The Top 8 TaxDome Alternatives for Your Accounting Firm
Author: Financial Cents
Reviewed for accuracy by: Stacey Feldman
In this article
Practice management software, like TaxDome, should help firm owners manage their projects, clients, and staff to improve client service and stay profitable.
However, TaxDome may not give you these benefits if its features do not meet your needs or if it is too difficult to implement and use.
Either way, you’ll need a different software—a TaxDome alternative—to unlock your firm’s potential and grow confidently.
From the review below, TaxDome’s extensive features were not powerful enough for the simplicity and robustness of Kristn, an accounting firm owner.
Here are eight (8) great TaxDome alternatives for your accounting or bookkeeping firm.
First, An Overview of TaxDome
Taxdome is a practice management software that enables tax and accounting firms to manage projects and clients in one place.
Its practice management features include:
- Workflow Automation: to save time and improve business operations.
- Workflow Templates: to document procedures for getting the job done.
- Recurring jobs: to create a repetitive schedule for future events and jobs.
- Dependencies: to help team members know when to start tasks in a project.
- Tax Organizers: to collect and submit accurate information for tax work.
- CRM Solution: to store client information and interact with clients to meet their deliverables.
- Document Management: to keep client documents in one place, no matter where they were sent from.
- Client Portal to securely interact with clients and receive the files, information, and e-signatures.
- E-signature: to collect legally binding signatures from clients online.
- Email Integration: Sync client emails with TaxDome and track client interactions.
- Invoicing and Payments to send recurring invoices and access payments directly from clients.
Drawbacks of TaxDome (and Why You Should Consider Alternatives)
TaxDome will not work for if any of the following features are deal breakers for your firm:
a. Mainly Built for Tax Firms: by its name, tax work is a primary feature of TaxDome. This is reflected in features like Tax Organizer, which enables tax professionals to collect information for tax preparation.
b. Difficult implementation (according to users like Takara):
You are most likely to spend hours watching video tutorials, product webinars, and paid training to understand it.
c. Time tracking in TaxDome is not robust. It is difficult to compare the hours spent on a project with the budgeted time.
d. Internal communication (and collaboration) in TaxDome is limited, for example, you can’t tag team members in comments.
Reviews
TaxDome has
Pricing
- $85/month per user billed monthly.
- $66/month per user billed annually.
- $58/month per user for the 2 year plan.
- $50/month per user for the 3 year plan.
The 8 Best TaxDome Alternatives to Consider
1. Financial Cents
Financial Cents’ practice management solution is designed specifically for the accounting industry. It helps firm owners to track client work, collaborate with staff, and get client responses faster.
Its simple interface and powerful features have enabled accounting firms to achieve 100% adoption, improving firm-wide visibility and becoming a single source of truth to all staff members.
Features include:
a. Workflow Management
Financial Cents gives you the visibility and organization to stay on top of client work and hit deadlines, thanks to:
- A dashboard that gives complete visibility into projects, assignees, due dates, and status of client work in one view.
- Workflow Filters that allow you to find the information you need from your dashboard.
- Automation that allows you to create recurring projects and manage dependencies and work status with minimal human input.
- Customizable Workflow Templates that document standard operating procedures (SOPs) so that staff know what to do to complete client projects.
b. Email Management
You do not have to constantly shuffle between your email inbox and workflow dashboard to manage client communication. Financial Cents integrates with Gmail and Outlook to access client emails from your workflow software.
With this feature, you can:
- See who last spoke to a client, when, and about what.
- Pin important client emails to related client work to give your team context into the email and project.
- Turn ad-hoc client requests into a project you can track on your workflow dashboard.
- Reply to clients from Financial Cents. Any action you take on an email in Financial Cents is reflected in Gmail or Outlook.
c. Client Management
This feature organizes your client information (contact details, client notes, documents and emails, logins, SSN, EINs, etc.) in one central place. Your team knows where to go to get information about the client, which increases delivery speed.
Some of the client management sub-features include:
- Client dashboard to present all client-related information in one view.
- An audit trail of interactions between your team and clients.
- The ability to identify profitable and unprofitable clients by comparing the time your team spends on their projects versus the revenue they generate.
- Securely store sensitive information (like clients’ usernames and passwords) in an AES-256 and AES-128-encrypted client vault.
d. Client Tasks and Auto Reminders
This feature cuts the time spent chasing and waiting on clients for additional information.
