CloudTax. An introduction to the CloudTax application on CaseWare Cloud

Transcription

1 CloudTax An introduction to the CloudTax application on CaseWare Cloud

2 Table of Contents Table of Contents... 1 Managing your entire practice s tax related workflows with CloudTax... 2 What is CloudTax?... 2 How does CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax work together?... 2 What you need to know about your data in CaseWare Cloud... 2 Entities, Staff, Contacts and Groups terminology when working in CloudTax... 3 Where do I start?... 4 I am the Firm Champion / CaseWare Cloud administrator... 4 I am the Tax Practitioner and I need to submit Provisionals for my taxpayers (My clients)... 4 Familiarising yourself with the CloudTax dashboard (Practice Overview):... 4 What everyone needs to know about CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax... 6 Welcome to the wonderful world of CaseWare Cloud... 6 Welcome to the wonderful world of CloudTax... 6 Manage Taxpayer Information from the My Taxpayer screen: Taxpayer Information screen Taxpayer year of assessment screen Processing and Submitting a Provisional Return: Tax Tables efiling notification centre: Practice Admin: SARS Sync Communication and Query Management Billing Checklist: A recommended user journey when using CloudTax Page 1

3 Managing your entire practice s tax related workflows with CloudTax What is CloudTax? CloudTax was developed to help you manage your entire practice from a Tax point of view in one system. Powered by CaseWare Cloud, this application enables you to have a centralised system whereby you and your firm can perform seamless tax management for your clients where you have a direct link with the SARS efiling data and a workflow that simplifies this process to save you time and increase your ability to execute this with accuracy. CloudTax was designed to offer you a simple and intuitive interface so that you can get up and running fast and manage your taxpayers efficiently as well. This guide offers you all the information you need to refer to when working on CloudTax. Here you will be able to see how CloudTax works from a tax process point of view as well as a feature point of view. There are videos, step-by-step workflows and elearning modules to help you along the way. How does CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax work together? At CaseWare Africa, we strive to develop software solutions that are holistic and make a difference to your bottom line. As the world moves towards connectivity, simplicity and integration we are also responding to this in everything we do. CaseWare Cloud is our flagship online platform that makes CaseWare Working Papers even more effective and along with that we have developed a range of applications that help you perform specific tasks without the need to install a separate system with a separate data set. Whether you are using CaseWare Cloud for your audit engagements, managing your secretarial tasks with the CloudSec application or your Tax clients in CloudTax, you now have all the tools you need to do this anytime, anywhere from a secure cloud based platform. What you need to know about your data in CaseWare Cloud Fortunately, CaseWare Cloud works in such a way that no matter which application you use it will pull through the Entity, Staff and Contact information you already have. The first thing to look at is that of Entities, Staff, Contacts and Groups. It is important to note that CaseWare Cloud needs this before it can help you to integrate and simplify any of your engagements as this is where your core source data begins. No matter which Application or Feature you plan on using, it will need the essential core data that is derived from Entities, Staff, Contacts and Groups as it will know what to do or which tasks to assign once it knows to whom this will be directed to. Below is an illustration that starts to depict this relationship and we will build on this as we further explore CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax in this guide. Page 2

