make fewer mistakes, increase revenue and capacity

tackle the four error categories.

by frank stitely
the relentless cpa

determining the workflow harm that errors cause should be second nature now. errors cause rework. rework adds to work in progress (wip) and, thus, increases turnaround time.

this happens in two ways: as wip increases, capacity decreases. it’s a double whammy.

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when a reviewer spots errors on a tax return and sends it back to the preparer, the preparer wastes at least 15 minutes, and probably more like 30 minutes, fixing the errors. the return then goes back to the reviewer, who spends another 15 minutes re-reviewing the return. we have added 30 to 45 minutes to the wip for this tax return. we know that adding to our wip numerator increases turnaround time.

equally as bad, errors reduce capacity. this may not be quite as obvious. in your average 14-hour tax return workday, preparers spending two hours per day correcting errors reduce their capacity to prepare new returns. instead of spending 14 hours a day preparing returns, our preparers spend only 12 hours a day preparing returns. obviously, less work gets done as a result of the errors. errors reduce our capacity, which increases our turnaround time.

very little has been written in the cpa/accounting world about preventing errors. practice consultants don’t believe they can reduce your bank account sufficiently by talking about error prevention. it’s not as sexy as telling you that you’re worth more than you’re making. however, errors cost you real money in higher costs and lost clients.

in the movie, “animal house,” dean wormer said, “fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” we can at least work on the stupid part when it comes to preventing errors. on the first two counts, i am guilty as charged, your honor.

the two best industries for information on preventing errors are medicine and the military. answering why is easy. when people screw up in these industries, people die.

there are hundreds of books on preventing errors in medicine and the military. in summary, there are two primary-causes of errors: bad procedures and bad culture.

johns hopkins medicine published a study that stated medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the u.s. the study goes on to state that an average of 250,000 people per year die in the u.s. every year from medical errors. medical practitioners have a huge investment in preventing errors and much to teach us. cp-2000 letters don’t seem so deadly by comparison.

a key takeaway from the research is the importance of simple and clear procedures. doctors use a marker to note the arm they are about to amputate. why? because they screwed up a lot before they started doing this. so why does the medical profession still have such horrible error rates despite the voluminous research and effort poured into procedures? solving procedures issues is maybe half of the problem – maybe half, probably much less.

culture is the real issue. there are lots of agendas in medicine counter to the professed purpose of healing patients.

that’s a culture issue. it’s a caring issue and an issue of prioritizing agendas other than patient care. someone—maybe nurses, maybe administrators, maybe insurance companies—cares more about something other than patient care. despite wonderful research on procedures, medical errors are still one of the leading causes of death in the u.s.

on the other hand, the military has a ready-made solution to the culture issue of mis-prioritization. on a submarine, when you screw up miles deep in the middle of the pacific ocean, you die. not surprisingly, submariners are motivated to follow procedures and reduce errors. motivation to reduce errors directly correlates with one’s personal investment in a successful outcome.

in conclusion, aligning personal interest with successful outcomes reduces errors from culture problems. our problem in accounting is that society frowns upon killing staff members for messing up the federal withholding on a w-2 form. regrettably, we must be more subtle, yet still align personal interests with the best interests of clients.

there are two pieces to getting staff interests aligned with client interests. the first piece is setting up systems that reward high quality and punish low quality. this sounds very simple in theory but is very difficult in the real world.

a decade ago, i made the stunning observation that we were paying our part-time tax season staff for quantity, not quality. we paid them a percentage of the billings for each tax return. they made a lot of errors because they didn’t get paid for preparing quality tax returns. they got paid for preparing tax returns – not correct tax returns. quality wasn’t rewarded. we rewarded volume and that’s what we got.

after brilliantly identifying the problem, i thought i would surely receive the nobel prize in economics for my solution to the problem. we would pay a 5 percent bonus to our part-time staff for returns prepared without data entry errors. i had my nobel acceptance speech nearly complete before the next tax season began.

we had recently begun tracking and classifying errors in preparation and came up with four error categories:

1. data entry errors
2. concept errors
3. cosmetic errors
4. comments

we consider data entry errors to be the most serious type of error in that they result from a preparer’s insufficient self-review. data entry errors cause cp-2000 errors and unhappy clients.

concept errors require additional staff training. we can’t blame someone for lack of training in an area.

