Canopy is tax practice management software from Canopy, Inc., with accounting functionality designed for tax professionals and their customers. It includes tax resolution analytics, automatic IRS form population, client management, transcript delivery and reporting, custom service workflows, penalty abatement, casework/client engagement tracking, client portals, and billing and invoicing capabilities.
N/A
Vertex
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Vertex combines tax research with technology to improve tax accuracy and
consistency on sales and purchase transactions. The automation aims to support high volume and complex transactions at speed and scale to streamline internal
processes and improve audit performance. Integrations to
ERP, e-commerce, procurement, and other billing systems enables a single tax
engine to seamlessly support a growing business. In addition to tax
determination, Vertex provides tools and services to automate and…
For accurate and remarkable accounting processes, Canopy is the program to embrace. One, it has the project accounting details where every resource has a detailed accounting feature. Again, matters on taxation and state compliance are professionally handled by Canopy. The tracking of the due dates for finishing a given operation is an incredible step.
It is easy to use, and the user interface is very interactive. A beginner can also work with ease and have no difficulty accessing Vertex. It is straightforward to understand how Vertex works. The tax calculation mechanism is good and accurate.
As TheCPATaxProblemSolver, Canopy is a great timesaver in helping me complete IRS Offer In Compromises. An Offer in Compromise (OIC) is an IRS program that allows taxpayers to settle their liabilities for less than the full amount owed.
I use analytics contained in the state-of-the-art Canopy tax resolution software to calculate smart recommendations based on each unique case to arrive at the best solution and prepare successful cases.
Canopy tax has an all in one practice management software. It features Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Document Management, Workflow Management, as well as Billing and Invoicing
Canopy's time tracking feature is hard to get valuable data from without the pro version.
Canopy's dashboard for the workflow management could be better by providing a filter option of "Show me projects I'm assigned to and on which I am assigned to the current open workstep."
Critical changes! I feel they should be more aware of changes in the states. Sometimes we get these changes from them after we file our returns! I feel they should be up on any changes that are important for returns.
Support is a big issue. Vertex used to be excellent with their support. When I called with a question I felt I was speaking to a professional who knows the product inside and out. Now when I call I get someone who says "That's a realy good question I will have to look into that" Then days go by before I get an answer. Sometimes I don't get an answer at all. This was not the case in prior years.
We are satisfied with the overall performance of Vertex. The software has provided my company with many efficiencies. We have shorted our audits and found that many audits are happy that we are using Vertex to calculate our taxes. We no longer need to worry about updating our rates each month since Vertex sends us a file to upload
Great program, but a lot of features are still manual. It's difficult to set recurring monthly reports in a time frame of "Previous Month" and we have to kick them off. We have to manually delete reports, there isn't an option to choose multiple at once. Data that is transferred into Vertex returns is quirky as well, taking multiple steps to update lines of data.
Our Vertex performance is good, although we are now experiencing Error 502 when adding additional data points to our transaction tester single tests. At Exchange, I was told to reach out to support....that most likely the On Demand system needed some additional CPU resource added. I have a currently open ticket, that has not yet been fixed on this matter
I cannot speak from personal experience, but our IT staff has found contacting Vertex support staff to be challenging. One coworker has gone through several support tickets because he was an unrecognized contact. He has also expressed frustration that communication with support staff is conducted solely by email, drawing out issues over an extended length of time that could be more easily resolved by a brief phone call.
By training I'm referring to our engagement with Vertex Consulting's professional services group. Each person on the engagement had prior leasing industry tax experience and most if not all used O Series before joining Vertex. Consultants with industry specific tax experience provide so much more than just "training". They are able to engage in deep tax technical discussions with actual experience while in private practice. This coupled with having visibility to how numerous other leasing peers approach similar tax issues is a huge plus on top of the standard training.
Vertex has offered multiple webinars for the products we have purchased that are informative and helpful. I've also attended a few of the Vertex annual conferences where I was able to strength my knowledge of Vertex. I also found that their online library and videos can be helpful in resolving issues and answering questions.
The implementation is challenging, make no mistake but will provide much value over time. Make sure you have full support of IT and your major stakeholders in your company. I found that while many people claimed to understand tax was important, they had no idea how deep tax in entrenched throughout the lease life cycle.
Canopy is a hyper-CRM that does more than just track client interaction. It also does filing sharing in a way that's relevant to the client and constantly drives to client back to interacting with our firm.
Vertex is more flexible and by using Vertex you need fewer people to maintain tax calculations. In addition, Tax rate update is maintained by Vertex, so you do not need to track and support tax rate update.
There needs to be a time-consuming setup both in the Enterprise Resource Platform and in Vertex and the related tools as well but once this is all established, Vertex is very proficient at calculating Sales and Use Tax in the USA and in Canada with GST/HST, as well as several of the provinces where we are located. As we added plants in different jurisdictions via greenfield expansion and aquisition, Vertex was able to integrate those as long as the tax department is fully informed of the system.
Canopy has allowed us to reduce our dependence on an administrative assistant to communicate with our clients effectively through the document request feature in an engagement. It has a reminder system built in which frees our time.
The storage provided is robust enough that we have been able to eliminate our file server. We store all our client information in their individual record. Making some files visible to the client and and some not visible allows us to work remotely more effectively and not deal with problems with VPN over hotel networks.
Canopy combines multiple products into one platform that is seamless and consistent. It has helped us eliminate multiple programs used previously to complete these functions.
Vertex for the solution that we needed was half as much as the old tax software that we used
Our past solutions have not been able to exempt certain customers, so we were spending a lot of time manually adjusting sales orders in two systems (Netsuite and BigCommerce)
We are now able to add more complex tax rules, such as charging sales tax on digital, food, and clothing items differently than we were able to before
