Question 1

What kinds of documents does the AI read?

Accepted Answer

Standard IRS information returns and slips — 1099-NEC, 1099-MISC, 1099-INT, 1099-DIV, 1099-R, K-1s, and W-2s — plus the client's prior-year return when you upload it. PDFs, phone photos, and scanned paper all work; the extractor normalizes the layout and lifts the numbers into the intake form.

Question 2

How does the anomaly flagging actually work?

Accepted Answer

Each extracted number is run against a small ruleset: missing employer EIN, a 1099-NEC with no state ID, a W-2 withholding total that doesn't reconcile, prior-year income swings, and a handful of common data-entry tells. Anomalies are surfaced as a checklist on the client record so you can decide to chase them or let them go — nothing is auto-filed.

Question 3

Will my clients see anything, or is this just for me?

Accepted Answer

Plumbmark is a back-office tool for one solo preparer, not a client-facing portal. Your client never logs in; you collect their documents however you already do (email, text, in person) and load them into the intake pipeline. That keeps the experience on your side of the counter and avoids the awkward "I forgot my portal password" phone calls.

Question 4

How fast does a new client go from "I'll send it" to "ready to prepare"?

Accepted Answer

Once a client signs your engagement and uploads their basics (ID, dependents, prior-year return for context), most intakes finish in under 10 minutes. The 1099s and W-2s land automatically as you receive them; the AI pulls the numbers and you review the assembled file the next morning.

Question 5

What happens to the data and the AI extraction — is my clients' PII safe?

Accepted Answer

Documents are stored encrypted at rest and only your operator account can read them. The LLM extraction runs against a sealed extract-and-verify flow — the model sees the document for parsing only, never to train on, and the structured numbers are what get saved. No third-party retraining, no data sale, and the complete row is yours to export or delete.

Question 6

Is this a replacement for my tax software?

Accepted Answer

No. Plumbmark is the front-of-house intake and prep layer; it hands you a clean, reconciled, anomaly-flagged file at the start of preparation. You still run your return in the professional tax software you already know — Plumbmark's job is to make that hand-off fast and complete, not to replace the line-by-line work.

AI document collection for solo tax preparers

One operator. Forty clients. A stack of paper that grows every day.

Three things that move the needle on a solo preparer's day.

Solo preparers ask, before they sign up.

Start the next season already on top of the paperwork.