Accountants: How Tallyfor Integrates With FreshBooks for Easier U.S. Tax Returns

One of the most potentially time-consuming aspects of preparing a client’s tax return is the book-to-tax reconciliation. If you’ve been preparing these workpapers manually in a spreadsheet, entering adjustments, and then re-entering those adjustments again in tax software, you might be glad to know there’s an easier way.

FreshBooks is excited to partner with Tallyfor to simplify this process and save you time when you need it most—during the height of tax season.

What Is Tallyfor, and How Does It Work?

Tallyfor is a cloud-based application that streamlines and automates book-to-tax adjustments, coding, and data entry by giving you one place for all of your accounting and tax adjustments.

Tallyfor estimates it saves about 90% of manual data entry for a typical tax client.

How to Get Started With the Tallyfor + FreshBooks Integration

Connect Tallyfor to your FreshBooks account or upload an Excel trial balance into Tallyfor and make all book, tax, and reclassifying journal entries with just a few clicks.

From there, it takes just a few minutes to map accounts to the appropriate lines on the client’s tax return and rename, group, and subtotal accounts.

Once you complete the initial coding and adjusting entries, simply push the data to your tax software. Tallyfor integrates with UltraTax, Lacerte, Drake, CCH Axcess, and ProSystem fx.

3 Benefits of Using Tallyfor with FreshBooks

Both Tallyfor and FreshBooks are cloud-based, so you can collaborate with anyone, anytime, anywhere, while keeping your client’s information secure—vital for firms and professionals that work partially or fully remote.

Benefit #1: Simple to Use

“Tallyfor lets me quickly, easily, and seamlessly pull the trial balance from FreshBooks to be able to review it, adjust it, group it, and pull it into the tax return.”

Getting up and running with some software takes time and involves a steep learning curve, but Tallyfor and FreshBooks make it easy.

High Rock Accounting was one of Tallyfor’s earliest and largest clients. “Tallyfor’s support team has been phenomenal,” said Rachel Fisch, Chief Global Development Officer at High Rock Accounting. “With no additional charge for onboarding or education, we were able to recognize almost immediate efficiencies.”

And Tallyfor is easy to use and understand going forward. Once you complete the initial mapping, Tallyfor rolls those preferences forward from year to year, so you only need to update new accounts.

Megan Justice, EA and owner of Crayon Advisory in Portland, Oregon, uses FreshBooks to prepare her client’s books and Tallyfor to get them ready for tax filing.

“Tallyfor lets me quickly, easily, and seamlessly pull the trial balance from FreshBooks to be able to review it, adjust it, group it, and pull it into the tax return,” Justice says. “It really helps my neurodivergent brain keep all of the client’s activity straight, know that I’ve looked at account balances, and warns me when something is off. This lets me keep my return prep efficient and smooth.”

“We’ve doubled the number of returns we’re doing while maintaining our file-to-extension ratio, even in these recent difficult tax years.”

Benefit #2: Saves Time

Most accountants know they need to automate data entry work in order to save time on the low-level tasks and spend more time doing what really matters: serving their clients. But it can be tough to know where to start.

Tallyfor empowers accounting and tax professionals to automate the tax trial balance and save hours per return by flowing data straight from the trial balance to tax forms in three easy steps: import, adjust, and file.

Fisch says that level of scalability, efficiency, accuracy, and consistency has been key to staying on top of their clients’ tax filings despite all of the challenges of serving clients through the pandemic.

“We’ve doubled the number of returns we’re doing while maintaining our file-to-extension ratio, even in these recent difficult tax years. As Christie Huck, our Tax Specialist says, ‘What took hours to do manually now takes literally minutes.’”

“[Tallyfor] helps me show [the client] the benefit and value of us working together throughout the year: fewer adjustments, better planning, and better understanding.”

Benefit #3: Demonstrates Value

Tallyfor provides you with reports and workpapers already formatted and ready to download, so you have the backup you need for your own records.
Justice has been using FreshBooks to pull detailed reports and share them with her client since she started her firm in 2020 and likes the additional reporting piece that Tallyfor brings to the picture.

“It lets me make adjustments for the tax return without affecting the books,” Justice says. “This is especially important when I don’t have an accounting or bookkeeping engagement with the client.”

Every tax professional has dealt with clients who have trouble grasping why the income on their tax return differs from the net income on their Profit & Loss Statement. Justice says Tallyfor allows her to help her clients make that connection.

“With Tallyfor, I can show the client their tax adjustments, how they impact the tax return, and why the tax return is different from their accounting,” Justice says. “This helps me show the benefit and value of us working together throughout the year: fewer adjustments, better planning, and better understanding.”

How to Learn More

Are you ready to use FreshBooks and Tallyfor to make tax time less taxing for your practice? Sign up for a Tallyfor account.

Be sure to check out the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program to continue learning from our growing community of client-focused, growth-minded accountants and bookkeepers.