The walkthrough — every screen, every person, every minute
No abstractions. Below is the exact sequence — who types what, what the payee receives, and what lands on your desk at the end. Total staff effort: about 15 minutes the first time, ~5 minutes per payment after that. The tax analysis in the middle: zero of your minutes.
Diane · Controller's office · day one
Seven fields, all things Diane knows by heart or has on the last 1042 the university filed. This is the entire institutional setup — there is no implementation project, no consultant, no training contract. When she clicks save, every future payment inherits these values automatically.
⏱ ~10 minutes, one timeThese appear in boxes 12a–12i of every 1042-S you file. You'll never enter them again.
Setup is done. Nothing else ever happens at the university level.
Maria · Political Science department · the day the talk is booked
Maria invited Dr. Sharma to give a guest lecture. She knows three things: who, what for, and how much. That's all Lectern asks her — notice there is not a single tax field on this screen. The moment she clicks send, Dr. Sharma gets the email in step 3 and Maria goes back to her day.
⏱ ~3 minutes per paymentLectern will contact the payee for everything tax-related. You'll be notified at each step.
The instant Maria clicks, Lectern emails Dr. Sharma. Nobody chases anybody.
Dr. Sharma · before she even books her flight
This is the exact email. One link, plain language, no IRS vocabulary. She completes it before she travels — so if anything's missing (a treaty claim that needs a US tax number, a document to bring), everyone knows weeks ahead, not at the reimbursement desk.
⏱ ~8 minutes — her time, not your staff'sDear Dr. Sharma,
Coastal State College is preparing your $2,000 honorarium for the guest lecture on April 14. To pay you correctly under US tax rules, we need a few details — it takes about 8 minutes, and you can do it from anywhere.
Complete your payment details →You'll be asked about your visa, your time in the US, and your tax residency — in plain language. Your answers determine the correct US tax withholding and the documents we'll prepare for you. Questions? Just reply to this email.
She clicks the button and sees this — real questions from the actual product:
Are you a US citizen or green-card holder?
What visa will you use for this visit?
Which country do you live in and pay taxes in?
India
How many days have you been physically in the US this calendar year?
10 days (counter with help text — transit days don't count)
In the last 6 months, have you accepted honoraria from more than 5 US institutions?
Do you have a US tax number (SSN or ITIN)?
No problem — without one, the standard 30% rate applies. If a tax treaty could reduce it, we'll tell you exactly what getting one would save you.
The moment she submits, Diane and Maria are notified: documentation complete.
Maria (or AP) · the day the payment is issued
After the lecture, Maria confirms the payment date and final amount. Before anything can be paid, Lectern runs the compliance gate — if documentation were missing or expired, the payment would be blocked here, not discovered at 1042-S season. Today, everything checks out.
⏱ ~2 minutesDiane · reviews in minutes, because the work is shown
This is the deliverable — the thing that used to take three weeks of email. Every value below is computed and cited: the rate, the amounts, the exact 1042-S box codes, the deposit deadline. Diane reviews it the way she'd review a colleague's worksheet, not rebuild it from scratch.
$600.00 withheld (30%)Dr. Sharma receives $1,400.00 · IRC §1441(a)
Aug 15, 2026Monthly schedule · EFTPS · Form 1042 liability
Enter the supplier invoice exactly as today — amount, withholding, and spend category are on the packet. Attach the PDF as backup documentation.
Print or save the packet to the payment record. If auditors ever ask "how was this rate determined?", the answer is stapled to the payment.
Every 1042-S box value for every payment, computed all year long — your annual filing becomes a review, not an archaeology dig.
Every guest payment documented, defensible, and done the same week — instead of a three-week email chain that ends in a guess.
Every determination shows its work — day counts, treaty article, IRC citation — and your tax office approves it. The logic is audited against Pub 515/519 and the current 1042-S instructions.
~10 minutes once, then ~5 staff minutes per payment. The payee does their own 8 minutes. Nobody attends a training.
Your first real payment, the same week you sign up. No implementation project, no integration required to start.
Stress test the product
Everything below runs against the live determination engine — the same ~200-rule system your payments would use, not a canned demo. Pick one of the cases tax offices actually lose sleep over, watch every check it runs, and compare the output to what your office would have decided. Then describe your own hairiest payment at the bottom and run that too.
Describe a real payment in plain English — who the payee is, their country and visa, time in the US, what you're paying and how much. We'll translate it into the engine's inputs (and tell you every assumption we made), run it, and show the determination.
Live engine run
Bring one real case from last year — we'll run it live, next to what your office decided. That's the whole demo.