Tax software that checks its own work.

Crosstie Practice

Run the firm from one place: clients, engagements, documents, deadlines and billing. Keep the tax software you use today. Crosstie Practice works alongside it.

Organizers that feed the return

In most products the organizer is a form the client fills in and someone retypes. Here the answers go straight into the workpaper.

• Built for each engagement: a document checklist and questions that follow the client's situation — a mortgage, rent, a 529 plan, school costs — so they answer only what applies.
• Done in several sittings: on a phone or a computer, with every answer and upload saved as they go, picking up where they left off.
• Answers that reach the return: filing status, dependents and ages feed the computation directly. Nothing is keyed twice.
• Reminders that know when to stop: outstanding items are chased after 3, 7 and 14 days, every 2 days near the deadline, then handed to you rather than nagging forever.

Client portal

• One place for the client: uploads by photo or PDF, questions, open-items requests, and the delivered return to review and approve.
• Duplicate and corrected documents: the same file uploaded twice is caught, and a corrected form replaces the original only after you accept it.

Engagement letters, e-signatures and payments

• Engagement letters signed online, with the scope and fee recorded. Adding a service later is an addendum the client signs.
• E-signatures for any document you send for signature, such as a proposal.
• Paid when they sign: in full, or billed monthly or annually by card, through Stripe.
• Access tied to payment: if a payment fails, the portal pauses new work until it's settled. The client can still see and download their records.
• Service packages: quote from your own tiers, with a price for each service on its own and a credit when it's bundled.

Time, WIP and pricing

• Which clients are costing you money, and what to charge them next year. From the time actually spent, each engagement's real hourly rate, and a list of what to reprice at renewal. Each new price is built from hours at your target rate, the cost to file, a margin adjustment and tax, with every step shown so you can check the arithmetic.
• Time that tracks itself. Work in a client's file and your time is recorded, sorted by what you were doing, and carried to the engagement's WIP. No one has to remember to start a timer. It pauses when you step away, and you confirm each block before it's logged.
• Cross-selling, suggested for you: services each client could use but doesn't have yet, with the reason — bookkeeping for a sole proprietor, planning for a landlord, payroll for a corporation. One click drafts an addendum to their engagement letter.

Documents and workflow

• Domestic and international file rooms. The engagement letter asks for the client's consent to international preparation (IRC §7216). Their files go to the international file room only if they consent, and to the domestic one otherwise.
• Mark up PDFs in the client's file, and export the marked-up copy.
• One view of the day: what needs attention, what's waiting on the client, and what's due.
• Every return's status, from documents requested to delivered, with deadlines by entity type.
• IRS notices logged against the client, with their response deadlines and status.
• Estimated tax payments: quarterly amounts recorded and reminders sent before each due date.
• Team roles and seats: preparer, reviewer, partner and admin, with sign-off levels set by role and a seat for each active user.

Coming soon

• E-signature for Form 8879, with the identity verification (knowledge-based authentication) the IRS requires for a remote signature.
• Export to the tax software you already use, so a firm that keeps its own software doesn't key the workpaper again.
• Payments through CPACharge, for firms that take payments there instead of Stripe.

Pricing, in short: one plan, priced per user per month. Everything is included, the Workpapers module too. Accounting, for the firm’s own books, is the one paid add-on module: built and in daily use at an active tax practice, available to firms in early 2027.

Crosstie Tax

The filing engine, with workpapers included. The return is prepared from the workpaper and filed, with no export and no second system. It's in development: Crosstie isn't yet authorized to e-file with the IRS, and no date has been set.

Return types: the roadmap None available yet

What Crosstie Tax is being built to prepare and file. None of these can be prepared or filed in Crosstie today. The 1040 is in development; the others are planned, in no fixed order, and no dates are set.

• Form 1040IndividualsIn development
• Form 1041Estates and trustsPlanned
• Form 1065PartnershipsPlanned
• Form 1120C corporationsPlanned
• Form 1120-SS corporationsPlanned
• Form 990Exempt organizationsPlanned
• Form 990-EZExempt organizations, short formPlanned

Each return type is built together with the supporting forms and schedules it needs, and the range of forms widens over time.

