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From 6 Weeks to 6 Days: Carpenter Streamlines Tax with Corptax

Covering 60 worldwide locations, Carpenter Co.’s three-person tax team was no stranger to pressure—but their legacy tax software pushed them to the limit. The team relied heavily on offline Excel workpapers, manually keying apportionment and taxable income data into a system that limited access to one user at a time. If two or three team members tried to work on the same entity for different states, one had to wait—creating constant bottlenecks and long nights. As a result, state filings lagged four to six weeks behind the federal return, collaboration was nearly impossible, and every cycle demanded tedious validation checks just to trust the numbers.

Disconnected processes also created major pain points in international and provision work. Separate spreadsheets for foreign entities and annualized rather than actual data at provision time led to inconsistencies and extra re-entry between systems. Manual tie-outs between returns and provision delayed every review and left the team unsure their results were accurate until the very end.

As Stephanie Jones, Manager, N.A. Income Tax, explained, “We spent so much time just making sure the numbers were right, we had no confidence until the very end—and by then, we were already behind.”

Solution

Carpenter implemented CSC Corptax^® U.S. and U.S. International Compliance, Provision, and Office to replace spreadsheets and disconnected systems with a single, integrated platform. The software immediately enabled real-time collaboration, automated data flow between compliance and provision, and end-to-end transparency across all entities.

With guidance from CSC Corptax^® Professional Services, the team configured the system to their specific needs—building knowledge to manage and enhance their environment independently long after go-live.

Using Corptax Office, they rebuilt their foreign tax packages so data for Forms 5471, 8858, and 8865 flowed directly into Corptax, automatically populating calculations across entities. They also took an innovative step—leveraging Corptax U.S. International Compliance to perform international provision calculations. Using the same data and mappings, they produced reports directly from the compliance module, giving reviewers and auditors full transparency and confidence in results, while cutting review time dramatically.

They further enhanced efficiency by updating provision mappings to accept actuals rather than estimates, ending the need to reenter data between systems. Built-in citations and diagnostics simplified internal and external reviews. When auditors questioned R&D apportionment, the team pulled the regulatory reference directly from Corptax to validate the result.

Trial balances and apportionment data now map smoothly between compliance and provision, creating consistent, audit-ready reports and eliminating manual reconciliation.

An added bonus: Corptax^® Professional Services and Corptax^® Support team members were always available to reinforce the team’s success, providing same-day assistance and often identifying additional time-savers along the way.

“Everyone at Corptax^® was so responsive and we love the system. The software is totally logical and works exactly how you’d expect. It’s helped us in so many ways!” said Jones.

Results

The CFO praised the team’s accuracy and speed following a standout filing season. Automation and connected workflows transformed Carpenter’s process from stressful and reactive to fast, assured, and controlled—combining real-time collaboration, automated calculations, and integrated data to:

• Cut filing time from ~6 weeks to a few days. Carpenter filed their federal return before October 15 and ~30 state returns a few days later—something unthinkable before Corptax^®.
• Boost collaboration and confidence. All users now work in Corptax^® simultaneously, filing faster and reviewing together with complete trust in results.
• Achieve accuracy across every entity. Automated templates now push data straight from foreign packages into returns, complete with diagnostics and authoritative references.
• Resolve audit questions in minutes vs. days. Built-in transparency and immediate data access let the team confirm calculations instantly and respond to auditors and internal stakeholders quickly.
• Eliminate rekeying and reconciliations. Shared data between compliance and provision ensures consistency and accuracy across every entity.
• Free time for strategic work. With automation handling prep and tie-outs, the team focuses on acquisitions, audits, and executive analysis.
• Build a scalable, future-ready platform. System automation and integrated data built a solid foundation for their upcoming BEPS and Pillar 2 implementation.

