Well, tax pros, you’ve done it! You’ve completed yet another successful busy season full of thousands of tax returns, managing client expectations, and, quite possibly, questioning your life choices.
But before you daydream about your well-deserved post-busy season vacation, consider this: The best time to prepare for next busy season is right now.
Why now? Because your pain points are fresh. The bottlenecks in your workflow are visible; technology glitches are still causing eye twitches; you’re still having nightmares about chasing down clients for the documents you need. And, most importantly, you’re acutely aware of what needs to change.
If you wait until summer to think about next tax season (and who would blame you? You’re ready to relax!), you’ll have forgotten half the issues (or they’ll be locked away in that compartmentalized box in your brain until busy season rolls around again). And come January, you’ll be stuck in the same cycle, dealing with the same issues as before, and feeling the same frustration.
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The key to breaking this cycle isn’t working harder—it’s working smarter. And that means leveraging technology, especially AI, to transform your busy season from a recurring nightmare into a manageable, profitable, and—dare we say—more enjoyable time of year.
Conduct a Post-Busy-Season Assessment
First things first (and a surprise to no one): Schedule a team debrief meeting while this busy season is still top of mind. This won’t just be about venting (although that can be therapeutic, too), but it’ll be about identifying what did and didn’t work.
Here are some questions your assessment should include:
Overall processes
Which parts of the process took longer than expected?
Were there tasks that could’ve been automated but weren’t?
Did your team find themselves repeating the same tasks?
Where did staff spend most of their time?
Workload
Did the workload feel balanced across the team or was it disproportionate?
Were staff with specialized skills used properly?
Were returns delegated appropriately?
Staff experience
Were staff required to work excessive overtime?
Were there signs of stress or decreased productivity?
Did staff feel supported?
Client behavior
Which clients were prepared and responsive?
Did clients understand what documents they needed to provide and when?
Were there commonalities during the tax return process that were confusing?
Which clients needed the most handholding?
Were there clients who consistently missed deadlines or didn’t provide requested information?
Workflow effectiveness
Which processes flowed smoothly?
Did any processes cause bottlenecks?
Did information flow seamlessly between different systems, or were there gaps?
Were there areas that could be improved?
Tech stack
Which tools enhanced productivity?
Did any applications cause more problems than they solved?
Did staff waste time moving between different platforms?
Are there processes that could be replaced with automation?
Did any tools not get used?
General
What went well this busy season and why?
Were there any noticeable improvements over last season?
Did any staff members go “above and beyond” this year?
Don’t forget to collect client feedback, too. Sending a simple survey to ask about their experience can help open you up to blind spots in your tax workflow process. Be sure to ask about communication, submitting documentation, and overall satisfaction with your process—not just the end result. This information will help you figure out where improvements can be made and ensure a better tax season for your staff and your clients.
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Streamline Your Overall Workflow and Cure App Sprawl
Once you’ve identified the pain points your firm experienced, it’s time to map your current end-to-end process from client onboarding to final delivery. This will help you spot inefficiencies and redundancies, and determine where changes need to be made.
- Client onboarding and document collection. Do you have a consistent onboarding process across all clients? What tools are used (if any) to send engagement letters, gather documents, and receive eSignatures? How many reminders are you sending (manual vs. automated)?
- Data organization and verification. Is this process automated, or are staff members manually entering data and organizing it into manually created folders? How much time is spent sorting, categorizing, and validating client information?
- Tax return preparation. How much time is spent manually inputting information that could be automated? Are preparers spending too much time on low-value tasks?
- Review and quality control. How many rounds of review did each return go through? Were there consistent issues that could’ve been addressed earlier in the process? Is the review process standardized?
- E-filing and client delivery. How did clients receive their returns? Was the process secure and user-friendly? Did e-filing go smoothly, or were there rejected returns that needed rework?
With this mapped process in hand, look for opportunities to streamline. App sprawl can happen without you knowing it, because there are tools for pretty much everything these days. But the problem is that many tools don’t talk to each other, which can kill efficiency, especially during busy season.
Build a Consolidated Tech Stack
We get it. There are a lot of tools out there for each step of the tax workflow process. But the solution isn’t more technology—it’s smarter technology. The most forward-thinking firms are consolidating their tech stacks into comprehensive platforms that handle multiple aspects of the tax workflow.
An end-to-end tax workflow solution can take a labor-intensive busy season and turn it into an automated and seamless tax experience for your firm and your clients by:
- Gathering client documentation. Automatically collect, organize, and categorize client documents with AI-powered technology that recognizes document types, extracts key information, and flags missing information—without manual intervention.
- Connecting with leading tax software. Seamlessly integrate with your existing tax prep software through APIs that eliminate double data entry, reduce errors, and create one unified system across your entire workflow.
- Preparing and reviewing client documents. Streamline the preparation process with integrated tools (e.g., digital calculator tapes, tickmarking, bookmarking, cross-references), maintain accountability with preparer/review page sign-offs, and send documents for e-signature without switching applications.
- Delivering completed returns electronically. Securely distribute completed returns with integrated e-signatures, electronic filing, and automated payment collection—all while maintaining the highest levels of security and compliance.
By consolidating your tech stack with an end-to-end solution, you’re eliminating the chaos of multiple applications and creating a more efficient workflow that frees your team to focus on what matters: delivering value to clients.
Embrace AI in Your Tax Preparation Workflow
AI has rapidly evolved from an emerging technology to an essential component of many accounting firms. In fact, according to research by Arizent, 70% of accountants surveyed believe that AI will have a profoundly positive impact on their jobs by changing the type of work they do and even creating jobs. Incorporating AI into your tax workflows creates a sustainable process that benefits your staff and clients.
