Chapter 1
How to Start a Tax Business
Chapter 2
The Fundamentals for Tax Preparers
Chapter 3
How to Setup Your Office
Chapter 4
Getting Your Office Tools
Chapter 5
Outsourced Suppliers
Chapter 6
Investing In Your Own Office Space
Chapter 7
Acquiring Your Clients
Chapter 8
Chapter 4: Setting Up Your Business Tools
Beyond the equipment you need for your business, you also need some essentials such as a business phone and business email. Both existing and new clients need to be able to reach your office to do business with you.
When you’re setting up a new business, it’s tempting to use your personal phone and email at first. Do NOT do this. Although it may seem cost-efficient, there are many reasons why you should invest in your own office infrastructure.
Why Should You Invest
in your Business Tools?
Providing the best customer experience
Investing in tools such as your office’s phone, email, and cards means investing in your customer experience. Having dedicated tools such as a 1-800 hotline or @yourdomain.com email address provides a good customer experience.
Clients can easily discern everything about a company or service provider before deciding to do business with them. They will be sure to check a business’s website, email, and phone number. If any of your contact details are personal, they will be less likely to choose to do business with you.
Communicating with you through your business tools reiterates to your clients that you are legitimate and professional. This will inspire their confidence in your new business.
Providing the best customer experience
When you start your new tax preparation business, you might start with only a few staff members. It is even possible to start with only yourself on the payroll. However, this does not mean you don’t have to invest in setting up your business tools for growth.
When you’ve started expanding and hiring more staff, you would want to make sure that your tools are capable to accommodate the increase in usage. By this time, your business cannot afford to slow down. Thus, you need to make sure your tools are ready and available so your staff can work and contribute right away.
Having your own company’s tools will help your staff to gain a sense of company identity, too. Getting their own business emails will give them the confidence to communicate with clients as professional representatives. Especially your sales staff! Providing them with business cards will be one of your top priorities. The cars will establish their credentials as representatives of your company.
Investing in your brand
In addition to helping to bolster customer confidence, branded business tools can help build your company image. As when you pick out your business name, you want to send a distinct message to your potential clients.
Brand awareness is achieved when people and potential clients know about your business simply through your name. If you have your own 1-800 phone line or @yourdomain.com tools, you can easily establish brand recall for your tax business.
As pointed out, clients look for stability and reliability in companies that they would trust. Having your own phone, email, and cards contributes to that image. From the client’s perspective, you have invested in your business, and therefore will not fold up shop at a moment’s notice.
In summary, getting a monthly subscription for your phone line and email adds greatly to your reputation, allows you to grow your business, and helps your clients to trust you. Now, let’s find out where can you acquire such tools.
Business Phone
The first tool you should get is a business phone. It is absolutely essential for client communication. More than that, it also helps you build good relationships with them.
If you are going to hire staff for your new business, consider hiring a receptionist first. The receptionist can assist you in handling calls, emails, and scheduled meetings.
Separating your business phone from your personal phone is important to ensure your privacy. At the end of the business day, you can switch off your phone and let the machines take your clients’ calls.
TIP: If you have reasonably good internet service, apply for a VOIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol service. They offer a wide range of services and cheaper rates. Plus, you won’t need to have a separate service for your internet and your phone line.
Here are some VOIP
and phone services to consider:
Skype
Skype is well-known for its free chat and call service. In addition, you can acquire a local number and set it up as your business phone. You can answer incoming calls and make outgoing calls using the Skype app from any device. Skype offers monthly subscription plans that range from $3.59 to $16.79 per month.
Packed with all the features of Skype free calls, you’ll have access to voicemails, call routing, video and audio calls, screen sharing, and encrypted calls. You’ll also be able to send files and conduct conference calls over Skype.
Skype lets you perform searches within conversations. You can activate functions like Call Forwarding, Voicemail, Caller ID, and Skype To Go. One further advantage of having Skype is its seamless integration with all Microsoft apps, including Office 365 and Outlook.
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
Phone.com
Phone.com is a cloud-based VOIP system that connects your phone system to whatever device you have, as long as it’s connected to the internet. It’s available at three price points with their Base ($12.99/mo), Plus ($19.99/mo), and Unlimited ($29.99/mo) packages.
Used by thousands of small businesses in the U.S., Phone.com has established a good reputation based on their system’s comprehensive features. The standard features include Account Management, Caller ID for incoming and outgoing calls, Toll-Free Phone numbers, Voicemail, and User Extensions.
You can choose from thousands of available local, toll-free, and international numbers. You can also customize phone numbers for an additional fee. If you already have a phone number that you’d like to turn into a business phone line, you can transfer it to Phone.com using their Number Porting feature.
Set up call handling rules such as call menus or auto-attendant, call forwarding, and call transfer to help direct your clients to the right person for their concerns. Your clients will also hear soothing hold music when they’re waiting for you or your staff to pick up their call.
