Should UltraTax Firms Switch From SafeSend or SurePrep to Truss on Verito?

For firms that run UltraTax and used SafeSend or SurePrep before Thomson Reuters acquired both and renewal costs climbed, Truss paired with Verito’s private hosting delivers the same workflow experience, but faster and more reliable, on dedicated infrastructure instead of shared Citrix. Firms currently on Thomson Reuters’ Virtual Office CS need to move their hosting to make the switch, since Virtual Office doesn’t allow firms to install third-party applications like Truss.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Truss and Verito are both still run by their original founders, not private equity, with profit reinvested in the product.
• Thomson Reuters now owns SafeSend ($600M, 2025) and SurePrep ($500M, 2023); renewal costs have climbed on both since.
• Truss replaces client portals with a magic link: no account, no password, just click and go. That’s the mechanism behind its 90% first-year adoption.
• UltraTax firms keep UltraTax. Only the SafeSend/SurePrep workflow layer moves to Truss.
• Firms on Virtual Office CS must move hosting to adopt Truss, since Virtual Office blocks third-party app installs.

What Is Truss, and Why Are UltraTax Firms Looking at It?

Truss is a workflow platform for tax and accounting firms that automates the work around the return: client intake, workpaper assembly, e-signature, and payment. UltraTax firms that used SafeSend or SurePrep before Thomson Reuters acquired both, and saw renewal costs climb afterward, are the firms most often evaluating Truss as the replacement.

UltraTax itself doesn’t change. The firm keeps its return-preparation software exactly as it is; only the workflow layer that used to run through SafeSend or SurePrep moves to Truss. Every client goes through the same system, from intake to delivery, instead of a patchwork of separate portals for document collection, review, and signature.

Why Does Truss Get Such High First-Year Client Adoption?

Every client action in Truss, uploading a document, signing a return, paying an invoice, happens through a magic link sent by email: no account to create, no password to remember, no portal to log into. That removed friction is why firms report 90% client adoption within the first year.

Truss calls itself an un-portal. Most document-collection portals ask a taxpayer to register, verify an email, set a password, then remember all of it again next filing season. Truss skips that step. A client gets a link, clicks it, and lands directly on the document request, the return, or the payment screen. The same mechanism runs across intake, e-signature, and invoicing, so a client who uploads a document through a magic link signs the finished return the same way months later. For a firm, that means one consistent experience across the entire client base, instead of some clients finishing in a portal and others emailing PDFs back and forth.

That’s a real gap most firms live with. A portal that isn’t the default option tends to see weak voluntary use elsewhere in the industry, several published estimates put unenforced adoption well under half, and a firm can always force the issue by making the portal mandatory. But mandating a login a client didn’t ask for has its own cost: a client who has to fight a portal to get a document to their preparer is a client a competitor can win over with less effort. A magic link removes the reason to make that trade in the first place.

How Does Truss’s Workflow Run, From Intake to Delivery?

Truss runs a firm’s post-preparation workflow in four connected stages: client document intake, workpaper assembly, tax return preparation and review, and final delivery with e-signature and payment. Each stage feeds the next automatically, so documents that come in through intake are already organized and in return order by the time workpapers build.

The four stages, in order:

• Intake. Client documents land in one organized channel instead of trickling into an inbox.
• Workpaper prep. Intake documents auto-populate into workpapers, built in return order instead of assembled by hand.
• Preparation and review. The return itself gets prepared and reviewed inside the same workflow. The firm’s tax software, Drake, Lacerte, UltraTax, ProSeries, or CCH ProSystem fx, stays exactly where it already runs.
• Delivery. The finished return goes out for e-signature and payment in one step, instead of a separate round of follow-ups.

Why Are Tax Firms Leaving SafeSend and SurePrep?

Both SafeSend and SurePrep are now owned by Thomson Reuters: SurePrep since a $500 million acquisition that closed in January 2023, and SafeSend since a $600 million acquisition announced in January 2025. Firms that wanted an independent alternative, and firms watching renewal costs climb since the acquisitions, started looking elsewhere.

