Client Portal Setup for Tax Season

Tax season runs from the moment the first W-2 arrives — employers must send them by January 31 — through the April 15 filing deadline. Getting your client portal set up before that first document shows up means clients know exactly where to upload, and you spend January reviewing documents instead of sorting attachments from three different email threads. Three months is enough time to do it properly.

Set Up in October, Open in January

The timeline that works for most CPA firms: October for configuration, November for a test run with a handful of real clients, December to invite the full roster. That gives you January as a clean start — when documents begin to arrive, the portal is already familiar to your clients.

1. October: Create client accounts, build folder structure, turn on 2FA for every staff login, do one test upload yourself.
2. November: Invite two or three real clients. Ask each one to upload a single test document. Check whether the notification email landed in their inbox — and ask them to check spam.
3. December: Send invitations to all remaining active clients. Include a short note explaining which folder to use for which document type.

This guide covers the setup mechanics. For a broader look at how CPA firms use client portals throughout the year — from client onboarding to final document delivery — see the client portal guide for accounting firms or browse the accounting firms section of the blog.

Step 1: Create a Client Account for Every Active Client

The Free plan is a personal account on a shared server — it has no client accounts and no portal of your own. Pro ($19/month) is where client-facing work starts: it includes 25 active client accounts and your own portal at a subdomain you choose. Client accounts are what give each client a private space inside your portal that only you and they can access.

Sign in to your portal, go to Clients, and create an account for each person or entity you plan to work with this season. Your client gets an email invitation, sets a password, and from that point on, their uploads land in their private space. You can see what they uploaded and when; they cannot see anyone else's files.

• Use each client's full legal name or entity name as the display name — it appears in notification emails and the audit log.
• Create one account per entity, not one per family. A joint-filing couple can share a single account, but a client who files both personal and business returns benefits from separate accounts.
• If you are migrating from a self-hosted ProjectSend install, your existing client accounts migrate with your data — the migration is free and typically completes in under 48 hours.

At the end of this step, every client you plan to work with this season has an account and a private space in your portal. Hold the invitations until November. If your firm also handles monthly bookkeeping, the guide to client portals for bookkeepers covers how to adapt this same setup for a recurring monthly cadence.

Step 2: Build a Folder Structure Around the Forms Your Clients Send

A flat list of files works for a sole practitioner with four clients. For a 10-client firm during tax season, one folder per document type saves time when a client uploads the wrong file — or when you need to locate a specific 1099 without opening every uploaded PDF.

Inside each client's space, create the subfolders before you send their invitation. A standard structure for individual returns:

• W-2 — wages and salary income. Employers must furnish W-2s by January 31; create this folder first.
• 1099 — dividends, interest, retirement distributions, brokerage income.
• 1098 — mortgage interest, for clients who itemize deductions.
• K-1 — pass-through income from partnerships, S-corps, or trusts.
• Other — bank statements, prior-year returns, anything that does not fit a specific category.

Ask clients to upload into the right subfolder. Most will not do this perfectly at first. A short follow-up message after their first upload usually fixes the habit. You can move files between folders from the admin view without losing the original upload metadata or timestamp. For a guide on what to tell clients before they log in, see how tax preparers collect client documents.

Step 3: Enable Two-Factor Authentication Before You Go Live

Your portal holds W-2s, 1099s, bank statements, and Social Security numbers for every client you serve. Enabling two-factor authentication for all staff logins before you invite anyone is the most impactful security step you can take before opening the portal.

Go to Settings, then Security, and turn on 2FA for your account. Each team member will be prompted to register an authenticator app the next time they sign in. On the Business plan, you can enforce 2FA by policy — no team member can bypass it. On Pro, it is available but each person opts in individually. For sole practitioners, it is still worth turning on for your own login.

The portal keeps a full audit trail of every login, upload, download, and file preview — with a timestamp and the user's name. On Pro, the history covers one year; on Business, you can export the full audit trail to CSV. Check the audit trail during your November test run: it should record every client upload within seconds.

Step 4: Test the Portal as Your Client Would

Before you open the portal to all clients in December, run a test with one or two real clients in November. The goal is to find any friction before 20 clients are uploading simultaneously in the third week of January.

1. Log in from a browser with no saved passwords and no active admin session.
2. Navigate to your assigned space and upload a test PDF.
3. Check that the notification email arrived in your inbox and not in spam.
4. Download the file and confirm the link opens.
5. Check the audit trail in your admin view — the upload should appear within seconds.
6. Ask the client to log in on their own device, without help, and note any step that confused them.

Pay close attention to the notification emails: does the sender name look like your firm, or like a generic system address? Whether clients recognize the email determines whether they know their documents have arrived — or that they need to upload.

A Note for Sole Practitioners

If you have fewer than five clients and want to test the workflow before committing to a plan, the Free option is a real starting point — no credit card required, no expiration as long as you sign in once a month. The limits are strict: 2 GB of storage, files expire after 30 days, no portal of your own, no client accounts, and no branding. For a tax workflow with even a handful of clients, you will quickly hit those limits.

Pro starts at $19 a month and includes 25 active client accounts, 100 GB of storage, and your own portal. You can start on the Free plan and see how the plans compare before upgrading. Migration from Free to Pro is handled by the support team and is not automatic.