Take Control of Your Tax Return Workflow with Scheduling

We reduced stress, gave clients clarity, and allowed staff to balance heavy workloads with real life. You can too.

If you struggle with controlling the pace and flow of tax return work in your firm, you may benefit from implementing a scheduling procedure. My firm, Steadfast Bookkeeping, did that for the first time this year, and it appears to be working well for us.

We accomplished this with our existing software (no need for any separate apps!), and with a few refinements, we’re looking forward to implementing this approach again next year.

Why We Tried Scheduling This Year

The start of tax season can feel like a floodgate: once returns start coming in, it’s hard to manage priorities, staff capacity, and client expectations. Clients understandably want to know when their returns will be completed, but when everything comes in at once, the only honest answer is “as soon as possible.”

It’s also tricky to know when to start working on a return. For the first couple of months of the year, documents and information can trickle in. Missing forms suddenly appear, along with corrected forms and revelations of new investments, businesses, even marriages and recently born children! Rechecking files and revising returns and estimates can deplete capacity and ratchet up stress.

And what if the client submits the questionnaire, uploads a few documents, and immediately requests updates? What if she has a mortgage application that needs to be finalized, or refuses to file an extension?

Many firms, including ours, usually shift workloads, rearrange schedules, and make costly exceptions for requests like these. But this year, we wanted something different:

• A way to smooth out the workflow so our staff didn’t feel overwhelmed,

• A system that would reduce the endless stream of “What’s the status of my return?” messages, and

• Space to plan around real life—vacations, breaks, even paternity leave!—without feeling like we were letting clients down.

How Scheduling Worked for Steadfast

We asked each of our individual (1040) clients to choose a week by scheduling an “appointment.” During that week, our team committed to reviewing their documents and beginning return preparation. If we were still missing documents or information, we informed the client of what we needed and that they would need to reschedule their review.

If we determine we have what we need during the document review, we committed to a two-week turnaround, beginning with the following week. That means a client should expect to have the return ready to review and sign within three weeks of the start of their document review week.

We allowed a predetermined number of signups each week, based on the number of returns we expected to do and the number of weeks we offered. We included “blackout” periods to account for breaks and to give us opportunities to catch up.

And, of course, we filed extensions for all returns, without exception. We filed proper extensions with genuine estimates of each client’s tax liability based on our projections and information available at the time of filing.

Here’s what changed for us:

• Less stress We controlled the pace, rather than letting the season control us.

• Better planning We had visibility into workload weeks in advance and could block off periods for deadlines, vacations, and family time.

• Fewer status requests Clients knew exactly when their documents were scheduled for review, if we needed more information, and an estimated timeframe for completing the return.

Clients generally found it easy to use. A few were confused because they thought they were scheduling a meeting (not just a review window), and some wondered why they couldn’t pick a week before April 15. Both were simple messaging issues we’ll refine for next year.

Implementing Scheduling in Your Firm

A simple scheduling system can yield major benefits. By adding structure, we reduced stress, gave clients clarity, and allowed our team to balance heavy workloads with real life.

Of course, you probably have questions, even doubts, about implementing a system like this in your firm. (We did too!) Thinking through your firm’s workflows and your clients' needs can help alleviate fears.

First, implementing scheduling helps maintain healthy boundaries for you and reasonable expectations for clients. Telling them to pick a review week, then making exceptions, accepting late submissions, or tolerating nonresponsiveness defeats the purpose. You have to clearly communicate the consequences of not scheduling a document review or not providing all the necessary documents and information by that date.

Next, the timeframes and number of reviews per week we used may not be appropriate for your firm. You could do more than one round per week, or even daily reviews, depending on your capacity and workflows. Just keep in mind that the more reviews you commit to doing each week, the greater the need to add in blackout periods to prevent overloading yourself and your staff.

Also, you may feel like setting this system up would be more trouble than it’s worth. However, you likely have what you need already. Our system worked well with our existing technological infrastructure. We didn’t need special software, and neither do you! You probably have someone in your firm already who could set this up for you, or if not, I’m happy to help!

💡 The rest of this post is for paid subscribers. I’ll walk through the exact setup, including the tools, calendar scheduling, and workflow details so that you can replicate this in your own practice.