If you’re an accountant, tax season isn’t busy – it’s relentless. Emails come faster than you can reply to them, clients are nowhere to be seen until the very last second, and suddenly, everything is urgent. Catching up? Please, you barely have time to eat. 

What’s even worse, the work never comes evenly. One day you’re doing okay, thinking you’ll just about pull through; the next, you’re drowning in files, missing documents, and meetings with people who “just have one quick question”. What’s tragic is that this chaos doesn’t come from the work itself, but from how that work is managed.

The good news is, it’s entirely possible to take back control and survive tax season without being burned out. 

Let’s dive into a few useful tips to get you through taxes without much headache.

6 Tips Every Accountant Needs During Tax Season

During tax season, you’re under constant pressure to get everything done perfectly (and on time), and as a result, you get stressed and overwhelmed. Luckily, though, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Set Time Limits for Communicating with Clients

It’s important to communicate with your clients, but if every call is long or those email threads never end, your entire day will get derailed. You’ll have to set clear boundaries during tax season. This means, time-block specific hours when you’re available for calls and be upfront about limits – 15 minutes and that’s that. 

Focus on essentials during the conversation and you’ll be shocked at how much more efficient they’ll be when there’s a time cap. 

Organize Physical Documents by Client and Category

When you have a lot of paperwork to deal with, you have to stay organized or you’re in for chaos. Digging through piles of documents just to find one missing receipt will waste a lot of time and, what’s worse, make you very stressed. Tax pros sort paper files using tax envelopes for each client and type of document. 

Chaos is kept in check and you can handle dozens of cases without having to worry about losing track of anything. 

Use Intake Checklists to Make Onboarding Faster

Onboarding new clients doesn’t have to take forever. One of the best ways to save time is to create a standard intake checklist, so that every client knows exactly what documents they need to send and when. Not only will it save you from chasing people down for missing info, it’ll also make your clients feel more confident in the entire process. 

And once the checklist is done, you can use it over and over for all new clients. 

Batch Similar Tasks to Avoid Switching Context

If you’re constantly switching between different tasks, how can you not lose time? You review a tax form, then answer emails, then hop on a call with a client. Meanwhile, your brain has to recalibrate every time and that mental reset can eat up more time than you think. It also makes you less productive. 

It’s much better to batch similar work together. Set aside a block of time to process returns, another block for client calls, and another for handling emails. You’ll stay more focused and make fewer mistakes. 

Make Appointment Scheduling Automated

Making appointments through email is one of those things that, little by little, suck up your time and it adds up fast. You end up with 5 different emails just to lock down a single appointment and, during that time, you could have done some work. 

Instead of this, set up an automated scheduler like Calendly. This lets your clients pick up a time based on when you’re available and you can even build in buffers between time slots so your calendar doesn’t get overloaded. 

Delegate or Outsource Everything That’s Not Essential

During tax season, you don’t really have the time to scan paperwork and format spreadsheets. Take a look at what you need to do and figure out which tasks that can be done by pretty much everyone and don’t depend on you. Maybe it’s data entry, organizing documents, email follow-ups, etc. These are the things you can delegate to a colleague or even temporarily outsource. 

And don’t think of it as an extra expense. It’s just something you can do to buy back your time and focus on what’s actually important (which is keeping your head above water). 

Conclusion

Your calendar looks like a list of things you need to survive and you’re trying to get through what feels like a nonstop sprint. Not even coffee can help the chaos that awaits you. Yes… That’s tax season for you. That is, if you do it the wrong way. There’s also the option of getting through tax season without ending up completely exhausted, plus you now have a list of 6 excellent tips that can make it manageable. 

There’s no magic wand that’ll make taxes feel pleasant, but at least you know how to keep your sanity while working through it.