A tax client portal for the paperless office, including the last ten percent
Most practices went ninety percent paperless years ago. The remaining ten percent — approvals, identification, the client who posts things — is what keeps the printer, the scanner and the filing room.
Free for 14 days, no credit card. Your portal carries your firm's name from the first client you add.
Permanent record
6 of 6 received- 2024 return and computations Filed 12 Mar
- 2024 engagement letter Approved 18 Jan
- Identification on file Verified 2021
- 2023 return and computations Filed 4 Feb 2024
- 2022 return and computations Filed 28 Jan 2023
- Retention review Scheduled 2031
Redgrave Tax's portal, as their client sees it.
Going paperless usually stalls in the same place. Internal files are digital, the ledger is in the cloud, and yet there is still a scanner by the door, a drawer of engagement letters waiting to be approved, and a standing arrangement with a client who sends everything by post.
The reason is that the remaining paper is nearly all client-facing. FirmHello removes the causes rather than digitizing the symptoms: approvals happen in the portal, identification arrives as an upload, the client's copies live somewhere they can find them, and retention happens on a schedule instead of in a cupboard.
Where paper survives, and why
Four remaining sources of paper in an otherwise digital practice, and what removes each one.
Approvals are why the printer still exists
Engagement letters, authorities and internal approvals are the single largest remaining source of paper in a digital practice, because the usual workflow is print, sign, scan, file, shred. Moving the approval into the portal removes four of those five steps and puts the approved copy straight into the client's permanent record.
Be clear-eyed about the remainder: documents that legally require a signature still require one, and an approval will not substitute for it. That is a smaller pile than most practices assume, and it is the pile a qualified e-signature provider exists for.
- Approval as an item on the same checklist as everything else
- Approved copy filed automatically with the full approval record
- No printing or scanning for anything that only needed a yes
Identification arrives as paper because you asked for paper
Clients post or bring in identification documents largely because the request was ambiguous about the alternative. An item that states exactly what is acceptable, and that can require a one-time code for the sensitive ones, gets a photograph from a phone instead of an envelope.
- Explicit instructions per item, so the first attempt is acceptable
- Phone uploads, which is where a photograph of a passport already is
- Optional one-time code before a sensitive item can be uploaded
Clients post things because they cannot find anything
A client who cannot locate last year's return asks you to post a copy, and a client who does not trust a link sends originals. Both habits end when the client has a permanent, searchable place of their own that holds every year of their file.
- Every prior year in one searchable place the client can reach
- Client copies available without anybody at the firm being asked
- Nothing expires, so there is no reason to keep a paper copy
Retention is a cupboard until it is a schedule
Paper accumulates because destroying it requires somebody to decide to. Digital retention set per client and per engagement executes on schedule and records that it did, which is both less work and better evidence than a filing room nobody has audited.
- Retention periods set per client and per engagement type
- Purge performed on schedule and logged
- Export before deletion, on demand
What the last ten percent needs
Every featureApprovals on the record
Engagement letters and internal authorities approved and filed without paper. Anything that genuinely requires a signature still needs a signature provider, and we would rather say so.
Client vault
Every year of a client's file in one searchable place, which is what stops clients asking for posted copies.
Request lists
Items with explicit instructions, so identification and documents arrive as usable uploads rather than as an envelope.
Audit trail
A record of what was collected, approved, viewed and purged, which is better evidence than a filing room.
Automatic chasing
Automatic follow-up, so nobody falls back to phoning and then posting a form.
Your brand, your domain
Requests that plainly come from your practice, which is what persuades a cautious client to upload rather than post.
Client documents are the most sensitive thing a firm holds
So the portal is built to hold them properly: encrypted, access granted one client at a time, and every action recorded. Nothing travels as an email attachment.
How FirmHello is built- Encrypted in transit and at rest
- TLS 1.3 on every connection and AES-256 encryption for stored documents, with keys managed separately from the data they protect.
- Access is per client, not per firm
- A client can only ever load their own space. Staff access is granted per client, so a junior can be given three files and nothing else.
- No documents in email
- Notifications tell a client that something is waiting and link them to the portal. The material itself never leaves it as an attachment.
- Complete audit trail
- Views, uploads, downloads, approvals and permission changes are all recorded with actor, time and IP, and the log is exportable.
- Retention you control
- Set how long documents live per client or per matter, and hold or purge on request, so the portal matches the retention policy you already have.
- Hosted in your region
- Choose United States, Canada, the EU or the United Kingdom, and your firm's data stays in that region.
Questions from practices going paperless
What actually stops us being paperless today?
In most practices: approvals, identification, and clients who cannot find their own documents. All three are client-facing, which is why internal digitization never finished the job.
Do we still need an e-signature product?
For anything that legally requires a signature, yes — we record approvals and we do not offer e-signature, and we would rather say that plainly than let you find out later. Most of what a practice prints is not in that category: an approval with the person, the wording, the time and the document version on the record covers it.
What about the clients who will not use a portal at all?
A small number will not, and a practice needs a manual fallback for them. What changes is that it becomes the exception rather than the design, so the scanner is for three clients instead of thirty.
Can we import the documents we have already scanned?
Yes. Existing digital files can be loaded into the matching client vaults so that the client's record starts complete rather than starting from this year.
Does digital retention satisfy our record-keeping obligations?
Retention is configurable per client and per engagement and every purge is logged, which is normally stronger evidence than paper storage. Whether it satisfies your specific obligations is a question for your own compliance judgement, not ours.
How is this different from your virtual tax firms page?
That page is for firms with no office at all. This one is for an established practice with premises that wants to stop printing.
Related
Where to go next
Every page on the site, grouped by the question it answers.
- Choosing a portal
- Security checklist
- Large firms
- Virtual tax firms
- Paperless practice — you are here
Ready when you are
Tell us what still gets printed and we will work through what removes it.
No card and no sales call. If you would rather tell us about your firm first, use the longer form.