Nick Frank Tax Prodigy
Nick Frank has spent the past 20 years pursuing the most technically accurate, yet easiest ways to comply with the overload of income tax laws and accounting rules. Ask him and you'll find his mantra to be something that he has channeled into his company's mind set – "There has to be a better way."
The Tax Prodigy team consists of a diverse set of tax and technology professionals with years of experience in making things happen. The SaaS company, led by Nick, is dedicated to providing today's accounting professionals with the solutions that will allow you to spend your precious time thinking and working with tax issues instead of fighting with archaic (yet expensive) software or debugging kludge spreadsheets.
With his extensive expertise in many tax disciplines, most notably ASC 740, Frank continues to help find that better way. For the last five years, he has taught ASC 740 courses at the University of Minnesota, where he is an alumnus.
Insightful Accountant sat down with Nick to get his thoughts on today's accounting landscape and how Tax Prodigy is helping change the game for today's ProAdvisors.
Give us a snapshot of Tax Prodigy?
The technical answer is that Tax Prodigy is a software services company focused on the challenges of corporate income tax. Our goal is to provide the best technology tools to manage risk and improve outcomes for income tax professionals.
What that means is that we want to help corporate tax professionals improve their lives through better processes. We want to make a meaningful difference for them. We truly hone in on the user experience, not just getting the calculations right. Our solutions are accurate, comprehensive and easy to implement, learn and use.
Give us a rundown of your new Cloud-Based Tax Provisioning Solution.
Tax Prodigy Provision is a web-based solution for calculating the income tax provision to satisfy the requirements of ASC 740 for GAAP financial statements. It is built to be technically accurate and comprehensive.
It's also really important to us that the solution is easy enough to use that a tax professional can just get things done even though they may only be focused on tax provisions four times a year, Since it is web-based, you can access it from anywhere. And it's really fast.
When you make changes, it recalculates instantly. There is no "calculate now" button We know that those tax professionals are looking for a single integrated solution that includes calculations for current payables, deferreds, uncertain tax benefits, and footnotes like the rate reconciliations.
So, we keep it simple. There aren't separate modules for uncertain tax benefits or payable, and you get a single license for as many users as necessary. When you use tax prodigy provision, you get everything you need.
Why is it such a valuable tool for today's accounting professionals?
When we talk to tax professionals, we hear a constant refrain that the amount scrutiny of the provision process and risk associated with getting something wrong has just increased exponentially in recent years. Tax Prodigy Provision really helps address these issues in the way tax professionals actually think.
What has been the early feedback from the marketplace?
Our initial focus has been to work with companies that are currently calculating their income tax provisions in spreadsheets. We are finding that a lot of these departments are really interested in improving their processes and controls but have been on the sidelines due to the high cost and long implementation times of existing solutions.
Tax Prodigy really changes that. We have been energized by how positive the response has been. Comments we hear a lot are that it "just makes sense" or "that's how I'd do it". It's been very rewarding to be able to help people really improve their lives.
We were just recently talking to one tax director who said how he really dreads January since that's when he has to do the tax provision. And as a long time tax professional myself, I can truly relate.
We think Tax Prodigy Provision can really improve the year-end process for a lot of tax professionals. We are currently ramping up our sales team with seasoned veterans from the tax technology space and are excited to help tax departments significantly improve their provision processes and reduce risk and ultimately make their lives better.
What do you expect to see from the accounting space as we head further into 2017?
We expect to see a continuation of past trends as technology is going to play a bigger role in the tax department each year. Tax departments have historically lagged behind other finance functions in terms of technology adoption. But we’re also seeing a broad-based trend of increased investment in technology driven by efficiency and control concerns.
What type of partnerships are you developing?
We have been meeting with national and regional firms to identify ways we can work together. There is general agreement that there is an underserved market with respect to tax provision software in the mid-sized company range and these companies have real needs for powerful, easy to use solutions that improve their processes.
What does your to-do list look like this year?
We are looking forward to helping as many companies and tax professionals as we can. We really want to make a difference for them. We are building out some additional features that we are very excited about particularly around interim reporting.
We recently brought on Cody Strub as our VP of sales. Cody who brings decades of tax technology sales experience to the table and due to the positive response we've been getting we are expanding our sales team so we can help as many companies as possible.
What’s the next "best thing" for you?
We’re always exploring where the pain points exist in the corporate income tax space and looking at ways to make tax professionals lives better.
What should every accounting professional know about Tax Prodigy?
We are excited to make a difference in how tax professionals do their income tax provision work and really enjoy developing relationships with them that enhance their lives and careers.