CCH Engagement Essentials exports can now do more in one step. A single Essentials file can populate your trial balance and apply your tax-mapping template at once — and you can import many clients together in a single bulk run.
What is the Engagement Essentials import?
CCH ProSystem fx Engagement can export an "Engagement Essentials" workbook that holds a client's accounts and tax grouping in a "Tax Trial Balance" sheet. Tallyfor reads that file to set up your binder's trial balance and tax categories.
A single file now populates the trial balance and the template
Newer Engagement Essentials exports carry the trial-balance amounts in the same "Tax Trial Balance" sheet as the tax mapping — the current-year balances live in the "TAX BALANCE" column. Previously, importing an Essentials file was template-only: it applied tax categories onto a trial balance you had already loaded. Now a single Essentials file does both — it populates the trial balance and then applies the tax-mapping template.
What this means in practice:
Balances are read from the current-year "TAX BALANCE" column.
Each account's declared type (Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue/Income, Expense) is read from the file and used to place the amount on the correct debit or credit side. This means accounts with similar numbers but different types — for example a realized currency gain (income) versus a fee (expense) — are classified correctly, rather than guessed from the account number.
The tax-mapping template is applied after the trial balance is created.
How to import a single Essentials file
Create or open the binder.
Go to Importer → Engagement → Essentials, or open Apply Template → Engagement Essentials. Both entry points run the same import.
Drop in the Essentials file. Tallyfor populates the trial balance from the balance column and applies your tax categories.
Bulk importing Engagement Essentials files
Please request access for Bulk import.
You can import many clients at once with the Bulk Engagement Essentials importer. Point it at your set of Essentials files and Tallyfor creates a binder for each client and applies the template.
Binder credits
The bulk importer respects your firm's binder-credit balance, so a large import can no longer create more binders than your plan allows:
The importer shows your firm's available binder credits before you run it.
If you have no credits available, the run is blocked.
If you have fewer credits than the number of clients selected, Tallyfor imports up to your available credits and tells you how many were skipped.
Each binder created in a bulk run draws down your credit balance, exactly like creating a binder one at a time.
Firms on unlimited or no-billing plans are never gated.
Form detection and per-row errors
Tallyfor infers the tax form for each client from the folder it sits in, so a mixed set of clients imports to the right form.
If a file can't be matched to a template, the importer flags the problem on that specific row, so you can fix it without stopping the whole run.
Older Essentials files still work
If you import an older, template-only Essentials export (one without a balance column), Tallyfor applies the tax template only — the same behavior as before. In that case, load the trial balance separately.
Need help?
If an Essentials file doesn't import the way you expect, contact our support team and include the file so we can take a look.