In this video, Matt Richardson and Damian Contreras, Tax Seniors at CK, walk you though how to use our secure client portal. From setting up your account and uploading documents to paying invoices, completing your tax organizer and receiving notifications, this overview will help to make managing your tax information simple and stress-free.

Topics Covered:

How to Access the Portal & Setting Up Your Account – 0:08

How to Upload Files – 1:40

How to Make a Payment – 3:45

How to Edit and Upload Your Tax Organizer – 5:42

Making Changes to Information on Your Tax Organizer – 11:37

Electronic Signatures – 12:05

Forgot Your Password – 13:07

Transcript:

I’m Matt Richardson. I’m a tax senior at Cray Kaiser. I’m Damian Contreras. I’m also a tax senior here at Cray Kaiser. And today we’re going to walk you through our portal that we use and started back in January of 2024. So Matt’s going to take you through the steps of how to set up the portal and how you initially get the invite to the portal.

Yeah, so I’ve just clicked on the link in the email, the notification email you get for setting up your new portal account. It takes you here, and then all you have to do is create a password. And once you’ve done that, you’re in. Once you load in, it brings you to our home landing page, which prompts you at the very top with if there’s any outstanding balances due, as well as right below that is. your to-do list and any recent files that are in your portal for you. If you have multiple accounts, for example, if you have an individual, if you have a trust, if you have a business, if you have children’s returns, you’re managing, to switch between the different accounts, you’ll go down here. There’s a name and there’s a personal. You can switch between a personal and then it’ll show any others that are connected. We just have a fake business client here connected. So anything that’s connected to you with Cray Kaiser, you’ll have a selection there to toggle between. So when you’re uploading documents, you can upload the documents to the specific portal for whatever the documents are for. That way we can kind of make sure everything’s staying nice and sorted.

And now let’s say you are getting your tax documents and you want to give them to us we don’t necessarily even have to request them from you all you have to do is simply go into your portal and upload them and we get notifications that you’re adding new files into your folder. So Matt will show you how to add a new file into your portal. So all you’ve got to do is go over here to files, add a file and then you can select. It’ll bring you over to your computer’s files that anything that you have downloaded to your computer and you can go in and access them and you can click on as many or as little files as you’d like to upload. So you can upload any file type that you would like. The only file type that we request you don’t upload is any JPEGs and pictures. We prefer Word documents, PDFs, Excels, anything of that nature is a great file to upload and our system can handle it. You can even upload zip files if that’s easier for you. If you’re adding in password-protected documents, when you are prompted to rename the file, maybe include the password with it, or else we’re going to have to reach out to you and ask, what’s the password to access this? It is a secure portal, so you are able to do that. Absolutely. And also, if you have a window open, you can just drag and drop as well. Very easy to add something.

Something we have people ask about is how to sort files in the portal. What happens is once you upload it, we’ll get a notification and it will prompt us to sort the files into whatever the relevant tax year or folder is within your portal. So the client doesn’t need to worry about dragging into a particular folder. You can just drop it in here in the file tray and we’ll take it from there. The only thing we ask is you put it in the respective client’s folder. So that’s the only indexing we need you to do is to index it in the proper client, not necessarily the right year and folder type.

So then we can also go down to the billing portion of it. So if you want to go there, let’s say you have a bill due. Any of your bills will be prompted right in the Canopy portal. And you can still, if you’d prefer to make a paper check, you can do that and mail it. But it will give you your invoice in here or you can very easily go and make a payment or view your payment history or what outstanding invoices you have. And to make a payment all you have to do is click the make a payment button. Even if you have no balance due just click on additional payment and you can type in what whatever amount you’re able to pay at that time and you just hit continue and you can pay with either a credit or debit card. There is a fee attached to that. Or you can do a direct bank account debit by putting in your account and routing number.

Whenever we upload documents for you, invoices for you, copies of your tax returns, payment vouchers, we will send you an email notification that’ll prompt you exactly with what we put in there, what’s it called, is it an invoice, is it a copy of your 2024 tax return. So all of that will be sent to you via email and then you can log into your portal, view it, download it, and see all of that within your portal. And it’ll come to you by entity as well. So if you have your personal and then your kids or your business, it will say, you know, uploaded in John Doe’s file or, you know, John Doe Inc’s file for you. So it’ll come to you for each portal you have access to.

Currently, you are not able to see the status of your tax return in the portal. That’s something you’d have to reach out to us for. And whoever’s on your team here at Cray Kaiser would respond to you promptly on where your tax return sits in the queue.

