Control Your Time: Avoid Ambush Meetings and Calls

How much time do you lose to pop-ins and unscheduled phone calls? Get it back.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

Ambush meetings and phone calls are unscheduled events. Clients just walk in with a tax document and want to say, “Hello.”

MORE: Get Clients to Bring Tax Docs Early…Yes, EARLY |You Train Your Clients, Whether You Mean To or Not | Train Your Clients Before They Train You | Why Time Tracking Still Matters | Business Owners Face One of Three Exits | Don’t Let Clients Dictate Tax Workflow | Make Fewer Mistakes, Increase Revenue and Capacity | How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars | Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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This morphs into, “Quick question while I’m here. …” Fifteen productive minutes escape your life, which is really 30 minutes when you consider the mental time you need to switch back to the task that was interrupted.
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Seven Principles to Work Less and Achieve More

Bid farewell to late nights at the office and weekend “catch-ups.”

By W. Michael Hsu

In accounting, where being constantly busy is the norm, working less while achieving more seems like a distant dream. But is it?

MORE W. MICHAEL HSU: How Do Firm Leaders Learn?Why Your Approach to CAS and CFO Services Is WrongWhen it Comes to Pricing, it’s About ‘Can’t Afford Not To’Your Client Base Is Global |

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What if I told you there’s a method that can help you strike the perfect balance between productivity and rest? It’s called the MEASURE x HACK method. In this article, we’ll dive into the seven principles of this method, showing you how to achieve more with less effort.

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Get Clients to Bring Tax Docs Early … Yes, EARLY

The secret? Humor, sarcasm and shame.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

There are easy ways to get clients to do what we need them to do. In our office, we call the process “training” clients. One of our biggest headaches is the late delivery of tax materials. So, we train our clients to bring their tax documents in early.

MORE: You Train Your Clients, Whether You Mean To or Not | Train Your Clients Before They Train You | Why Time Tracking Still Matters | Business Owners Face One of Three Exits | Don’t Let Clients Dictate Tax Workflow | Make Fewer Mistakes, Increase Revenue and Capacity | How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars | Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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We accomplish this through a series of e-blasts explaining our deadlines. The e-blasts start in December, and we call them “Countdown to Tax Season.” They cover much more than our deadlines for clients to provide business and personal income tax returns documents.

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Train Your Clients Before They Train You

Taking unscheduled phone calls and meetings wrecks your bottom line and theirs.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

Many of the behaviors you rationalize as good client service are just desperate measures to avoid losing bad clients.

MORE: Why Time Tracking Still Matters | Business Owners Face One of Three Exits | How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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However, clients are trainable – at least as trainable as Jack Russell Terriers. That is to say they’re somewhat trainable. However, like Jack Russell Terriers, you train clients or they’ll train you. Somebody’s getting trained. Here’s an example of how that works.
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Pros Handle 45% of Income Tax Returns

data tableRefunds down by double digits.

By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research

Tax season 2023 has been consistent. Refunds are down, and so are self-prepared filings and IRS.gov visits. By every other marker, though, business is as usual or better.

MORE: On Business Outlook, CPAs Are Confident … and Concerned | At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service | More CPAs See Worsening Economy | Marchternity: The Solution Is Community |
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As of Feb. 24, the latest data available, the IRS had received 46 million individual income tax returns, up 1.3 percent from the same period in 2022. It had processed 45.7 million returns, up 4.3 percent.

We always like to see processing go quickly, and the agency is speeding through returns right now at a clip of 99.4 percent.

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At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service

Guess who suffers?

By CPA Trendlines Research

It probably won’t surprise the average tax practitioner to learn that in the American Customer Satisfaction Index of federal agencies, the Internal Revenue Service ranks dead last.

MORE: Tax Pros Offer Advice for Small Businesses | Busy Season Barometer Finds Many CPAs in Transition | Marchternity: Just Say ‘No’ | News on IRS Is Maybe Sort of a Little Bit Good
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It accomplished the same dubious rank in Forrest Research’s U.S. Customer Experience Index of 221 companies and federal agencies.

Two sad things about this:
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Tax Pros Offer Advice for Small Businesses

Specific tips from your colleagues.

By CPA Trendlines Research

When the 2023 CPATrendlines Busy Season Barometer asked practitioners what advice they’d give small businesses, most of the responses boiled down to two essential messages:

  • Don’t be afraid … but be careful … and ready.
  • Hang on to your cash.

MORE: Busy Season Barometer Finds Many CPAs in Transition | More CPAs See Worsening Economy | Marchternity: The Solution Is Community | Why We All Hate the Tax Code | Tax Season 2023: Better or Worse?
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A Little Trepidation

Looking at these early responses to the survey – which is still open for responses – we are sensing a little trepidation over the near future.
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