The workpaper stays with the Firm.
Behind every Sign-off sits the workpaper: source documents, facts, entries, and readback, hash-chained and owned by your Firm. The Workbook and the workpaper export go into your Firm's own file.
Tax prep, with the file behind every entry
A value in your tax software can be checked only against the file that shows where it came from. TracePrep keeps that file with the Firm.
What the workpaper holds
The workpaper export carries the source document references, the facts with their history, the entry list and its receipt, every row exception with who raised and closed it, the Sign-off, and the audit log for that return.
The Workbook
When the Reviewer signs, TracePrep produces the Workbook from the frozen entry list. Every row shows its value, its source citation, and whether the Preparer corrected or keyed it.
Frozen at Sign-off
Sign-off freezes the facts, the entry list, and the entry receipt in one step. A Firm user records delivery when the Workbook and the workpaper go into the Firm's file. Recording delivery sends nothing to a client or a vendor.
Finalized Study workpapers stay with the Firm.
Your retention duty does not end when a subscription does. Every finalized Study leaves TracePrep as a branded PDF, structured data, and an immutable evidence manifest, and the finalized evidence is yours permanently.
A report you can lose is not a workpaper
Firms carry a document-retention duty that outlives any vendor relationship. A finished study is a deliverable only if the Firm can still open it years later, whatever happens to any subscription. The moment the Firm needs a workpaper is usually years after it was finished. TracePrep treats the finished Study as the Firm’s property from the start, because that is the only arrangement in which the word workpaper means anything.
Three artifacts, not one file
Finalizing a Study produces three things. The branded PDF, which is the client-facing document. The structured data behind it, so the figures are readable by something other than a person with a highlighter. And the evidence manifest, which seals every source snapshot at the version it was used. Together they are what the file actually needs: the conclusion, the data, and the evidence, kept as one set rather than as a document and a memory of where it came from. Separate any one of the three and the other two get weaker. A PDF alone is an assertion, and data alone is a spreadsheet nobody can source. Kept together they are a workpaper, which is what your file is supposed to contain.
What happens if you cancel
The Firm permanently owns its finalized evidence and workpapers. Cancelling does not change that. Finalized Studies remain downloadable in TracePrep for three years from the date the subscription ends, for any reason, so leaving never turns into a scramble to get your own files out. Export on the way out, or come back for them later. Either way, ownership was never the thing in question.
Why this matters
For the Reviewer
The entry list you signed off keeps its file: each row, its source, and its readback. The file you signed is still the file, and the evidence behind it is still attached to it. A question years later about a Study gets answered from the manifest you approved rather than from a vendor’s current copy of anything.
For the Firm
Retention is satisfied by what the Firm holds, not by what a vendor still hosts. The finished work goes into the tax file as a complete set and stays there.
Questions
What does the Firm keep from tax prep?
What does the Firm actually own?
What happens to finished Studies if we cancel?
Why does the evidence manifest matter separately from the PDF?
See what your Firm ends up holding.
One waitlist covers the TracePrep app and the TracePrep plugin. For a Reasonable Compensation Study, see how a Study is built.