Later, after the main return types

Specialty filings come once the return types above are in place. No dates are set.

• Form 709Gift and generation-skipping transfer taxLater
• Form 1120-HHomeowners associationsLater
• Form 1120-REITReal estate investment trustsLater
• Form 1120-IC-DISCInterest charge domestic international sales corporationsLater
• Form 5500Employee benefit plans. Filed with the Department of Labor through EFAST2, not with the IRSLater
• Other specialty filingsFurther specialty returns, added over timeLater

Work on the return itself

• On the form, not a questionnaire. You prepare on a replica of the IRS form, line by line, the way returns are reviewed.
• Every line says how it got there: keyed by hand, calculated, carried from another form or the workpaper, or overridden.
• Overrides keep the calculated figure, with who changed it, when and why, so an override can be undone.
• The return comes from the workpaper, so figures aren't keyed twice and can't drift apart.

State returns, beside the federal one In development

State returns are in development, and no date is set. When they're built, each state sits beside the federal return with its own diagnostics and its own e-file gate, so a clear federal return can still have a blocked state, or the other way round.

Workpapers Module · included in both products

The workpaper is a trial balance, not a document list. Adjusting, reclassifying, federal-tax and state-tax entries (AJE, RJE, FTJE, STJE) post to their own columns, and eliminating entries (EJE) consolidate related entities. Schedules M-1, M-2 and L are built for the 1120, 1120-S and 1065, each in its own form’s layout. Schedule M-3, when it’s required or chosen, is built line by line through Parts I to III, with every amount traced to its accounts and entries and book-tax differences split into temporary and permanent. It comes with both products. With Crosstie Practice alone, you keep your own tax software and prepare the return there.

Coming soon Exporting a finished workpaper into the tax software you already use, so nothing is keyed twice.

• Incomplete, never confidently wrong. A figure that can't be supported isn't computed. You get the reason instead of a number.
• Tie-out to the return. For 1065, 1120-S and 1120 returns, the return's key totals as prepared are checked against the workpaper, and sign-off waits until every difference is explained.
• Filing-ready schedules. The workpaper’s schedules (L, M-1 or M-3, and M-2) are filing-ready only when every line is computed, no review flag is open, they tie to the return, and every sign-off level has signed. It’s worked out each time you look, so a figure that changes after sign-off takes it away. Page 1, Schedule K and the K-1s are still prepared in your filing software.
• Entries that know the entity. Suggested from the client's ledger, and sorted into book, reclassification and tax-only entries, with book-tax differences carried to Schedule M-1.
• A signed-off year stays signed off. Up to three levels, preparer, reviewer and partner. A signed-off or filed year is frozen. Reopening it takes a reviewer or partner and a stated reason, and every sign-off and reopen is logged with who, when and what changed. If one person signs two levels, the file says so.

Accounting Module · the paid add-on, early 2027

Accounting for the practice itself: the firm’s own bank and card accounts, its own books and its own year-end, inside Crosstie. It isn’t a bookkeeping or write-up tool for your clients. It’s built and in daily use at an active tax practice today and becomes available to firms in early 2027. It’s the one optional module: everything in Crosstie Practice is one price per user, and accounting is the only thing priced separately.

• The firm’s bank and card accounts: connect the practice’s own bank accounts and credit cards, and their transactions come into the firm’s books, booked to an uncategorized account for you to categorize.
• The firm’s ledger: its chart of accounts, manual and recurring journal entries, fixed assets with straight-line depreciation and amortization, and loans with automatic interest.
• The firm’s own year-end: its books produce a book-to-tax trial balance, with adjusting, reclassifying and tax entries and state columns, on the same engine as client workpapers.
• If the practice runs through more than one entity: books for each, with consolidation runs, intercompany eliminating entries suggested for you, and a consolidated view.
• The firm’s receipts: upload a file or take a photo; it’s read for you, matched to bank transactions for you to accept, and spending without a receipt is listed.
• The firm’s statements: profit and loss, balance sheet and general ledger, exportable to CSV.