Have you gone appointment-less? Do you like it?

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#21
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For some clients I like 100% online only, but for others I still like an appointment.

Many clients are smart and efficient, and so it's great to proceed online.

But others will never sign and finish, asking a string of creeping questions and corrections. And I have to spend time giving them deadlines to provide more info and to sign, etc. It's just a real PITA with some clients.

Without an appointment it's also easy to miss the need to convey valuable things, such as "do you plan to sell this property that you just moved out of and now rent to others?" Etc.

It also creates a connection with clients that increase loyalty, value-add, and the ability to bill.

Plus it's "the relationships" you remember on your death bed - not how much money you made.

I also have a nice handful of elder-clients and I really like them because they are organized and show up on time (early, LOL). They couldn't handle online and I prefer not to lose them. I can replace them if I wanted to, but I like them.

I'm not saying that appointment-less is folly, I'm just making a point that appointments as still helpful in many ways and with many clients.
 

#22
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I have a goodly collection of older clients as well and most of them are pretty good at respecting my time. Mind you, I actually wish a couple of my younger clients would come in for an appointment, rather than using Sharefile. The drip, drip of information drives me nuts.
 

#23
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SumwunLost wrote: Mind you, I actually wish a couple of my younger clients would come in for an appointment, rather than using Sharefile. The drip, drip of information drives me nuts.


Agreed, or them not responding to e-mails for 3-4 weeks and then I have to remember what the hell we were discussing.

This is why I tell clients their tax or accounting work will not be started until I believe I have all relevant information.
 

#24
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CornerstoneCPA wrote:
SumwunLost wrote:

This is why I tell clients their tax or accounting work will not be started until I believe I have all relevant information.


Yes, this.

But then they say "I think I've uploaded everything, do you have everything you need"?

And with this they have now forced us to start it at some point without the uploads being complete and so we still forget.
 

#25
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Wiles wrote:We are trying to work on our messaging for next tax season. We want to continue not having tax season appointments. We can't think of a good customer-service-way of saying Jan-Apr is all about getting the compliance work done and the rest of the year is for planning and meetings.


We are trying to tackle exactly this. We want to experiment with a subset of clients this fall with rolling out a premium package where, if they sign up for pay for the premium package, we make available to them an appointment in the latter part of the year. They don't get an appointment during tax season unless they sign up for the super-deluxe, super-expensive package (still brainstorming ideas on this). If it works well, we may roll it out to the whole client base.

Does anyone have any tips on this kind of idea, how to make it work, and how to present it to the clients?
 

#26
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Beardenjv, doesn't that depend partly on you client base? I have a decent number of clients who are not high fee but they are high profit. They are organized, come in early in the season and pay a smallish fee. I may hear from them over the summer. Otherwise, I don't see or hear from them till the next year. I am not sure I'd want to bump those sort of clients for the more demanding sort that suck my time to no good effect.

Do you want to give them the sense that the premium and above packages come with unlimited time? Or would it be a good idea to specify (a) organizers must be completed and information supplied all at once (b) access to a set amount of time; you may set this at quite a high level if the fee justifies it. Premium service should mean that tax preparation is the start, not the end.

What if they don't tell you about a wonderful new investment they made after the last meeting and which requires considerably more time in tax preparation?

Sometimes people confuse me with Private Frazer from "Dad's Army." There is a grain of truth in that.
 

#27
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I am also evaluating "packages" for tax clients, and some would include "unlimited" correspondence with me (not to be confused with my time associated with tax research and application). Realistically, most clients would not consume all that much of my time but they may be willing to pay $10-15k to gain access to it when they're already paying, say, $3-5k for a tax return.
 

#28
Twin Turbo Z  
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Not once this year have any of us been sick. Usually some idiot comes in sick and we all end up sick !! Flu, cold, whatever... This has been the first time in 40 years no one got sick !!! Gonna try and keep it that way. But we are going to remodel our lobby to allow clients in the building. But still no sit down appointments and limited human interaction. Setting up a Dr. office type lobby. Pass through window for documents and signatures or everything via online portal. If customers dont like the limited interaction, they can go elsewhere. Plain and simple.
 

#29
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Sumwunlost, those are some great points. We do like the high profit but small clients that we have, no need to run them off or anything. I guess one thing were wanting to do is to eliminate the meetings where the clients come in and hand me one document at a time and say "This is my W-2" etc. and there's nothing that has changed and no interesting tax planning opportunities. I want to save my time in tax season for those who actually need it, and I want to meet with clients that need a meeting, in the late fall when tax planning is more likely to be beneficial. So I was hoping to tell these clients to schedule in the late fall if they need to and we won't meet at all if we don't need to. It was great this year not meeting during tax season with a lot of people that really don't need a meeting in tax season, covid was convenient from that standpoint, hoping to seize the opportunity to continue that sort of thing.

