From Client Intake Call to Engagement Letter in 15 Minutes

The client did not want another tool

The firm already ran its work through Firm360 and UltraTax CS. The problem was the manual space between those systems: notes from the intake call, emails requesting missing W-2s and K-1s, uploaded files, scope preparation, the engagement letter, invoice and onboarding. A new standalone application would have created another login and another source of truth.

The design brief was therefore narrow and practical: make the existing stack behave like one system, preserve the firm’s review points, and keep identifiable tax data away from general-purpose AI steps.

Where the work stalled

After an intake call, a team member reconstructed the client profile, identified missing documents, wrote the follow-up, reviewed uploads and prepared a rough scope. Each handoff could wait in an inbox. The advisor could not move to the commercial conversation until the administrative work was complete.

What Chronexa built

The intake call is transcribed and converted into a structured client profile. The workflow compares that profile with the expected document checklist and drafts precise requests for anything missing. Uploaded documents enter a secure vault and pass through OCR before any AI review.

The privacy boundary is deliberate: OCR extracts structured values first, and the reasoning step receives de-identified fields rather than a client’s identity. The system cross-checks values, flags conflicts and prepares possible service needs for human review. It then drafts a scope and price range, creates the engagement letter, sends it for e-signature, raises the invoice and starts onboarding.

What changed

The firm can produce the engagement-letter draft roughly 10–15 minutes after the intake call rather than rebuilding the file by hand. The advisor still approves scope, price and tax conclusions. Automation removes the waiting and re-keying around those decisions; it does not make them.

How the systems were connected

Firm360 remains the place where the firm manages the relationship. UltraTax CS remains the tax system. The automation layer moves structured data between them and the surrounding document, signature and billing services through APIs, webhooks and controlled file handoffs. That matters because replacing the practice-management or tax platform would have made the project slower and riskier.

The document stage is split in two. OCR reads the file first. A reasoning step then works with selected, de-identified fields. It does not receive the client’s full folder and it does not write a tax position straight into the return. The output is a checklist, a set of possible conflicts and a draft for review.

What the 10–15 minute result means

The measured time is from the end of the intake call to a drafted engagement letter in the deployed workflow. It is not a promise that every tax return is prepared in 15 minutes. Difficult files, poor scans and unusual tax positions still need professional review. The gain comes from removing re-keying, inbox waiting and repeated document chasing around that professional work.