4 Tips To Keep Your Sanity This Busy Tax Season

It’s that time of the year again. While everyone else is getting ready to celebrate Christmas and the New Year, accountants in the UK are locked away at their desks, one email away from a full-fledged panic. The 2017-18 tax season is breathing down your neck, and you still haven’t received paperwork from your clients, let alone filing their taxes.

Take a breath. Everything will be okay. It’s 12 December today, and if you follow this advice you should sail through the tax season.

Prepare your clients

Want to save some time and a headache? Help your clients. Make the process more streamlined for them. Consider the following:

Simplify the collection of your clients’ tax data. Send them a checklist detailing all the paperwork you need to file their tax return accurately and on time this year. Start scheduling appointments as soon as they complete the paperwork. This will not only help you manage your time effectively but also lock down on clients that have a history of late tax returns.

Helping your clients prepare for the tax season will save you time and stress making the whole process more fun for both of you.

Plan ahead

Tax time is stressful – sleep-deprived nights and coffee-fuelled days make up most of the season. However, by planning ahead you can take control.

Start by communicating with your clients on a regular basis. It will facilitate the tax planning process and ensure things are dealt with in the early time of the season. As noted earlier, send out tax return checklists and information requests as the season gets nearer. Consider establishing your own ‘due date’ for clients – this may help reduce the number of last-minute filers.

Stabilise staffing

Ensuring you have stabilised staffing for the busy season is also essential. Staffing is an issue and you are not alone. Research shows that finding and retaining staff is amongst the biggest issues facing accountants, and this shortage is expected to have the biggest impact on accounting practices over the next decade. To help set up your practice apart from the competition and attract high quality candidates, consider rewarding your in-house staff more client-facing work that enables them to provide tech-based solutions to your business clients.

Engage an outsourcing partner

If you are struggling with staff retention and productivity in your practice, chances are you have a workload problem. The right outsourcing partner should help you deal with the rush for tax returns in December and January.  They will help you master tax season capacity challenges, turnaround tax returns faster, increase profitability by 50% profits per return, and file with 100% accuracy and timeliness.

However, for some reason, struggling accountants are consistently hesitant to seek external help. They push their in-house teams to work longer hours to cope with the additional demands, causing staff to burnout. People are your most valued asset, and protecting them from fatigue is an important part of keeping your customers happy.

Looking for a way to beat the rush for tax returns this Christmas? Call our offshore accounting specialist on 0845 838 2452 or click here to contact us.