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Introducing Tax Planning Workflows in Instead, a way to move from client facts to a reviewable plan. A planning workflow can use client goals, entity facts, financial context, tax research, projections, implementation steps, and firm templates to produce a client-ready deliverable for review. That matters because tax planning usually breaks between advice, calculations, documentation, and follow-through. Instead helps the firm keep the work connected. From facts to research, strategy to savings estimate, plan to implementation, and professional review before anything goes to the client. See how tax planning workflows work in Instead at the link in the comments.

AI-native tax work does not mean removing professionals from client decision. In Instead, agents can help prepare structured tax work: organize documents, assemble workpapers, draft planning support, surface open points, and prepare review packages. Then the human does the work that should stay human: inspect the file, correct the output, apply judgment, advise the client, and sign off. That is why the new operating model is not "AI replaces the tax team." It is agent-produced work submitted to professionals for review. See the workflow in Instead at the link in the comments

Introducing Workpapers in Instead: agents that help turn source documents into reviewable tax work. A tax professional can give Instead the client file, source documents, prior-year context, firm instructions, and review expectations. The agent can organize support, draft the workpaper, flag open items, and prepare the output for human review. That is the shift: workpapers stop being scattered assembly across folders, spreadsheets, and comments. They become structured tax work a professional can inspect, correct, and approve. See how workpaper workflows work in Instead. instead.com/linkedin

Andrew Argue, CPA, CEO and Founder of Instead, was featured on Accounting Voices as part of Rob Brown's new series, AI Reality Inside Firms. The conversation brings together five companies working at the center of AI adoption in accounting firms, with a focus on what is actually changing inside firm strategy, operations, and leadership. The most important question is no longer whether AI will affect accounting firms. It is where AI is already changing firm direction, what leaders are still getting wrong, and which decisions will separate leading firms from the rest over the next two years. We were glad to join this discussion because this is the work firms need now: moving past narrative and into practical execution. Thank you to Rob Brown and Accounting Voices for creating space for a more grounded conversation on how AI is landing inside firms. Tune in to the conversation at the link in the comments.

Introducing Firm Agent Orchestration in Instead: one agent coordinating tax work across many clients. A firm should be able to describe the job once, then let the system coordinate the work across the right client files. For example, a firm could ask an agent to pull documents from Microsoft OneDrive for 37 clients, start return-prep workflows, update the workpapers, and create an open-points list showing what is still missing. The agent can then coordinate sub-agents across those client files so the work moves in parallel instead of waiting for a team to process each file one by one. That matters because tax work rarely fails because one step is hard. It fails because dozens of small steps are spread across documents, clients, reviewers, folders, portals, spreadsheets, emails, and missing information. Firm Agent Orchestration is built for that operating reality. The product goal is not just to answer a tax question. It is to help a firm move a body of tax work forward across clients, surface exceptions, and hand reviewers a clearer set of outputs to inspect. This tax season, we already saw one AI orchestrator prepare 2,296 workpapers and complete 999 AI Tax Reviews. Next tax season, you will see one tax orchestrator inside a firm be able to prepare 5,000+ returns. Humans still review, edit, advise, and sign off. The shift is scale: work that could take a team days or weeks can start moving in minutes or hours. instead.com/linkedin

What does a firm do when tax compliance moves toward zero-touch tax returns? That is the real question behind AI tax prep. Inside Instead, the return workflow is being built around the full path of tax compliance: create the client folder, rename and organize files, extract the data, populate the workpaper, populate the return, review the return, resolve diagnostics, update the workpaper, and get the file ready for final review. Today, humans still review, edit, resolve exceptions, and sign off. That part matters. But as agents get more accurate every month and every quarter, the economic value of tax prep changes. The work that used to define staff capacity starts to look more like a bank feed: something the system handles, reconciles, and prepares for human review. Then the firm has to answer a bigger question. If the return can increasingly be prepared by agents, what should the firm sell? More manual prep? Or review, tax research, planning, advisory, strategy, and better client outcomes? The role of the firm does not disappear. It moves up the value chain. Preparers become reviewers. Reviewers become orchestrators. Partners get more time to design advice, manage risk, and help clients make better tax decisions. Zero-touch tax returns are not just a product feature. They are a forcing function for what the modern tax firm becomes next. This isn't something a legacy tax software with bolted-on AI products can solve. It requires a fundamental shift. See it in action at instead.com/linkedin

