to Sole Practitioner
Based in Amissville, Virginia, Charles J. Sher Jr. has had a long and successful career as a certified public accountant — first for Fairfax-based Thompson, Greenspon & Co., P.C., and more recently as a small Professional Corporation in his own firm, Sher & Co. For most of that career (40 years, to be precise), he's relied on BNA Income Tax Planner to deliver the flexible tax planning his clients require.
That's why when Sher decided to venture out on his own 10 years ago, he didn't even consider looking for another tax planning solution. "I've been so happy with BNA Income Tax Planner that I couldn't imagine not using it in my own business," said Sher. "I simply could not perform by hand or by using spreadsheets the calculations and projections BNA [Income Tax Planner] delivers. As a result, I would not have been able to provide the service my clients have come to expect."
Accurate Calculations
Building and preserving wealth requires a watchful eye not just on current and future tax implications but also on past tax obligations. With BNA Income Tax Planner, Sher can keep track of all of these for his clients. Prior-year tax calculations going back to 1987 make it easy to manage audits, adjustments, and back-tax engagements. And the system's ability to automatically download updated information from the Internet means that Sher can rest assured he's always working with the most current tax laws.
"With BNA Income Tax Planner, I never have to worry about having the most up-to-date tax information," Sher explained. "During periods of intensive tax law changes, this has proven to be critical."
Flexible Projections
For Sher, where BNA Income Tax Planner really shines, though, is in its ability to compare multiple tax scenarios. Since everything from marriage to divorce to real estate transactions, stock sales, and more has an impact on income tax liability, the ability to analyze multiple what-if scenarios is key to good tax planning. Allowing up to 20 side-by-side columns of federal and state tax data and seven modes of analysis, BNA Income Tax Planner provides that flexibility.
Explained Sher, "Whether it's determining whether a client should take all of the profits from a business sale upfront or spread them out over several years, estimating the tax implications of self employment, or performing any number of other calculations, the drill-down capabilities of BNA Income Tax Planner have made it an indispensible tool for viewing tax impacts as a whole when considering multiple variables and transactions."
Sher uses BNA Income Tax Planner to calculate tax implications for a broad range of situations, including:
- Installment sales
- Capital gains on stock sales
- Asset purchases by year
- Medical expenses
- Self-employment income
- Section 179 deductions
Swift and Efficient Data Collection and Analysis
With more than 300 clients to serve, Sher also appreciates the speed with which BNA Income Tax Planner allows him to perform a variety of projections. "If I were doing these projections manually or with spreadsheets, they would take hours or even days," he explained. "With BNA Income Tax Planner, I can perform them in minutes. The computations are all done instantly."
Another timesaver for Sher is the fact that his tax preparation program makes a bridge to BNA Income Tax Planner (as do many major tax preparation packages), which makes it a snap to import data. "The one-keystroke command for data import into BNA Income Tax Planner has made my job much easier," he said. "The data import process is seamless, and it works well with my CCH files."
Improved Client Communications
One thing Sher has learned over the years is that all of the data and projections in the world are useless if they're not presented in a format and at a level of detail that makes sense to the client. BNA Income Tax Planner assists greatly in this task by allowing users to provide clients with as much or as little detail as they wish in its easy-to-understand reports and graphs.
Explained Sher, "I share a variety of reports with my clients, so being able to customize them — flexibly limiting or enhancing what information I share — is extremely helpful, as is the ability to dynamically link to financial planning data in Microsoft Excel or Word."
The bottom line for Sher is that without BNA Income Tax Planner, he wouldn't be able to grow his client base while still providing the in-depth analyses and swift projections and responses his customers have come to expect. "BNA Income Tax Planner is a wonderful product that makes my life much easier," he said. "It's as simple as that."
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About BNA Income Tax Planner
Offering the most comprehensive income tax planning software features available, BNA Income Tax™ Planner helps you efficiently model complex tax scenarios, eliminate surprises, and offer tax planning and projections that help clients manage and reduce their federal and state individual income tax liability. BNA Income Tax Planner allows you to quickly calculate federal income taxes including alternative minimum tax, capital gains, estimated tax payments, stock options, and more with the most accurate tax calculations available.
With BNA Software you can be confident that you are using up-to-date software that fully assures tax law compliance.
Learn more about BNA Income Tax Planner »
About BNA Software
Founded in 1983, BNA Software develops professional software solutions for tax, accounting, and financial planning professionals. With category-standard software including BNA Corporate Tax™ Analyzer, BNA Income Tax™ Planner, and BNA Fixed Assets™ Software, BNA Software is the solution of choice for accounting, law, and financial planning firms, as well as corporations of every size. More than 60,000 customers including the IRS, depend upon BNA Software for the highest degree of tax, regulatory, and compliance expertise available in the market.
