Drake Tax Software Review: Is This Accounting Software Good?

The name Drake stands out for many reasons: a great musician, but also, a leading tax software. And, the software for tax management is the topic of the day. This Drake tax software review will look at Drake software pricing, the Drake products and tools, as well as some pros and cons of this tax practice management software solution.

So, let’s get started!

Drake tax software review 2024: Is Drake tax software any good?

The brief answer is, Yes, Drake is very much worth it as a tax software solution. There are a lot of solid Drake tax software reviews, but we think this one is going to be the only one the internet you will ever need from here on.  

Drake Software is one of the best accounting software for small business like CPA firms and self-employed tax professionals. You can be sure that Drake always delivers on its smart but user-friendly promise of being great tax SaaS. 

Drake tax software pricing plans

First of all, how much does Drake tax software cost? Let’s first review Drake professional tax software prices:

How much does Drake tax software cost for nonprofits?

Right now, Drake does not seem to offer any specials for nonprofits or charitable organizations. That being said, there are great resources provided by Drake for nonprofits to manage their taxes as best as possible.

Are there any Drake tax software coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

After carefully researching the entirety of the world wide web, we are sad to announce that there does not seem to be anything available in the way of promos, coupons, vouchers, discounts or special deals for Drake at the moment. 

Drake tax software free vs paid: what’s the difference?

This Drake online tax software does not offer a free version. That’s not a big deal, as tax software and accounting tools in general are not usually free, unlike CRM and other SaaS. There are, however, some free trials for some of Drake’s products and features. Free trials are a great way to get a quick feel for a tax platform to see if it is right for you.

Drake tax software overview: what is Drake tax software & what is it used for?

Drake income tax software has many great uses and tools to help CPAs and accounting professionals. Drake professional tax software features are used for:

• Tax planning and bookkeeping management for the tax season

• Being a tax and returns estimator

• As a payroll tool

• Organizing tax forms and tax filing for income tax returns

• Minimizing tax payments and maximizing tax deductions

• Sorting federal returns and state returns tax information

• Secure tax document sharing between client taxpayers and accounting firms

• E-file and e-signature functionality

• Helping with the IRS and audits

• Tax data entry with automatic data flow 

• Credit card and debit card payment collection

• Setting up a client portal

• Optimizing business returns 

• Collecting and categorizing new client information

• Offering a knowledge base and other tax research data

Drake tax software features list

The main features of Drake tax software are:

• Drake Tax

• Drake Documents

• Drake Portals

• Drake Accounting

• Drake E-Sign

• Drake Software Gruntoworx

• Drake Software ProtectionPlus 

• Drake Software TheTaxBook
   

1. Drake Tax Planner

The Drake tax preparation software and all its tax planning functionality form the core of our review. While most Drake products work seamlessly together, it’s Drake tax which is most commonly the module holding all the other modules together, especially during tax season.

Drake Tax uses automatic data flow to connect the info across different tax returns, saving you the time of manual data entry. If you use the macros for shortcut keys, you’re flying. You can also toggle any field to reveal the prior year’s data.

Categorize your items by categories like verified, flagged for review, or noted for review, and get notified when there is an item needing immediate review. Doing data imports for investment transactions from Microsoft Excel or text files is possible too.

The Drake Tax Planner can be used by self-employed tax professionals to help clients save on their tax returns based on things like income, marital status and dependents. There is also a quick estimator, amortization schedules, and a tax return archiving tool.

Drake Tax workflows are readily-usable. They can do things like client status management, automated scheduling, pre-season letters, and plenty of autofill functionality for payer and provider data. Workflows are also used for Drake tools like LookBack, LinkBack and Client Presentation.

For e-files, Drake Tax lets you do e-files for state returns or federal returns. One can leverage Drake E-Sign and attach PDFs as well.

You can use Drake Tax to collect payments from both credit cards and debit cards, making this useful for many self-employed tax professionals.

For the purposes of practice management of a tax firm, all tax filing data can be easily updated from a previous year to the next tax year, plus you can do backups of client data and custom user settings. Any calculated results on a tax form can be simply traced back to its source for verification.

What’s more, Drake Tax offers an online tax research resource with customizable lists, so you can get quick stats on your most important bookkeeping data.
 

2. Drake Document Manager

Using Drake Documents is a great way for CPAs to cut down on paper waste as well as free up space in the workplace, and any new client will likely also appreciate the digital service. Drake Documents works with Drake Tax and Drake Portals.

With the Drake document manager, you can set up custom cabinets, drawers and folders to stay hyper organized. Importing and exporting taxpayer information makes moving data around no problem.

There is strong password protection to keep client data safe, as well as file watermarking. You can get administrative tracking of file activity as well.

This Drake software includes an integrated email launcher that speeds up the process for accounting forms to send their clients documents, with the ability to add links to external files. Finally, you get a built-in backup tool.
 

3. Drake Secure File Pro Portals

If your accounting firm wants to set up their own website, you can do so with Drake Portals. It provides you with a domain with Secure File Pro. It’s super safe, and you get off-site backup.

When you get your own subdomain of SecureFilePro you can put on some custom branding like a company logo.

