Mastering Tax Season Capacity Challenges in Your Accounting Firm

Accounting practice owners face new apprehensions every day, from keeping on top of compliance changes to finding new ways to grow and sustain the firm. However, one of the most common problems plaguing accounting practices is the ability to find, recruit and train staff. Excessive recruitment fees further compound the issue.

Retention can also become challenging when you consider the options they have. The lure of big firms in bigger cities can be a tough act to compete with.

Not being able to find the correct staff is just as bad as hiring incompetent staff. In fact, AccountingWeb columnist Philip Fisher expresses it very accurately, “For any firm of accountants, with the exception of losing a major client, the most costly mistakes are going to relate to employees. Indeed, if you hire the wrong employee or employees, that might lead directly to the loss of a key client.”

The capacity challenge goes much deeper than just finding and retaining appropriate staff. The costs associated with employee turnover also rise considerably and, in turn, increases overhead expenses. Once a staff member leaves, the owner has to take on the cost of recruiting, hiring, onboarding and training a new employee.

In addition to these costs, the business will likely experience a drop in productivity as the new staff member gets used to their role.

Address staffing concerns with tax outsourcing

Let’s be honest, driving success in your accounting business is not possible if you don’t have enough capacity to take on work. The ability to generate output greatly influences your firm’s ability to generate higher income.

One solution that’s proved to not only address staffing issues but also a number of other concerns during the tax season is outsourcing. Working with a tax preparation outsourcing provider allows you to easily set up and scale your accounting teams (without incurring the costly overheads), so you can focus on adding more value and building deeper client relationships.

Manage the tax season rush

Like most businesses, accounting firms also follow a cycle of busy and non-busy periods. The cycles tend to coincide with accounting and business reporting deadlines such as the 31 January Self Assessment deadline.

These busy and non-busy periods can be daunting for accountants as it makes it quite difficult to maintain staff accordingly. It’s difficult to hire extra tax accountants just for a few months of the year and then let them go when the work is no longer there.

However, by outsourcing tax work, accountants actually gain this freedom. When you choose to outsource tax returns, you neutralise the pressure of having to recruit or reduce staff according to the peaks and troughs of the business year.

And this isn’t a new trend; according to a survey by IRIS, 30% of UK accountants plan to delegate work to external providers in the next five years, with that figure set to increase to 50% in ten years.

Scale for success

In order for a business to flourish, it needs to scale according to the market and its trends. An accounting practice owner should be in a position to allocate time and resources according to how they want to grow their business.

However, it’s quite difficult for them to this on their own. At some point, they will require the assistance of experts who specialise in helping accounting practices scale up their business. Accounting outsourcing companies providing tax return outsourcing services are exactly the experts to help achieve this goal.

Outsourcing specialists can take on almost all accounting-related tasks, from tax preparation and bookkeeping to management accounts and VAT. By taking on these responsibilities, it frees up the practice owner to focus on scaling up the firm as they see fit. In fact, owners can even get advice from the outsourcing provider on how best to scale up.

A reliable tax outsourcing firm would have been in business for some time and would have most likely already addressed the same concerns for a previous client. This type of information is priceless when planning the same for your practice.

Overcome your capacity challenges

The beauty of outsourcing is not only reducing overhead costs but also building a partnership that strengthens and supports your accounting practice and helps you achieve your business goals.

Establishing outsourcing as a strategic part of your accounting practice lets you tap into a massive talent pool of qualified personnel, who can be hired at an economical rate. In fact, most accounting firms that outsource tax preparation to QXAS are able to reduce costs (by up to 50% per tax return) by complementing in-house workforce with highly trained offshore tax professionals.

If you are an accounting practice owner looking for a solution to capacity constraints, reach out to us at +44 208-146-0808 or book a free consultation here.