Resolve 6 Factors Challenging Workflow and Efficiency in Tax, Accounting and Bookkeeping Firms

By Don Emery | 08/10/2017 | 9 min read

Most owners, partners, shareholders and IT professionals would agree, improving workflow and efficiency in the firm is a challenge and perhaps an ever-present goal. Moving your firm from where you are today to a more productive and profitable operation starts by identifying and resolving the catalysts that challenge workflow.

In this article I explore six of the leading catalysts causing workflow and inefficiency in tax, accounting and bookkeeping firms. Additionally, I provide insight on how to resolve each issue.

Prepare and review process is not standardized and/or enforceable.

Not everyone is using the same processes to prepare and review returns. Lack of standardization will result in more errors, increased difficulty onboarding new staff and less efficient processes due to the lack of routine functions.

Some of the most common prepare and review processes can be standardized. For example:

  • Require staff to work from digital copies of tax slips versus allowing some staff to work from paper tax documents while others work from digital copies.
  • Require reviewers to review digital documents, versus paper.
  • Require reviewers review to the tax return versus information located in tax software.
  • Require preparers to provide a standard list of information for reviewers.

How to resolve this challenge? 

Assemble a project team tasked with creating a standardized prepare and review process for your firm. Enforce the standardized process.

How Doc.It resolves this issue:

Doc.It’s implementation team works with you to create a listing of all tasks to be performed to accomplish a given type of work. This procedure, enforced by Doc.It Suite software, guarantees users work through preparation and review following the firm-defined process in a step-by-step manner.

The ability to control deadlines.

Your work is deadline driven; happy clients will remain happy when the work you do for them is handled on time. You will remain in control of deadlines when you know where every project is at all times. Running your firm in this way ensures attention is given to the right projects at the right time; deadlines are not missed and costly penalties are avoided.

How to resolve this challenge? 

Staying on top of these various due dates based on return type can be easy with the right software. Software with extensive reporting capabilities should automate due dates for statutory compliance and ensures your firm meets statutory timelines while allowing manual input deadlines for non-statutory requirements. For example, it is critical to ensure your tax deadlines for 1040, 1041s, T-1s, T-2s and all other types of returns are managed. Automation of due dates is important in these cases, also when dealing with hard due date (e.g. personal returns) or calculated due date based on an event (e.g. period ending).

How Doc.It resolves this issue:

Doc.It Suite has multiple features and functions that insulate the firm from the risk of missing due dates. Automated due dates can be created for each type of tax return or users can manually set due dates where warranted.  Additionally, extensive reporting capabilities allow for simple review of all upcoming due dates by Partner, Manager or by a Tax Manager who may have overall responsibility for all tax assignments.  Ultimately, Doc.It Suite’s features and functions provide advanced notification of potential issues which allows the firm to address potential issues before they become a problem. 

Balance and status of workload.

Balancing the workload of all employees and being aware of the status of projects greatly impacts workflow and efficiency. It is easy and common for some employees to be assigned too much or too little work. When multiple projects of different types are underway, access to real-time updates and reporting on the status of all projects raises awareness of deadlines, due dates in jeopardy and provides the ability to proactively resolve bottlenecks before work stoppage occurs.

How to resolve this challenge? 

Your firm would benefit from software that budgets time for each task enabling you to record actual time spent for each task. Monitoring and reporting on the work left to complete for each task enables you to balance workload before bottlenecks occur.

How Doc.It resolves this issue:

Doc.It Suite’s digital binder area, the area where users access their work tasks, provides extensive reporting capabilities and real-time update of status of all work. Doc.It Suite also enables users to use any device, working from anywhere, to efficiently access a real-time update. Additionally, Doc.It Suite users can apply filters to see the real-time status of work for anyone (e.g. staff, partners, management, etc.).

Lack of system to handle emergencies as they arise.

Working in a profession where deadlines rule, stalls happen and emergencies will be created; 20 percent of your files will become problematic. These situations have the potential to wreak havoc on emergency situation files and the remaining 80 percent of your work. One problem, not dealt with when it arises, can jeopardize due dates for many projects and cause projects to go over budget.

How to resolve this challenge? 

With the right software emergency instances can be handled before they arise. For those that can’t be dealt with in advance, it is essential to minimize disruption to workflow. When emergencies arise document management and workflow software should enable you to adjust priority and effectively communicate the adjustment(s) to the team.

