How to Eliminate Busy Season Burnout

It’s that time of year again. CPAs and accountants all know what I’m referring to here. Across the country, firms and practices are knee-deep in the most stressful, exhausting part of the year, with endless cans of energy drinks and cups of coffee at the ready. I’m talking about tax season.

Every year CPAs and firms make the promise to themselves that this year will be different. This year won’t be like the last. While the sentiment is admirable - and necessary - inevitably, most firms find themselves falling back into old habits of unsustainable work hours, last-minute filing requests, chasing clients for outstanding data, and compounding stress and exhaustion that they carry with them throughout the year.?

Most firms persevere and push through it because they know it’s an inevitability, a part of the job spec of being an accountant and running a successful firm or practice - clients all need their tax returns filed and submitted around the same time.?

And while it’s unrealistic to think that this time shouldn’t come with any amount of pressure, simply resigning you and your team to several months of non-stop overtime, extended hours, and stress is not a viable long-term solution either. Eventually, you and your team are going to take a hit from the nonstop exhaustion, resulting in burnout that ends up costing you far more than anything you could recuperate in revenue during that period.?

So what’s the best solution for you as a CPA who runs a business and you as a living, breathing human being who only has a certain number of hours per week to realistically dedicate to this demanding time before you, and your team members, collapse from the pressure??

What is the Cause of Busy Season Burnout??

A lot of the time, it’s easy to shrug off the negative short and long-term effects of the tax season as a “necessary evil” for the success of your firm. It’s all too easy to adopt an external locus of control, thinking “this is how things are” or that the resultant stress you feel is due to clients as opposed to an internal locus of control, where you adopt a mindset that places you in control of and responsible for events and outcomes that impact you.

More often than not, the stress and burnout that firms and practices feel are simply due to improper or insufficient planning, preparation and capacity management. It’s not your clients, it’s not the time - it’s your existing planning and management processes that are falling short.?

The great thing is that these are things you actually can control and change to better serve you and protect your team from becoming overwhelmed and hitting burnout.?

Remember - it’s all about perspective here and focusing on what you can change. You can’t change tax season or prevent it from happening (most firms wouldn’t want to anyway as it brings in invaluable additional revenue), but you can change how you approach it as a firm.?

Protecting Your Firm From Busy Season Burnout and Exhaustion

Your two most precious resources are your staff and your capacity. You need to protect both, especially during the busy season.?

The concern here that most CPAs will likely have is how to mitigate the negative effects of tax season without impacting the profitability and revenue it generates for their firms. Is the only way to counteract it by taking on fewer clients during this time? It’s not the only way but it is one important way - and it can ultimately work to your advantage if you do it well.?

Many firms find themselves at the point of collapsing because they take on any and all tax requirements from clients while charging standard, uniform rates. This strategy, in large part, is what causes the busy season’s neverending bottlenecks and perpetual scope creep that bury CPAs and their firms in an avalanche of work.?

Instead of adopting an “any-and-all” approach when it comes to providing clients with your tax services, you can reduce and offload the incoming work from smaller clients (whose work usually takes a disproportionate amount of time for the revenue they bring into your firm) while increasing the value of your services and driving more revenue from clients during this time.

You can do this by introducing packaged pricing to your tax services. I’ve talked before about the benefits of productizing your accounting services which increases their inherent value and helps drive more incoming revenue, as well as provides the opportunity for you to upsell to your existing clients.?

By turning your tax services into packaged bundles offered at different rates you can eliminate scope creep that eats into your time and doesn’t generate significant revenue. You can also effectively manage client expectations from the get-go, particularly for smaller clients, ensuring that the time you put into their tax requirements is more fairly reflected in your hours and earnings. For larger clients who are paying more, you can successfully plan and allocate more time.?

Ensure your packages succinctly reflect and describe the scope of services clients can expect when engaging with you for tax season. Offering “basic”, “standard” and “premium” bundles that build on the previous bundle’s services and add a standout service can make it easier for clients to see the difference, and subtly encourage them to opt for a higher-priced package.?

Give clients plenty of warning ahead of time to select the option that best suits their tax requirements and provide a cut-off date where, after, they can’t change their plan until the following year. This might sound counterintuitive as you’re essentially turning away revenue but remember, the goal here is to develop a sustainable strategy for managing the busy season.?

If you’re constantly accepting client changes and updates to your pricing packages, you’re quickly going to find yourself just as overwhelmed and unable to deal with the incoming scope of work. You’ll be right back in the same situation you’ve worked so hard to get out of.?

Avoid that by being firm and giving clients plenty of advance notice and a cut-off date to finalize their selection. By doing this, you can adequately plan and manage capacity on your side so your staff doesn’t end up exhausted and overworked and more likely to resign.

Conclusion

By reworking your pricing and service strategy, you can better plan for the upcoming busy season, anticipate your incoming workload and allocate your resources as needed. The tax season will always be busy and will always generate some degree of stress but it certainly doesn’t need to be driving you or your team to the point of all-out exhaustion and burnout.?

With proper planning and management processes in place, you can reap the benefits that the busy season has to offer without having to endure the cost and brain drain that usually comes with it.