4 Entities, Staff, Contacts and Groups terminology when working in CloudTax Page 3

5 Where do I start? CloudTax was fortunately designed to get you up and running quickly and easily. To get started, first ask yourself where you are in terms of your role (Are you the administrator / champion that needs to set everything up for your firm), or are you a Staff member (Tax practitioner / designated person in your firm that needs to work in CloudTax that would like to begin managing Taxpayers and submitting Provisionals? Whatever your role, refer to the below to see who does what. Note that all your training resources will always be hosted on the CaseWare Africa Success Community. Make this your first point of reference when you need anything, including finding this guide. First go through this guide to get a good foundation of how the application works and then use our Checklist: A recommended user journey when using CloudTax to guide you on submitting your first Provisional. I am the Firm Champion / CaseWare Cloud administrator This individual will be the one that takes care of all the back-end processes to get your instance of CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax up and running from a settings and data point of view. Further down in this guide we provide you with all the self-help information that shows you exactly how all of this is performed. The Firm Champion should first go through the section that deals with what everyone needs to know to get a foundational understanding of how CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax works. Then you can move on to the Firm Champion / Administrator specific learning resources. I am the Tax Practitioner and I need to submit Provisionals for my Taxpayers (My clients) This individual can only start working on CaseWare Cloud and or CloudTax once the environment has been set up and he or she has created you as a Staff member so that you are able to log in. Your Firm Champion also associates you to the Taxpayers you will be working on. You will only ever see the Taxpayer/Contact and Group information that pertains to you. In this guide we will help you get upskilled on what CaseWare Cloud is and how CloudTax works. You will be able to access all the self-help tools to help you to perform the functions you need to perform in this incredible application. As is the case with the Firm Champion, you should first go through the section that deals with what everyone needs to know to get a foundational understanding of how CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax works. Then you can move on to the Tax Practitioner specific learning resources. Familiarising yourself with the CloudTax dashboard (Practice Overview): To make sure the content in this guide makes sense, please familiarise yourself with the CloudTax dashboard. Upon logging into CaseWare Cloud and accessing the CloudTax application, you will be presented with a dashboard, which provides an overview of your tax engagements within your practice. Below is a short breakdown of all the elements you have available when you land on the CloudTax home screen (also known as your Practice overview screen). Each item has been numbered so that you can see which menu item does what. Page 4

6 Carefully study each of them to get a good understanding of the layout and how they are all positioned to make the provisional tax submission process simple and effective. NR Menu item Description 1 Practice overview The Practice overview button here can be used to navigate back to the Practice Overview screen. This button and the CloudTax button both act as your home screen. 2 Provisionals Click here to access and process all your provisional returns. This is an overview of all Provisional Tax activities in the system. A quick view of what status the work is in; also, a view based on due dates 3 My Taxpayers Clicking here will take you to your Taxpayer database 4 Search Function CloudTax also comes with a useful search function to help you find information quickly and easily 5 efiling Notification Centre Here you can get instant access to all your SARS efiling notifications that pertain to your taxpayer submissions to SARS 6 SARS Sync Here you access the screen that will enable you to sync your CloudTax application with SARS. It is recommended that you Sync with SARS daily to ensure you have the most updated assessment, provisional and taxpayer information. How did the data get here? - After sync'ing with SARS, the system automatically creates Provisionals (if you haven t created them already manually beforehand which you can do) 60 days prior to the due date, which is based on the Year End of the entity. On creation, these are set to be 'in progress' and would populate in both the active Provisionals and Provisionals due charts. SARS correspondence is also downloaded after the sync through a secure channel into our system. 7 Practice Admin The Practice Admin menu is where you will be building up all the CloudTax data you will be working on 8 Active Provisionals pie chart Active Provisionals are a graphical representation of the status of your Page 5

7 taxpayer s provisional. For example, In Progress, Awaiting Taxpayer Review or Awaiting SARS Feedback. Simply click on the chart portions or the legend to drill down to the Provisional Return view where you can see a detailed list of Provisionals in that respective status. The Provisional process workflow statuses are automatically updated after an action is performed 9 Provisionals Due pie chart Provisionals Due are a graphical representation of how many Provisionals are due within the respective timeframes; example Overdue, Due within 30 days and Due in 31 to 60 days. You can click on the chart portions or the legend to drill down to the Provisional Return view where you can see a detailed list of Provisionals in that respective status. Reminders and notifications will be based on the due date of Provisionals. 10 efiling Overview Here you get a quick overview of all the efiling statuses and it gives you a bird s eye view to track your Taxpayer submissions. This helps you to see what is going on between SARS and your practice in the efiling overview. This saves you from having to rely on s or going into the SARS efiling site to check for correspondence or status of submissions. What everyone needs to know about CaseWare Cloud and CloudTax Welcome to the wonderful world of CaseWare Cloud The learning resources below helps position CaseWare Cloud. It is important to understand that CloudTax is an application that rests upon the infrastructure of CaseWare Cloud. CaseWare Cloud can be seen as your operating system, where CloudTax is an application that draws on it. First familiarise yourself with what CaseWare Cloud is, and then explore the CloudTax application. Title Delivery type Link to the content CaseWare Cloud Introduction to the basic navigation elements in CaseWare Cloud Tutorial video Click here CaseWare Cloud Learner guide for the Introduction to CaseWare Cloud User guide Click here CaseWare Cloud Introduction to CaseWare Cloud Fundamentals Webinar Webinar Click here Welcome to the wonderful world of CloudTax Once you are comfortable with the CaseWare Cloud content, you can now dive into the CloudTax specific resources that are going to help you with your Provisional Returns submissions. Title Delivery type Link to the content CloudTax Setting up your CaseWare Cloud Firm Settings (Only applicable to the Firm Champion / Administrator) elearning Click here Page 6

