Tech & Innovation Briefing · No. 01
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Tech & Innovation Briefing · No. 01 · September 2026
What the technology is doing, what the firm has already pulled off, and what the next eight days ask of us.
Deadline week
The number the firm earned together
Before anything else in this issue.
All 65 of them. Not 64, not “most of them, we’re chasing two.” Every single one, confirmed against the tracker. Whatever else the next eight days throw at us, nobody is racing a deadline they could have already cleared.
Tap a tile
Twelve tiles, twelve people, twelve real things that happened in the last three weeks. Turn one over to see it. The numbers come straight out of the trackers you all keep. Nothing here is anybody’s opinion.
0 of 12 turned over.
Tax season · use today
Clients are calling about the 15th. Here is the short, honest answer to the five questions you’ll actually get.
Yes. Every extension for the September 15 deadline is filed, all 65. If they want it in writing, the confirmation is in their client-portal folder.
The extension buys time to file the return, not time to owe. We can’t finish the return until the year’s statements and K-1s are in hand, and the 15th is the wall for the extended partnership and S-corp returns. That’s the whole reason for the document chase.
No. The extended deadline is the last one for these return types. There’s no second extension. Say it plainly and early. It’s the single most useful thing a client can hear from us this week.
Arlene has taken over the bookkeeping side of several relationships. She’s up to speed on the files. If a client sounds unsure, loop her in directly rather than relaying.
Check the portal folder before you push back. If it’s genuinely there, thank them and move on. A client who feels double-asked stops answering, and we need them answering for the next eight days.
Under the hood
Four things changed since the middle of August.
The first agreement to come out of the new automation engine went to leadership on the 28th, and the finished version was on file the next day. What used to be an afternoon of assembling boilerplate is now a review pass. Zen’s walkthrough of how she built them by hand is what taught it. The engine is her process, written down and made repeatable.
SharePoint and OneDrive went down tenant-wide for most of a Thursday afternoon. Nothing we run caused it and nothing was lost. The important call that day was the boring one: don’t recreate documents while sync is broken. Everyone held off, so there was nothing to untangle when service came back around 4:30.
There’s a new Innovation & Technology team in Teams for AI, internal software, workflows and automation. If a piece of your week is repetitive enough that you could describe it out loud in five minutes, that’s the bar for automating it. Bring it there. That’s exactly how the agreement engine started.
Client records live in Dynamics now, so look there before asking around for a phone number. Headshots for the Microsoft directory can be generated if you’d rather not sit for a photo. Several already are, including mine. And Bianca’s naming convention is the quiet reason this issue could be written at all: because every file starts with a code, the firm’s work can actually be counted.
People
Welcome
Arlene Al-os joined us last month on bookkeeping and client relations. In her first weeks she has picked up seven entity books and already closed one of them out. If a client mentions a new name on their emails, that’s her, and she’s up to speed on the files.
Say hi. She answers fast.
Farewell
Chelsea Brown wrapped up with us at the end of August to start her own practice. Leaving a steady paycheck to go hang your own shingle is the hard version, on purpose, and she’s doing it. Good luck, Chelsea. Go get ’em.
Fortuity Forward
No. 01 · September 2026 · Office of the CITO
Written by Chad Keith. Numbers pulled from the client and bookkeeping trackers as of Sunday, September 6. Spot something wrong in your tile? Tell me and I’ll fix it in No. 02. The trackers are the source, so a wrong tile usually means a row needs updating anyway.
Fortuity Inc. · Internal & confidential · Not for client distribution.