Here are the sub-features:
- Client Task: the ability to create a task (usually a request for a file or information) for your client to complete.
- Auto follow-up: the ability to set up automatic reminders to nudge your clients until they complete your request.
- Client Portal: Financial Cents’ TSL 2.3-secured client portal is the platform where clients go to upload documents. You can also send documents (like proposals for them to sign in the client portal), and they can ask questions and provide answers to your questions.
Note: Financial Cents client portal does not require a username or password at login. It uses secure magic link technology to enable clients to access the portal whenever necessary.
e. Document Management
Financial Cents client portal allows you to organize documents into folders and collaborate by asking questions and providing clarity on client documents.
f. Capacity Management
This feature helps you track employee workload so you can manage your human resources effectively.
It allows you to:
- View your team’s workload in one view to see those with the capacity for more tasks.
- Set team capacity limits to avoid employee burnout.
- Reallocate tasks to maintain team balance.
g. Time Tracking & Billing
The feature tracks your firm’s work hours for accurate flat or hourly billing. It also helps you see which client’s project is taking up your time and make educated decisions to keep your firm profitable.
It allows you to
- Use a Start-and-Stop Timer that is accessible from anywhere in the app.
- Integrate with QuickBooks Online to invoice your clients directly.
- Use Time Tracking Reports to gain insights into where your team is spending its time.
- Use the Effective Hourly Rate feature to identify your most profitable clients based on time spent.
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Why You Should Consider Financial Cents
Financial Cents is easy to implement and use, saving you the hours of chasing customer support to focus on high-value tasks.
Financial Cents provides a central location for all your firm’s information and gives your team access to the same information, preventing information silos and improving work quality.
Reviews
Financial Cents has 4.8 stars (out of 5) based on users’ reviews in both Capterra and G2.
Pricing
Financial Cents offers a 14-day free trial.
Its paid plans are:
- Team at $39/month per user (billed annually).
- Scale at $59/month per user (billed annually).
Should You Use Taxdome or Financial Cents?
The combination of ease of use with powerful features ensures that Financial Cents will grow with your firm. It is helpful for both small and medium firms. Meanwhile, users consider TaxDome difficult to set up.
2. Canopy
Canopy’s practice management features enable accounting firms to do more work in less time.
Its firm-wide operating system helps firms to “unclunk” every aspect of their accounting practice with features such as:
a. Project Management
This helps you stay on top of what your team members are doing. Projects in Canopy are broken into tasks and subtasks to reduce the mental workload of managing them.
- Workflow Automation: Canopy uses rules to trigger your tasks and events in your processes so that you wouldn’t need to handle them manually.
- Workflow Templates: Canopy provides templates that streamline client work.
b. Client Management
Canopy’s client management solution helps to monitor the client lifecycle from prospect to paying customer.
This means the ability to
- Store all relevant documents on the client’s record.
- Simplify client collaboration by tagging clients to draw their attention to important information.
- Create roles for your clients and manage what they can access in the client portal.
c. Document Management
Canopy simplifies your document management with a client portal that lets you:
- Organize client files into folders.
- Send forms and request eSignatures in the client portal.
- Limit clients’ access to internal documents on their profile.
- Send documents to clients through a secure link.
- Collaborate with clients by asking questions and providing clarity on documents.
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Why You Should Consider Canopy
Canopy may work for you if you value the ability to:
- Access IRS transcripts. Canopy’s partnership with the IRS enables users to pull transcripts instantly.
- Perform Bulk actions. This feature allows you to perform a task for multiple clients simultaneously. For example, you can send the same email to multiple clients at once.
Reviews
Canopy has:
Pricing
Client management is free for all Canopy users. Any other feature you add comes at a separate price. For example, Document Management and Workflow are $40 and $35/month per user.
Should You Use TaxDome or Canopy?
Canopy’s tax preparation features and partnership with the IRS make it a better choice for firms that handle large volumes of tax resolution cases. But if you’re looking for a more affordable option, TaxDome may be a better choice.
Read the in-depth side by side comparison of Taxdome vs Canopy
3. Karbon
Karbon aligns accounting teams with a project management platform that drives communication and collaboration. Karbon’s numerous features can be overwhelming for small and mid-sized firms, but they are powerful enough for the complex needs of large firms.
