While the entire year is often busy for reputable accounting and CPA firms, nothing comes close to the busyness and burden of tax season. Fortunately, there are a number of simple but effective ways to help your firm stay on track and not lose their minds during this particularly stressful time of year, some of which can be found below:
Always be one step ahead
It can often take days or even weeks to get a clients tax paperwork organized and analyzed in time for filing deadlines, but there are a couple of things you can do to try and stay one step ahead:
- Gather all required documents from customers well in advance, with the help of polite, continual, and timely reminders
- Make your clients aware of the importance of being prepared during tax filing time
- Be organized and hyper-efficient with client documents to make sure you don’t miss any important information or misplace any paperwork
Consider outsourcing some of your requirements
This is a fantastically cost-effective and convenient way to reduce the tax burden felt by everyone in the office when tax season swings by. Why not hire a team of professional accountants working for an outsourced service provider, to help you manage anything and everything you don’t have the time to do yourself? Following your processes and sticking to rigid deadlines, they can help ease the burden at tax time, while enabling you to continue providing your clients with an outstanding service.
Make the best use of technology and digitization
Throughout much of the United States, tax preparation and filing has been digitized, but certain advances in technology can also help reduce the workload of accounting firms. Accounting and tax tools can help you do the following:
- Digitally manage client details, financial details, and documents digitally
- Manage client accounts
- Provide accounting services
- Carry out accounting reconciliation
- Generate reports
- Analyze business and costs
Leveraging such technology can help you stay one step ahead of your competitors, while giving your clients timely tax advice and support.
Have processes that are well-defined
Streamlining your workload, particularly during tax season, is essential if you’re to maintain your high levels of service and client satisfaction, and all processes that you use should be well-defined and documented so that everyone in the office is on the same page.
Be ready for potentially complex or challenging cases
Even if you do outsource some of your tax and bookkeeping requirements, it’s still a good idea to try and anticipate any upcoming challenges or risks that have presented themselves while reviewing client documents or circumstances. By tackling any issues as soon as they arise, you can keep a clearer head when managing tax season, and limit the burden.
Stay focussed and professional at all times
Maintaining a professional attitude and strong focus at all times can help you better deal with the pressures of tax season, and here are some top tips for doing exactly that:
- Set goals that the entire team can achieve
- Be polite but firm when dealing with colleagues, employees or clients
- Follow up all work closely and let your team know what you expect of them
- Be as flexible as possible without losing focus
- Recognize and reward good work from your team
These top tips have helped saved many an accounting firm from being swallowed up and spat back out by the dreaded tax monster, who unfortunately, pays us all a visit at the same time every year!
To keep on top of your tax responsibilities while maintaining your sanity, consider outsourcing some of your requirements for added peace of mind.