Will a Ledgerhands tax preparer sign or file our clients' returns?
No — and this is the boundary we are most careful about. Your dedicated professional prepares returns and assembles the supporting workpapers; your firm reviews the work, signs as the paid preparer and files. Ledgerhands professionals are not preparers of record, do not hold U.S. practitioner credentials, and do not represent taxpayers before the IRS. Every return that leaves your firm leaves under your firm's review and your firm's signature. If a provider offers you anything looser than that, we would treat it as a reason to ask harder questions.
Which tax software can they work in?
They work in your instance of whatever you already run — UltraTax CS, CCH Axcess, Drake, Lacerte or ProSystem fx are the ones we see most often — under user accounts you provision at the permission level you choose. Software proficiency is assessed during screening, and we train to your specific preparation checklists and workpaper conventions before the first return they touch. Tell us your stack on the discovery call and we will screen against it.
What does this seat do outside of busy season?
The same thing the rest of your team does: extensions, cleanup, bookkeeping and close support, prior-year work, planning preparation, and getting next season's clients organized before they become next season's fire drill. This is a full-time permanent seat, not a January-to-April rental, which is why the person who learns your client files this year is still holding that knowledge next year. If your need genuinely is seasonal-only, say so on the discovery call — we would rather scope it honestly than sell you twelve months of something you want for four.
How do you protect client tax data, which is about as sensitive as it gets?
The same controls we apply to every seat, which are the strongest we operate: NDAs signed before any access, MFA on every account, company-issued managed workstations with no local data storage, least-privilege role-based access, an enterprise password vault, and encryption in transit and at rest. Your professional works in your systems rather than ours, so client data stays in your environment. The full control set is on our security page, and if you have a security questionnaire we will complete it before your discovery call.
When should we start if we want someone in place for busy season?
Autumn, for a January start. Placement typically runs 2–4 weeks from discovery call to first day — a shortlist in about two weeks, then your interviews, then training and security onboarding — and a preparer is meaningfully faster once they have had time on your files and your software before the volume arrives. Firms that call us in January get a good hire; firms that call us in October get a good hire who is already up to speed.