Tax Preparer Client Tracking Template
Every obligation priced on its owner count, every open item ranked by what it puts at risk, and the week your season runs out of hours.
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Client by Filing Obligation
[Practice] — filing season [20__]
The owner count and the monthly exposure are required fields. A row without them is a date, and a date is not a work list.
| Client | Form | Owners counted | Fee | Original due | Extended due | Per month late | K-1 exposure | First month | vs fee | Open items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Partnership] | 1065 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| [Partnership] | 1065 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| [S corporation] | 1120-S | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| [C corporation] | 1120 | n/a | — | — | — | balance driven | n/a | — | n/a | — |
| Pass-through subtotal | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Three things a deadline list will not tell you
| Every entity return shares one date | So sorting by date carries no information at all |
| The penalty runs on owners | Not on the fee, and part of a month counts as a whole month |
| The count reaches back a year | Anyone who was an owner at any point, not the roster at year end |
Once the book is priced, the chase list and the capacity plan both sort on the same number.
Every practice knows the dates. What nobody has on a wall in February is the number that decides which client to work on first, and it is not the fee. A late partnership return costs 255 dollars a month for each person who was a partner during any part of the tax year, so a thirty-four partner fund runs 8,670 dollars a month against a fee of 12,500. Part of a month counts as a whole one.
That figure is the sort key, and joining it to the open items changes the order of the day. On the week of 23 February, Alderbrook CPA Group had twelve items open across five clients. Those five carried 76 of the book's 87 counted owners, so 19,380 dollars a month, 87 percent of the total exposure, sat behind a document nobody had sent. The three clients with nothing outstanding carried 1,785 dollars between them and were being prepared first.
Same week, the hours went over for the first time: 262 required against 220 available. Left alone that 42 hour overrun compounds to 380 by the Monday of deadline week. An extension buys none of it back on the payment side, because Form 7004 does not extend the time to pay. Run it alongside the monthly close pack and hand any notice that arrives to the tax notice responder. The register here records what was paid with each extension, not only that one was filed.
What's in the pack
Client by Filing Obligation sheet
Every return in the book with its owner count, its jurisdictions, both due dates, the monthly late-file figure, the Schedule K-1 exposure and the first month as a percentage of the fee.
Missing Information sheet
Each open item joined to the exposure sitting behind it, sorted on that figure, with days open, chases sent, the last thing the client said and who can genuinely produce the document.
Chase Log sheet
Every contact with its step, channel, recipient and response, plus the next action and its date. This is what makes a fourth message credible and an extension defensible.
Extension Register sheet
The estimate, what was actually paid against it, the shortfall and what that shortfall accrues per month, because a corporation that does not pay when due is penalised monthly.
Preparer Capacity by Week sheet
Hours budgeted, hours carried in from the week before, capacity and the overrun, with blocked returns and blocked exposure carried across from the tracker.
What a Late Filing Costs
The federal figures with the instruction behind each one, why part of a month is a whole month, and why the multiplier reaches back over everyone who was an owner at any point in the year.
Client Chase Sequence
Four steps that each change something: the request, the reminder, the named consequence with the real number in it, then escalation. Plus how to tell when the client was never the right recipient.
Extension Policy
The cut-off date seventeen days out, what has to be true before an extension is filed, the reopen date keyed to when the blocking item genuinely arrives, and the due date table by form.
Engagement Status Note
One page a week to the partners: where the season stands, what it becomes if nothing changes, what is blocking it, and the named decisions being asked for. No status colours.
Space rule
Rank by exposure, not by date. It governs every prompt here, and it is why no obligation enters the book without an owner count and a price against it.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Open the pack in River and let the agent build it from your own book, or download the blank Word and CSV files instantly with no account.
- 2
Send the roster and last season
A practice management export, a billing report, prior-year Schedule K-1 sets or a hand-kept spreadsheet. The K-1 sets are what give you a defensible owner count.
- 3
Price the book, then rank it
Owner count on every pass-through row, the monthly figure against it, then the open items joined to that figure so the chase list sorts by dollars rather than days.
- 4
Load the weeks and set the cut-off
Real hours placed in the week they land, unfinished hours rolled forward. Find the first week over capacity, and put the extension decision seventeen days out.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes, all of it. Word documents and CSV sheets, no signup, no card. Edit with AI is a separate optional route for anyone who would rather hand over a client roster than retype one. Everything else River publishes sits in the template library.
Why price returns by owner count rather than by fee?
Because that is how the penalty is written. The late-file figure is a monthly amount multiplied by everyone who was a partner or shareholder during any part of the tax year, capped at twelve months, and the practice usually absorbs it. Fee size predicts nothing about it.
Does an extension solve the problem?
It solves the filing problem and none of the payment problem. The balance stays due on the original date and interest runs from there whatever happens afterwards. In the worked season two extensions were funded short and accrued 1,009.50 by their extended due dates.
What counts as an owner for the multiplier?
Anyone who held the interest during any part of the tax year, not the roster standing on 31 December. A fund that admitted two partners in the third quarter counts thirty-four rather than thirty-two, and each month of lateness costs 510 dollars more than the year-end list suggests.
How is this different from a deadline list?
A deadline list gives every entity return in the book the same date, so the ordering carries no information. This one orders by what is at risk and by what is blocking it. Notices that do arrive go to the tax notice responder, and state registrations that need checking go to the sales tax nexus review.
What format are the downloaded files?
Four .docx documents covering the penalty arithmetic, the chase sequence, the extension policy and the weekly status note, plus five .csv sheets, zipped into one file. They open natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
It creates a free River account with this pack installed privately, ready to read your roster, price every obligation, sort the open items and load the weeks. Practices running their own books alongside client work pair it with the monthly close pack.
Put a number on the season before it starts
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open this exact pack in River and let the agent price your own book.
Edit with AI