Automate T2 corporate tax workflows

Firm owners and administrators can automate annual T2 corporate tax work, so that attaching a Corporate Tax service to a business client creates a job for each year-end, with tasks, emails, a meeting, and an invoice along the way.

Your firm doesn’t have to build this from scratch. New firms start with a ready-made Corporate Tax setup. Start there, check it fits how your firm works, and change only what you need.

What your firm already has

Assisterp sets up these pieces for Corporate Tax when your firm is created:

• A Corporate Tax service template, for business clients.
• A Corporate Tax Workflow pipeline with five stages.
• A job template and a pipeline trigger that connect the two. Saving a Corporate Tax service on a client creates the year’s job on the pipeline.

The five stages, each with a task created automatically when a job enters it:

Stage	Task it creates
Year-End Documents	Collect corporate tax and year-end records
Adjust & Prepare	Finalize year-end adjustments and prepare the T2 return
Review & Authorization	Review the T2 return and obtain authorization
File & Pay	Electronically file the T2 return and record payment
Assessment & Close	Save corporate tax evidence and close the engagement

The pipeline also sends the client an email when a job enters the first stage and another when it reaches the last stage. It schedules a meeting at Review & Authorization and creates an invoice at Assessment & Close. Automove is on for every stage, so a job moves to the next stage once that stage’s task is done.

To see it, open Settings > WorkFlow Setting > Pipelines and open Corporate Tax Workflow.

Adapt the stages to your firm

Stage names, tasks, and emails are yours to change. Every firm runs year-end a little differently, so treat the five stages above as a starting point. To change them, follow Job templates and stage automation.

For example, a firm that wants separate steps for financial statements and partner sign-off might use six stages instead:

1. Year-end intake: an Email automation requests year-end records, and a Task automation creates a document-collection task.
2. Financial statements: Task automations for adjusting entries and account mapping. Turn Automove on so the job moves on when these are done.
3. T2 return preparation: Task automations for preparing the return and its schedules.
4. Partner review: a Task automation for the review. Add a Stage Condition if only some clients need partner review.
5. E-filing and billing: a Task automation for filing, and an Invoice automation for the fee.
6. Completed: an Email automation sends the client the filing confirmation.

The stage names, task names, and email wording in this example are suggestions. Create the templates they use in your own firm before adding the automations.

Check the service template

1. Open Settings > Templates > Service templates.
2. Open Corporate Tax, or select Add (the plus icon) to make your own.
3. Check that Client Type is Business and that Reporting Periods includes Annually.
4. Under Fiscal Year Type, choose Date of established to use each client’s own year-end, or Custom to set one fiscal year end for every client using this template.
5. Select Save.

See Service templates for every field.

Check the job template

The ready-made job template already sets each job’s dates and tasks. To review or change it:

1. Open Settings > WorkFlow Setting > Job Templates.
2. Open the Service Templates tab and find the template whose name starts with Corporate Tax Workflow.
3. Adjust Job Name, Job Start On (Days), and Job Due On (Days) to match your filing deadlines.
4. Under Task and Invoice, attach any extra task or invoice templates your firm uses.
5. Select Save.

Check the pipeline trigger

1. Open Settings > WorkFlow Setting > Pipeline Trigger.
2. Find the trigger for Corporate Tax Workflow. It uses On Service Update with the Corporate Tax service tag.
3. If you built your own pipeline or job template, edit the trigger to point at them. Keep only one active trigger per service tag. See Pipeline triggers.

Add the service to a client

1. Open Clients, select a business client, and open the Services tab.
2. Select Add New Service.
3. In Choose a service template, select Corporate Tax.
4. Set the Service Start Date, choose Annually as the Frequency, and pick the Corporate Tax tag.
5. Select Add Service.

Saving the service runs the pipeline trigger, and the year’s job appears on Corporate Tax Workflow. See Services on a client record.