8 CloudTax A basic navigation through the CloudTax application in CaseWare Cloud Tutorial video Click here CloudTax Manual User guide on importing taxpayers into CloudTax Userguide Click here CloudTax elearning How to import Taxpayers into CloudTax from the Practice Admin menu CloudTax elearning How to access and correct validation errors on Taxpayers from the Practice Admin menu in CloudTax CloudTax elearning How to access and correct validation errors on Staff from the Practice Admin menu in CloudTax elearning elearning elearning Click here Click here Click here Familiarising yourself with the CloudTax Provisional Returns screen: Upon clicking on the Provisional Returns button, you will land on a view where you can see the detail of all your Provisionals that you would like to submit. This can also be accessed by clicking on the pie chart, although this will only bring you to the specific status you clicked on (Blue/Green/Yellow). In this view, you can see which entity the provisional is for, which provisional it is (i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd) and other important information to help in deciding what step to take next. On this view, you are able to see the Last Assessed Income as per SARS as well as the calculated Estimated Taxable income based on a standard 8.5% increase in the prior year's income as per SARS rules if you click on the hyperlinked Provisional Type. Based on the data received by SARS, the Tax Payable is automatically calculated and presented on this view. The Tax Practitioner will be assigned to the Taxpayers he or she needs to submit Provisionals for. The Tax Practitioner will also be able to approve Provisionals in bulk. Page 7

9 Active Provisionals are a graphical representation of where in the provisional process their taxpayers Provisionals are; for example, In Progress, Awaiting Taxpayer Review or Awaiting SARS Feedback. The user can click on the chart portions or the legend to drill down to the Provisional Return view where they can see a detailed list of Provisionals in that respective status. Provisional process workflow statuses are automatically updated after an action is performed. Page 8

10 Provisionals Due are a graphical representation of how many Provisionals are due within the respective timeframes; example Overdue, Due within 30 days and Due in 31 to 60 days. The user can click on the chart portions or the legend to drill down to the Provisional Return view where they can see a detailed list of Provisionals in that respective status. Reminders and notifications will be based on due date of Provisionals. From here, you are able to apply additional filters to narrow down the list; for example, perhaps you want to only see the "Due in 30 days" for individuals - so you can filter the view: From this view, you are able to process multiple returns into the next workflow stage. For example, those returns that are set as "Nil Returns" may require very little further work and CloudTax allows you to manage these returns in bulk, eliminating the need to review each one individually and submit 1-by-1. Page 9

11 Manage Taxpayer Information from the My Taxpayer screen: Each Taxpayer (individual, corporate and trust) has a profile in CloudTax, directly linked to CaseWare Cloud, where you can easily manage their personal, company and contact details. A taxpayer can be searched for via the "Quick-find" search bar, or via the "My Taxpayers" tab. You can edit details of the entity here and it is automatically saved to CaseWare Cloud. There is also an overview of all correspondence received for that taxpayer, easily discoverable and searchable on the profile. The Taxpayer information and it only becomes available once you click on a particular taxpayer s profile from the My Taxpayers screen. This screen doesn t show any validations, but if there are it will display. It is however recommended to always action validations from the practice admin screen that we will cover a bit later. To go into a specific Taxpayer s profile from this screen, simply click on the name to access. Page 10

12 Taxpayer Information screen Taxpayer year of assessment screen The logged in user can gain access to the tax periods created and allowed for creation for the taxpayer. He/she can then gain access to the first, second or third Provisionals as well as manually create them. The user will can create and delete tax years; and create, cancel and delete Provisionals. There are validations which can prevent certain actions to be performed and messages will pop-up to warn the user when they are performing certain actions. Page 11

