What are you doing to position your firm to achieve accounting practice growth in 2019? Do you have a strong plan in place to help keep you on track once busy season hits? If not, now’s the time to prepare.
Prepare Your Firm to Achieve Accounting Practice Growth in 2019
Seasoned accounting professionals know that once they are in the midst of tax season, everything else tends to become background noise. Sometimes relationships that you’ve been slowly cultivating get neglected or fizzle out as a result. In order to hedge against this, consider taking some time now to prepare. Here’s what we recommend:
Manage Expectations
Consider reaching out to your important contacts to remind them that tax season is coming up and you will be busier than usual. Encourage them to get an appointment on the books immediately, if they have any pressing concerns they’d like to discuss with you. Let them know that you’ll check in with them again once tax day passes.
Encourage clients to get forms in early
We strongly recommend that you encourage your clients to get all of their tax information submitted as soon as possible. You can even include a reminder to do this in the same call you make or email you send in your efforts to manage tax season expectations. The sooner you have all of the information you need, the sooner you can complete your clients’ tax preparation, and the less work you’ll have to do once crunch time approaches.
Mentally prepare yourself
It’s no surprise to you when busy season hits, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t wear on you. Consider taking steps to mentally prepare yourself for tax season. Remind your friends and family that you’ll be very busy; evaluate your out-of-office responsibilities and commitments to see if there’s something you could put on pause for a few months; schedule a vacation, or some other type of reward for yourself, for soon after tax season ends. You know what works best for your own mental health—take some steps to be prepared.
Get organized
Staying organized during tax season can help tremendously with your stress level. What system do you have set up to keep track of your important contacts and tasks? If you don’t have a good answer, then now’s the time to get something in place. More and more accounting firms are turning to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, such as ABLE, to keep them organized and on track.
Stay On Track for Accounting Practice Growth with ABLE
ABLE is a CRM system designed by accountants, for accountants. With as little as 15-30 minutes of use, weekly, ABLE keeps users organized and on track for accounting practice growth. To learn more about the wide variety of business development tools that ABLE offers, schedule a free, 30-minute demo today!