Portal Access, Notifications, Email Sync—How Everything Works Together

Each entity you work with—whether an individual, family, or business—should have one account, but each account might have more than one contact linked to it. Find out more about setting up login access for your accounts, notifications, client email options, and more.

Covered here:

• How to Set Up Accounts
• How to Add Additional Email Addresses
• The LOGIN Toggle, Explained
  
• The EMAIL SYNC Toggle, Explained
• The NOTIFY Toggle, Explained
• How Notifications and Email Work for Clients Still Pending Activation
• Removing a User’s Access (Email) From an Account
• Changing Client Email Addresses
• Unlinked Email Addresses, Explained
• How Users Switch to a Different Account on Their Client Portal

How to Set Up Accounts

 Here are a few examples to show you how you can set things up to best suit your needs:

Spouses With a Joint Tax Return: One Account

If you have a married couple who file jointly and both want portal access to the same information, create one account, then link the two contacts to it (one for each spouse). If there are other family members associated with the account (children, grandparents, uncles, etc.), they too can be linked to the account.

Spouses With Individual Tax Returns: Two Accounts

If you’re preparing two individual returns for two spouses, create a separate account for each person—then link both of their contacts to each. Within each account, you’ll be able to turn on toggles for their email addresses so that they can log in to either account, receive the same notifications, and sync their email. 

A Child Who Requires Their Own Tax Return: A Separate Account

If you’re preparing a separate tax return for the child of a single parent or a married couple, we recommend that parents use a different account for the child—but everyone can have their contact linked to the account.

Business, Payroll, and Bookkeeping: One Account With Multiple Contacts 

First create an account for the business, then link all relevant contacts to it: business partners, controllers, managers, etc. For each contact, enable the desired toggles for their email addresses so that they can log in to the account’s portal, receive notifications, or sync their email.

How to Add Additional Email Addresses

A contact might have several email addresses (personal, work, etc.).  By default, each contact has one email field, but you can manually create extra CRM fields for email addresses or create additional ones while you’re importing.

A firm owner or team member who has been given access rights to manage accounts can add additional users (emails) to an account.  

In the client account profile, open the Info tab, then review the Contacts section. Here, you’ll see all the email addresses of contacts linked to the account. If you want to add email addresses that are  not listed, you have two options: add another linked contact or add an additional email address to the contact that is already linked. 

Here are the steps:

1. Create custom CRM email fields to store the additional email addresses of the new contact(s).
2. Update an existing contact to include an additional email address.
3. Turn on the LOGIN, NOTIFY and/or EMAIL SYNC toggles for this email if you need to (see the details below).

The LOGIN Toggle, Explained

When you add an email address to an account, you can turn on the LOGIN toggle to give the person the email belongs to portal access.

What this does:

• The user gets an invitation to access the TaxDome client portal so that they can get to their account.
• If you turned on the LOGIN toggle for two or more emails for the same account, any of these users can log in with their email and get to the same account.

Once you’ve added portal access to a contact’s email address, TaxDome sends the person an activation request by email. In order to activate the account, the person needs to accept the request and create a password. The new user will then be automatically linked to the account. Now two users will have separate login credentials for the same account. 

The EMAIL SYNC Toggle, Explained

When you add an email address to an account, you can turn on the EMAIL SYNC toggle. 

What this does:

• You’ll see all the emails received from that email address in the Inbox+ section and in the Email tab of that client account. You’ll be able to reply to the email right from TaxDome.
• All history between your synced emails and the email will automatically populate on TaxDome.
• If Automatically Save Attachments is enabled, all future emails with attachments will automatically save the documents to the Client’s Docs section of the client account.  

Note: You can turn on the EMAIL SYNC toggle for prospective clients who haven’t gotten portal access to an account yet (i.e., the LOGIN toggle is turned off), so you’ll be able to get emails from them as well. 

The NOTIFY Toggle, Explained

When the NOTIFY toggle is turned on for an email address in the Contacts section, the person the email belongs to will receive notifications. 

That user will get...

• ...all emails sent to the account from TaxDome.
• ...all bulk emails sent to the account from TaxDome.
• ...all emails sent to the account via pipeline automation.
• ...all system notifications, which include:
  • Notifications about new messages
  • Notifications about new replies in message threads 
  • Notifications about new firm-uploaded documents
  • Requests for documents pending signature 
  • Reminders for documents pending signature 
  • Requests for documents pending approval 
  • Reminders for documents pending approval 
  • Requests for new organizers
  • Reminders for pending organizers
  • Requests for new bills
  • Reminder about pending bills
  • Confirmations for bill payments
  • Notifications about refunds issued
  • Request for new contracts
  • Reminders for pending contracts

You can turn on the NOTIFY toggle when adding portal access or an additional email address to a client account—or whenever you like.

You’ll always receive copies of whatever system emails go out to clients. For more details about how to set that up, go here. 

How Notifications and Email Work for Clients Still Pending Activation

If you’ve turned on the LOGIN, NOTIFY, and EMAIL SYNC toggles for a client account, but the user hasn’t yet activated that account, they will still receive TaxDome email and system notifications:

• All regular email you send from TaxDome will work regardless of whether the account is activated or not. You will also receive Inbox+ notifications about new emails sent by the user (if you have set this up in your Notification settings).
• All system notifications will go to the user’s email and will include the Account activation banner at the top of the email until they have activated the account.

You can always resend an invitation if you need to.

Removing Access (Email) From an Account

If someone no longer needs to have access to an account, you can remove them. Go to the Info tab of the account and turn off the LOGIN toggle to the right of the email address of the person whose portal access you want to remove. The account will remain intact; however, that user will no longer be able to access it by using their credentials.

Changing Client Email Addresses

When a client’s email address changes, add their new email address as if they were an additional user; however, make sure not to immediately remove the previous one. Instead, follow these steps:

1. Update the client’s contact to include the new email address. 

2. Add their new email address as described in Giving Additional Users Access to an Account above.

3. Wait for the client to accept the invitation sent to the new email address, so that they don’t lose access to their account. Once the client has accepted the invite, delete their previous email address as described in Removing a User’s Access to a Client Account above.  

Unlinked Email Addresses, Explained

With some of your client accounts, you may notice an Unlinked Emails section under Contacts. Here, you’ll see email addresses that are currently being used to log in to the client portal but are not linked to a contact. This happens when you give portal access to an email address and then delete it from a linked contact or an additional user is added by the client but not linked to a contact. 

There are two ways to fix unlinked email addresses:

• If the client is no longer using the email address, you can turn off the LOGIN toggle to its right. The email address will then disappear from the list.
• If the email address is still relevant, you can link it to the existing contact it belongs to:  

1. Click the three-dots icon to the right of the email address, then select Link email with contact.

2. Start typing the contact’s name, then select the appropriate contact from the list. 

3. Select the email field for the email address, then click on the LINK button.

How Users Switch to a Different Account on Their Client Portal 

Users who have access to various accounts will see a  Switch Accounts pop-up when they log in. They’ll be able to select the desired account from the pop-up. During a session, they can also switch between accounts as frequently as they want. To access the Switch Accounts pop-up, they’ll need to click on the Switch account link at the bottom of their left sidebar.