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Build a personal tax intake form that tells each client which documents to send, using Claude to plan it
Brian Clare, founder of Blueprint Accounting in Ottawa (bookkeeping, payroll and corporate tax for Canadian owner-managed businesses; started in 2018), in a live session at The Firm's AI in Practice Summit
Version one of the firm's personal tax intake form lives in Airtable, built in two evenings after working it out back and forth with Claude. It asks about eligibility, a spouse, income types, dependents, working from home, investments, rental properties, self-employment and deductions, and from the answers it tells the client what to send; the team then checks what the client said they'd send against what actually arrived. At the summit he rebuilt it in Lovable with eleven plain-English prompts, using Claude to plan the data model and draft every prompt. The rebuild pre-fills last year's answers, auto-saves, asks AI-generated follow-up questions by comparing this year's answers with last year's, and checks each upload against the document type requested, with an override button so a wrong AI check never blocks the client.
Claude $17/mo billed annually ($20 monthly); free plan available; Airtable and Lovable aren't priced here
Medium · or we do it from $149/mo
Claude, Airtable, Lovable
The problem
Tax season started with three weeks of chasing documents instead of preparing returns. Clients weren't sure where a form went or where to find it, and the firm needed everything before it could start the actual tax work.
What happened
Version one took two evenings; the Lovable rebuild took about forty minutes and eleven prompts, and in the demo it flagged a T5 uploaded where a T4 was expected. He is clear that the rebuild isn't ready for clients: it has no authentication or OAuth and only light error handling, so he said he would unpublish it and that security has to come before any client data goes in. No tax-season time savings are given. Owner-told.
Quoted in the source: Brian Clare, founder, Blueprint Accounting. Source: The Firm, AI in Practice Summit: Watch It Get Built, A Client Onboarding Tool Created Live From Scratch (Brian Clare) (2026-06-02) · Added 2026-10-19.
How to set it up yourself
- What Blueprint Accounting does: a personal tax intake form asks each client about their year and, from the answers, lists the documents they need to send; the team checks what was promised against what arrived.
- Write your data model first: the questions you ask every tax client, which answer triggers which document (rental income means a rental statement, self-employment means a business statement), and what your staff need to see. Use the prompt below with Claude to turn it into a form plan.
- Build the form in a tool you already know (Airtable, as Clare did first, or an AI app builder such as Lovable), with a separate client view and staff view so clients never see each other's data.
- Before a real client uses it, add login and run the builder's security check. If you add AI document checks, give the client an override so a wrong check never blocks them.
Copy-paste prompt
I run {FIRM NAME}, an accounting firm that prepares personal tax returns in {COUNTRY}. Help me plan a client tax intake form. The questions I ask every client: {QUESTIONS}. The documents each answer usually requires: {ANSWER -> DOCUMENT LIST}. 1) Turn this into a step-by-step form with conditional questions, so clients only see what applies. 2) For each answer, list the exact document the client must upload. 3) Describe two separate views: what the client sees and what my staff see when checking a submission. 4) List the security steps I need before any client data goes in. Don't add tax rules I didn't give you; mark gaps as [ASK].One short email a day: 3 new AI use cases from real small businesses, each with its source and setup steps, plus a Tool of the Day. Free, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Tools used
Claude
AI assistant for writing, long documents, analysis and coding help.
From $17/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) (checked 2026-10-18)
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Checked prices: Claude: from $17/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) (verified 2026-10-18)
Rather not do it yourself?
We'll set this up in your tools, in your voice, tested. $149/mo with setup included (6-month minimum), or $497 pay-once. Satisfaction guarantee: we'll fix it until it works. Pay-once setups: or we refund your setup fee. $149/mo plan: cancel in the first 30 days and we refund your first month. Terms. We reply within 1 business day.
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