CPA Relay - Practice Management for Small CPA Firms
Practice management built alongside a working CPA firm: engagement letters, document collection, e-signatures, billing, and a client portal. Live at cparelay.com.
Visit the live site →Most accounting software feels like it was designed in 2004 by people who have never survived tax season. CPA Relay is my answer to that, built alongside a working CPA firm and shaped by how its staff spend a filing season.
It handles the work around the return: chasing clients for documents, getting engagement letters and 8879s signed, tracking who owes what, and billing for it. It doesn’t calculate taxes, e-file, or replace the general ledger. Firms keep Drake, QuickBooks, or whatever they already trust for that.
Who it’s for
Solo practitioners and firms with 1 to 15 people. These firms are too small for enterprise practice suites and too busy to run the season out of email threads and a shared drive.
What it does
- Engagement letters. 53 built-in templates, including 7216 consents, with merge fields that fill in client details.
- Document collection. Reusable PBC checklists, client uploads (phone photos included), and automatic reminders when items go overdue.
- E-signatures. Form 8878 and 8879 signing with recorded identity verification and a SHA-256 audit certificate. Spouses who share an email address get separate signing sessions.
- Client portal. One login per client, even across several entities, and a home screen that shows only what the client needs to do next.
- What’s Outstanding. One firm-wide board of open tasks, signatures, approvals, messages, and unpaid invoices.
- Time, proposals, and billing. Time logged against partner and staff rates, staged proposals, invoices, and Stripe payments by ACH, card, or Cash App Pay.
Client-visible folders and messages are amber. Staff-only items are sky blue. Nobody has to guess what the client can see.
Pricing
$55 per seat per month, or $45 per seat on annual billing, with every feature included. Client logins are free and unlimited. Stripe pays the firm directly and CPA Relay takes no cut.
I set up each firm personally, so new firms start by requesting an invitation at cparelay.com.
If you run a different kind of firm and want software built this way for your own workflow, tell me what you’re building.