Upload PDFs and tax returns, allowing clients to get at them whenever it is most convenient. They can sign them in the portal. Clients can also share documents among each other. Meanwhile they can upload their W-2s. 

The basic Drake Portal comes with 5 GB of transfer storage, though you have the option to purchase more.

Other Drake Portal SaaS tools include a mobile-responsive interface, instant messaging, summary of last year’s tax form info, online payments, digital signatures, Drake Tax backup, and top-grade built-in security.
 

4. Drake Accounting

Many tools of Drake and similar tax software solutions offer PPR, or pay-per-return, meaning you pay for each tax return you provide. But when you have the client volume to make it worthwhile, you can get Drake Accounting which has unlimited clients, installs per unit, payroll, form generation, and more.

Drake accounting goes beyond basic tax platforms. It handles complex bookkeeping, accounts payables and accounts receivables, multi-location payroll and batch payroll processing.

You can also use tools like direct depositing, e-signature, state tax and wage forms, prior-year viewing and editing.

Great Drake accounting reports can come in tree-view navigation as well as graphic drill-down reports.
 

5. Drake E-Sign

E-signatures are another way to eliminate paper usage, plus it’s a time-saver. Drake E-Sign Online is integrated with Drake Tax and works along with Drake Portals SecureFilePro.

With a signature pad, you can let clients use a digital signature quickly on each page of a tax form. These are secure, tamper-proof and authentic signatures. 

A tax preparer provider's digital signature can be set up just one time, and afterwards reused with ease. Standard PDF printing is also on offer here, as are password protections and watermarking tools.

You can offer clients a sign now, or a sign later option. If later, the document is stored with the client’s document manager folder.
 

6. Drake Software GruntWorx

GruntWorx is the Drake name for text recognition automation features, which as everyone who reads this site knows, is a must in keeping your business operations as streamlined as possible.

GruntWorx lets you take any printed or written text and digitize it automatically, cutting down on more manual entry. They use the finest OCR tech, or optical character recognition. There is also a human review process for max accuracy, but only for the U.S.
 

7. Drake Software ProtectionPlus

ProtectionPlus is Drake Software’s module for helping you out with audits or other dealings with the IRS.

If you are a CPA or tax professional and you need help handling an excess of client notices and audits, ProtectionPlus can be a great aid and time-saver. They help with scheduling, tax debt relief, denied credits and fraud.

What’s more, there are identity theft restoration services with fraud alerts on credit records, and you can also get business insurance. 
 

8. Drake Software TheTaxBook

If you have ever heard of the CPA Practice Advisor’s Readers’ Choice Awards, then surely you are aware that TheTaxBook has been awarded number one for 9 years in a row. This is the best place for integrated tax research business insights.

With Drake, you get it in PDF format and can share parts with clients via email. It is also easily searchable for quick reference. The content always remains as up-to-date as possible. It reads great on a desktop, tablet or mobile device. You can add bookmarks, do search histories, and even peruse the archives of older editions.

If you subscribe to Drake, you can buy TheTaxBook at a discount.

Drake tax software pros and cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of Drake tax software:
 

Drake tax software advantages

The benefits to Drake Software are many. Firstly, this platform gets good grades for relative ease-of-use. The learning curve is short so that means you’ll be up and running in minimum time.

Next, as far as sharing documents and files go with your clients, Drake Portals is an excellent system for creating a secure file-sharing system.

Drake Tax is pretty much everything you might want in a tax accounting system. It lacks none of the key tools, but it does not suffer from feature-overload.

Finally, the GruntWorx tool is very effective at capturing text that has not yet been digitized, like printed forms of handwriting.
 

Drake tax software disadvantages

There are not many serious Drake tax software problems. As far as drawbacks of Drake go, what one mainly comes across is the old-fashioned look and feel of the interface.

What’s more, the Drake customer support can be one of its cons. It’s not the worst, but some users have wished it were a bit better.

Finally, if you are looking for a more thorough tax and personal finance solution, Drake is a bit limiting.
 

Drake tax software complaints & praise (Drake accounting software reviews from real customers)

There are a decent number of reviews of Drake tax software, both positive and negative. The more praiseworthy reviews of Drake Tax focus on the ways it helps small business accounting firms and self-employed CPAs save time and money through workflow automations and having a near-100% digitized document management system.

Negative Drake software reviews, however, are a bit more varied. Some complain about the lack of great customer support for the more basic packages. Others have unfavorable reviews of comparisons between Drake to other similar platforms because of the design and intuitiveness of the dashboards.
 

Review of Drake tax software support

Drake provides a phone number for phone support, usually all day and evening from Monday to Friday, and with shorter hours on Saturdays. There is also email support.

Drake hosts an online support resource center including a knowledge base, reference guides and user manuals. 

Is Drake tax planner worth it? Our conclusion

And so, the eternal question, is Drake tax software worth it? Yes, Drake Software, like Drake Tax, Drake Portals and Drake Documents, are worthy tax and accounting tools to ensure your business returns, tax year after tax year, are the best they can be. Is it better than Drake tax software alternatives like Intuit’s Quickbooks or TurboTax? Well, that is up to you to find out.

Our final Drake tax software rating

4 / 5