RMW Accounting's Durango team accelerates research, expands advisory services, and streamlines delivery

Company overview

A national network of local CPA firms, RMW Accountingpairs on the ground relationships with broader resources across the country. The Durango, Colorado office began as Tafoya Barrett and Associates and serves individuals and business owners with tax, advisory, and planning services backed by RMW's tools and talent.

Introduction

RMW Accounting's Durango office set out to modernize three critical motions at once — get defensible tax answers faster, standardize advisory so more staff could contribute, and remove friction from the last mile of delivery. The firm led with CoCounsel Tax to research complex questions in minutes with authoritative citations partners could stand behind. Ready to Advise is being rolled out to turn partner know-how into repeatable advisory work so staff can deliver credible guidance sooner. SafeSend now handles end-to-end assembly, e-sign, estimates, and secure third-party forwarding, reducing chase work and improving client confidence.

The trust pivot that unlocked adoption was simple and specific. "I knew that I was still doing research in the software that I knew and trusted. That it was coming from code, regulations, and case law."

With institutional trust established, output trust came from citations the team could verify, and adoption trust came from SafeSend's guided steps clients complete before viewing returns. The result is a faster, calmer practice that protects professional judgment while creating room to scale advisory.

The solution

The firm led with CoCounsel Tax to anchor its AI strategy in trusted source partners. "I knew that I was still doing research in the software that I knew and trusted. That it was coming from code, regulations, and case law." That institutional trust made it safe to adopt AI for everyday and complex work alike; quick cross-checks before client calls and deeper research navigated through iterative prompts.

CoCounsel's analysis capabilities now accelerate reviews of long documents. Operating agreements that took two to four hours are summarized and validated in minutes, with partners confirming details against the source. Tafoya uses CoCounsel almost every day, sometimes two or three times a day, for both quick confirmations and complex analysis.

In parallel, the firm is rolling out Ready to Advise to standardize advisory workflows and transfer partner knowledge. The aim is practical leverage; moving knowledge from Tafoya’s head to the rest of the staff so that basic advisory services aren’t bottlenecked at the partner level. "Ready to Advise is going to lay it out for [staff]. They still need to have that human touch and be able to understand what they're saying and speak it, but a lot of the work is going to be done for them so that it's not going to take them one, two, three years to be able to be in the advisory space. It can take them a matter of months."

Clear steps, reusable templates, and partner oversight prepare staff to contribute sooner while keeping human judgment at the center.

To remove the last mile of friction, the team implemented SafeSend across Tax Returns, Organizers, Gather, Secure File Transfer, and eSignatures. Instead of juggling multiple tools for gathering, assembly, delivery, and signatures, staff and clients moved through a single, consistent flow.

UltraTax prints directly to SafeSend; completed returns are automatically assembled and delivered in two to three minutes; clients review and eSign without passwords or portals to manage; payments and K-1 distribution happen in the same place; and automated reminders keep signatures and payments on track without manual follow-up.

Clients are guided to sign before accessing documents; signed e-file forms flow back to operations automatically; and estimate reminders trigger 14 days before due dates. Clients can securely forward returns to bankers via access codes, with no separate consent paperwork or partner intervention required. They can also manage quarterly estimated payments directly, with reminders arriving automatically.

The connected experience raised output trust with a clear, auditable path clients can navigate without confusion, and it created adoption trust across the team because it "just worked…intuitive, simple, and made sense."