Also something that we’re going to be implementing for the 2025 tax year as it’s creeping up for your individual tax returns is you’re going to see your organizer as a to-do in your personal portal. So when you log in, Matt will show you right there. It says organizer 2025. All you have to do is open that up. We’ll have a PDF file attached. Open it up and there will be our letter and our questionnaire to fill out. And then there will also be your prior information for you to review and see what you need to send us this year. And you can fill this out in the PDF, attach it, re-upload it to us, and we can receive it that way. If you prefer to print it out and re-scan, that’s possible as well. Yeah, and when we send it over to you, you’re going to get an email notification telling you that there’s a new to-do in there for you. It’s going to be the 2025 organizer. And we just request that you review it and write any pertinent information on there. Did you switch jobs, open new accounts, have a kid, expand your family? Are the kids in college? And we have questions on the organizer’s first and second page that go over all major life changes that are very common, that can impact your tax return.

This step we’re going to show you how to download and fill out your organizer through the pdf file. And if you’re not as comfortable with the technology you can still print it out and re-scan it and upload to us but I think for a lot of people it’ll be easier just to do it in the PDF and re-upload it. So the first thing to make sure you have, you do need to have a PDF editing software. So Adobe is a common one that a lot of people have, but there are a lot of other softwares as well. You should be able to do it in any program that allows you to edit a PDF. So make sure you have that. Some of them are browser based. Some of them are desktop based. Again, pretty much anything will let you edit a PDF. So when you’re ready to fill out your organizer, you can just go to the portal. You’ll either have it in your files. There should also be a to-do list item for you as well once we upload them. And then the important thing here is we’ve had some people fill it out in the viewer here, through Canopy. It will let you sometimes edit or type things on here, but unfortunately it does not save back to the portal when you edit just through this viewer. So you do need to actually download it to your desktop computer and then edit it. So we’ll download. And so once you’re in and have it open, you can go through and add all the information you need to. Most of these editors will have comment tools so you can add a check mark, click for yes, no on all these questions. So that’s typically pretty simple. Doesn’t matter, check mark, X, whatever you like to use. If you need to add data or numbers, scroll down to one of these sections for more information. So if you need to add information, there are usually multiple ways you can add a text box. You can add that and tell us, I bought a new rental this year. I’m not sure what you need, but I included some documents. So you can add a note like that for us with a text box. Some of them also allow you to type text directly onto the document without a text box. You know, it looks a little different, but again, as long as you’re putting the information there, we’ll be able to handle it. Same goes for the fields that have number inputs. So if you’re putting in your charity contributions, you can just go in, edit, type the text on here, and then we’ll be good. So what you need to do then, you need to save this once you’re done filling it out. Save the file. And if you want to, just to help us track things, you could always rename it something like filled out, just so we can keep the original one straight from your filled in one. You don’t have to do that, but that would just be a little helpful if you can do it. And then go to files, add a file, and attach your organizer. And then we’ll have it in our portal. So it’ll be in our portal. If we open it up, we’ll see the changes you added to it, the check marks, the numbers, the other information you’ve added. That said, once you’re done, all you do is re-upload it to the portal, add any comments that you’d like, and mark it as complete. And then it’ll let us know that it’s ready for us to review and complete your tax return. If anything changes after you’ve uploaded the initial organizer at that point, it’s probably better just to email or give us a call. Whoever your contact here is and let us know what information has changed that’s definitely something that happens pretty frequently and I think once we’ve got the organizer and looked at it it’ll be much you know easier for us to track down the change and see what we need to do if you just call us and say oh hey I forgot to tell you about this new account I opened or whatever it is then we can kind of get right to it.

We do have a feature within the portal to send electronic signatures. Most of our electronic signatures will come through DocuSign and they’ll go directly to your email from our tax software or our personal DocuSign accounts for those those items. And sadly the IRS is slowly developing accepting electronic signatures so there are still some where we’ll publish documents in the portal that you’re going to have to print out and put a wet signature on. But if we can do things electronically, we definitely try to do those electronic signatures and make it very easy into your emails.

The portal has an automation system in it. So once we set up that to-do for you, we can choose whether it emails you daily, weekly, monthly with reminders until it’s completed. So we’ll probably turn it on to where every week or every other week it’s sending you a reminder to say, hey, this task is in there, this organizer is in there for you to complete. And then until it’s completed, you’re going to keep getting those emails.

What if you forgot your password to the portal? So to get into your portal, all you have to do is go to the Cray Kaiser website, craykaiser.com, and then in the left bar, it’s going to have a little option for portal. So you just click on portal, and it will immediately take you to the Cray Kaiser portal. Once you’re on that landing page, it’ll tell you to put in your email and your password, and there will be an option for forgot password, and it’ll walk you through the steps to reset it.

Thank you for listening to Matt and mine’s explanation and steps on how to use the portal. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to your team member here at Cray Kaiser, a member of our admin team, and we’ll further assist you with the portal.