AI Prompts to Deliver Client Files

Connect your AI assistant to ProjectSend Cloud and you can deliver a client's tax return with one instruction: "Save this summary as a file and give me a link for Martinez." Your assistant uploads the file, creates the private link, and returns it so you can paste it into an email or message. Below are the exact prompts accountants use most during tax season, organized by what they do and which plan unlocks them.

What can your AI assistant do with client files?

When you connect Claude, ChatGPT, or another assistant to your account via the MCP connector, it acts on your portal in plain English. You do not open the admin, find the file, or copy the link by hand -- the assistant handles that step. On any plan, it can:

• Save a document, summary, or CSV it just wrote as a file and return the private link
• List your files, search by name, or pull up details on a specific one
• Check who downloaded a file and when
• Create or revoke a private link on demand

One limit applies on every plan: your assistant cannot open or read the contents of a stored file. It works with links, download records, and metadata -- not the documents themselves. For a deeper look at what this means for client confidentiality, see AI Assistant: Safe for Client Files?.

Prompt recipes for tax season

These work with any assistant that supports the MCP standard -- Claude, ChatGPT, and others. Replace the brackets with your details. The assistant figures out the rest.

On any plan

• "Save this client summary as a file and give me a private link." The assistant saves whatever it just wrote -- a tax checklist, a formatted engagement letter, a year-end summary -- as a file on your account and returns the private link. You paste it into an email. The client does not need an account to download it.
• "Did [client name] download their tax return yet?" The assistant checks the download log and reports back -- who downloaded, from which link, and exactly when. Useful at the end of a filing deadline when you want to confirm delivery before closing the engagement.
• "Stop the link to [client name]'s organizer -- they submitted it." The link is revoked immediately. The file stays on your portal; only the shared link stops working. Good practice when a document contained sensitive intake information you no longer want accessible.
• "How much storage am I using?" The assistant checks your account totals. Useful after tax season when you want to archive old engagement files before they count against your storage limit.

On Pro and Business

Pro and Business add client accounts, folders, and per-client download history. These prompts open up the full handoff workflow:

• "Create a client account for Jane Doe at [email protected] and send her the 2025 folder." The assistant creates the account, shares the folder, and Jane gets a notification email with her login details. Any files you add to that folder later are available to her automatically. Clients never pay for access.
• "Which clients haven't downloaded anything in the last 30 days?" The assistant pulls client accounts and their download histories. A useful end-of-season check before you send a follow-up to inactive clients -- and a clean record of who received what.

The FTC Safeguards Rule and why your audit trail matters

Tax preparers and CPA firms that handle nonpublic personal information are covered by the FTC Safeguards Rule, effective June 2023, which requires a written information security program with access controls and a record of who accessed what. The download log that ProjectSend Cloud keeps -- who downloaded a file, from which link, and when -- is exactly that record. When your AI assistant reports "Martinez downloaded the 2024 return on October 12 at 2:14 PM," that is a timestamped delivery record your firm can keep on file.

The IRS recommends keeping tax records for at least three years from the date you file the original return -- longer in cases involving underreported income. Keeping the delivery record alongside the return gives you a complete picture of who received the document and when, all in one place.

Getting started

Setup takes about five minutes. Connect your assistant using the instructions at Connect your AI assistant. Add your account credentials to the assistant once, and from then on you give it instructions in a chat window. Everything in the "On any plan" section above works on the Free plan with no credit card. For creating client accounts and managing folders, you need Pro at $19/mo.

For accounting firms specifically, the value metric is active client accounts: you pay for the clients who are actively using the portal, and archive the rest. Clients never pay for access. See the full guide for accounting firms for how the whole portal fits into a tax-season workflow, and compare plans for the full pricing breakdown.

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