Canopy

The best feature is the client portal and mobile app. It has been a business transformation blessing from way before COVID was ever a thing. I remember way back in 2017 when the mobile app was nearly launching how it revolutionized the way my clients do business with me. This is what has kept me on Canopy in spite of the price hikes.

Canopy recently has changed their pricing model and I don’t like it because it increases the barriers to tax professional adoption. There are other titles out there who bring good feature sets and a much lower price point and has given me reason to start shopping elsewhere. What keeps me at Canopy is not wanting to invest the time in moving my clients files over to a new system, notifying my clients that I virtually moved virtual offices, and avoiding the headaches of all the client questions that would ensue.

We liked the ability to access the software/information from anywhere.

The software does not allow you to export a sorted contact list. A very simple option that has been neglected.

Clients like the portal. It has helped improve the perception that my firm cares about their info. It also feels very organized. It is easy to set up a portal.

Yegads, what to me seems like obvious items, the organizer doesn’t roll over from prior year to current year. Your current solution is for me to set up customer accounts for each member of a family unit. This seems dumb and a waste of accounts, my and my team’s time, my money and the client perception and experience. If i as a customer was asked by my firm to re enter all prior year into, I would be beyond annoyed. I would wonder what kind of high tech experience Alison isn’t offering me. As a customer, I would also be less inclined to complete it because It is a waste of my time. Your customer service and training library aren’t helpful. Since it is very self serve, I have no idea what to look for in terms of better ways to use canopy because I don’t know what I don’t know. You let us all know at the innovation summit about the 100 new features you have rolled out. My admin and I were dumbfounded to learn this. How did we not know About the cool ways you are trying to make my life better? Do you offer monthly training or “ask me anything” webinars that don’t require me to pay extra or upgrade to a higher level. If you do, why don’t I know about them? If you don’t, why don’t you? It seems like you would help me have a better experience with the software and keep me as a recurring customer. Also, it is hard as nails to get requests followed up on. Customer service isn’t great.

I love the portal and the client/entity set up. I love that everything related to my workflow is in Canopy (except the tax return). It's very nice to have everything in one system.

The syncing with QBO hasn't been as easy as I'd like, but that may be an Intuit issue as well. There are issues when duplicate clients are created and you merge them. If the client was already linked in Canopy, that link is broken and I don't know how to recreate it. I hear that a function to sync specific clients in Canopy is coming soon and that should resolve my issue.

I haven't been able to pull a transcript yet. I keep getting "Pull Failed". I'm not sure if this in an IRS issue or Canopy. Hopefully this can be resolved soon.