Maximize Efficiency and Avoid Burnout During the Busy Season

Accounting professionals are no strangers to burnout, especially during tax season. With looming deadlines, worried clients, and mountains of administrative tasks waiting, it can be easy to let your personal life and emotional well-being take a backseat to your professional deadlines. But letting your work dominate your life, even if it’s just during the busy season, can have disastrous consequences that could lead to you feeling tired and anxious—or worse, total burnout. 

But at Mango, we’re not all doom and gloom. We explore invaluable tips on how to maximize your efficiency and avoid the beast they call burnout this tax season.  

1. Improve client communication and collaboration  

Client interactions can take up a massive amount of time during the busy season—and they aren’t necessarily stress-free, especially this time of year. From waiting (patiently) for essential documents to answering emails from clients worried about the status of their taxes, accountants can get overwhelmed quickly.  

Client communication and collaboration tools can reduce the stress by making it easier to get critical documents and share updates, without taking away from the countless other tasks you have on your plate. A well-designed software solution will provide you with secure file-sharing, one-click eSignatures, and easy-to-use client portals.  

Here’s how these powerful tools can help you take client interactions to the next level: 

Secure file-sharing 

Securely share and request files straight from your inbox, without requiring a login. Bank-level security removes the need for protecting your PDFs with passwords, and you don’t have to worry about physically printing and scanning (or mailing) documents.  

Electronic signatures 

Get securely signed documents from your clients anytime from anywhere in just a few clicks, eliminating the need to wait days for a response. And yes, eSignatures are legally binding!  

Client portal 

Increase client convenience (and satisfaction) with a self-service, cloud-based digital gateway that allows your clients to pay online, check on invoices, and manage documents—all from their computer or mobile phone. 

These powerful tools allow you to streamline your communication by eliminating long response times, and they have the added benefit of being convenient and user-friendly. And when your clients are more in-the-know about their projects, they’re more likely to have a better client experience.  

2. Automate non-billable and administrative tasks 

Accountants often get stuck in the weeds when they’re working on time-consuming (and often non-billable) tasks, and there’s no worse time for this than smack in the middle of the busy season.  

As it turns out, losing billable hours to admin work is unnecessary. From sending emails to onboarding clients and tracking time, many of your most common daily processes can be automated. Automations are simple to implement and free you up to focus on clients and the work that actually gets you paid.  

To automate tasks and get back to work, your practice management software should assist with:    

Client onboarding 

Save time while still keeping the focus on the client’s experience. With the right practice management software, your clients can feel informed, up-to-speed, and supported with custom welcome messages and automatic emails that guide them through the intake process. 

Time tracking 

Effectively tracking time is crucial to any accountant’s work, whether billing by the hour or value billing. Instead of spending hours trying to account for the work you’ve been doing, use time-tracking software that logs all your activity with the click of a button. 

Billing 

Pulling from the time you’ve tracked, you can easily and automatically set up batch or recurring invoices with links to online payment options so your clients can pay easily every month. 

Email 

Automate repetitive email tasks like feedback requests, newsletters, answers to frequently asked questions, and invoices or payment reminders.   

With these cumbersome administrative tasks finally off your plate, you can get back to getting more high-value work done (and getting paid for it).  

3. Streamline your task management and team communication 

Holding project meetings, wrangling status updates from team members, and back-and-forth emails are part of shepherding a project to the finish line during tax season.  

But even though these tasks are necessary, they can also take up a lot of energy. 

Project management software can be a game-changer in getting the job done while keeping burnout at bay. The right tools will keep your team organized and on the ball during the busiest season of the year, removing the need for endless meetings and status updates.  

Critical features of project management software for accounting firms include:  

• A comprehensive project dashboard that gives you the big picture of your project status and makes it easy to drill down into the details 
• A master library of project templates that can be easily customized and tailored to your organization’s needs 
• Customizable workflow options that allow you to assign tasks to team members, add notes to projects, and filter as needed to assess your progress quickly  
• Email notifications that alert you when new projects or tasks are assigned and let you know when a project is finished and ready for review 

Before you dive into new software, though, make sure your team is fully trained on how to use it. New tools are only helpful if everyone is comfortable with their features and functionalities. If you’re considering implementing a new practice management tool, consider holding team training sessions so everyone is on the same page.  

Accounting firm management software isn’t just for accountants 

Accountants aren’t the only ones who feel strapped for time and stressed during the busy season. Bookkeepers are also at risk of burnout and overload during tax time—and these tips and tools are just as useful for them as they are for accountants. Accounting billing software can help bookkeepers stay organized and efficient without sacrificing accuracy.  

With the right cloud-based software solution, bookkeepers can track time and expenses, handle online invoices and payments, and manage all of their contacts, documents, and projects from anywhere at any time.  

Get rid of burnout and enjoy tax season success with Mango  

With our robust practice management system, you can get every piece of software you need in one place, so you don’t lose time jumping between different programs during the busiest time of the year.  

Save time, set your accounting practice up for success, and keep tax season burnout at bay with help from the experts at Mango—schedule a demo with us today.