Prepare Your Company for Tax Season: How to Staff Smart

Tax season brings unique staffing challenges that require careful planning and execution. Learn how to assess your team’s needs, hire the right talent, and ensure your accounting department is prepared to handle the year-end crunch with ease and efficiency. Contact our staff at PrideStaff Financial.

Focus on current staff:

Instead of bracing staff for the upcoming tax season, try encouraging them. You can communicate this attitude in writing through a simple phrase that you include in your email signature. Offer incentives for employees when the chaos of the season ends. You could also be fun! Hang up a banner with a fun encouraging phrase.

Assess your team’s needs:

Nothing adds to stress like inadequate tools and outdated software that can’t handle the complexity of year-end accounting tasks. Ensure your team can access modern accounting software and tools that make their tasks more manageable. Set up a meeting and ask staff what they need in order to get through the crunch season. Making these investments helps streamline their work and shows that you’re interested in a healthy professional environment.

Get some rest!

You’ve read that right! It may seem odd, but getting proper rest and relaxation before the surge of tax season is crucial. An accounting department can see a lot of improvements both in wellness and morale by taking some intentional time to rest before having to buckle down and focus on crunching numbers and helping dozens of clients file their taxes the right way. Perhaps the accounting department can ease up on work leading up to tax season or else promote time for rest over the holidays. Capitalizing on rest is perhaps one of the most useful ways to prepare for the coming tax season.

Hire seasonal help:

Staffing smart means staffing for the season. Know what your team needs ahead of the tax season and prepare early for hiring seasonal staff. Create a clear job description which saves both you the time and frustration that come with interviewing candidates who aren’t really qualified because they weren’t clear on what the role entailed or required of them. Also, be willing to extend the contract length for unexpected challenges or client hiccups that come with filing taxes. Make sure that you offer seasonal workers the same tech that other employees have access to. This is incredibly helpful for allowing temporary workers who need some time to adjust to the way your accounting firm does things to hit the ground running.

Plan in advance:

For any accounting department, it’s a good idea to notify clients ahead of time and schedule planning meetings. This simply prepares both the clients and their accountant to get the necessary documents and forms in order, to provide any necessary information that might be needed, and for both parties (especially when it comes to new clients) to meet and get acquainted before diving into their taxes.

PrideStaff Financial has consistently won awards for exceptional client satisfaction.

Our highly skilled staffing consultants can support your management teams during the upcoming tax season. Contact us to learn more about our accounting & finance staffing services.