Friday, January 24, 2025

Building GPTs to 10x Your Efficiency

At the end of 2023, OpenAI announced GPTs - custom mini-apps built on ChatGPT that you can make yourself for specific tasks.

Although they had a splashy launch, it's been relatively quiet since. Not many people know about GPTs.

But used right, they can make a big difference in how you use ChatGPT as a tax preparer. So here's a quick breakdown.

What are GPTs?

GPTs are mini-apps built on ChatGPT. In essence, they're a way to package unique prompts into a simple-to-use app made for a specific use case.

With GPTs, you define exactly how ChatGPT will engage with the user. You preload it with detailed instructions, give it context, and put guidelines in place.

You can make your own GPT if you have a Pro plan or use others' in the GPT marketplace.

For example, there's a logo maker GPT. It immediately asks you what your logo is about. You answer. It follows up with questions about color palette and complexity level.

Then it gives you an initial output image generated by DALLE (OpenAI's image generation model). You can follow up again and ask for tweaks.

Because the GPT was made for logo generation, it has all the context and instructions to create logos better than just a raw prompt in ChatGPT, "Make me a logo about XYZ."

^^^ I found a few tax-related GPTs with a quick search on the marketplace.

Why use GPTs in your firm?

  1. No repetitive prompting
  2. Guide how you or your team uses ChatGPT for tax work
  3. Better quality responses
  4. More controlled use of ChatGPT - for your team or your clients

How to make a GPT in <5 mins

Making a GPT is insanely easy. First, you need a Pro plan or a Team plan.

Once you know generally what your GPT will do, you give it all the context it needs, specific instructions, and specific the output it should give (image, code, text, formatting etc).

You can make your GPT public or just share it with your team. OpenAI has detailed instructions here.

How to use GPTs in your practice

You should consider making a GPT for any tasks or questions you find yourself frequently asking ChatGPT.

For example:

  • Engagement Letter Generator: Create customized engagement letters for clients based on their needs and filing status.
  • Staff Onboarding GPT: feed in all your SOPs and onboarding materials and give your new hires a unique way to learn about your firm and get familiar with your processes. Whenever they have a question about your processes, instead of asking you, they can ask the GPT.
  • Error Checker GPT: Cross-check simple client-provided information across uploaded documents (e.g., SSNs, EINs, income figures) for accuracy and completeness
  • Tax Code Explainer GPT: A GPT trained to explain specific tax code sections or deductions in layman’s terms, formatted as an email to send to clients immediately with one copy paste.
  • Client Facing FAQ GPT: All those pesky questions your clients have about your firm works or how their return is doing... Put all the answers in a GPT and point them to it. Let them ask all they want while you sit back and relax. Ok, maybe not relax. But you know what I mean.
  • 1040 Analysis GPT: Gives tax saving strategy ideas based on someone's 1040 return.

Make sure to empower your team to make their own GPTs. Whenever they find themselves using ChatGPT for a specific job a lot, make a GPT out of it. Hone it. Refine it. Share it with the rest of your team.

And please share your GPTs with me as well - we'd love to shout them out the rest of our tax pro community!

P.S. this email series is by CleanUpBuddy.ai, which helps you turn a tangle of bank statements into a clean P&L in under a minute using AI.

It's great for those Schedule C clients without clean books. You know who I'm talking about. Feel free to check out our site to see how we can help you reclaim hours of manual work this tax rush without outsourcing or hiring.

We also invite you to join our Discourse community for other bookkeepers & tax pros using CleanUpBuddy here. We'll add more content there as well as announce events, special promos, and more.

Thanks for tuning in, happy to help with any questions. Just drop a reply.

Touch base next week,

~Toni, CEO of CleanUpBuddy.ai

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