Tax-season prep, run year-round on your live books

The problem

Every March looks the same. Vendor TINs are missing for half the contractors who got paid last year. The 1099 chase email goes out to people who've changed agencies, changed inboxes, or simply stopped responding. The bookkeeping isn't closed because three months of credit card transactions are still uncategorized. The CPA sends a polite email asking for documents that should already be tagged to the right account, and the owner spends a Saturday rebuilding a register from bank exports.

The cost is not the CPA's hourly rate. The cost is the owner's weekend, the bookkeeper's January, and the slow drift of decisions made without numbers. By the time the return is filed, the tax-planning window has already closed for the year that just ended. Quarterly estimates were guesses. Vendor classification was a question nobody answered until it was a 1099 question.

There is a better shape for this. Books closed monthly. Vendor records complete and encrypted before the first payment goes out. A handoff bundle the CPA can open and work from on day one. And a consultant who can answer "what does this mean for my taxes?" without billing four hours to reconstruct context they should already have.

How it works

Year-round 1099 readiness

The platform tracks eligible 1099-NEC vendors continuously, not in late January. Every vendor flagged as 1099-eligible is monitored for completeness — TIN on file, address current, payment threshold tracked across the tax year. A live missing-TIN list shows you exactly who needs follow-up before reporting season opens, with totals so you know which gaps actually matter. Vendor records are encrypted at rest, and printable Copy B forms generate from the same data when it's time to file.

W-9 capture flow

Chasing W-9s by email and PDF attachment is how TINs get lost. ATCS sends the vendor a tokenized link to a self-submit page where they enter their legal name, TIN, address, and entity type directly. The token is single-use and time-bound, so credentials never live in inboxes. Each request shows a clear state — sent, completed, expired — and expired requests can be reissued without re-keying anything. When a vendor finishes the form, their record updates in place and disappears from the missing-TIN list.

CPA handoff bundle

When your CPA asks for "everything," the handoff bundle is a single download per tax year or period. It contains the P&L, the full transaction register, the 1099 vendor list with totals, and a document index pointing at the receipts and statements already attached to transactions. Your CPA opens one package and starts working. You stop fielding follow-up emails for documents you already have.

Tiered consulting cadence

Consulting is priced separately on the calculator and runs at the cadence that fits the business — as-needed, monthly, quarterly, or weekly. The advisor is CPA-aware and has live access to your books, so a session is not a status update. It is a review of what actually happened this period, what to flag for your CPA, and what to prepare before the next quarterly estimate. Owners who want a monthly "what does this mean for my taxes?" get exactly that, without paying CPA hourly rates to cover basics.

What you get

• File-ready 1099 list every January, not every January 28
• Encrypted vendor TIN and address records with full audit trail
• Tokenized W-9 capture links your vendors can self-submit from any device
• Live missing-TIN dashboard with payment totals per vendor
• Printable 1099-NEC Copy B forms generated from your own platform data
• A single CPA handoff bundle per period: P&L, register, 1099 list, document index
• Year-to-date P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and cash position reports kept current
• Monthly tax-season-prep review with rolling action items
• Quarterly preparation conversations ahead of estimated payment windows
• A consultant who can read your live books before the call, not during it
• Honest scope: we prepare and surface, your CPA files and determines
• Cadence and pricing you choose on the calculator, with the option to change

FAQ

Are you my CPA?

No. ATCS is a bookkeeping and advisory platform with CPA-aware consulting on top. We prepare your books, surface what matters, and assemble the handoff your CPA needs to file. For the return itself, the position taken on it, and any final tax determination, your CPA is the right professional.

How do you handle 1099-NEC reporting?

Eligible vendors are tracked through the year, not at deadline. The platform maintains encrypted vendor records, flags missing TINs with payment totals, and generates printable Copy B forms from the same data. The W-9 capture flow lets vendors self-submit so the gap closes well before January. See 1099 vendor compliance for the full workflow.

