With tax season now officially behind us, as an accountant who has been super busy for many months, your temptation might be to not think about taxes until next year. Doing that for a few weeks is healthy, in fact.  But you know in the back of your mind that since everything is still fresh in your memory, now is the right time to review how it went for your firm and identify what can be improved before the next busy period.

Most accountants will discover that the 2018 tax season has taught them one very important lesson, you need to be more efficient. The key to running a more efficient accounting firm is process improvement. Now that the 2018 tax season is over, this is a great time to explore ideas to speed up the way every task that is performed during tax season is executed.

Consider Ways to Improve Every Process

tax season

Think about the number of times each step was repeated during the 2018 tax season.  Search for ways to eliminate unnecessary steps, and make sure these steps are followed consistently throughout your team.  When you have identified the sequence of tasks for each process, you can compare and uncover where staff has innovated to make a particular job run smoother. Perhaps a particular innovation can improve the process not only for that client but for all similar jobs across the practice.

"Make sure the discussion is around today’s process and not what was written down three years ago or what the manager thinks the process is. Discuss what the doer actually does. The discussion has to be real if you want to improve." Jody Padar, New Vision CPA Group

When you have documented the ideal process, look at technology options that may provide additional improvements. Take advantage of the quieter period you are in now to explore all your options. Even if it takes two to three months for staff to get comfortable with a new system or app, your focus should be on what you can do now to make next tax season better for everyone. Will the initial investment be quickly repaid by significant gains in efficiency down the track?

"Technology is changing our practice faster than we could ever have imagined. The best tool three years ago, or even six months ago, may not be the best one now. We are constantly on the lookout for better ways to solve problems and alleviate pain points." Megan Genest Tarnow, The Mobius Group

Do You Need to Automate More Tasks? 

If you consider it in the proper light, accountants in 2018 and beyond after it easier than ever before. Automation has been a game changer and will continue to do so.

If you have accounting tasks related to taxes that you are on the fence about automating, now is the time, post-2018 tax season, to make necessary changes. This will give your team more time to serve more client and enable them to produce higher-quality work with less late nights and weekends playing catch-up.

Explore industry-specific solutions that:

  • Automate non-value adding processes such as data entry of suppliers’ invoices, debtor follow-up and raising invoices
  • Automatically assign tasks to clients, and send them gentle reminders if they forget
  • Automate aspects of your onboarding process such as preparing proposals, generating engagement letters and creating work
  • Automatically collect data from client bank feeds
  • Provide visibility throughout your team to avoid double-handling tasks and to ensure everyone knows who is working on what
  • Assist you in standardizing your firm’s processes

Before next tax season arrives, identify the issues you experienced during this tax season that your firm is weak in.  Of course, every new tax season that rolls around will present you and your accounting firm with issues you did not foresee. That is simply the nature of life. Every tax season will produce surprises that you cannot plan for. But by taking the time now to identify and implement ways to make your processes more efficient, you will ensure that next time is more painless than the last. A determination for constant improvement is something that the most successful accounting firms all have in common.

Another thing MoneyThumb hopes you didn't have to learn the hard way during the 2018 tax season is that using our PDF Financial File Converters is a smart idea and a huge time saver when it comes to doing clients taxes. If you are an accountant but are not a MoneyThumb client yet, take a few minutes to check out the best financial file converters available anywhere. You will definitely be thanking us next tax season.