Mid-season, Carpenter’s new system faced an unexpected stress test: a major acquisition added 30 new returns just before the filing deadline as one team member prepared to take a temporary leave. Thanks to Corptax^® automation and shared access, the remaining team filed every new return on time without adding outside help. The experience proved how scalable and resilient their new environment had become, even under extraordinary pressure.

As Stephanie Jones sums up, “This season felt completely different. We filed so much faster and finally had time to focus on analysis and improvement instead of just keeping up.”

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From 800 Hours to Minutes: NextEra Collaborates with Corptax to Power through New Credit Rules

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) drove significant revisions to 2023 credit forms, adding new reporting requirements expanding eligibility for clean-energy tax credits and the ability to transfer credits to 3rd party taxpayers. The changes significantly increased compliance complexity, requiring companies to track and report every credit sold—by facility, credit type, and buyer—across multiple IRS forms (8835, 3468, and 3800).

For NextEra Energy, the nation’s largest renewable-energy producer, the scale of reporting increased dramatically. In 2023, more than 13,000 facilities generated credits, resulting in over 700,000 individual data points to report in multiple sections of the affected forms.

As NextEra’s reporting volume surged, their process began pushing system limits; existing tools simply weren’t built for that scale. The team used enhanced form grids to copy and paste data, but each batch was slow to load and hard to align. Form layouts and location-code limits added more complexity, forcing extra manual checks to ensure accuracy.

With executive leadership closely tracking the new credit sales program—and transactions expected to rise fivefold in 2024—the team began looking for a more automated, scalable approach.

“We could see the process would become unsustainable as volumes grew,” said Allison Browning, Manager, Federal Compliance. “We knew Corptax could help us find a better way.”

Solution

NextEra and Corptax partnered to evolve a new method for managing credit-form data. After raising the issue during a CONNECT 2024 roundtable, the NextEra team collaborated with Corptax Development and Support teams to prototype and test an import-template process designed specifically for clean-energy credit reporting.

While Corptax refined the new import-template process, NextEra developed an automated pipeline linking its Business Warehouse data to Corptax. Using Alteryx, the data was reformatted to match the template structure, enabling fast, reliable imports through Corptax Data Import functionality.

“The first time we hit the button and everything loaded in minutes, we couldn’t believe it,” said Browning. “The Corptax team was incredibly responsive—we refined the process together and it worked flawlessly.”

Before loading, the team reviewed data in Excel to verify identifiers and date logic. After import, they used Corptax reports to confirm clean results. The new approach replaced hours of manual work with instant, reliable uploads—bringing a new level of speed, accuracy, and confidence to every filing. What started as a proof-of-concept became a model process now available to other clients managing high-volume filings.

Results

The collaboration delivered measurable efficiency and long-term scalability:

• Reduced manual effort by more than 800 hours, transforming a multi-week task into minutes per upload
• Scaled from 13,000 facilities in 2023 to 45,000 in 2024 with no additional staff
• Delivered audit-ready accuracy under executive-level visibility
• Freed time for strategic analysis instead of manual data handling

“Working closely with Corptax, we built a repeatable, scalable process that keeps pace with our growth,” Browning said. “It’s fast, reliable, and ready for what comes our way.”

The joint effort not only advanced NextEra’s automation goals—it helped shape a new import-template capability now simplifying reporting for Corptax clients across multiple industries.

TEGNA Navigates Election-Year Revenue Swings with Corptax State Planner

For TEGNA Inc., a media company with 64 local TV stations and two radio stations across 51 U.S. markets, advertising revenue is anything but predictable. Political cycles drive sharp fluctuations from year to year: even-numbered years bring heavy local and national campaign spending, while every fourth year, presidential races amplify the surge. Battleground states shift with every election cycle, causing revenue, and the apportionment factors tied to it, to swing dramatically from state to state.

Those fluctuations made state estimates increasingly difficult to manage. Historically, TEGNA calculated state extension payments using prior-year apportionment factors. The method worked in stable years, but as revenue and apportionment shifts became more extreme, it grew too risky.

