CHANGE THAT IS IMPORTANT TO ALL OF OUR CLIENTS!

IMPORTANT CHANGE!!

How the Coronavirus will temporarily affect the way we work with our clients.

Like most businesses all across America, we at Heritage are taking great precautions to protect both our clients and our staff.  Here are some of the things we have already been doing as well as a very important change that we feel we must implement starting Thursday, March 19^th.

Things we have already been doing:

1. As difficult as it has been to do, we have already stopped shaking hands with each other and with our clients.
2. We have been sanitizing door knobs, faucets, and other surfaces that multiple people may touch.
3. We have been washing our hands between every client.
4. We have been providing brand new pens for you to use when signing the paperwork. These pens have not been used and/or reused by previous clients and the pens are given to you to take home with you.

A very important change that we feel we must implement starting Thursday, March 19th:

In order to implement the “social distancing” recommended by the federal government, we are instituting a NEW policy that will require that you drop off your materials for us to work with rather than come into our office and risk exposure to yourself, other clients and our staff.  We regularly have more than 10 people in our office at the same time.  This new policy will protect both our clients and our staff.  We appreciate your understanding in this and look forward to the time when things will get back to normal.

Here’s how this new change will work:

1. First, let me tell you that we have been preparing returns for approximately 20% of our clients this way for many years so this is not something that is new to us.
2. Note that, due to this arrangement, an appointment will not be necessary. Just drop off your paperwork whenever it is convenient for you.
3. Before leaving your home, please place your paperwork in an envelope or bag that can be secured so that the documents will not fall out.
4. When you arrive at our office, please just drop your envelope or bag of paperwork through the large mail slot in our front door.
5. As an alternative, if you need for us to do so, you can also call us on your cell phone to let us know you are there. If you don’t have a cell phone, you could just blow your horn.  Please be patient with us and we’ll come out to collect your paperwork as quickly as possible.
6. We will work with your return as soon as possible, using a first come, first served basis. Although we will try to get your work completed more quickly, please allow at least five (5) business days for us to complete your work.
7. When we have gone as far as we can with your return, we will call you or email you with questions and/or results.
8. Once your return is completed, we will ask you to come by to pick up your returns. We will bring your completed returns out to you with a clipboard for you to sign the required forms.  We will provide you with a brand new pen that no one else has used before. You may keep the pen.

For those of you who are computer savvy, an even better alternative is to exchange documents using our secure portal.  If you wish to use our secure portal, there are instructions at the end of this letter.

Of course, you can also always use the good old U. S. Mail if you prefer.

As a result of this change, we will waive the $18 fee increase that we described in our letter we sent in January. That was scheduled to take place on April 1^st, but will be waived for this year only.

We will greatly miss the opportunity to visit with you as we have done in the past and look forward to doing that once this historic virus situation has passed.  In the meanwhile, we hope you will understand why we feel the need to do this and will work with us as we implement this new policy.

THANKS! Len Boush, Michelle Dail, Frank Gerbus

HOW TO USE THE SECURE PORTAL – IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS:

1. You will receive a separate e-mail from [email protected] that allows you to create your own password to access your files from our secure portal.
2. Please note and remember the username and password.
3. Both the username and the password ARE case sensitive.
4. You only have 48 hours to create the password before that e-mail expires. If that happens, please give us a call and we will resend the e-mail.
5. PLEASE closely follow all of the instructions on that e-mail.
6. One very important thing to remember: You will create your own password, as mentioned in step #1 above, to access the secure portal.  You will use a different password that WE create to open any password protected documents.  The password WE create for opening documents will almost always be the first four (4) letters of first taxpayer’s last name followed by the last five (5) digits of the social security number of the taxpayer whose name appeared first on the tax return. For example, if the names on the return were George & Martha Washington and George’s Social security number was 123-45-6789, then your password would be wash56789. The password is all lower case with NO spaces.
7. Don’t hesitate to call us for assistance!

TO ACCESS YOUR FILES FROM OUR SECURE PORTAL,

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS

1. REMEMBER! The password you used to enter the portal is known only to you. If you have forgotten that password, please call us to ask us to send you instructions to reset your password.
2. To access the portal, go to HeritageTax.com/
3. Click on the box in the upper right hand corner that says “Secure Log-In”.
4. Enter your username and the password you created and click the Sign In button.
5. When the home page displays, notice the My Folder menu to the left.
6. Click on “Documents from Preparer”.
7. In the right column, your documents should appear. Click the Download link for a document.
8. Select to open or save the file. IMPORTANT! A password may have been assigned to one or more of your files that is DIFFERENT from your log-in password. In most cases, this password will be the first four (4) letters of first taxpayer’s last name followed by the last Five (5) digits of the social security number of the taxpayer whose name appeared first on the tax return. For example, if the name was George & Martha Washington and George’s Social security number was 123-45-6789, then your password would be wash56789. The password is all lower case with NO spaces.
9. You may need Adobe Reader to open the file. The program is already on most computers.  If you do not have this program, you can download it for free at http://get.adobe.com/reader/
10. If you select Save, follow the normal procedure you use when saving a file to your computer.

To submit a document to your preparer:

1. Follow instructions #1 – #5 above.
2. Click the Documents to Preparer link under the My Folder section.
3. In the right column, click the Upload
4. Click the Browse Files button to search for the file you would like to upload.
5. The file should display under the button. Click the Upload
6. The file will display in the right column. You have the opportunity at this time to rename or delete the file if necessary.
7. Your preparer will be automatically notified that a file is ready for downloading from you.
8. If you have any questions, please contact your tax preparer.