Some of its features include:
a. Project management
This aligns your team, clients, and workflows around your firm’s goals with:
- A Kanban Dashboard that tracks the progress of client projects to ensure you don’t miss important information.
- Workflow Templates that standardize your processes.
- Customizable Statuses and Job Roles to streamline workflow and keep all team members on the same page.
b. Email Management
Karbon embeds emails in your workflow for your team to access them directly from their workflow tool.
This means that:
- All client communication is centralized for your team to see when a client was last contacted, by whom, and what was said.
- You Can Collaborate (in Context) with Comments in your client emails without the client seeing it.
c. Client Management
Karbon’s client management solution gives you:
- Visibility into client relationships (by organizing their information in the profiles).
- Audit trail of client communication by organizing client emails, internal notes, and details in one shared location.
- The ability to automate data collection.
d. Client Portal and Document Management
Documents in Karbon are collected and managed in the secure client portal. Once shared with you, client documents are added to the relevant project automatically.
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Why You Should Consider Karbon
Karbon values team and client collaboration. Karbon is one to consider if you need to align your distributed team; however, you might need to be patient and ready to pay for customer support as you learn to implement and maximize its extensive features.
Reviews
Karbon has:
Pricing
- Team at 59/month per user (billed annually) OR $79/month per user (billed monthly)
- Business at $89/month per user (billed annually) OR $99/month per user, billed monthly
- Enterprise: Custom Pricing
Should You Use TaxDome or Karbon?
If you want a tool that has a little bit of everything in a practice management software solution, TaxDome is worth considering. If you require more robust project management needs, Karbon has the breadth and depth of features to serve you.
Read this un-biased Karbon vs Taxdome review.
Related: Financial Cents vs Karbon for small and mid-sized accounting firms?
4. Jetpack Workflow
Jetpack Workflow provides workflow and task management features that help accounting professionals increase their productivity and revenue.
Its workflow features include:
- A dashboard showing the status of client work.
- Workflow Automation to create a client’s future projects and automate work handoff between assignees.
- Workflow Checklist Templates: to use as it is or customize to suit your processes in a few clicks.
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Why you should consider Jetpack Workflow
If you need a tool that focuses on the workflow needs of your accounting firm without the perks (such as a client portal and CRM) of a full-on practice management firm, you may consider Jetpack Workflow.
Reviews
Jetpack has:
Pricing
Paid plans:
- Organize starts at $45/month per (billed annually).
- Scale costs $49/user per month (billed annually).
Should You Use TaxDome or Jetpack Workflow
Jetpack Workflow is not a practice management software. It is a good TaxDome alternative when you don’t want to use practice management software with features you may not need. It focuses on workflow management needs.
TaxDome is better suited for those looking for an all-in-one practice management software.
Related: Financial Cents vs Jetpack Workflow
5. Aero Workflow
Aero Workflow is a workflow solution that helps accounting firms manage their projects in real time. It is cloud-based and provides everything distributed accounting teams need to complete client work.
Aero’s core features are:
a. Workflow Management with
- A Dashboard to Track Projects against their due dates.
- Workflow Templates that show accounting teams the steps they need to complete their firm’s standard services efficiently.
- Recurring Projects that enable teams to set up repetitive client work for the future.
b. Email Integration
This syncs data with your email software to turn clients’ ad-hoc emails into projects & tasks
c. Built-in time tracking
This feature monitors the time accounting teams spend on their clients’ work and makes decisions that improve their profitability.
d. Client Management
Aero workflow ensures your team has all the information they need to complete client work in one place. This includes the name and contact information, client activity history, and custom information like usernames, passwords, etc.
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Why you should consider Aero:
Aero workflow enables you to add links to documented SOPs into your workflow. This makes it easier for your team to find the SOPs to standardize projects.
Reviews
Aero Workflow has
Pricing
- Startup for 1-5 Users at $125/month
- Growth for 6-25 Users at $250/month
- Scaling for 26-50 Users at $365/month
Should You Use TaxDome or Aero Workflow?
Aero Workflow is a workflow tool, not a practice management software, so they have fewer features. While TaxDome is an all-in-one practice management software.
6. Pixie
This UK-based practice management solution helps firms to save time and organize their firm. Its features are simple and intuitive and seek to keep smaller accounting firms from getting overwhelmed.
Here are Pixie’s major practice management features:
a. Workflow Management
Pixie streamlines internal communication and collaboration to keep everyone on the same page and improve the quality of your results.
