2022 was my first year being self-employed. At that, currently I'm a solo-practitioner with no support staff. That is hopefully going to change at some point 2023, and hopefully sooner than later. With that being said, I had some questions on how to increase efficiencies or spend less time in the process:
1) I use Canopy practice management solution. I prefer to handle stuff electronically as much as possible. If all I'm doing is preparing someone's 1040, I almost don't care to meet them in person. That being said, I still try to have a thorough process. For new clients I have them fill out a personal information page. I can upload this to the client portal and they can fill this in directly in the portal. I also have an annual questionnaire. Again this can be fill out directly in the portal. If a client wants to bring their documents in person, is requiring them to fill out these forms ahead of time through the portal or mailing them to them and setting the appointment far enough in advance for them to receive it something to consider? I believe I spent WAY WAY WAY too much time having clients fill these forms out live and in person this year.
2) I'm a talker and I tend to always give too much feed back or go the long way to answer questions. I've tried to get better at this over the years, but I know its something I struggle with. That being said, for most 1040 clients, I don't need for them to sit down and tell me the life story of every tax document that they have. I don't mind going over okay so you have x number of W-2's, x numbers of investment account 1099's, etc. but again, I feel like my drop off appointments were WAY too long. A majority of the time I can work through most things without the client giving me a ton of information, unless something really changed this year, new rental property, etc. I'd like to limit these meetings to no longer than 15 minutes. I've thought about even charging my consultation rate for meetings that go longer than this?
To sum it up, I basically want to figure out a way to dramatically spend less time on the intake/onboarding and drop off times. I don't mind some of it, but as my client list continues to grow, I won't have as much time for these meetings.