Built for solo CPAs, EAs, and practices under 25 staff
The CRM for the accounting practice that is you, two partners, and a seasonal preparer.
Big-firm practice management tools (Karbon, Canopy, TaxDome) are expensive overkill for a 3-partner CPA practice. Spreadsheets stop working the January you add a second associate. Strkr sits in the middle: Section 7216 consent tracking, PTIN management, Circular 230 compliance evidence, tax-season workflow, and client portal, on a flat per-seat line.
Dolores runs a 4-partner CPA practice outside Portland with 410 individual tax clients, 62 small-business clients, and 11 trust and estate engagements. Marcellus is a solo EA in Phoenix with 180 clients across 1040, 1065, and 1120-S returns. Both of them have the same evaluation story: Karbon and Canopy priced too high and brought features they do not need, TaxDome works but the UI feels like a bolted-together set of tools, and the big practice-management platforms are built for 50-plus-staff firms. The six items below are the recurring frictions on small-practice CRM evaluations.
Section 7216 consent
The IRS disclosure consent requirement for tax preparers.
IRC Section 7216 restricts how tax return preparers can use client information. Written consent is required for most uses outside the scope of return preparation (marketing to clients, cross-selling other services, sharing with third parties). The consent must be in specific IRS-prescribed form and retained with the return. Most small-practice CRMs do not surface this requirement, leaving the firm with a compliance gap most practitioners find only during an IRS enforcement action.
Circular 230 compliance evidence
The IRS practitioner ethics standard.
Circular 230 governs enrolled agents, CPAs, attorneys, and other representatives before the IRS. The due-diligence obligations (10.22), the written-advice standards (10.37), the record retention (10.33), and the solicitation rules (10.30) each require evidence a small practice must retain. Strkr's practice tier ships the Circular 230 evidence surface with the per-engagement due-diligence record, the written-advice retention, and the solicitation audit log.
PTIN tracking
The preparer tax identification number per preparer.
Every paid preparer needs a current PTIN, renewed annually by December 31 for the following year. The PTIN appears on every return the preparer signs. Practices with seasonal preparers or recently credentialed EAs track PTIN status and expiration manually in a spreadsheet. Strkr tracks each preparer's PTIN with the expiration date, the renewal reminder 60 days before expiry, and the return-signing audit that captures which PTIN signed which return.
The tax-season bottleneck
February to April 15 is 60 percent of annual revenue.
Most individual-tax practices book 55 to 65 percent of annual revenue between February 1 and April 15. The bottleneck is not the tax software; it is the document-collection cycle (missing W-2, missing 1099, mortgage interest statement, broker statements for Schedule D) and the preparer-to-reviewer handoff. Strkr's document-request engine tracks per-engagement document status with automated client reminders and a reviewer-queue surface that shows which returns are ready for review.
The engagement letter administrative burden
An EL per client per service per year.
Each service (1040, 1065, 1120-S, bookkeeping, advisory, audit) under AICPA SSTS and most state board rules requires a separate engagement letter per year. A 410-client individual-tax practice signs 410 ELs by late January. Most practices generate the ELs manually from a Word template, send through DocuSign, and file in a shared drive. Strkr's EL engine generates the letter from the service template, routes to the client for e-sign, and files on the client record automatically.
Horizontal CRM feature gap
HubSpot and Zoho model deals, not tax engagements.
Horizontal CRMs model a deal with a close date, which does not fit a recurring annual tax engagement. The engagement is a service with a start date, a service period, a review process, a signoff, and a renewal clock the following year. The firm using HubSpot or Zoho for a small accounting practice typically ends up with a custom-object workaround that drifts. Strkr's engagement model ships natively for the accounting practice.
What a small-practice CRM should ship
The accounting primitives, on a lean practice tool.
A 4-partner CPA practice does not need the depth of a 50-partner firm tool. It needs the accounting primitives shipped cleanly. The cards below are the capabilities Strkr's practice tier ships for solo and small practices under 25 staff.
Section 7216 consent engine
The consent surface with IRS-safe language.
