Take Care of Yourself and Your Practice Staff This Tax Season

We all know how chaotic tax season can be even if we plan it to the ‘T.’ Extended office hours, frequent coffee breaks and pizza sessions, and working Saturdays all become the norm.

Of course – stress levels are the highest at this time of the year. In fact, until after Tax Day, CPAs and accountants will continuously be on their toes to accommodate the influx of tax returns in addition to their daily tasks.

A ConstantContact survey states 56% of business owners are never away from work and a whopping 51% of them revealed they don’t have time to focus on themselves. Whoa!

Therefore, it isn’t surprising to know that such a “pressure” can have severe ramifications in your personal life.

For starters:

• You could find it difficult to snap out of your office mindset when you are at home.
• You could have trouble sleeping at night thanks to the copious amounts of coffee you’ve had all day.
• You could even be disturbed due to staff shortage your CPA firm is currently experiencing.

Many reasons can affect your wellbeing during the busy period. But most importantly, your accounting staff can also feel low or bogged down at times.

Of course, one of the benefits of outsourcing accounting services is to reduce stress. But we’ll discuss that later.

It is essential to create a positive and motivating environment for those working with and for you. One way to ensure this is by organizing varied activities to keep everyone motivated throughout these few weeks.

Here are a few stress-reducing ideas to try:

• Dress-down days
• Scheduled masseuse visits
• Catered dinners for those working late evenings
• Personalized coffee and doughnut deliveries
• Weekly birthday celebrations (who doesn’t love cake?)
• Video game competitions
• Happy hours (everyone’s favorite!)

The social gatherings should be long enough for everyone to get out of their work mode to unwind a bit. A good tip is to keep the majority of the activities in-house to eliminate travel time and improve attendance.

Additionally, here are a few things you and your staff must try individually to keep stress levels in check:

• Make it mandatory to take 10-minute breaks away from the desk to go out for a walk or have a non-work related conversation with colleagues.
• Take deep breaths every time you feel overwhelmed with your workload, emails or strict timelines.
• Get up and stretch, move around and come back to your desk energized and awake.
• Set a scheduled time to go to the gym or do yoga before coming to work, if possible.

Thought about outsourcing?

Why not? There many benefits of outsourcing accounting services.

1) When it comes to managing the overflow of tax season, you won’t have to run around hiring expensive staff because your outsourcing partner will support you during the busy period in a cost-effective set-up. This in itself is one of the most significant benefits of outsourcing accounting services.

2) Many small and midsize CPA firms do not have access to the best of technologies or infrastructure. But, since your outsourcing partner is fully equipped, it is possible to complete tasks efficiently.

3) One of the benefits of outsourcing accounting services is that you won’t have to worry about adapting to changing tax laws and instead move your entire focus on delivering work to your clients. Your outsourcing partner will take care of that.

4) They will also help you with tax legislation and advise you on the best ways to manage compliance and boost your operational efficiency.

5) One of the benefits of outsourcing accounting services is that you can turn around work faster as you have the right tech and legislative support from your outsourcer.