Company Overview
Built to end the document chase.
Shoebox is an AI-powered tax document collection platform for accounting firms — helping CPAs spend less time chasing and more time advising.
Our Mission
Give accounting firms their time back.
Tax season shouldn't mean thousands of hours of follow-up emails and unfulfilled document requests. Shoebox exists to make the collection process invisible — so firms can focus on the work that actually requires their expertise.
By reading each client's prior-year return, Shoebox builds a personalized checklist and collects the exact documents you need — turning a weeks-long chase into an automated workflow that runs itself.
Operating Principles
How we work.
These are the principles that guide every decision we make — from product to customer support.
Start with the CPA's problem
Every feature begins with a real pain point from the accounting firm side. We work backward from frustration, not forward from technology.
Automate the obvious
If a prior-year return already tells us what documents are needed, a human shouldn't have to figure it out. We remove the predictable work so people can focus on the nuanced work.
Accuracy above all
A missed document means an amended return. We hold ourselves to a standard where the checklist we generate is complete — every W-2, every 1099, every K-1.
Respect the client's time
Taxpayers aren't tax experts. We design every client-facing interaction to be clear, fast, and frictionless — because the easier it is to fulfill, the faster the firm gets what it needs.
Security by default
Tax documents are among the most sensitive data people share. We treat them accordingly — bank-level encryption, strict access controls, and no data sold or shared.
Build for long-term trust
We win when firms have their best tax season ever. That means being honest about what we can do, shipping things that actually work, and standing behind every interaction.
Why Shoebox Exists
Tax season has always meant chasing clients for documents. It doesn't have to.
Every year, accounting firms spend thousands of hours doing the same thing: sending reminder emails, following up on missing W-2s, waiting on brokerage statements that clients have forgotten about. It's not complex work — it's just slow, manual, and completely preventable.
The prior-year return already contains a complete picture of what a client needs to file. Their bank already has the 1099-INT. Their brokerage already has the 1099-DIV. Their payroll provider already has the W-2. The documents exist. The problem is getting them from where they live to where they're needed — and today that process runs almost entirely on email and hope.
We built Shoebox because that gap is a solvable engineering problem. Reading a return, generating a checklist, and connecting to financial accounts is exactly what software should do. Accounting firms didn't get into this business to chase paper. We did.