“We had a presidential cycle where Maine ad revenue shot up unexpectedly,” said Courtney King, Sr. Manager, Tax Compliance. “We underpaid, proving our traditional approach needed to change.”

Adding to the challenge, TEGNA’s estimation process relied on large, interconnected Excel workbooks—one for federal and another for state calculations—with formulas growing increasingly fragile over time. Each state required different rates, apportionment adjustments, and quarterly percentages. “Every time something changed, we had to check whether a formula still worked,” said King. “It was easy to miss a surtax or rate update.”

With a small team and tight deadlines, there was little time for review or corrections. Each update meant rekeying data and rebuilding calculations from scratch. “We needed something that could model the differences across all 50 states without the manual effort and risk,” said King.

Solution

TEGNA implemented CSC Corptax^® State Planner to automate its state estimate and extension process. The company already used Corptax for provision and compliance, so expanding into state planning was a natural step. Implementation support from Corptax Professional Services helped configure the system for TEGNA’s multiple unitary groups and unique apportionment structures. The team ran both systems in parallel for one quarter, then fully transitioned to State Planner the next.

State Planner now handles all state estimate calculations in one place. It integrates with CSC Corptax^® Compliance, automatically pulling existing data from the database. The tool lets TEGNA mix prior-year and current-year inputs by state—so users can, for example, use prior-year property values for one state while

applying current-year sales for another. “That flexibility is huge for us,” said King. “Election years are so unpredictable, we need to model different hypotheticals fast.”

The system automatically calculates state taxable income, apportionment factors, estimated taxes, and payment spreads by quarter, while identifying the lowest tax required to avoid underpayment penalties. When TEGNA modifies a revenue assumption or apportionment factor, State Planner instantly recalculates results—no spreadsheet editing or formula checks required.

Built-in integrations also improved collaboration. Using CSC Corptax^® Office, the team tracks quarterly payments and shares liability data directly with its co-source return preparer. They even apply a five percent cushion to extension payments for conservative coverage. “Now we can plan and post in one system,” King said. “It’s fast, accurate, and transparent.”

Results

TEGNA’s results were immediate and measurable:

Reduced shortfall risk and achieved near-perfect accuracy. State Planner’s real-time modeling replaced estimates based on outdated factors, ensuring filings landed right on target—even in volatile election years. In one key state, the recalculation nearly mirrored the final return, confirming the new process worked exactly as intended.

“That accuracy gave us confidence we’d been missing,” King said. “We could finally trust our estimates.”

Achieved significant time savings. What once took ~40 hours of spreadsheet setup now takes about a day in State Planner. Hidden formula errors are gone, and recalculations that used to take hours now happen in seconds. “It’s not just faster—it’s cleaner,” said King. “We spend our time reviewing results, not debugging formulas.”

Built confidence through transparency. State Planner provides instant visibility across all of TEGNA’s entities, giving the team a clear view of how spikes in sales—like political ad booms in battleground states—affect state liabilities. With everything centralized and automated, the team can validate results at a glance and plan with confidence.

Empowered a lean tax team to manage complexity. With a small tax team, TEGNA now handles complex, high-volume state estimates confidently and independently. The centralized system also strengthens collaboration with outside preparers and creates a foundation for proactive planning in future election cycles.

“State Planner gives us control,” said King. “We know what’s driving the numbers, and we can respond quickly. That’s a big deal when the ground is always shifting.”

By adopting Corptax State Planner, TEGNA transformed its state estimate process from manual and uncertain to automated and precise. The team gained accuracy, saved days of work each cycle, and built a scalable process ready for the next surge in political advertising, wherever it may occur.

From Manual Adjustments to True Analysis: Williams Expands Automation and Insight

Williams’ income tax team had two challenging goals for modernizing quickly: reducing manual effort and maintaining strong controls while moving to a paperless environment. When an analyst departed just as Form 1120 work was set to begin, the team saw an opportunity to reassess their workflows and identify new ways to drive even more efficiency.