Regarding the concept of unlimited time, I figure that with the existence of higher-priced packages that get compared side by side, we can get across to the client that we give them more time when they choose a higher package. For each package, specify a certain amount of time for appointments or number of phone calls, etc. during the year. I figured that we would probably have to have a customized price for each client based on how complicated their tax return is and their personality for clinginess. Quote that highest package for whatever we think they would actually use if we gave them unlimited time - quote it high enough to make it worth it and high enough that they won't choose that package if they would be using up our time unnecessarily.

Regarding organizers and info supplied all at once: That does make it more convenient. How would you enforce this? Tell them there's an extra fee if they send us partial information?
 

#30
Wiles  
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SumwunLost wrote:I have a decent number of clients who are not high fee but they are high profit. They are organized, come in early in the season and pay a smallish fee. I may hear from them over the summer. Otherwise, I don't see or hear from them till the next year. I am not sure I'd want to bump those sort of clients for the more demanding sort that suck my time to no good effect.

We are struggling with this predicament in our office. We have decided we need to decrease our tax season load and now find ourselves choosing between "retail" clients and those with more complex situations. Our staff want to keep the easy stuff.

The retail clients tend to be high realization and the complex clients are not. It's easy to bill $350 for a 1 hour tax return engagement, but not so easy to bill $3,500 for 10 hours. Yes, this is something we need to get over. But also, part of this is because we find ourselves doing things we feel are not billable, e.g. researching, spinning our wheels, going down a rabbit hole, over working immaterial items, etc.

There is also a higher sense of getting 'er done-ness kicking out several easy returns per day vs struggling though the complex tax return.

Something in our gut says that we should not build our practice on catering to the retail clients. These folks will eventually disappear and we will be competing with Turbo Tax and HRB.

Our stupid gut is also saying we are doing our CPA license and years of education a disservice by only doing easy work. These folks with complex situations need our help. The retail clients do not.
 

#31
jon  
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Which clients are the most profitable or potentially the most profitable both now and the future? If any are painful that is another consideration. If they change categories that is up to your own review.
 

#32
Wiles  
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Yep. Makes sense. Furthermore, the complex work should be more profitable than the easy work. If a 1 hour tax return is $350, then a 10 hour tax return should be more than $3,500.
 

#33
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Wiles wrote:Our stupid gut is also saying we are doing our CPA license and years of education a disservice by only doing easy work. These folks with complex situations need our help. The retail clients do not.


This is why I have only a handful of simple 1040s, and the relationships with those clients go back 10-15 years. Otherwise, most of them have more complicated tax situations, are self-employed or high net worth, etc. I have some I charge my minimum fee to do and they take less than 20 minutes, so it is hard to let those go but also need to focus on value added services that then generate much higher fees--that is the area of growth and profitability, not retail-type clients that can easily go elsewhere or use TurboTax.

2022 is going to be a period of restructuring my Firm. I will be working out the details this fall for implementation in 2022, but it is likely to be phased in through 2023. Increased hourly fees, increased minimum fees for any particular type of work, focusing even more on working with small businesses and their owners, etc., and shedding certain clients.
 

#34
ATSMAN  
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In a multi ownership tax business it is difficult to manage the expectations of all stakeholders. But if you are the sole owner you can determine if 10 returns that take less than an hour each at $350 a pop is better than 1 that takes 10 hours and you bill $3500 and hear complaints plus the additional research time.

I stay away from complex returns that are a research hog, because clients don't appreciate the value of my time. I have found my sweet spot for Sch C, Sch E, some simple 1065 returns. I have stayed away from 1120 returns, especially multi jurisdictional.
The state laws are the real resource hogs. I was glad to get rid of a few of those.
 

#35
smtcpa  
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I have been working on this for the past few years. Not in the form of "packages" but in premium pricing. I have been telling new clients the price for a return is $X from 5/1-9/1 and $X+35% if you want it before 4/15. It has been well received by new clients; they either move along, tell me they're fine with extensions, or gladly accept the premium price. Now I need to start working on existing clients and move my lower-priced clients into the summer or have them find someone else. I am also contemplating a scheduling system to encourage clients to submit during certain weekly blocks. The goal is to work normal 40 hour weeks all year, or at least greatly smooth out the curve during tax season.

beardenjv wrote:
Wiles wrote:We are trying to work on our messaging for next tax season. We want to continue not having tax season appointments. We can't think of a good customer-service-way of saying Jan-Apr is all about getting the compliance work done and the rest of the year is for planning and meetings.