- Internal deadlines give you more control over project completion dates by setting earlier dates for your team to complete projects.
- Real-Time Status Updates helps you see where each client’s projects stand and what might be causing bottlenecks in your processes.
- Preset Templates that you can customize for your accounting processes.
b. Client Management
Pixie’s CRM gives firms a hub to store all client-related information and communication to service the client relationship effectively.
With the Client Task feature, you can use emails to request additional information and auto-remind your clients about pending requests.
c. Email Management
Pixie seeks to help prevent email overwhelm by:
- Organizing client emails so that nothing gets lost.
- Turning your email inbox into tasks with the click of a button.
- Delegate ad-hoc emails to your staff.
d. E-signatures:
Pixie’s E-signature feature allows you to manage online client signatures by adding the signature request feature to your workflow.
e. Document Management
Pixie’s document management is GDPR-compliant and allows you to share files with clients confidently.
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Why You Should Consider Pixie
Pixie is a good option if you are based in the UK and don’t mind the limited collaboration and time-tracking limitation.
Reviews
Pixie has
Pricing
Pixie’s pricing depends on the client base. More clients mean higher costs.
- Less than 50 clients: $69/month.
- 51-250 clients: $129/month.
- 251-500 clients: $199/month
- 501-750 clients: $249/month
- 751-1,000 clients: $329/month
- More than 1,000 clients: Custom pricing
Should You Use TaxDome or Pixie
Pixie is most suitable for small-sized accounting firms. Plus, it is UK-based. Its features, templates, and integrations are designed mainly for UK-based accounting firms.
For example, it integrates with Companies House to enable UK-based firms to access client information in the United Kingdom.
7. Xero Practice Manager
Xero Practice Manager streamlines workflows to improve the productivity and efficiency of accounting teams. It is highly configurable and can be tailored to meet your firm’s unique needs.
Its integration with Xero Accounting qualifies users for the Xero Partners Program.
Its practice management features include:
- A dashboard to view your jobs, assignees, and due dates.
- Work Assignment to allocate tasks (with due dates) to your staff.
- Customizable Templates to standardize projects.
- Track and invoice time to record the hours your team spends serving clients.
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Why You Should Consider Xero Practice Manager
If you are a Xero user and want a tool that integrates effortlessly with Xero Accounting, Xero Practice Manager may suit your needs.
Reviews
Xero Practice Manager has:
Pricing
- Early at $3.75/month.
- Growing at $10.50/month.
- Established at $19.50/month.
Should You Use TaxDome or Xero Practice?
Xero Practice Manager has more advanced tax features than TaxDome. Its pre-filled tax forms and templates make filing tax returns easier. It also has up-to-date tax rules that ensure the compliance of your tax returns.
8. Wolters Kluwer’s CCH iFirm
CCH iFirm empowers accounting professionals to serve clients and grow their firms by streamlining and monitoring projects and staff member tasks.
The 360-degree view of the firm enables firm owners to manage with confidence.
Some of its features are:
- A Workflow Solution: connects firms, clients, and staff to accelerate growth and drive decision-making.
- Client Management: helps firms centralize client information to be more proactive with their accounting and tax work all year round.
- Document Management: allows you to control access to client documents to ensure the security of client information.
- Client Portal to securely exchange documents with clients.
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Why You Should Consider CCH iFirm
CCH iFirm is most useful for tax firms—thanks to its integration with ATX and Taxwise.
Reviews
CCH iFirm has
Pricing
- Practice Manager $695.
- Client Portal $625.
OR
- CCH iFirm Suite (Practice Manager and Client Portal) $1,105
Should You Use TaxDome or CCH iFirm?
CCH iFirm’s Accounts Receivable features can help invoice clients promptly to prevent revenue leakages.
Financial Cents: A More Robust TaxDome Alternative
Growing an accounting firm is stressful. You don’t need a tool with features that overwhelm your team and make implementation difficult.
With extensive workflow, tax, website, and branding features, TaxDome gets overwhelming to the extent of needing a consultant to assist with implementation.
Meanwhile, Financial Cents focuses on organizing projects, staff, and clients and enabling collaboration to improve the quality of client service.
Set up takes an average of three (3) days, and using its features is simple and straightforward.
Sign up for a 14-day free trial of all Financial Cents features today.
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