The accounting field is hectic, with many accountants often working long hours that stretch beyond the demands of a typical five-day work week.  

These intense hours and overloaded schedules can take their toll. In a recent survey, 99% of accountants reported some level of burnout, and over 24% of respondents reported medium to high levels of burnout.  

While this is challenging on a personal level, it also is problematic from a business operations standpoint; when professionals burn out, it can lead to decreased efficiency and a feeling of dissatisfaction with their work. But there are other options besides heavy workloads and long weeks. If you want to support your teams and help them achieve better work/life balance while also improving productivity, consider the four-day workweek. 

Is the four-day workweek really a solution? 

While the concept of giving your employees fewer hours to complete their tasks might sound counterintuitive, there is evidence to support that this practice can work if implemented effectively. 

One headlining example: Microsoft. In 2019, Microsoft Japan reported that after shifting to a four-day workweek, it experienced a 40% increase in productivity. 

Other companies who have implemented a four-day workweek have noticed benefits like:  

• Increased productivity 
• Better employee retention 
• Lower overhead costs 
• Improved talent recruitment 

Tools to help your accounting firm implement a four-day workweek 

If you’re looking for ways to implement a four-day workweek at your firm without sacrificing customer satisfaction and employee productivity, an excellent place to start is finding tools that streamline your accounting practices to reduce the risk of burnout and save time. 

Here are some of the tools accounting firms can use to make a four-day workweek possible. 

Project management 

Instead of wading through a mountain of emails to figure out what has to be done and when, take advantage of the latest project management software that will keep you on task and hitting deadlines. (Even if those deadlines are one day a week short!) 

You can get a bird’s eye view of progress on all tasks from your main dashboard and create templates for custom workflows so you don’t lose valuable working hours populating tasks. Due date tracking is built-in, so you don’t have to rely on an old-fashioned datebook or create calendar reminders. This can save enormous amounts of time and keep your team working together seamlessly, from the office or on the go. 

Billing and invoicing tools 

Two tasks that eat up accountants’ time budget are tracking time and invoicing and billing clients.  

Manually tracking time, while better than NOT tracking time at all, is tedious and error-prone. Accountants that wait until the end of the week to tally up their hours are more likely to misreport their time. 

And when it comes to invoicing and billing, doing it by hand is yet another recipe for lost hours, frustration, and mistakes. Even detail-oriented accountants can struggle with finding the time to assemble invoices (let alone chase down overdue ones).  

A great way to free up time for your team is to use time and billing software to take these time-consuming processes off your plate so that you can focus on more high-value tasks during your condensed workweek.