13 Processing and Submitting a Provisional Return: CloudTax has a built in-workflow for provisional returns. The returns go from In-progress, Tax Practitioner Signoff; Tax Payer Sign-off, Submit to SARS after which they are tracked based on the status at SARS. This flow allows a logical way to move the work through the process, and having the statuses set in the system allows you to track where in the process your provisional return is. The wizard is divided into four categories, Gathering information, Provisional Calculation, Review / Sign off and Submit. Notes that each category is clickable or you can use the previous and next buttons bottom right to navigate. Gathering Information In the Gather information section, you place all the supporting documents that is required to verify that the figures you have captured. This can be done by dragging and dropping files here or by using the browse function. Once you are done here, click on the Provisional Calculation tab to move on. If a figure is overridden for whatever reason, a red dot is placed to the right of the cell to indicate as such. Supporting documentation for overrides can be added in the "gather information" tab. We support Individuals, Company and Trust tax tables for 2016-current. All data is validated at this stage to ensure valid returns are submitted to SARS. You can show the Gather information to show how other supporting docs can be added i.e. the Signed Engagement Letter that can be submitted using a File Request in CWC and attached to the entity from here. Page 12

14 Provisional Calculation In this step of the first Provisional wizard, all the SARS estimates and Actual numbers will display here. Kindly note that when you do the SARS sync, the SARS estimates will update and the Actual figures will reflect what you have captured in CloudTax about this taxpayer. The dropdown top right is the information that pulls through when you do the SARS sync and it relates to the latest assessment information as supplied by SARS and you are unable to edit that. Once you are done with this, click on the Review/Sign-off tab. Provisional calculations will be automated based on prior year assessments and rebates. The provisional calculation can be viewed electronically approved / signed off by the tax practitioner and taxpayer. Page 13

15 Review / Sign-off As soon as the tax practitioner is happy with the return, it is possible to now mark the return as signed off. Note that this can only be done when all form data is valid (i.e. there are no validation errors present). This step in the process will rely on the SARS Sync so that the information can update correctly. If applicable you will need to review and correct any validation errors before continuing as you will not be able to submit this provisional if there is still information missing or if it still has unresolved validation errors. Once everything is complete, you can click on the Submit tab. The next step is to ask the client to sign-off. This could be the actual individual for an individual return or a company representative. CloudTax has a great way of getting the contact to digitally sign-off the calculation (assuming that he or she has already been created as a contact on CaseWare Cloud. Selecting a linked contact from the review screen, will send an to that contact with a URL to the system, allowing them to securely log in and view the calculation, and sign it off. After signing off, the return is automatically queued for submission to SARS and will be submitted on the next "SARS Sync". You will get a link to activate your Cloud account. Contacts are free - their access to the 'portal' is not charged. Page 14

16 Submit Now before you finally submit this provisional take note of the following: This provisional cannot be submitted if it wasn t approved by the Tax Practitioner and by the taxpayer. Its only after both these tasks are completed where it will be sent to the SARS queue for submission. It will also not submit if there are any provisional requests outstanding from SARS. If the taxpayer is a non SARS efiling user and everything is in in order you can mark items as manually submitted to SARS Page 15

17 Tax Tables CloudTax has the Tax Tables built in and is completely aligned with SARS. Important to note on this screen is how the SARS estimates are already loaded and you can easily view the last assessment information to compare to this year's actual figures. If you change any of the actual figures; the Total Amount Payable is automatically calculated and presented on screen. Other features to note: Page 16

18 efiling notification centre: The efiling Summary is a table representation of how many items are being queued, sent and/or received from SARS. The user can click the Go to efiling Notification Centre which will redirect them to the E-Filing Notification Centre where they can see which items have been Queued to SARS, Sent to SARS, Returned with Errors and Received from SARS. From here you can see all activity between your practice and SARS. On SARS sync, all correspondence for a taxpayer is loaded against that taxpayer, but you can view all incoming and outgoing SARS activity from here in order to have a glance to what activities have taken place at a practice level. You can drill down to view any additional information. Correspondence can be assessments, letters, notices - the type of document is set in the correspondence type column. For example, if correspondence has been received, you can drill down and view the PDF received from SARS: Page 17

19 Practice Admin: I wouldn t go there in the demo unless you're answering specific questions i.e. viewing tax tables, importing data. Practice Admin provides a central firm view of all entity related data. Users can manage taxpayer information, staff members and assign tax practitioners to taxpayers. User s will be able to capture and/or inline edit information which will write back to CaseWare Cloud. The user will also can perform bulk actions. Page 18

