{"id":115620,"date":"2023-08-21t11:48:51","date_gmt":"2023-08-21t15:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/?p=115620"},"modified":"2024-08-27t17:01:29","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27t21:01:29","slug":"stop-non-tax-season-service-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2023\/08\/21\/stop-non-tax-season-service-requests\/","title":{"rendered":"stop non-tax season service requests"},"content":{"rendered":"
“i know you\u2019re busy, but \u2026”<\/strong><\/p>\n by frank stitely<\/em> a well-known practice management expert, whom i greatly respect, advises cpas never to tell clients that you don\u2019t have time for them. i disagree with the never part. you know how it starts. on march 25th, the call comes in.<\/p>\n more: <\/b>control your time: avoid ambush meetings and phone calls |<\/a>get clients to bring tax docs early…yes, early |<\/a>you train your clients, whether you mean to or not<\/a> | train your clients before they train you<\/a> | why time tracking still matters<\/a> | business owners face one of three exits<\/a> | don\u2019t let clients dictate tax workflow<\/a> | make fewer mistakes, increase revenue and capacity<\/a> | how small firms can win the talent wars<\/a> | easy ways to avoid \u2018done but\u2019 tax returns<\/a> | six ways to create a millennial-friendly firm<\/a> | do you know your turnaround time?<\/a> “i know you’re busy, but…”<\/p>\n a request follows that could most certainly wait until after tax season. you are hip deep reviewing all the personal tax returns that got stuck in the process while you climbed out of the march 15th corporate tax ditch.<\/p>\n \u201ci need to know if i\u2019m paying unemployment taxes to the right states. i think i should be paying taxes to the people\u2019s republic of california, but i\u2019m not. i\u2019ve been paying unemployment taxes to uzbekistan instead.\u201d<\/p>\n you know this doesn\u2019t have the urgency of picking at navel lint during tax season. she has been paying it incorrectly for the last half-century. another month won\u2019t matter. nonetheless, you have a client who expects you to research unemployment taxes for california and uzbekistan in late march. of course, it\u2019s just a \u201cquick\u201d question. what do you do?<\/p>\n our respected practice management expert would have you perform the research under the principle that you must always appear to have time for everything. i disagree. during tax season, you don\u2019t have time for every request.<\/p>\n that\u2019s a fact, jack.<\/p>\n if you drop everything to respond to this request, you\u2019re keeping one client satisfied, probably not even happy, while making three or four others very unhappy waiting for their tax returns, which presumably are the entire point of tax season.<\/p>\n here\u2019s where i think he goes wrong. he doesn\u2019t believe in telling clients upfront, before and during tax season, that you simply don\u2019t have time for everything and tasks that can wait must wait. that\u2019s tax season. if you follow his advice, you have two alternatives.<\/p>\n do the research and make other clients unhappy. or tell the client that you don\u2019t have the time to do the research until after tax season. both are bad alternatives. you end up making someone unhappy and probably getting an earful when your emotions are already raw.<\/p>\n i believe in setting expectations before tax season. i have previously written about our\u00a0series of pre-tax season e-blasts getting clients ready for tax season. one of those explains that we don\u2019t have time for everything during tax season. we focus on tax returns and year-end financial statements during tax season. we don\u2019t have time for much else.<\/p>\n we do this with humor. we explain that the biggest problem we have during tax season is actually finding the time to prepare tax returns amid all of the other non-tax season requests. i use some ridiculous example of something a long-dead client asked me to do in the past. i explain that it\u2019s not their request that\u2019s the problem. it\u2019s the 400 requests from other people that are the issue.<\/p>\n an underlying cause of the problem is that all your clients see themselves as your only client. if that\u2019s the case, you are doing a great job of client service. however, this leads to the mindset that you surely have time for this one request. of course, we know it\u2019s not one request. it\u2019s 400 requests.<\/p>\n for example, a client told one of our admin staff last week, \u201cfrank will do this for me. we go way back.\u201d<\/p>\n this came from a $500-per-year client. clearly, he sees himself as a very important client. i like him, but our practice doesn\u2019t survive on $500 clients asking for favors in late february.<\/p>\n it doesn\u2019t look like i\u2019m succeeding at stopping the non-tax season requests from the above example. however, my goal isn\u2019t 100% success. that\u2019s not realistic, given the size of our practice. the goal is to stop most of the bleeding. any time that we recover adds to our tax season capacity and pushes off tasks until after tax season when we have more free capacity.<\/p>\n of course, april 16th rolls around and 400 clients all think i\u2019ll have their tasks completed by close of business. but at least you’ve stopped most<\/strong><\/em> of the bleeding by communicating up front.<\/p>\n 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