Section 7216 consent generates with IRS-prescribed language per use case (marketing to clients, cross-sell to related services, third-party sharing with a identified recipient). The consent captures client signature and retains with the return record. The audit log surfaces consent status per client so the firm knows which clients can receive which outreach without triggering a 7216 violation. The $10,000 per-violation penalty under IRC 7216(a) stops being a sleep-at-night issue.
Engagement letter engine
Per-service EL generation with e-sign.
Templates for 1040, 1065, 1120-S, 1120, 1041, 990, bookkeeping, write-up, payroll support, and advisory engagement letters shipped with AICPA-aligned language. The firm customizes once and the per-client EL generates with the service details, the fee structure (fixed, hourly, hybrid), the term, and the signatures required. E-sign routes through the integrated e-sign vendor (Strkr integrates with DocuSign and PandaDoc as the two most common for accounting). Dolores signed 410 ELs in the first 10 days of January last year with the new engine against her prior 3-week process.
Document request engine
The tax-season document-collection surface.
Per-engagement document request lists (W-2, 1099 variants, mortgage interest, broker statements, HSA contributions, charitable receipts, business P&L) with per-client customization. Automated client reminders at 7-day cadence until all documents arrive. Client portal upload with OCR tagging so a photo of a W-2 attaches to the right engagement with the preparer-tagged form type. Reviewer queue surfaces returns with all documents received and ready for prep.
PTIN and credential tracking
Per-preparer PTIN expiration and credential status.
Each preparer record carries the current PTIN with expiration date, the credential status (CPA, EA, AFSP participant), and the state-license status where applicable. Renewal reminders 60 days before expiry. Return-signing audit captures which PTIN signed which return at submission. The seasonal preparer's PTIN status is visible before they are assigned returns in late January instead of discovered mid-March.
Circular 230 due-diligence record
The per-engagement evidence surface.
Circular 230 Section 10.22 requires due diligence on returns, written advice, and oral advice. The per-engagement due-diligence record captures the inquiries made, the client responses, and the preparer's reasonable reliance findings. The $1,000 to $20,000 per-return preparer penalty under IRC 6694 for understatement due to lack of due diligence stops being a defensible gap because the evidence is on the record.
Client portal
A portal the client actually opens.
The client portal is a single-page surface the client opens for the interaction (document upload, EL signature, invoice payment, return review). No account creation required for one-off interactions; a magic link covers it. For recurring clients the portal account retains document history, return copies, and the per-year engagement record. A photo of a W-2 taken on a phone uploads with the right form-type tag applied automatically.
Tax-software integration
The return-prep tool stays where it is.
Strkr integrates with the common tax-prep software (Drake, UltraTax, Lacerte, ProSeries, ProConnect, TaxAct) via native connectors or file-based import. The return assembly, the review workflow, and the e-file submission stay in the tax-prep tool where the preparer already knows the keystrokes. The CRM carries the client relationship and the engagement workflow; the tax-prep tool carries the return itself. Clean handoff in both directions.
Flat per-seat pricing
The license line is 1 number, not 7.
Strkr practice-tier pricing is per seat with the full product. No per-return meter. No per-engagement module. No tax-season surge pricing. A 4-partner practice with 2 associates and 2 seasonal preparers runs 8 seats year-round. The seasonal preparers pay the normal seat during the February to April window, which is 2 months of a 12-month seat cost. The invoice is predictable 12 months out, which lets Dolores plan the practice without a mid-year vendor surprise.
Advisory expansion tracking
The 1040 client who becomes an advisory client.
A 1040 return client is often the entry point to a bookkeeping engagement, a quarterly estimate review, a retirement-planning conversation, and a succession-planning engagement over 5 years. Strkr tracks the service expansion with the lifetime-value rollup across the client's services. The $380-a-year 1040 client who became a $12,000-a-year advisory client visible in one view rather than three.
The small-practice specifics
What a 3-partner CPA practice actually runs on.
A small practice runs differently than a 50-partner firm. The specifics the small-practice evaluator checks against ship on Strkr's practice tier without the mid-market admin overhead. The six items below are the recurring questions on the evaluation call.
Partner-ownership attribution
Who owns which clients, and what the book pays.