Can the consultant give tax advice?

The consultant provides tax guidance and tax-season prep — reviewing what happened, flagging items to discuss with your CPA, and helping you organize before quarterly windows. They do not give legal or final tax determinations. For those, we recommend your CPA, and the platform's AI assistant will tell you the same thing whenever it is asked.

What if my vendor never returns the W-9?

The vendor's record stays on the missing-TIN list with their payment total visible, so you can decide how to proceed. Tokenized requests can be reissued, and the platform keeps a record of every attempt. If the vendor remains unresponsive through filing season, your CPA can advise on backup withholding and reporting options.

How does this work with my existing CPA?

It works the way your CPA wishes every client worked. The handoff bundle gives them a clean package per period instead of a scavenger hunt. Many clients keep their CPA exactly where they are and use ATCS to remove the friction in between — closed books, complete vendor records, and a consultant who handles the questions that don't need a CPA's hours.

What AI handles so your CPA can do real CPA work

CPAs spend years earning a license, accumulating continuing education credits, and building the judgment required to take defensible positions on a return. They are also, by and large, not the people who should be spending mid-March chasing a contractor for a missing TIN or rebuilding October's general ledger from a shoebox of receipts. ATCS exists to remove the prep work that fills the first three weeks of every tax season so the CPA's hourly rate goes toward judgment, not data entry. This is a partnership model, not a replacement model. The platform prepares and surfaces; your CPA files, signs, and determines.

AI handles the prep so the CPA doesn't have to

• Track 1099 vendor eligibility continuously across the tax year. CPAs typically discover the gaps in late January when there is no time left to fix them; ATCS surfaces missing TINs every month so the issue is closed by November.
• Send tokenized W-9 self-submit links so vendors fill in their own TIN through an encrypted form. The CPA never has to email a PDF, chase a fax, or transcribe a handwritten response.
• Assemble the year-end handoff bundle in one click on December 31. The bundle includes the P&L, the register, the document index, and the 1099-eligible vendor list — the same package a CPA otherwise spends days assembling manually in February.
• Attach receipts and invoices to transactions at the moment of posting. The CPA opens a register row and the supporting document is already there, instead of being requested in an email thread and located in March.
• Maintain a tamper-evident audit log and closed-period locks. If an IRS examiner asks what happened on a given date, the answer is a lookup, not a reconstruction.
• Reconcile bank and credit card activity continuously, so the books the CPA receives in January are the books that were already correct in October.
• Refuse tax determinations inside the AI assistant itself. When a user asks the assistant whether something is deductible, it declines and recommends CPA review — by design.
• Surface anomalies (duplicate vendors, missing W-9s, uncategorized transactions) as a working list the CPA can triage in minutes.

What only a licensed CPA can and should do

• Take a position on the return and sign it. That signature carries legal weight that no software can or should provide.
• Determine deductibility for a novel transaction the AI has never categorized and has no basis to opine on.
• Represent the client in front of an IRS examiner, respond to notices, and negotiate adjustments.
• Advise on entity structure changes — LLC to S-corp election, partnership conversions, multi-state nexus questions.
• Issue a tax opinion or written advice the client can rely on for a transaction.
• Make the final determination on backup withholding obligations and reasonable-cause defenses.
• Apply professional judgment to gray areas where the law is unsettled and the facts matter more than the form.

CPAs who use ATCS routinely finish prep work that used to take three weeks in three days, and they spend the recovered time on the planning, structuring, and representation work clients actually pay them for. The bookkeeping side of tax season stops being the bottleneck. The platform makes the CPA more valuable to the client, not less.

Where to next

If tax season has been a fire drill for more than one year running, the fix is not another spreadsheet — it is a closed set of books, a complete vendor file, and a cadence that fits the business. Open the pricing calculator to set a consulting cadence and see the all-in monthly price, or review the bookkeeping page to see the platform the consulting runs on.