Secure file-sharing recs?

March 26, 2018 7:07 PM

My tax accountant is in another state this year. I need to get her my tax documents - is there a way to do so securely online?
posted by Dragonness to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I just save everything as an encrypted pdf (using a strong password sent via phone) and then send it as email. If it isn't already a pdf, I use the "print to pdf" option on my mac.
posted by metahawk at 7:11 PM on March 26, 2018

Google drive is secure, as long as you both have a Google account (and trust Google... Which I do, clearly.).
posted by kdar at 7:20 PM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

My accountant has a share drive that she sets up that we can upload files to, which I presume is secure enough—can yours set up something like that?
posted by leahwrenn at 7:20 PM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

The documents are only as secure as her computer or phone anyway so I send my accountant documents as email attachments. Otherwise, if you have a lot, I'd use Dropbox personally.
posted by AppleTurnover at 8:11 PM on March 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ask your accountant how she wants them. This is the wrong direction to solve this problem; it's easier and cheaper in the long run for you if you use the way that she prefers rather than making her use the way you prefer if you don't have a die-hard preference already. Professional tax preparers will almost always have an opinion about how they prefer to manage electronic documents, in this day and age. Google Drive works just fine, but it's not the optimal solution if for example she's already paying a bunch of money for one of the tax packages that includes client document management.
posted by Sequence at 8:55 PM on March 26, 2018 [7 favorites]

Ask your accountant how she wants them, but don't send them as unencrypted email attachments, you are asking for trouble.

If she does not have a preferred system, then I would send password-protected ZIP files and give her the password by phone.

These can be opened on any PC (Win or Mac) and don't require any special steps or special software on her end. They are easy enough to create: http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-create-zip-file-with-password-in-windows-78/

(Password-protected PDFs are also good, but harder to create on Windows and don't apply to all file types)
posted by richb at 6:03 AM on March 27, 2018

I've been using ShareFile.com with my accountant for YEARS.

In fact I was impressed enough with it in that context that I adopted it as my company's secure file sharing platform.
posted by uberchet at 6:22 AM on March 27, 2018

Response by poster: I've asked the accountant but she is super old school and suggested email or dropbox. So dropbox it is.
posted by Dragonness at 4:33 PM on March 27, 2018