The primary constraint was not multiple ERPs—it was the time required to gather, print, organize, and prepare adjustment reports for analysis. Workpapers and templates were well managed and compliant, but assembling materials for review demanded significant manual effort. Streamlining these steps, particularly through batch printing and automation, would give analysts more time to focus on higher-value analysis.

As Williams’ Senior Tax Analyst Leslie Hagelberg put it, “We wanted our analysts to have more time to actually analyze—that was the objective.”

Solution

A Corptax client since 1996, Williams has continually evolved its processes over nearly three decades of use. This time, a focused automation effort to streamline adjustments grew into an enterprise-wide process improvement—enhancing control, visibility, and analytical focus across provision and compliance.

Data quality and standardized mapping. The team standardized GL-to-Corptax mappings at the account/sub-account level and tax-sensitized data to enable consistent downstream automation. Using the Corptax Data Import Connector, they reformatted four key fields (account, sub, FERC, intercompany) within the import process, allowing data to enter Corptax cleanly and uniformly. This visibility into standardized data ensured that data entering the system was accurate, traceable, and ready for analysis. Hagelberg noted, “you simply set up the connector and forget it”—as once configured, the routine required little ongoing intervention.

Automated adjustments at scale. With consistent mapping in place, Williams built a single set of automated adjustments run by entity groups for both provision and compliance—replacing one-off execution and manual printing with centralized, batch-run automation affording greater control and visibility. Reviewers could now see every adjustment across entities in one place. New investment-level profiles removed manual steps in investment-level balance-sheet tie-outs, clarifying partnership activity and improving accuracy and review efficiency.

Platform and Services support. An Oracle Cloud conversion prompted a remap and cleanup initiative to further strengthen data governance and control. CSC Corptax^® Professional Services facilitated large-scale entity code changes and helped configure import routines, minimizing administrative overhead during the transition. Williams also submitted a product enhancement request related to automated adjustments output/printing, which Corptax^® implemented, further enhancing transparency for Williams. This work was part of the Blue Skies cloud conversion project and was recognized with a Champion Award for its impact.

Process discipline. The team initially ran legacy and new processes in parallel to verify results and build confidence in the new approach. Next, they leveraged variance screens to monitor multiple ledger imports in real time. This allowed them to gain visibility into differences, focus on the drivers behind the variances, and resolve exceptions faster.

Leslie Hagelberg captures it best, “Our analysts can finally focus on what matters—true analysis.”

Results

Automation delivered more than speed—it empowered sharper insights and better decisions at every stage of reporting.

• Automated ~90% of adjustments. Coverage climbed from ~750 (early year) to 1,400+ automated adjustments, delivering compounding time savings.
• Saved 58 hours per cycle (vs. 31 in year one). Quantified efficiency increased from ~31 hours to ~58 hours as automation scaled, plus additional time saved by eliminating one-off tasks and reprinting.
• Preserved capacity during peak periods. Automation effectively offset a lost headcount at Form 1120 kickoff, stabilizing throughput without replacing staff.
• Detected variances much faster. Repeated ledger imports (e.g., 7+ times during year-end close) combined with variance screens accelerated identification of changes and reduced rework.
• Improved tax-basis balance sheet. A recent automation win removed manual steps in categorizing partnership book income by investment. By leveraging imported GL data, Williams now reverses income at the partnership level—providing clearer visibility in the tax-basis balance sheet and supporting ongoing efforts to streamline processes and improve transparency.
• Allowed analysts to perform higher-value work. Time shifted from clerical preparation to substantive analysis—improving engagement and quality.
• Received recognition. The initiative earned internal recognition (Champion Award) and demonstrated how Williams’ feedback to Corptax^® led to product enhancements that benefit all users.

Williams proved that even long-time Corptax^® clients can discover new opportunities to automate, accelerate, and refine their processes. By challenging “same as last year” thinking, the team proved how continuous improvement can deliver lasting results.