Electronic signatures

DocuSign tends to be very expensive.  Many users in the TaxCycle forum who processed 800 or more returns in 2020 received a letter from DocuSign with an additional invoice that they went above the quota.  The state that DocuSign costs approx. $8.00 per signature, and that for this tax season, DocuSign might suspend a users privileges if it exceeds the number of signing packages they signed up for.  TaxCycle is creating their own document signing tool called TaxFolder, charging $500 for unlimited packages, but will also continue to support DocuSign.  I agree, that Profile is behind in not supporting integration with an e-signature solution.

Last year, most of my clients signed in person, so I didn't worry about using e-signatures.  Some clients also printed the T183, signed them, re-scanned them, and sent them back to me. I also had a few clients that used the free signing tool embedded in Adobe Acrobat to sign their documents.

For this tax season, I have purchased a license for Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, which comes with Adobe Sign.  It works reasonably well, however, it doesn't support creating field templates (only document templates - the more expensive Business and Enterprise additions allow for field templates).  This means that you can't create a template for the T183 (a form that changes for each client).  You have to manually insert the signature field (and perhaps the date field if you chose to leave it blank when you print the T183's) for each T183 you send for a signature (or Authorize Rep form). 

The other thing I've noticed is that although Adobe Sign sends an email to the client with a secure link to access the files on Adobe's secure network, once the document is signed, it sends a copy of the signed document to the client as an attachment, thus giving access to the file by a someone hacking into the client's email account. Again, only the more expensive Business & Enterprise versions allow the user to disable the attachments.  Plus, a hacker can also click on the Adobe email link and access the file from Adobe's secure site.  Thus, when setting up the signature fields in Adobe Sign, it is important to follow the menus and apply a password to the file, thus adding a degree of security to prevent unauthorized access.

I hope this is helpful.

Hi, thank you for using Intuit ProFile Community

FinancierCanada is correct. For 2020 T183 there are two options for the T183:

1) Answer e-signature No: ProFile populates the date, this is similar to the method in the past when clients sign in the office

2) Answer e-signature Yes: The taxpayer is required to sign and enter the date and time of signing on the signed T183. The preparer then enters the date and time from the signed copy T183 into ProFile.

Hope this helps