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
Citrix Grasshopper
Grasshopper is another VOIP service that caters to small and medium businesses. In 2016, it was acquired by Citrix, which helped strengthen their service. It has three packages: the Solo, Partner, and Small Business. Their packages start from $26 to $80 per month.
Grasshopper’s main strength lies in its features. Their Solo package has 1 number with 3 extensions available. Aside from that, all packages have Mobile and Desktop applications, Custom Greetings, Simultaneous Call Handling, Incoming Call Control, Call Transfers, and Instant Response. On top of these features, you also get unlimited minutes whichever plan you choose!
Another great feature that Grasshopper has is that you can get notifications via the mobile and desktop apps included. Voicemail messages are also directly encoded and sent to your mobile and email. That way, you can read and review your voicemails.
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
MightyCall
Also a VOIP service, MightyCall provides toll-free, local, and customized numbers for its clients. Having a customized number is perfect for the marketing aspect of your business. Incorporate your business name on your number or get a clever one that everyone can immediately remember.
MightyCall’s Basic package is $19.99 per month. It includes 1,000 minutes, 2 toll-free or local numbers, and 10 clients in the Contact Book. If you need unlimited minutes, you can get the Standard package available at $39.99 per month. Aside from unlimited minutes, you get additional features like Call Recording, Voice to Text, Presence Indicator, and 5 toll-free or local numbers.
What’s great with MightyCall is that all its packages include Unlimited users. When you start hiring more staff, you won’t have to spend additional fees to provide access to them. MightyCall also has a desktop app with a multichannel activity dashboard that displays messages, calls, emails, and callback requests.
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
Business Email
One of the most essential tools you need is your business email. All correspondence to your clients and IRS will be done by email.
There is a lot of free email hosting service available now. However, not all can provide you with the data security you need. Plus, email hosts are competitive now, offering more robust features for your business.
Here are some email hosting
services to consider:
Microsoft 365 for business
You also get access to Microsoft Office tools like Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. As for their communication package, you can get Skype and Microsoft Teams. All of these features are available on your workstation and your mobile.
If you don’t need to install these features on your laptop, you can opt for their all-mobile version for only $5 a month.
In terms of branding, you can get your domain name on your email addresses. Having your own “@brand.com” showcases professionalism and builds a trustworthy reputation.
This is a highly recommended option when building your own tax preparation business. Aside from email, having Office 365 with Microsoft Word and Excel is a necessity in the tax industry. If you’re using Office 365 Business Essentials, just add $ from $7.50 per month to get the Office 365 Business Premium package.
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) is a more feature-packed service compared to the free Gmail people know and use. For only $12 a month, you can get 2TB cloud storage, customer support, mobile device management and security, and your own company email address. This also gives you access to 150 participant video meetings, with recordability.
Aside from the email service, you’ll enjoy Google’s other features like GDrive, Meet, Calendar, Photos, Sites (a website builder), and Google Sheets, Forms, Docs, and Slides. What’s great is that Google Workspace is compatible with all web-capable devices. You can work from your laptop and transfer to your phone in seconds.
If you need a lot more storage space, you can opt for the Business Plus service that comes with 5TB cloud storage or the Enterprise plan that provides “as much storage as you need.”
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
Rackspace
Rackspace is an email hosting provider known for its robust customer service package. Support is available in 10 global centers with 3,000 cloud engineers on-standby if there’s any trouble with the email hosting service.
Rackspace offers professional email hosting with your own company email address for $2.99 per month, per user. You will get Outlook, webmail, and mobile access with 25GB mailbox storage space. You also get unlimited aliases and group lists.
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
ZohoMail
If you don’t need a lot of storage space or extra features, you can try Zohomail’s email hosting service for only $1 per month, per user. It comes with email hosting for multiple domains, mobile app, and business calendar functions.
You can also opt for their $3 per month Workplace plan that includes an online file manager, instant chat communication app, and online meeting software. You also get access to tools such as Online Wordprocessor, Spreadsheet, and Presentation software.
Pricing and companies do change. Please check directly with vendors for current offers. Updated 15 September 2023.
Business Cards
Business cards are vital tools for when you are networking. Market your business by participating in trade shows and conferences. When you’re at a trade show, hand out business cards to potential clients. You can expect to drum up some business this way.
Despite that, business cards are not critical enough to spend a lot of time or money on. You may end up spending a lot of money if you choose to get the design and printing of your cards professionally done.
And attending a trade show to market your business is not going to be your first marketing strategy. In the early days of your business, you can get by with a simple business card created on your laptop. Print the cards yourself using your printer.
Alternatively, you can order your business cards from Vistaprint. From time to time, Vistaprint offers free design and printing of business cards, which means you’ll only pay for shipping! If their promo is not available, you can still get free shipping from Vistaprint, which reduces your costs.
The best time to invest in business cards is when you’re going to trade shows and other events that’ll give you the opportunity to network. To lower expenses, order your business cards in bulk. If you have many client-facing staff members, getting business cards for everyone in one go can be cost-effective.
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