SafeSend automated what Thomson Reuters calls the “last mile” of the return: assembly, review, e-signature, and delivery. SurePrep built its business on 1040 automation and document collection, through products including 1040SCAN, SPbinder, and TaxCaddy, used by more than 23,000 tax professionals at the time of its acquisition. Both are now part of the same parent company that also owns Virtual Office CS, the hosted-desktop product many of these same UltraTax firms are hosted on. For a firm that wants its workflow tools and its hosting to sit outside a single vendor’s ecosystem, Truss and Verito are each built as that alternative in their own category.

Truss vs. SafeSend vs. SurePrep: How Do They Compare?

Truss, SafeSend, and SurePrep all automate work around the tax return, but they differ on ownership, scope, and what a firm can pair them with. The table below compares parent company, workflow coverage, and the hosting question, since only one of the three currently has a named hosting partner.

Does Adopting Truss Mean Switching Hosting Too?

It depends on where the firm’s tax software runs today. Firms hosted independently, including on Verito, can add Truss without touching their hosting. Firms on Thomson Reuters’ Virtual Office CS have to move hosting at the same time, because Virtual Office is a locked environment that doesn’t allow firms to install third-party applications like Truss.

Virtual Office CS is Thomson Reuters’ own hosted environment for the CS Professional Suite, including UltraTax. It runs on shared Citrix infrastructure that Thomson Reuters operates and controls, and firms can’t install anything Thomson Reuters didn’t ship. That rules out running Truss inside it. A firm in that position moves its hosting to Verito at the same time it adopts Truss, bringing UltraTax and everything else onto one dedicated server. Verito’s side of that move is ready in as little as 24 to 48 hours once the firm’s data is released, though the release itself runs on Thomson Reuters’ timeline: much of the CS Suite’s data lives in SQL databases that only Thomson Reuters staff can export. Firms hosted anywhere else, their own server, another provider, or already on Verito, can add Truss on its own, with no hosting change required. One exception either way: Verito doesn’t support ATX, so ATX firms need a different hosting path regardless of Truss.

What Does Verito’s Hosting Add for a Firm Leaving Virtual Office CS?

Verito replaces shared Citrix with a dedicated private server per firm, 35% faster and built specifically for tax and accounting workloads. UltraTax runs alongside Truss and anything else the firm uses, QuickBooks, Drake, Lacerte, ProSeries, or CCH ProSystem fx, on one login, with support from a real person in under 60 seconds.

Virtual Office CS is multi-tenant and locked to whatever Thomson Reuters ships. Verito is single-tenant per firm, with the firm’s own dedicated resources and the ability to install what it needs, Truss included. Every environment meets IRS Publication 4557 and FTC Safeguards Rule requirements, backed by SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 audits. Pricing is transparent and month to month, instead of bundled into a quote-based license.

What Do Verito and Truss Have in Common as Founder-Owned Companies?

Both companies are still run by the people who started them. Truss was founded by Dan Pinkous and Ken Kantzer; Verito was founded by Jatin Narang and Cam Majors in 2016. Neither has taken on private equity ownership, so neither answers to an outside owner optimizing for an exit multiple instead of the product.

Jatin Narang started Verito after watching accounting firms lose hours to slow IT support, and built the company around overstaffed, overtrained support instead of the leanest possible headcount. That only works if profit gets reinvested into the product and the team instead of extracted. Truss’s own product reflects the same instinct: an un-portal clients will actually use, built by the founders still running the company, not handed down from an acquiring parent. Firms that have watched SafeSend and SurePrep change hands and prices under an acquirer are choosing two companies where the incentive still runs toward the customer.

How Do Firms Get Started With Truss and Verito?

Firms already hosted with Verito can add Truss by reaching out to their account team. Firms on Virtual Office CS moving both their hosting and their workflow, or firms leaving SafeSend or SurePrep entirely, can email [email protected]. Neither path requires an existing customer to change tax software.