How hard is it to integrate custom workpaper tools directly with tax prep software (like CCH or UltraTax), and has anyone solved the data import problem?

One member said their team did solve direct integration from their workpaper tool into their tax software so no one had to manually touch the data, but called it painful — CCH's APIs were described as some of the worst they've encountered in any project. Another member on UltraTax noted their software doesn't even offer that option. The consensus was that these legacy tax software platforms (built decades ago) have poor or nonexistent APIs and aren't improving them, making true end-to-end automation an arduous, custom-engineering-heavy effort rather than something achievable via prompting alone.