How it works
The process runs inside your firm's own Microsoft 365 Copilot. Client documents never leave your tenant. We provide the prompts, the workbooks, the checks, and the training. You provide the judgment.
The method
- Read. One chat takes last year's return and this year's source documents and builds an Excel worksheet. One row per amount with the document and page, totals by formula, and an Expected tab built from last year's return. It never sees this year's return.
- Compare. A second chat takes that worksheet and the prepared return and lists every difference in both directions, with the worksheet row and the return page. Differences that need attention first. Facts only. It does not say which side is right.
- Decide. A preparer or reviewer works the list. A difference is a question, not an error. The findings that matter become review notes. The rest get cleared with a line each.
The full version adds a prebuilt workbook with control checks that have to come to zero, written reader instructions that close the ways the models fail, a list of checks built from hundreds of real returns, and a prior year step for carryovers and what changed. The one page sheet is the basic version. The library and the install are the full one.
Three ways to get it
The library. Launching December.
Every prompt and workbook we use, the process documents behind them, and updates through the season as the models and the forms change. Accessible monthly price. The first fifty firms get a founding rate that does not go up. Run it yourself, in your own Copilot, at your own pace.
Install and workshop.
We come to you. A working session with your preparers and reviewers to set the library up for your practice. Your client mix, your states, your software exports, your dollar cutoffs, your letterhead on the planning letters, and the misses from your own last season written into the checks. Then your people run it. Scoped, flat fee.
Run it for you.
For firms that want the findings and not the process, we run the review in our own Microsoft 365 tenant on a per return or per season basis. This is a conversation, not a web form. We would walk through where the documents go, who sees them, how long they are kept, and our position under IRC section 7216 before anything is sent, and put it in writing.
The questions to ask any AI vendor, including us
- Does client data leave the firm's environment, and where does it go?
- Is it used to train external models?
- Who at the vendor can see it?
- How long is it kept, and who deletes it?
- Does the arrangement meet the firm's confidentiality obligations and its engagement letters?
For the library and the install, the answers are simple. The data never leaves your tenant and we never see it. For the hand run option, we answer all five on the first call, in writing if you want it.
Where AI helps, and where it does not
Reliable for
- Reading documents and extracting figures
- Matching documents to a return
- Comparing this year to last year
- Listing differences with page references
- Drafting a plain language letter for review
Stays with the practitioner
- Whether a difference is an error
- Whether a position is defensible
- Close calls on the facts
- Final review and signature
- Anything a regulator might question
Start with the sheet
It is free, it is one page, and it runs today. If it is useful, the library is the next step and a conversation is the one after that.
james@wilhelmautomation.com | 203-701-9499