A multi-partner practice runs partner-ownership attribution for compensation (books 60 percent to the originating partner, 25 percent to the service partner, 15 percent to the firm). Strkr tracks the ownership splits on the client record with the historical attribution if the ownership changes. The year-end partner-compensation report pulls the splits automatically rather than from a quarter-end Excel reconciliation.
Referral source tracking
The attorney, the banker, the client, the website.
Small accounting practices book 70 to 90 percent of new business from referrals. Attribution to the referring source (an estate attorney, a commercial banker, an existing client, the firm website) drives both the quarterly thank-you campaign and the partner-referral-credit calculation. Strkr's referral attribution captures the source as a structured record with the lifetime-value rollup per referral partner so the firm knows which attorney relationships are actually productive.
Peer-review preparation
The AICPA peer review happens every 3 years.
AICPA peer review (every 3 years for firms performing audit, review, or compilation engagements) tests the firm's quality control system against SSARS, SAS, or the applicable standards. The reviewer samples engagements and tests the documentation. Strkr's per-engagement documentation surface preserves the required evidence through the retention period so the peer-review sample pulls from one place. Dolores's most recent peer review cleared with no findings, in part because the Strkr engagement records had the complete documentation set.
Trust and estate engagement specifics
The 1041, the fiduciary accounting, the K-1 distribution.
Trust and estate engagements (1041 returns, fiduciary accounting, K-1 preparation) carry a different data shape than 1040 or business returns. The grantor, the beneficiaries, the trustee, the fiscal year, the asset base, the distribution schedule each live on the engagement. Strkr's trust-engagement template captures the shape with the K-1 distribution to beneficiaries tracked back to each beneficiary's personal 1040 engagement where the firm handles both.
IRS correspondence tracking
The CP2000, the CP14, the 668-W, every notice logged.
An IRS notice (CP2000, CP14, CP22A, 668-W wage levy, 668-A bank levy, LT-11 final notice of intent to levy) arrives at the client, who forwards to the preparer. The notice response has a due date and a response path. Strkr's IRS-correspondence tracking logs the notice type, the issue date, the response due date, the response document, and the resolution. The seasonal associate working an August CP2000 response sees the full notice history and the client's prior response pattern.
Billing integration
Invoicing stays where the firm already runs it.
Most small practices run billing through QuickBooks Online or FreshBooks or a dedicated practice-billing tool. Strkr integrates with the common tools so the invoice generates at engagement signoff and the paid status syncs back to the client record. Fee realization reports (billable vs billed vs collected) run from the Strkr side with the invoice-paid events from the billing tool. The firm sees fee realization per client, per service, per partner without a cross-system reconciliation.
How small practices compare the options
The practice-tier evaluation checklist.
A small CPA or EA practice runs the evaluation differently than a 50-staff firm. The six criteria below are what shows up on every small-practice buyer call.
Fit for 1 to 15 staff
Not a mid-market tool with the modules turned off.
Karbon and Canopy are powerful tools built for 20-plus staff practices. The feature set at 4 staff feels like a lot of weight on a small practice. Strkr practice tier is calibrated for solo through 25-staff practices with the depth available where the practice needs it and the surface clean where it does not. Marcellus the solo EA uses the same tool at 1 seat that Dolores's practice uses at 8 seats.
Tax-season surge handling
The platform scales from January to April without a tier bump.
February to April 15 is 3x the normal cadence for most practices. The seasonal preparer joins mid-January and leaves late April. Strkr handles the seat flex (add seats, drop seats) on a monthly cadence without a tier bump or a long-term commitment on the seasonal seats. The practice runs 8 seats during tax season and drops to 6 for the rest of the year without a renewal negotiation.
Tax-software connector depth
Native connectors to Drake, UltraTax, Lacerte, ProSeries, ProConnect, TaxAct.
The tax-prep tool is the hot spot during tax season. The CRM should push client data to the tool and read return status back without manual re-entry. Strkr ships native connectors to the common tax-prep tools with the client-data push and the return-status read running on save. The alternative (manual re-entry or a middleware bridge) adds 3 to 5 minutes per return across 400 returns, which is a lost day for a solo practice.
Section 7216 and Circular 230 posture
The compliance surface shipped for the small practice.