Introducing Workflows in Instead: a way to give tax agents an entire job, not just a question. With Workflows, a tax professional can write a memo describing the tax work they want done, attach the relevant files, add firm templates or SOPs, and have an agent carry the task from instruction to reviewable output. Workflows can help with long-horizon tax work, like: • Building a multi-part tax plan • Preparing a 1040 workpaper • Reviewing a workpaper • Reviewing a tax return • Preparing a tax return • Running a firm-specific process using your own templates The difference is simple: chat answers a question. Workflows execute a process. They can use client documents, firm instructions, tax research, templates, and tools to move through multi-step work that normally takes hours or days of manual assembly. This past tax season, one tax staff member used workflows to prepare 2,000+ workpapers and review 1,000+ returns. That is the product shift we care about: tax teams moving from manual preparation to agent-orchestrated tax work, with humans still reviewing, editing, and signing off. Check out Workflows at Instead: instead.com/linkedin.

Congratulations to the Instead team, our partners, and customers! Just this week we became the first company in decades to be able to offer electronic and print filing across IRS, states, and cities. We had to pass over 4,000 tests validating the accuracy of our tax calculations across 1040, 1041, 1120, 1120S, and 1065. Over the course of the next few weeks and months, we will release each of these jurisdictions for filing tax year 2025 extended returns and we will have full coverage for any tax & accounting firm to migrate from CCH, GoSystem, UltraTax, Lacerte, ProConnect, Drake and more for tax year 2026. Do not sign your renewal until you see just how much the tax experience has changed. While this is an incredible milestone, perhaps what I'm even more excited about is our AI agent layer that sits on top of these approvals which can complete the entire workflow for filing returns: When you upload or integrate tax docs, Instead: •Creates folders •Identifies and renames files •Extracts all key tax information •Creates and populates tax workpapers •Populates tax returns inputs •Resolves diagnostics checks •Reviews the tax returns •Performs a 3-way check across returns, workpapers, source docs Many companies out there are trying to do parts of this process, but our government approvals allow us to control the entirety of these tasks end to end. Effectively the entire core collection of tasks of a tax preparer have become automated. When you buy these legacy software products, you buy a product and still have to do all the work. With Instead, entire tax workflows and returns are done for you in minutes completely replacing the need for traditional tax staff roles and outsourcing/offshoring operations. This is a profound change in our industry and will allow small groups of people to prepare tens and even hundreds of thousands of tax returns. And what we're even more excited about is helping tax teams provide even more value to clients. Instead also helps perform tax research, estimated tax payments, tax plans & memos which allows professionals to move from inputting data for compliance to providing a new level of professional tax planning & advisory experiences for every client. Thank you to everyone that has supported and and even our doubters/haters that motivated us along the way! And for all our partners (current and prospective), we'll release an open API/MCP very soon so you can finally create incredible experiences for your customers that legacy providers ban, block (often sending legal letters) and charge hundreds of thousands of dollars if they even let you start. Once you see what Instead can do, you'll never be able to prepare a tax return manually again!

We'll be at BDO Evolve showing what agentic tax work looks like in practice. Instead's newest release is built for the real return workflow, across both individual and business returns: source documents, workpapers, return inputs, diagnostics, reconciliation, review, and filing readiness. For firms in the BDO Alliance, the question is not whether AI chat can answer tax questions. It is whether AI can help move the actual work forward across the returns, entities, reviewers, and deadlines your team already manages. That is what we'll be showing live. Inside Instead, agents can help organize source documents, prepare workpapers, support return inputs, surface open items, run diagnostics, and prepare work for human review. Professionals still review, edit, advise, and sign off. The shift is that more of the structured production work can happen before review starts. This season, Instead's tax workflows supported: • 2,296 AI Workpapers • 999 AI Tax Reviews • One tax staff prepared 143 returns in one day Those workflows are not limited to a single return type. The same model extends across individual returns, business returns, estimates, plans, memos, reviews, strategy implementation, and soon filing. If you're at BDO Evolve, come see how the work actually moves.