20 Importing Taxpayers in bulk from the Practice Admin Screen The user will be able to add multiple taxpayers into the system using a csv import file. This will also create the taxpayers as entities and contacts within CaseWare Cloud. The Entity Take On process will prompt the user to correctly map their uploaded document with the mandatory fields required for both CloudTax and CaseWare Cloud. elearning How to import Taxpayers into CloudTax Information Validation for Staff and Taxpayers from the Practice Admin screen The system is designed such that information is validated on the input of data. The field will be highlighted if information is missing or captured incorrectly. Hovering over the highlighted fields will provide the user with a tool tip on why the field is highlighted and/or on how to resolve the validation. elearning How to access and correct validation errors on Taxpayers from the Practice Admin menu in CloudTax elearning How to access and correct validation errors on Staff from the Practice Admin menu in CloudTax Page 19

21 SARS Sync The SARS Sync button is CloudTax s integration with SARS e-filing. Providing the user, the ability to submit to SARS, track submission status and receive correspondence from SARS. It is recommended to perform a SARS Sync daily to ensure that you get the correct information pulling through for your Taxpayers. Communication and Query Management CaseWare Cloud Discussions is a central place where users can connect with taxpayers and track all communication. Taxpayers can post their queries to the assigned staff member against specific tasks. The client and the staff member has context when reading comments. Page 20

22 Billing CloudTax is integrated with CaseWare Cloud Time & Billing, allowing the user to do billing of time and expenses per entity, per provisional process. Checklist: A recommended user journey when using CloudTax. # Step Description 1 Set up your practice via the Firm Settings menu on CaseWare Cloud. Note this only applies to new CaseWare Cloud or CloudTax firms. If you are an existing user, kindly ensure your Staff are marked as Tax Practitioners and that your Taxpayers and Contacts are loaded. Open CloudTax. 2 Create staff members or do an import of staff members. Refer to the CaseWare Cloud Getting Started for CaseWare Administrators elearning module where the Firm Settings are demonstrated. Please pay specific attention to the Work Hours and Staff Rates Section (Time, Expenses and Billing) from a CloudTax point of view. This task is completed from within CloudTax Practice Admin. Refer to the elearning module that demonstrates how this is done. We recommend importing your Staff as this will increase accuracy and save you time. There is an FAQ on the data requirements for your CSV. 3 Create Taxpayers or do an import of Taxpayers This task is completed from within CloudTax Practice Admin. Refer to the elearning module that demonstrates how this is done. We recommend importing your Taxpayers as this will increase accuracy and save you time. There is an FAQ on the data requirements for your CSV. 4 Create CaseWare Contacts or do an import of contacts - if contacts are not loaded, the entity (Taxpayer) cannot be ed. Please refer to the CaseWare Cloud learning material on how this is done. We recommend doing an import. Expand the CaseWare Cloud menu, click on Contacts, click on New where you can either manually create or import Contacts. 5 Set up Practice integration with SARS. In CloudTax, click on the SARS Sync button and populate it with your efiling Credentials. This will ensure that all your Taxpayer information will pull through. Note, this is why data accuracy is important when it comes to your Taxpayer SARS reference number. Page 21

23 6 Mark relevant staff members as practitioners. This task is completed from within CloudTax Practice Admin. Access your Staff List and check the tick box to enable them to be Tax Practitioners. 7 Process SARS Sync. Click on the SARS Sync button and fill in your credentials. This may take a few minutes to pull all the information from SARS. We recommend that this is done daily. 8 Correct validation errors with Practice Admin. This task is completed from within CloudTax Practice Admin. Refer to the elearning modules that cover validation error management. 9 Check efiling Notification Centre. Click on the efiling Notifications Centre button and work through all the notifications received. 10 Go to My Taxpayers to view all taxpayers Go to the My Taxpayers list and click on the Taxpayer to open their profile. Confirm information supplied in Taxpayer Information Screen. Go to Year of Assessment. On SARS Sync, Tax Years and Provisionals will automatically be created 60 days prior to their due date. 11 Open provisional. Go to the Provisional Return menu. When viewing your taxpayers, click on the hyperlinked section entitled navigate through the provisional process. (Gathering information, Provisional Calculation, Review / Sign-off and Submit) Note all progress meters in this area. Upload Documents. Do calculations. Send s. Review, Sign-off and Submit. 12 Practice Overview will show the current state of all work for taxpayers. As part of your daily checks, click on pie chart portions to go to Provisional Returns and drill down in the table provided to find your taxpayers from the Practice Overview screen. Note all progress and/or validation indicators. Do bulk approvals. Set Filters. Export. Page 22