Evaluating and future-proofing your accounting practice after busy season

It feels unfathomable, but busy season will soon slow down. Returns and extensions will be filed, and accountants can breathe a bit.

Here’s another truth about this time of year: The processes and parts of an accounting practice that need to be tweaked or fully changed are in full view. The stress test of busy season will expose gaps, needs, and possible improvements to make—especially if your firm hasn’t yet adopted the latest AI tools and technology.

It may feel too soon to reflect on the busy season you just got through, but make sure to schedule time to take notes before the details become hazy (or if you block them out due to stress). Once the details are on paper—an email, Post-It, Google doc, or note-taking app are helpful places to store them—they’ll become a good starting point for an actionable change management plan, large or small. 

Here are five suggested areas to review before putting this year’s busy season—and yourself—to bed.

1. Evaluate your processes

End-to-end processes of an accounting practice are the engine that keeps the books-to-tax busy season moving. The volume of work moving through these processes will expose bottlenecks and manual areas that are eating away at you and your team’s time.

Give some scrutiny to data collection and entry, reconciliation, and other areas that can take up a lot of time and leave the door open for human error.

Look into what you can do to move toward a fully automated end-to-end process. Ask your accountant peers how they automated the identified manual parts. Deep dive into accounting software and third-party apps. Embracing automation buys back the resource of time, but also paves the way for cleaner, error-free data. 

This is an ideal time to find ways to use AI to remove manual processes (just remember that AI tools always require human oversight). It’s also a good moment to draft a responsible AI policy for your firm if you haven’t already. This useful guide will align the team on how and when to implement artificial intelligence in the practice. Just like an employee handbook, an AI policy keeps everyone on the same page when it comes to policy, usage, and oversight.

Legacy processes may still be in place for a practice because they have traditionally worked. But all processes gather dust and need healthy scrutiny. Take time to circle the areas in your processes that are lagging and may need refreshing. There could be many more time-saving areas that weren’t available when the current process was first established.

2. Natural next evaluation point: technology changes

Make note of all the areas in your practice where technology worked well this year—and where it did not work or needs improvement. Reach out to your vendor representatives with your lists of needs, and ask for assistance in making the changes that would be beneficial to your practice. There may be holes in your tech stack or more efficient workflows that an outside observer can help you see.

And be mindful of the change management required for technology shifts, including timing and client communication. This is also a good time to help your clients make any useful updates to their tech stacks that will help both you and them in the long run.

Intuit QuickBooks has a host of product innovations coming in 2025. Consider how these updates can be beneficial to improving your technology stack. For more information on these or other ways the Intuit team can help, feel free to reach out to us.

3. Review the client roster

Client relationships are the heartbeat of every practice, where tendencies, timeliness, clarity, and other characteristics impact the accountant/client relationship. With recent client communication fresh in mind, evaluate each client with these two questions:

1. What work did we do for this client?
2. Is what we are charging this client in line with the answer to #1?

Look at workloads for specific clients and evaluate if what they are being charged is appropriate for the amount of work their engagement requires. Take as many notes as you can on each client. These notes can frame the conversations with clients at the end of their engagement, and can also serve as a reminder for the team of specific nuances to keep in mind next year.

Ask the harder question of which clients can be offboarded. Are there clients that can be better served by a different firm or a different practice area?

Consider working through an exercise to identify the ideal client profile for your practice, and use this as a guide in further business planning. 

4. Review service offerings

When automating parts of your end-to-end processes results in better quality data and more efficiency, there can be an opportunity to explore new or expanded service offerings. Think through your conversations with clients.

What were clients asking about this year? Are there new patterns in how small businesses operate and what they need? What gaps were there in service offerings that clients sought out in the busy season?

Adding new service offerings is not an easy lift, but keeping an eye on what clients need is prudent for the long-term success of a practice. Notice the patterns in what multiple clients are asking, and start to think about what added-value new service offerings can bring to your business and your clients. Future proof your business by learning about, and providing, the latest AI and technology before clients even ask.

5. Check in on the team & take time to celebrate

Busy season is hard on accountants, their families, and their support network. 

Leaders: Add a touch point at the end of the season to see how everyone is doing. 

Team members: Check in on each other.

Use an upcoming team meeting to compare any evaluation notes. See where there is pain point overlap, or if it is more comfortable, leaders can set up meetings with individual members. If you’re a staff member and this outlet isn’t in place, ask for time with your leader to share your observations.

Technology and refreshed processes may serve a practice, but these are only as good as the people using them. Take a look at what changes can be introduced to staff training. Think through how to use the next few months to learn the necessary skills for growth, and also consider what kind of training is needed for clients to ensure the working relationship continues to be healthy.

And take time to celebrate! Ask employees how they’d like to mark the end of busy season as a firm, whether it’s going out for drinks, a gift card they can use on their own time (with a dollar limit, of course), or having lunch at a favorite restaurant as a group.

Now is a great opportunity to close busy season on a positive note and future-proof for challenges next year. Give evaluation priority. Uncover the pain points and take the next few months to develop a plan to address them. The practice and clients will be set up well for the next busy season.