Ideas to be more efficient in the new year!

Around September and October, i like to keep an list of ideas to improve my next tax season.

One for me is to get all clients who do estimates signed up with EFTPS.

It's a nice time saver not to have to prepare all the estimate vouchers, password protect them, and then email.

Please share your thoughts if you have some ideas we can all benefit from:

I have a very organized and easily searchable library of pre-created "canned" answers to save time with all of the repetitive questions and email request/delivery situations.

It's become quite large.

It's a real time saver not to have to repeat this work over and over again and it also has disclaimers and important notes that have been "written in blood" from previous mistakes to help prevent new issues and to put out fires before they start.

Have you used Quick Parts in Outlook?
My admin staff use this for language in tax return delivery.
I've used it for language sending ELs and Organizers to new clients.

I'm going to implement SafeSend for Org/EL and TR delivery.

Going to have to look into all of the above...great ideas!

This coming tax season, I will be focusing more on clients who have Crypto transactions providing me the necessary documents in a timely manner. Before I used to always get hung up with delays from their side downloading all the transactions, buy/sell reports etc.
From now onwards returns with Crypto will have a different timeline. Clock does not start until I get all documents.

My biggest goal is revising engagement letters to place all burden on the client. Not that I have had issues, but everything has become so friggin' complicated and subject to interpretation that I want it clearly outlined I am only liable for advice I provide and really nothing else.

I'm planning on adjusting my website to have a page specifically for new clients. I've been poor at communicating my process to clients and how they benefit from my approach, and they also don't understand what I might expect of them and what they can expect of me. Things like (generally) 1 business day turnaround on most e-mails and calls, 2 week turnaround on tax returns if all information is provided, what my post-tax season availability is, and other issues like that.

I'm also planning to address crypto reporting requirements in that as well. Some of the exchanges are great at reporting, but the bad ones are impossible to read.

Have you used Quick Parts in Outlook?
My admin staff use this for language in tax return delivery.
I've used it for language sending ELs and Organizers to new clients.

Thank you for bringing that to my attention -- I never knew that existed and now I need to explore it.

Fire your worst clients - you'll never regret it. This is a good time of year to do it.

Fire your worst clients - you'll never regret it. This is a good time of year to do it.

Early Christmas gift.

I plan on making myself available to clients 24/7/365 next year. So 8 hours on January 31st, 8 again on February 23rd, 10 hours on March 14th, 12 hours on April 14th, 10 hours on April 15th, July 15th, September 14th, 12 hours on October 15th, 2 hours on December 24th and 17 minutes on Hogmanay before I crack open the whisky (note spelling).

Appointments only on Tuesdays and Thursdays worked quite well this year, with no complaints. In fact, my good clients murmured approvingly. I want to convert more to electronic delivery but some good clients like face-to-face and I will indulge them with 30 minutes of face-time, or 30 minutes of FaceTime, as they prefer. Whether I have another client or not, I am going to set an alarm in my diary so that "Beside the Sea" announces the end of the meeting.

Have you used Quick Parts in Outlook?
My admin staff use this for language in tax return delivery.
I've used it for language sending ELs and Organizers to new clients.

Good one. I use it for the very same tasks.

Fire your worst clients - you'll never regret it. This is a good time of year to do it.

I fired my worst 8-10 clients a couple weeks ago and I already don't miss them.

Lately I have been leaning more heavily on Schedule Send in Outlook. It's a simple feature, but I've come to the conclusion that it's heavily underrated and underused in professional service firms.

To give an example, a client wanted to have a consulting engagement in mid-Dec. That ended up getting postponed due to complications on the client side. I told the client that I'd reach out on a certain date after the holiday to schedule time for January.

Previously I would have just snoozed the email. Then, when it popped back up at the top of the inbox I would have had to spend time getting my bearings/refreshing in order to type up an email.

Now, I typed up the email then and there, while everything is fresh in my mind, and schedule send, usually 8am local time for any future date I want.

The email goes out at that date and time automatically. From the client's side, it appears I'm VERY much on top of things. On my end, it's a huge time saver.

I also use it for prospects as well.

Great idea

I do this on Google email also...great feature!

One thing i'd like to improve this year - is calling IRS or state tax authorities - so freakin brutal to get through - very distressing!

Fire your worst clients - you'll never regret it. This is a good time of year to do it.

I fired my worst 8-10 clients a couple weeks ago and I already don't miss them.

Same here. They were such pains. It felt so good.

As i do projections, i like going into the 2022 software program and entering the estimates that have been
entered already during the year. It's a small thing that i can do now to take away one more burden when i get into the thick of hte season.

Around September and October, i like to keep an list of ideas to improve my next tax season.

One for me is to get all clients who do estimates signed up with EFTPS.

It's a nice time saver not to have to prepare all the estimate vouchers, password protect them, and then email.

Please share your thoughts if you have some ideas we can all benefit from:

You don't need to sign up your clients to EFTPS to avoid the vouchers.. etc. Just send them a IRS direct pay link. https://www.irs.gov/payments/direct-pay. I work for a big firm and we just send them the link with some simple copy/paste instructions. No vouchers!

I do both vouchers and the link. I don't want to give them a reason to complain about why I didn't tell them about both.