The IRS compliance surface is as important for a solo EA as it is for a 50-staff firm. The $10,000 per-violation Section 7216 penalty and the per-return Circular 230 penalties scale with practice size. Strkr's compliance surface ships to the same standard for a 1-seat practice as for a 15-seat practice. The $29-a-seat practitioner does not pay a penalty their 10-seat peer avoids.
Three-year total cost
The real-money comparison for 4-partner practices.
For a 4-partner practice with 2 associates and 2 seasonal preparers (8 peak seats, 6 off-peak): Strkr practice tier runs roughly 5,500 to 7,200 a year. Karbon practice tier runs roughly 11,000 to 15,000 a year. Canopy with the tax modules runs roughly 9,500 to 13,000 a year. TaxDome runs 4,500 to 7,500 at the smaller end. Three-year cost delta for a mid-sized practice typically runs 8,000 to 25,000 dollars.
Advisory expansion lever
The tool that supports the practice growth plan.
Most small accounting practices grow by expanding existing-client revenue (1040 to bookkeeping to advisory to succession planning) rather than by adding new clients. Strkr's lifetime-value rollup and service-expansion tracking make the growth visible and the next-conversation opportunity surfaced. A quarterly review of the 100-top-lifetime-value clients drives the expansion conversations rather than the generic cross-sell blast.
Head-to-head
Strkr vs Karbon for a small CPA practice.
Karbon is the common comparison for small CPA and EA practices looking at modern practice-management tools. Canopy and TaxDome are the other two frequent comparisons. The head-to-head below focuses on Karbon for a 4-partner practice with 2 associates.
The common thread across small accounting practice accounts: the practice management surface matches the practice size without the mid-market overhead and the compliance posture stays current without a separate tool. The playbooks below are motions live on practice-tier accounts right now.
4-partner CPA practice, Portland area
Tax-season engagement letters signed in 10 days against a 3-week prior process.
Dolores's 4-partner CPA practice with 410 individual-tax clients and 62 small-business clients moved from a Word-template-plus-DocuSign EL process to the Strkr EL engine. The 410 ELs signed over 10 days in early January, with the e-sign cadence tracked per client and the signed EL filed on the client record automatically. The prior 3-week EL process gave the practice back 2 weeks of partner time right as tax-season intake was ramping.
Solo EA, Phoenix
Section 7216 consent gaps closed before the first IRS inquiry.
Marcellus's solo EA practice with 180 clients ran a 7216 consent audit on migration. The audit surfaced 44 clients where the practice had marketed quarterly estimate reviews outside the scope of return preparation without a written consent on file. The 44 consents backfilled over 2 weeks using the Strkr consent-generation flow. Marcellus closed the compliance gap before the first IRS enforcement inquiry rather than during one.
12-staff CPA firm with trust engagements
K-1 distribution tracked to beneficiary 1040 engagements.
A 12-staff CPA firm handling 23 trust and estate engagements each year moved the K-1 distribution tracking to Strkr. The K-1 distribution from the 1041 trust engagement attaches to each beneficiary's personal 1040 engagement where the firm also prepares the beneficiary's return. The beneficiary preparer sees the K-1 pending and the trust preparer sees the beneficiary 1040 waiting for the K-1. Handoff friction cut by roughly 60 percent against the prior shared-drive approach.
7-staff bookkeeping and tax practice
Advisory expansion drove 32 percent revenue growth year over year.
A 7-staff bookkeeping and tax practice ran the lifetime-value rollup and the service-expansion report on Strkr for 2 years. The quarterly review of top-100 lifetime-value clients drove 44 specific advisory expansion conversations, 23 of which converted. Advisory revenue grew from 11 percent to 29 percent of total practice revenue over 24 months. Total practice revenue grew 32 percent year over year with no new client acquisition.
Seasonal preparer onboarding
PTIN status verified before the first assigned return.
A 15-staff practice adding 4 seasonal preparers in mid-January ran the PTIN-status verification before assigning returns. One of the 4 seasonal preparers had let the PTIN lapse on December 31 and had not renewed. The gap surfaced in Strkr's PTIN check during onboarding before the first return was assigned. The seasonal preparer renewed and was clear by January 20. The firm avoided a late-season discovery that would have required reassigning in-flight returns.
A CRM for the accounting practice that fits a 4-partner firm, not a 50-partner firm.
