1. Crayon Advisory: provide you with your Engagement Packet, Initial Invoice, and Information Requests. If you’re waiting for this, be certain you (and your spouse if you’re married and file jointly) have completed your Auxiliary Software Consents and that you’ve selected your preferred date to provide Initial Initial Information.
2. You: Provide Initial Information. That information will be detailed on your Acounta Dashboard. Checkout your Action Items to see what is open for you to do. Your Action Items may not be fully comprehensive – you may need to review the specifics of your Document Requests, which is an item in your Action Items.
3. Crayon Advisory: Review Initial Information. We’ll take a look at what you provide shortly after you’ve told us you’ve provided complete initial information. If we have enough to get started, we’ll schedule preparation. You’ll receive a semi-automated, fairly generic notification of your tax return having been scheduled for preparation. If we know we’ll need more than what we have at the start, we’ll ask for it right away. If the information missing is significant, we will not schedule preparation.
4. Crayon Advisory: Initial Preparation. We’ll get as close to a completed tax return as we’re able. If we can get to a completed tax return, all the better!
5. Crayon Advisory: Extension Delivery – if your tax return is being extended, we’ll provide that extension information. You’ll receive a secure message in Acounta with relevant attachments and details.
6. Crayon Advisory: Request Additional Information – if we need more information to complete your tax return, we’ll ask for it here. Yes, we do end up needing more information for most clients, especially for/from clients with whom we don’t/haven’t worked during the year together.
7. You: Provide Additional Information. We can’t work with what we don’t have – you’ll need to send it our way.
8. Crayon Advisory: Continued Preparation – This is where we work toward a completed tax return. Steps 6 – 8 may need to be repeated depending on your specific situation.
9. Crayon Advisory: Review – before we finalize a tax return and start assembling it to deliver to you, we review everything on the return. This ensures we’re delivering you a quality, complete, and accurate tax return.
10. Crayon Advisory: Assembly – this is where some magic happens and we put all the parts together for you. This includes your summaries and comparisons, delivery letters, filing and payment instructions, and the tax returns themselves.
11. You: Client Return Review – this is your opportunity to take a look at your tax return and other related documents. It’s also where you’ll tell us if you’d prefer to have a meeting to review your tax return together or if you’d rather keep to the review videos that are included with the cost of your return.
12. You: EFile Authorization Signatures – these vary a little bit depending on your tax return type. Your Delivery Letter will provide you with details on where to find your eFile Authorization to sign.
13. Crayon Advisory: EFiling – this is where we actually efile the tax returns on your behalf.
14. You: Paperfiling – yes, even in 2026 there are still some returns that need to be paper filed. We’ll provide instructions on this with your tax return delivery.
15. You: Tax Payments – if there are any taxes to pay, you’ll have that information with your actual tax return.
16. You: Estimated Tax Payments – we’ll provide you with these, too! We’ll also remind you about upcoming estimated tax payments, usually between 10 and 5 days before they’re due.

 Love me a TLDR. We’ll hit the highlights of the rest of the FAQ and other information in this post right here.

• The 2026 tax season is bringing about a significant change: you’ll select the last day you want to provide your tax return information. If your initial information is provided after your self-selected Initial Information Due Date, your tax return will enter a queue based on the date initial information is received. Tax returns that have met their self-selected deadline will be prioritized in the queue over ones that miss their self-selected deadline. Tax returns are completed on a prioritized, first in, first out basis. To maintain your priority, you will need to adhere to due dates that will be given to you during tax return preparation.
• The last available Initial Information is due date is no later than March 13, 2026.
• Zero dollar extensions will be filed for clients who have signed their engagement letter and paid their initial payment by April 12, 2026 but have not provided sufficient information to calculate an extension payment and/or provided information late.
• You will receive customized due dates for additional information as preparation moves forward. This date will be provided to you in an email and/or a Secure Message in Acounta. That email will also land in your Moxo Information Gathering Workspace.
• If you are not concerned about retaining your place in the queue, any additional information needs to be received no later than June 17th, 2026.

Acounta’s deadlines are designed for the firm (I.e. Crayon Advisory, LLC) to see clearly and easily. We will communicate deadlines to you as clearly as possible with reminders.

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to select the last date you would like to provide initial information. You can do so here. Because these dates are customized to you, the client, we can’t provide the date here.

The last available date is 3/10/2026. We are unlikely to be able to file returns prior to 4/15/2026 if initial information is received after 3/5/2026.

Acounta will have specifics about the information we need to get started on your tax return.

If you are a partner in a partnership or an owner in an S-Corporation and we prepare your Partnership or S-Corporation tax return, your initial information is inclusive of the information necessary to prepare your Partnership or S-Corporation tax return. The information for that pass-through entity’s tax return is necessary to prepare your tax return and/or calculate your extension.

In nearly 25 years of practice, Megan has only seen a small handful of returns that are able to be prepared based solely on the initial information provided. The later a drop-off date you select, the more likely an extension will be necessary.

We’ll ask for additional information as soon as we know what we need. When we ask for that information, we’ll also provide you with two due dates:

1. The first date will be the date we need information by in order for your return to retain its current priority in the queue.
2. The second due date will the the final due date we need you to provide additional information. For individuals, that date is July 17, 2026.

We will give you as much time as we reasonably can while still maintaining a reasonable workflow and priority queue for our other clients (our other dance partners).

We will also send you reminders regarding outstanding information. These reminders are automated.

We’ll send you reminders pretty regularly – every 3 to 10 days depending on when we are in the season and how close we are to your information due date. These reminders are automated, but this system is not directly connected to Acounta, where you provide your information. There may be some timing delays between when you provide information and when automated reminders are halted/reset.

Your Project Tracker in Acounta will be updated as your return moves through the process. Your Project tracker is up at the top, when you first login to the portal. This tracker should be reasonably accurate. Keep in mind Megan is a human, subject to human error, prioritizes completing work over checking boxes,  and is only inside Acounta once or twice a day. Updates may take one to three business days.

We’ll also send you bookended updates as your return moves through the process – a semi-automated, “here’s what’s coming,” as your return completes the most recent step and a custom, “here’s where the things are at!” message. The second message may have deliverable files attached to it. If that’s the case, you’ll receive a Secure Message notification from Acounta. 

Maybe. But, in all honesty, it’s not likely.

We provide updates when we have them in/through email or Secure Messages in Acounta.

We know it may have been a minute. We know it may feel impersonal, detached, and like you’re uncared for. You’re not. It’s actually quite the opposite. Without these policies in place, Megan is likely to spend at least a half an hour and usually closer to 90 minutes or more looking at the status of your tax return, the project they’re working on currently, the next project(s) in the queue, considering if your return or other project can be moved up in the queue reasonably, and typing out a response.

Yes, Megan is admitting here they do enter into the ADHD guilt/shame spiral vortex more than is reasonable.

That time is better spent working on tax returns and preparing resources and tools for you and every other client.