Reasonable Compensation Studies your firm owns
Your partner needs the same standard applied in March that was applied in October. Your preparer needs the evidence work to stop eating an afternoon per client. Your reviewer needs to see how a figure was reached before putting a name to it. TracePrep is built so all three of them are working from one file.
Three jobs, one file
The same Study has to satisfy three different people. Here is what each of them is actually asking of it.
For the partner
You are putting the firm behind the same kind of conclusion on every return where it comes up, and you want that conclusion reached the same way every time regardless of who prepared it. Every Study follows one documented process, so consistency stops depending on which staff member picked up the file.
For the preparer
You want the evidence gathering to take minutes instead of an afternoon, and you want the file to clear review on the first pass. Intake is structured, wage evidence comes from public data and is pinned to a named release, and the workpaper assembles as you work.
For the reviewer
You want to inspect the derivation before you put your name to it, rather than accept it on faith or rebuild it yourself. Every figure links to the public source it came from, and every judgment call carries its written rationale beside it.
Pilot with one preparer and one reviewer
Rolling a new process out to the whole firm in one go is how it gets quietly abandoned by week three. Start narrow enough that one real client tells you what you need to know.
Pick the pair who already work well together
One preparer, one reviewer, ideally two people who already trade S-corporation files back and forth. A single pass through a live client teaches you more than any demonstration will.
Run a real return start to finish
Intake follows one structure, the wage evidence is pinned to a published release, every adjustment carries its rationale, and the reviewer at your firm signs off on the conclusion. All of it on a return you were going to prepare anyway.
Put it beside last year and decide
Set the new workpaper next to the one you produced last season and judge the record, not the software. If it is better, widen it. The process is the same on every file, whoever prepared it.
What your firm keeps
A workpaper is only worth producing if it is still yours, and still legible, long after the engagement closes.
The workpapers belong to the firm
The Study, the evidence behind it, and its exhibits are your firm's work product. You can export the whole file, and stopping your subscription does not change who owns it.Next year starts from this year
The prior Study carries forward as the starting point for the next one, so the annual update reads as a comparison against a known baseline rather than a build from nothing.Evidence anyone can re-open
The wage comparison rests on the federal occupational wage survey published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Study records which dated release it drew from. A reviewer, a successor firm, or an examiner can open the same public table and see the same figures.An audit log of who did what, and when
Who prepared the Study, what changed after the first draft, who approved it, and the date each of those happened. That is what a partner is really buying: the ability to answer a question asked two years after the return was filed.
Questions to expect
Do we have to change how we run S-corporation returns?
Who at the firm signs off on the number?
What happens to our files if we stop using TracePrep?
Can two preparers work the same way without us writing a manual?
Run one Study and judge it from the file
The quickest honest test is a live client you were already going to work on this season.