Here’s where AI can make the biggest impact on your tax workflow:
- Document collection and organization. AI can automatically identify and categorize tax documents, even if clients upload them with generic file names. No more sorting through emails or piles of paperwork to figure out which PDF is a W-2 and which is a 1099.
- Data extraction. Advanced OCR (Optical Character Recognition) can pull relevant information from forms and populate your tax software, reducing errors and saving hours of manual entry.
- eSignatures. AI-powered eSignature tools track who needs to sign what, send automated reminders, and update you when documents are signed.
- Client questionnaires. Smart questionnaires can adapt based on previous answers, ensuring clients only see questions relevant to them and reducing unnecessary confusion.
- Deadline management. AI tracks deadlines, prioritizes work, and sends automated reminders to both staff and clients.
Not Convinced AI Can Make Busy Season Better?
Based on typical tax workflow tasks, here’s a quick breakdown of the potential time savings AI can provide:
| Task | AI Assistance | Estimated Time Savings with AI |
| New client onboarding | Digital intake forms, chatbots, auto-fill data from scanned documents | Medium |
| Document collection | Client portals, automated reminders, OCR for data extraction, direct data pull from accounting software | High |
| Document organization | OCT tools to classify, label, and organize files automatically | High |
| Tax prep | Scan-and-populate forms, deduction suggestions, anomaly detection | High |
| Review | Error flagging, comparison with prior year, checklist completion | Medium |
| Communication | AI-drafted emails, chatbots, auto-scheduling tools | Medium |
| Client deliverables | Auto-generated summaries, insight reports | Medium |
| Compliance | Auto-fill from payroll data, bulk generation | High |
Determine Your Optimal Tax Client Capacity
Busy season burnout often comes from taking on more clients than your team can realistically handle. Instead of overloading your team with every possible client, take time to calculate your firm’s actual capacity.
Consider factors like average time per return, staff utilization rates (both during and outside tax season), ideal working hours per week (understanding 40 hours isn’t impossible, but it probably isn’t realistic), the number of tax professionals working on returns, and the total number of weeks in tax season (busy season plus extension season). By analyzing these variables together, you can determine how many returns your firm can complete while maintaining quality and preventing burnout.
For example, a five-person tax team may discover their optimal tax capacity is just 650-700 returns per season, which could be far fewer than the 1,000+ they’ve been struggling to complete. This insight allows you to make strategic decisions about which clients align with your expertise, where investing in the right tax workflow solution may help, and when adding staff becomes necessary.
Develop Your Team’s AI and Technology Skills
You may be surprised to learn that 12% of accountants don’t trust AI to be in charge of anything at all. But a lot of fear can be derived from a lack of knowledge about AI tools. And since AI isn’t going anywhere, modern firms need to evolve with it. That’s why it’s important to use the off-season to invest in your staff’s AI and technology skills.
Start by identifying skill gaps uncovered during busy season, such as:
- Technology struggles
- Time-consuming tasks
- Errors or miscommunication
Then, creating a training plan that addresses the gaps, which may include:
- Formal training on new software platforms
- Peer learning sessions where staff can share their knowledge
- Regular technology updates and refresher courses
What may be most important, though, is preparing your team for how their roles will evolve as AI becomes more integrated into your workflow. Focus on how technology will elevate their positions—not eliminate them.
For example, as AI takes over data entry and organization, staff accountants will get to spend more time on analysis and advisory services, making their work more meaningful while creating more value for clients.
Create an Implementation Timeline
Remember that change doesn’t just happen overnight—especially in a profession as detail-oriented as accounting. Create a realistic timeline for implementing your new workflows and technologies before the next busy season.
Using a phased approach like the one below works best (slow and steady wins the race, after all):
- Phase 1 (immediately post-busy season): Assessment and planning
- Phase 2 (3-4 months out): Technology selection, tech-stack consolidation, and initial setup
- Phase 3 (6 months out): Staff training and preliminary testing
- Phase 4 (3 months before busy season): Client onboarding and full system testing
- Phase 5 (1 month before busy season): Final adjustments and preparation
Set specific goals for each phase and regularly check progress. As an example, you could aim to have 50% of your clients using your new document collection system during the next busy season, 75% the season after, and 90% by the busy season after that. This approach ensures your team’s comfort with new processes and helps your clients adapt, too.
Educate Your Clients and Improve Communication
Even the best internal processes will fail if your clients aren’t on board. Use the off-season to educate them about your new systems and set clear expectations for the next busy season. Consider creating resources like short video tutorials on using your client portal, checklists of what they’ll need for next year’s return, or clear timelines of when documents are due.
Of course, AI-powered client portals can dramatically improve the client experience while reducing your staff’s workload. These systems can:
- Send automated reminders for missing documents.
- Provide real-time updates on return status.
- Answer common questions through chatbots.
- Provide secure document exchange and eSignatures.
When clients have access to what they need when they need it, everyone wins.
Better Busy Seasons Start Today
The best time to prepare for next busy season is right now, while challenges remain fresh in your mind. By conducting a thorough assessment, streamlining your workflow, embracing AI, and carefully implementing changes, you can turn busy season into a more enjoyable experience for all (your firm included!).
Remember, the goal isn’t just to survive busy season—it’s to thrive during it. And with the right approach, tax season can become a time of growth, profitability, and even reasonable working hours for your firm.
The profession is quickly changing, with AI leading the way. Firms that adapt will find themselves not just keeping up but getting ahead. They’ll work less, earn more, and deliver better services to their clients.
So, before you close the books on this busy season and jet off to your much-anticipated (and well-deserved) vacation, take the first step toward making the next one better. Your future self (and your team) will thank you.