Improving Your Office's Productivity During Tax Season

Improving Your Office's Productivity During Tax Season

Tax season is, of course, one of the busiest times of year for tax professionals. With an influx of customers, comes a welcome uptick in business. However, with the flood of customers, it becomes even more important to have processes and procedures aimed at maintaining efficiency. In order to sustain a competitive edge, tax professionals need to be able to deliver the same quality of service, to each and every customer, through the peak of tax season. 

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While tax season itself has the most foot traffic a tax office will see throughout the year, preparing for tax season is a year-long process that truly never ends. In fact, tax professionals need to stay updated with tax codes and regulations, reach out to clients from years past for potential repeat business, increase marketing efforts, and perform routine office-work. They have their work cut out for them come the start of tax-season. All of that considered, it’s no wonder tax professionals are constantly seeking solutions to improve office efficiency, and production. 

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Boosting Efficiency During Tax Season

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Tax professionals are always trying to get the most out of their days. Optimizing daily efficiency is a balancing act between time-management, quality assurance, and customer satisfaction. In order to maximize the amount of productivity a tax-professional can achieve in a single day, requires an emphasis on organization. However, production resulting in sub-par performance, actually bottlenecks business operations, and wastes time. Work that is riddled with errors, or simply below standard, has to be repeated which is both a waste of time, and an indicator that better efficiency practices need to be implemented. 

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Scheduling: Scheduling is essentially time-management 101. Keeping a detailed calendar that dissects individual workdays into regimented time-slots is a simple, and effective way to plan work-activities and ensure that deadlines are met. There should be office-wide access to each tax-professionals calendar. This allows co-workers to maintain awareness around staff availability and the timing of client-meetings. On the individual scale, detailed calendars allow professionals to visualize their day, which empowers them to break down tasks to their hourly durations. A granular overview of each hour in the work day lets tax-professionals arrange tasks in such a way that maximizes every hour. This detailed timeline provides the platform to create a daily plan, rather than just taking each day as they come, ultimately leading to a significant increase in productivity and efficiency.  

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Many company wide email systems, and other internal communication softwares are innately equipped with native calendars. This makes it easy for busy professionals to share their daily and weekly plans, create meeting invites and other events, and communicate openings in their schedule with co-workers and clients alike. 

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Work Flows: Implementing a work-flow is one of the easiest ways to systematically improve efficiency. Work flows provide a clear path to complete tasks in a timely manner, taking the guess-work out of routine procedures. By applying a formulaic methodology to regular tasks at hand, tax professionals can free up time in their workday, allowing them to focus on more arduous tasks, serving clients, or growing the business. While work-flows provide a system in which efficiency will flourish, there are other strategies that should also be integrated into the office's normal practices to boost efficiency, during tax season, and year round. 

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Project management software is an excellent way to manage and create workflows. These softwares are able to carve out critical paths, and assist professionals in making decisions that keep them focused, on task, and in the efficiency zone. 

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Client Expectations: Setting client expectations is integral to building a successful, and long-lasting client  relationship. The expectations should be a two-way-street that gives the client insight into the tax firms processes and expected services, while also setting up clear guidelines for the client to follow in regards to providing the proper information. 

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For business clients, it should be clarified prior to even the first meeting what sort of documentation, and system-access the firm is going to require. This could be information regarding proof-of-inventory, access to payroll systems, and much more. The details on what the tax business will require from a business client can be provided through a ‘client-assistant-package’. Essentially, this is a formal guide for the client to follow, so that the tax services can be rendered in a timely and efficient manner, providing the tax-professional with the information they need out of the gate. 

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Much less is required from individual clients, as the tax-services applicable are normally far smaller in scope. However, individuals should still have clear information regarding the documentation and information that is going to be required to begin the tax filing process. Individuals will need to be able to provide information and documents such as returns from previous years, major events, and other documentation that can affect the filing process. 

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Powerful Software: Technology and automation have infiltrated virtually every industry and market, regardless of product or service. Tax software is constantly being improved, with bolstered features that are aimed at making the tax-season easier on the professionals and the clients alike. 

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Powerful tax software integrates features like e-signatures, split screens, document integration, depreciation schedule integration, and much more. These features streamline the information-gathering, and information processing procedure boosting efficiency and allowing for tax-professionals to focus on what’s really important; delivering excellent quality customer service, and growing the firm's book of business.

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‍Refundo has solutions for every tax-professional or tax office regardless of size. Boasting powerful, sleek, and user-friendly tax softwares designed to provide tax professionals with the tools they need to optimize their efficiency, and get the most productivity out of their day as possible. From Audit protection, to tax-refund advances, and tax-refund transfers, Refundo has a powerful software ready for your office today. To start boosting your tax firms efficiency contact us, and get in touch with a tax expert equipped to answer any and all your questions about Refundo’s products and their many benefits.