Drake Workflow is designed to help you monitor all your tax returns in a single system, organized by status and preparation stage. Drake Workflow gives you complete control of your tax preparation firm’s productivity by helping you track tasks, assignees, and progress. This will help you ensure that your workflow is on track - from tax return creation, to preparation, and through to payment collection.

Drake Workflow is integrated with Drake Hub.

Key Benefits

• Integrated Workflow: All apps work together with automation that update a client’s status as their return progresses. You can also update statuses manually to match your office workflow.

• Task Delegation: Assign clients to team members in Drake Workflow. Each person completes their task and reassigns the client back to the preparer.

  • For example, a client submits documents through Drake Portals, the data entry clerk sees the status, enters the data, then updates the status so the preparer can filter for returns ready for review - all from within Drake Workflow!

• Practice Overview: Get a high-level view of all returns, broken down by category and status type. You can apply filters to pinpoint returns that require your immediate attention and ensure that all returns move through to complete by the due date that you set.

Overview

To access Drake Workflow, log into Drake Hub and select Workflow on the left.

To view return statuses for a different tax year, click the year drop-down at the top of the window beside Workflow for and select the year you want to display from the list. Both Tax Year 2024 and Tax Year 2025 are now available.

Workflow defaults to a board view, but you can click List to toggle to a list view. See Drake Workflow - Customize Views, Search, and Filter for more information on customizing your Workflow experience.

Board View

List View

The board/list displays the five main stages of return preparation.

• New Returns

• Gathering Info

• In Preparation

• In Review

• Completed

Each return has a more specific status displayed below the taxpayer’s name. When the status is updated through an automated or manual process, the return moves to the applicable stage. Within each stage, returns are ordered in alphabetical order by the taxpayer’s last name or entity name.

When reviewing a particular return on the board, click Show Details to get more information. In the list view, expand the row to see more details. The suggested next step is shown. In this example, the return was updated from the prior year, but data entry has not been started, so the suggested step is Open Return.

To review or add notes, click the note icon beside Show/Hide Details (on the board) or on the far right column (in list view). The notes pane will expand on the right-hand side of the browser window. Notes are displayed in order of addition (newest at the top). You can delete notes by clicking the trashcan icon, or add another note by typing an entry and clicking Add Note.

Add Work Items

See Drake Workflow - Add Work Items for details.

Stages and Status Types

See Drake Workflow - Stages, Status Types, and Colors for details.

Search, Filter or Customize

See Drake Workflow - Customize Views, Search, and Filter for details.

Notifications

See Drake Hub - Settings - Notifications and Workflow for details.

Frequently Asked Questions