If you run a bookkeeping practice or have clients who need a tax partner, there are two tracks to work alongside the practice behind Outpost Cloud — Geiger Tax & Accounting. One is a lighter-touch referral relationship. The other is a full seat inside the Outpost Cloud environment, with tax preparation as a back-office resource for your clients. Your clients stay yours either way.
Some bookkeepers just want a reliable tax preparer to send clients to. Others want to actually work inside a shared QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise environment with tax support behind them. Both are real relationships — they’re just different sizes.
You keep running your bookkeeping practice exactly the way you run it today. When a client needs a tax preparer — or a client you can’t serve anymore needs a home — you send them to the practice. No Outpost Cloud access is required, and there’s no change to how you work day to day.
You get a full seat in the Outpost Cloud environment and work in QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise alongside the practice. Your clients’ books live on the same managed infrastructure. Tax preparation is available as a back-office resource for your clients’ returns — you don’t have to build that capacity yourself. Your clients are still your clients.
The affiliate track is the deeper of the two. Here’s what that looks like in practice.
You log into the same Outpost Cloud environment the practice uses. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise runs as a native Windows application through your session. Same speed, same reporting, same feel as a local install.
Unlimited company files on one QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise license. Your clients’ books live on managed, backed-up infrastructure with 45-day restore history. No server for you to run and no backups for you to remember.
When your clients need returns prepared — 1040s, S-corps, partnerships, LLCs — the practice handles that side of the relationship. You stay in the bookkeeping lane. Neither of us tries to do the other’s job.
This isn’t a buyout and it isn’t a lead-share arrangement. The bookkeeping engagement is between you and your client. The practice doesn’t solicit your bookkeeping clients for bookkeeping work.
The practices stay separate. Your firm is your firm. The practice behind Outpost Cloud is its own. Your clients engage with you for bookkeeping. When those clients need tax work, they engage the practice directly, and you keep the bookkeeping relationship. Nothing about the affiliate track dilutes your ownership of your book.
The fit is usually obvious in a short conversation. Some bookkeepers want the deeper integration — tax capacity behind them and shared infrastructure. Others just want a reliable tax preparer to refer to. Both work.
Same two tracks, laid out next to each other.
| Referral Partner | Affiliated Bookkeeper | |
|---|---|---|
| Outpost Cloud seat | Not included | Included |
| QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise access | Through your own tools | Through the shared environment |
| Tax back-office support | Client engages the practice directly | Built into the relationship |
| Client ownership | Your clients stay yours | Your clients stay yours |
| Commitment level | Light — referrals only | Deeper — shared practice infrastructure |
| Who it fits | Bookkeepers who already have their stack dialed in | Bookkeepers who want tax capacity and shared infrastructure |
Which track fits is usually obvious in a short conversation. 15 minutes tells us whether either track makes sense for you.