Chapter 9

Client Portals—Gateway to the Future

First published: 10 May 2017

Summary

The topic of portals can be as broad in scope as talking about information technology or the Internet. This chapter presents a definition of a client portal, which is a secure link on the website to personalized information and applications. One of the primary forces driving CPA firms to implement a client portal is to reduce the risk of a breach of privacy associated with e-mailing documents that contain personal information, such as tax returns, financial statements, investment information, and so forth. Another key feature of the client portal is to automate otherwise labor intensive tasks related to exchanging documents and other information with the clients. The chapter provides a roadmap for developing a portal strategy that can be deployed over an extended period of time based on one's priorities and resources and defines the portal strategy in four stages: document and file exchange, workflow integration, aggregation and single sign-on and third party cloud applications.

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