Everyone who touches or may touch the project should be proactively aware of changing due-dates, projects that have stalled, escalated priorities or projects that are over-budget. This level of communication, when done effectively, increases awareness of time-sensitive information while also helping to mitigate risk.

How Doc.It resolves this issue:

Doc.It workflow ensures the proactive handling of deadlines. For example, when a deadline changes due to client needs, the priority of the project and the due dates can be changed. Additionally, notes attached to the project will be visible to all potential staff who will work on the project. Furthermore, Doc.It’s reporting includes an “At Risk” report where each user can uniquely define the potential risk of a problem based on a number of conditions. This report enables the firm to follow-up on projects needing attention before the situation becomes an emergency. 

Because risks change throughout the year, being able to define risk daily, if needed, is important. For example, risk to the firm on April 13th in the U.S. is very different than risk on January 13th. Software that allows you to report on risk daily will help the firm avoid the disruption emergencies cause. Addressing a problem before an emergency occurs results in an efficient and profitable operation.

Documents trickling in.

Clients send documents to you at various times; it is your job to gather and store these documents until they are needed. This scenario plays out the same way in firms of all sizes regardless of how good you or your clients are, forcing staff or partners to start/stop work on a file, setting the file aside waiting on the needed documents to arrive. This factor is a major catalyst to inefficiency; this is highly disruptive.

How to resolve this challenge? 

You cannot control clients’ actions of sending documents at various times. You can insulate your firm from inefficiency created by this scenario when software your firm uses for document management and workflow enables you to operate this way:

  • The client’s file or documents are located in your system within five seconds or less.
  • When a file is re-opened you know instantly where you stopped work.
  • When a file is reopened it is instantly apparent what tasks are finished and not finished.
How Doc.It resolves this issue:

When multiple people know of a file and its status the firm is far less likely to lose control of it. Doc.It Suite lists all projects in process, their status – and if applicable – the specific individual or people the project is assigned to. Due to the start/stop factor caused by documents trickling in, Doc.It Suite allows notes to be added by document or project ensuring everyone knows what has – or has not – been completed. Finally, Doc.It has the sign-off by document feature; everyone who has the potential to work on a file knows with certainty where work stopped when the file was set aside, and where to begin.

FIFO controls workload.

In this profession deadlines are more than promises to clients; many deadlines are mandated by tax law. Workflow and deadlines are in jeopardy when firms place too much reliance on FIFO to control the work for each employee or there is no real method to control workload and workflow.  The obvious negative ramifications for missing deadlines are financial and penalties for clients with the added risk of losing a client when this happens.

FIFO is not always the most effective way to control workload. Additional ineffective ways include allowing staff to choose what they want to work on, or selecting a folder based on any random criteria such as top of pile, or choosing a file based on its thickness.

How to resolve this challenge? 

Getting control of any assignment and communicating deadlines to anyone who has the potential to work on the file is a necessity. Deadlines may be dictated by due date, priority and age of a file, revenue, scheduling, and more.

When everyone working on a file knows, in real-time, project deadlines and priorities they are best positioned to work on files they should be working on to ensure deadlines are met. For example, a preparer or reviewer who touches the file needs to be aware of real-time deadlines, potentially at the project and task level, as set by manager or partner as well as the age of the file. With this information easily and readily available, people working on a file can determine which files should be worked on.

How Doc.It resolves this issue:

Doc.It provides real-time information by project such as task start and due datesproject start and due datesproject priorityyear-end date and project notes where descriptions or instructions are necessary.  The information is easily sorted in ascending or descending order, with filtering tools, to ensure all users have the information necessary to make the right decision about which project to work on next.

In closing, forcing processes or software to resolve these catalysts is not an end-all long-term workflow and efficiency solution. There must be buy-in to processes and solution(s) from everyone in the firm. Your firm is a living breathing entity; software, people and processes may change or need to change.  Consider workflow and efficiency to be an evolution of continuous process improvement.

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About the author

Don Emery

Don Emery, CPA, CA is Doc.It’s Director of Client Solutions. Doc.It provides document management, workflow and document storage products for accounting and tax firms of all sizes. Don leads the North America business development team and provides implementation consulting services to clients and assists clients with various issues. Don joined Doc.It in 2009 as an Implementation Specialist and was named Director of Client Solutions in 2012.