Free calculator
How many returns is your team leaving on the table next season?
Automated document intake, extraction and return pre-fill cut prep time per return by about 40%. That freed time is capacity — returns your current team could file without a single seasonal hire. Move the sliders.
Added capacity revenue per season
$126k
from 180 additional returns your current team could file — 18 more per preparer, no new hires
960 h
of staff prep time freed per season at the published 40% reduction
+180
returns added at a conservative 30% throughput gain — the engine’s benchmark is 3×
Uses the published benchmarks from our CPA & Tax Engine: 40% less prep time per return and a 94% pre-fill rate, with throughput modelled at a conservative 30%. Methodology below — your firm’s real number depends on return mix, and the audit maps it.
Get this breakdown for your firm — before next season
We’ll send your numbers with the full methodology, plus how document intake, extraction and return pre-fill produce the 40% — on the tax software you already run.
Methodology
The math, in the open
No black box. Prep hours are your returns multiplied by your average prep time; automation removes 40% of them (the published benchmark for automated intake, classification, extraction and pre-fill). Throughput is modelled at a deliberately conservative 30% gain — the engine benchmark is 3× — and capacity revenue is simply the added returns at your average fee.
hours freed = returns × prep hours/return × 40% added returns = returns × 30% (conservative; benchmark is 3×) capacity revenue = added returns × average fee
With the defaults — a 10-preparer firm filing 600 returns at a $700 average fee — that is 180 additional returns and $126,000 in added capacity revenue per season: the same worked example published on our CPA & Tax Engine page. Where the 40% comes from in practice: documents are pulled from your client portal automatically, classified by type, extracted field-by-field with a verification pass, and pushed into your tax software as a 90–94% pre-filled return. The preparer starts from a punch-list, not a blank organizer.
The fix
How firms capture the capacity
The service
CPA tax document automation
Document chasing, intake, classification and extraction automated end-to-end — 84% less manual client follow-up, 3× more documents processed per staff member.
The engine
The CPA & Tax Engine
Watch the full pipeline run: intake → classification → extraction → gap chasing → return population → CPA review, with every number this calculator uses.
Your stack
Built on your tax software
UltraTax CS, CCH Axcess, Drake, Lacerte, ProConnect — the pre-filled return lands in the software your preparers already use. No migration.
FAQ
Tax-season capacity, answered
Where do the 40% and 3× benchmarks come from?
They are the published benchmarks on our CPA & Tax Engine page, drawn from documented results in AI tax-document automation (benchmarks from Filed): roughly 40% less preparation time per return once intake, classification, extraction and return population are automated, and up to 3× staff capacity in busy season. The calculator deliberately models throughput at a conservative 30% — not the 3× best case — so the business case never depends on a ceiling number.
Does this include review time, or just prep?
Just prep — intake, classification, data entry and population. Review is a separate gain: with a side-by-side review dashboard where every extracted value links to its source document, CPA review typically drops from 3–4 hours to 15–25 minutes per return. The calculator leaves that out, which makes its estimate more conservative, not less.
We are a small firm — does the math still hold?
Yes. The model is linear, so it holds at 600 returns or 6,000. What changes at smaller firms is which constraint binds first: capacity per preparer matters most when hiring seasonal staff is hardest, which is exactly the small-firm situation.
What does it take to actually capture this capacity?
The pipeline behind the numbers: client documents pulled automatically from your portal, classified by type (W-2s, 1099s, K-1s, brokerage composites), fields extracted and verified, and the return pre-filled in your existing tax software — UltraTax, CCH Axcess, Drake, Lacerte or ProConnect. Firms typically go live in 3–5 weeks, before season.
Is the data I enter here stored anywhere?
No — the sliders run entirely in your browser. We only receive your inputs if you choose to submit the form with your email, in which case we use them to prepare your breakdown.
Sometimes the hardest part is reaching out — but once you do, we'll make the rest easy.
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No-risk guarantee: if we can't find automation worth more than it costs to build, you owe us nothing — and you keep the roadmap.
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