Start a 14-day trial with the practice-tier configuration enabled: Section 7216 consent engine, Circular 230 due-diligence record, PTIN tracking, engagement letter engine, document request engine, client portal, and native tax-prep connectors.
Is Strkr sufficient for a solo EA or do I need a full practice-management tool?
Strkr's practice tier covers the primitives a solo EA needs: Section 7216 consent, Circular 230 due-diligence record, PTIN tracking, engagement letter engine, document-request engine, client portal, and IRS-correspondence tracking. The pieces a solo EA typically does not need (team-based task management across 10-plus staff, deep time-tracking integration, firm-wide capacity planning) are not the Strkr focus. For a solo EA with 100 to 300 clients, Strkr is a strong fit at 1 seat. For a 20-plus-staff firm with complex internal workflow needs, a dedicated practice-management tool like Karbon or Canopy still carries the depth where Strkr focuses on relationship-and-compliance.
How does the Section 7216 consent engine work?
Section 7216 consent generates with IRS-prescribed language per use case. The three common use cases ship as templates: marketing to current clients outside the scope of return preparation, cross-selling to related services the firm offers, and third-party sharing with a identified recipient. The consent captures the client's written agreement (physical signature on a mailed form, electronic signature through the e-sign integration, or in-person signature during the engagement meeting) and retains with the client record for the IRS-mandated retention period. The consent status surfaces on the client record so the firm knows which clients can receive which outreach without triggering a 7216 violation. The $10,000 per-violation penalty under IRC 7216(a) stops being a sleep-at-night issue because the consent evidence is on the record for every outreach the firm has made.
Can Strkr handle the tax-season document-collection cycle?
Yes. The document-request engine runs per-engagement with per-client customization. Templates for 1040, 1065, 1120-S, 1120, 1041, and 990 engagements ship with the standard document lists (W-2, 1099 variants, mortgage interest, broker statements, HSA contributions, charitable receipts, business P&L). The client portal upload tags documents by form type at upload (OCR-based for the common forms, manual tag for the rest). Automated client reminders run at a 7-day cadence until all documents arrive. The reviewer queue surfaces returns with all documents received and ready for prep, so the preparer picks up the next ready return rather than hunting for one. In a 400-return practice, the engine typically cuts document-chasing time by 40 to 60 percent across the February-to-April window.
Which tax-prep software does Strkr integrate with?
Native integrations with Drake Tax, Thomson Reuters UltraTax CS, Intuit Lacerte, Intuit ProSeries, Intuit ProConnect, and TaxAct Professional. The integration pushes client data (name, address, SSN, filing status, prior-year reference, dependents) from the Strkr client record to the tax-prep tool so the preparer opens the tax tool and the client header is already populated. The return status reads back to Strkr (started, in review, approved, e-filed, accepted, rejected) so the engagement-status reporting runs from Strkr. The return itself stays in the tax-prep tool where the preparer already knows the keystrokes. Clean handoff in both directions, no manual re-entry.
What is the pricing for a solo practice vs a 10-staff firm?
Strkr practice-tier pricing is per seat with the full product on every seat. A solo EA at 1 seat pays the per-seat rate. A 10-staff firm pays 10 times the per-seat rate. There is no tier bump at 5 users or 10 users or 25 users. Seasonal seats add and drop monthly without a long-term commitment, so a 4-partner practice running 8 peak seats and 6 off-peak seats pays for 8 seats during the February-to-April window and 6 seats the rest of the year. The invoice is predictable 12 months out, which lets the practice plan without a mid-year vendor surprise. Current practice-tier pricing lives on the pricing page.
How does Strkr handle peer-review documentation?
AICPA peer review on a 3-year cadence tests the firm's quality control system against SSARS, SAS, or the applicable standards. The reviewer samples engagements and tests the documentation. Strkr's per-engagement documentation surface preserves the required evidence through the retention period: the engagement letter, the client correspondence, the significant judgments documentation, the review signoffs, the IRS correspondence. The peer-review sample pulls from one place rather than from a shared drive, an email archive, and a Document Management System. Firms running Strkr through a peer review typically report that the sample pull went in hours rather than days, which freed partner time for the review conversation itself.
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