We are trying to tackle exactly this. We want to experiment with a subset of clients this fall with rolling out a premium package where, if they sign up for pay for the premium package, we make available to them an appointment in the latter part of the year. They don't get an appointment during tax season unless they sign up for the super-deluxe, super-expensive package (still brainstorming ideas on this). If it works well, we may roll it out to the whole client base.

Does anyone have any tips on this kind of idea, how to make it work, and how to present it to the clients?
 

#36
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smtcpa, In the early 1990's I worked, as a temp, for a British bank that tried the weekly block thing. It was almost universally unpopular.

This season, I have been royally brassed off by existing clients dropping real estate sales on me when they could and should have told me very soon after they sold the property. A goodly chunk of their tax return could have been done in the off-season. Instead, I am still gathering cost basis in some cases. I am going to make a fuss about that in my tax season letter - maybe before.
 

#37
Twin Turbo Z  
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ATSMAN wrote:In a multi ownership tax business it is difficult to manage the expectations of all stakeholders. But if you are the sole owner you can determine if 10 returns that take less than an hour each at $350 a pop is better than 1 that takes 10 hours and you bill $3500 and hear complaints plus the additional research time.

I stay away from complex returns that are a research hog, because clients don't appreciate the value of my time. I have found my sweet spot for Sch C, Sch E, some simple 1065 returns. I have stayed away from 1120 returns, especially multi jurisdictional.
The state laws are the real resource hogs. I was glad to get rid of a few of those.



Amen !!!
 

#38
Wiles  
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ATSMAN wrote:I stay away from complex returns that are a research hog, because clients don't appreciate the value of my time. I have found my sweet spot for Sch C, Sch E, some simple 1065 returns. I have stayed away from 1120 returns, especially multi jurisdictional. The state laws are the real resource hogs. I was glad to get rid of a few of those.


I can understand saying no to these when it is a prospective client. But the usual case is an existing client, over time, can grow into a more complex situation. Every year, there will be a number of clients that will introduce you to new things and new complexities. Many of them will require research. Sure, you can disengage the 2% that have transitioned into very complex changes. But what the other 20% that are just somewhat more complex.

My partner and I talk about increasing our minimum 1040 fee each year. The staff grumble about having to do more and more complex, time intensive work. We have an "inside" joke and say, I guess our staff want us to, instead, set a maximum fee. Then we are supposed to disengage the client at the end of their appointment, telling them, "I'm sorry, your return is going to cost more than $750. We cannot prepare it."
 

#39
Wiles  
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Year #2 of no appointments. We are not saying it's because of Covid, but many clients believe that to be the case. So that works for now.

Several have sent e-mails saying that they really miss meeting with me. Sure, I miss the 5-10 minutes of chit chat, but that is all I miss about the appointment. We do give each of them a closing phone call. Apparently, that is not enough to replace what they felt they had before.

I certainly don't miss:
* Spending a majority of the day building piles of files around me as I assume the role of primary taker-in of information and documents. I have really enjoyed being able to delegate that to other staff and removing myself from the initial contact. Just like the doctor does not take your blood pressure, I should not be asking you how much you received for the advanced child tax credit. This is not a good use of my time.
* The continuous stop-and-go-and-stop of appointment days. Time is a limited resource - especially during tax time. Wasting a few minutes or longer between appointments is bad time management.
* Having to put on the happy face when I am dead tired.
* The superfluous conversations that come with a client just sitting there. Since they took this time out of their day, then they need to fill this time in order to get value. Sometimes this turns into a mini tax planning meeting which was not on my agenda. Sure, let's have those discussions, but not right now. I am trying to figure out why your 1099-B does not show your cost basis information.

I just re-read this... Yes, I will admit I am a little (or a lot) self-absorbed. Maybe it's time to retire...
 

#40
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I'm back to a 3/4 schedule or at least close. A prefer the face-to-face as I find it's the best opportunity to unearth issues that may otherwise get missed. Often it is not the direct question that finds it; rather, it's the follow up to the client's response(s). The verbal volley helps me to feel I've nailed down both facts and issues.

I agree that over the course of the day there can be some time frittered away between appointments. I try to backfill it with phone calls and research as best I can.
 

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