cosmetic errors don’t affect the numbers on the returns. they are items such as misspellings and random blank lines. the irs doesn’t care if we can’t spell unless it’s a taxpayer or dependent name.

finally, comments aren’t errors at all. they can be compliments.

when we first began tracking errors, we found that on personal tax returns, our average data entry error rate was more than 1.5 errors per return. that was shocking based on the information above about the havoc errors cause in increased wip and lower capacity.

we needed to fix the data entry error problem, and my solution to incentivize preparers to not make errors was both brilliant and staff friendly. i was at the forefront of employee-first management theory. well, it was better than using a baseball bat on them. or so it seemed.

what could go wrong? let’s skip to the result and then go back to analyze why.

data entry errors did not decrease significantly. we lost probably a hundred hours debating the existence and definition of data entry errors. if our scan-and-populate program made a mistake, preparers didn’t believe they should be penalized for not catching the error.

it was crystal clear before tax season that it was their responsibility to catch these errors. however, that didn’t reduce their protests one bit. we got 2,000-word email missives about how we were ruining their livelihoods. we wasted easily a hundred hours reading and responding to these.

they viewed the 5 percent bonus as an entitlement that we were taking away arbitrarily. you may wonder, as i did, how college graduates could think that way. surely, at some point, they took a management class about why quality was important.

the reason why they considered the bonus an entitlement was irrelevant. the fact that they did think this way is all that mattered. i would love to go back and punish their parents for poor child-raising skills, but that wouldn’t solve the problem.

the next tax season, we eliminated the bonus. griping ceased. we eliminated griping by paying people less. this is why i should receive the nobel prize. who knew you could reduce staff complaints by reducing compensation? of course, this made absolutely no sense.

what was the solution to the error problem? the solution is aligning their personal financial interests with high-quality work. i was right about that, but my initial solution sucked.

my approach now is the education their parents and professors didn’t do. the basic lean six sigma equation applies to them personally, as well as to our firm. making errors costs them money. they waste time correcting errors that could be better used preparing more returns.

is this working? not well enough. the problem is more complex from a training perspective. the real solution is teaching remote staff how to efficiently prepare returns in the first place. if they aren’t efficient, they will make errors.

i came to this realization from reviewing a preparer’s third questions list to a client asking about missing mortgage interest. the interest was down $20,000 from the prior year, and the preparer didn’t notice until after my review comments highlighting this.

we believe that we provide this training every january, but we really focus more on our firm procedures and interacting with us. we spend little time teaching them how to approach tax return preparation. efficient preparers know that the first 15 minutes spent organizing tax return information can greatly reduce the total time spent on the return and reduce errors. few people learn this on their own. the irony is that we do this training well with full-time staff.

another huge factor behind staff errors is attitude toward clients. staff who don’t care much about clients as human beings make more errors. again, this is a culture problem.

i see tax preparers who want to punish clients for not making the preparers’ lives as easy as they might be. this week i heard the following statement from a preparer:

“the client needs a lesson in worthless stock. they don’t understand that we need the basis even if it’s worthless.”

the second word in the sentence tells us everything we need to know about the preparer’s attitude. the preparer isn’t dealing with a real human being. he is dealing with a “client.” we need to teach lessons to those horrible people, known as clients, so that they make our lives easier. of course, this preparer will likely never meet this client. he didn’t bother to use her name. there are no obvious consequences to demonizing her. the preparer wraps himself up in his own problems and doesn’t care about this entity known as “client.” tax season is tiring, and clients are the problem. obviously, few of our clients understand worthless stock. we should be glad they don’t. that keeps us employed.

the likelihood of errors increases when a preparer works for a “client” instead of jane.

adopting remote office technology means fewer personal interactions with clients. this problem will worsen in the future without some action on our part. we must actively manage our firm cultures to turn unseen clients into human beings in the eyes of staff. clients are not obstacles but our reason for existing.

partners set the tone for how staff treat clients. i regret the many times i’ve stormed through the office griping about clients. i’m a big part of our problem – the biggest part. i know my clients personally. i care about them and their financial results. however, that gets lost in the heat of tax season when i roar through the office in a huff. staff need to see more of the caring and less of the huffing.

creating a more client-friendly culture aligns our interests with client interests. we must do better.

posted on january 31, 2023