Automate Client Document Collection and Verification

Many accounting firms use client portals like TaxDome or Canopy, or a combination of Dropbox and email. These tools act as digital filing cabinets. They confirm a file was uploaded, but they have no understanding of what is inside the file. Your staff still has to open every single PDF to manually verify its contents, creating a significant administrative bottleneck.

Consider onboarding a new S-Corp client. You need their prior year 1120-S, all shareholder K-1s, the last four quarterly payroll reports, and 12 months of bank statements. The client uploads a PDF named 'statements.pdf', but it only contains 11 months. They upload a payroll report from the wrong year. Each error requires an email exchange, a delay, and a manual update to a spreadsheet checklist. This process can take 10+ hours of non-billable time spread across two weeks.

The structural problem is that these off-the-shelf tools are designed for generic file sharing, not intelligent document processing. They cannot be configured to read a PDF and confirm it is an actual Form 1120-S from the correct tax year. They cannot extract shareholder names from a K-1 to cross-reference your client list. You are stuck with manual review because the software treats every document as an unknowable, opaque file.

The engagement starts with a discovery session to map every document you require for each client type, from individuals to complex partnerships. We define the specific verification rules for each document: date ranges, required fields, and totals that must match. This map becomes the blueprint for the entire system.

The core of the solution would be a FastAPI service running on AWS Lambda. When a client uploads a document to a secure portal built on Vercel, this service uses the Claude API to perform optical character recognition (OCR) and data extraction. Because of its large context window, Claude can process multi-page documents like bank statements or complex partnership returns in a single pass, typically under 30 seconds. The extracted data and status are stored in a Supabase PostgreSQL database.

The delivered system provides two interfaces. Your client gets a simple, checklist-style portal showing exactly what they need to upload, with green checks appearing as valid documents are received. Your team gets an admin dashboard showing the onboarding status of all new clients at a glance. Instead of chasing files, your team reviews an already-verified and complete document package.