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Tax & Accounting
8 Firm Management Tips for
a More Productive Tax Season
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8 Firm Management Tips for a More Productive Tax Season
Following even one or two of these eight tips can go a long way towards
increasing your firm’s productivity.
With economic conditions always uncertain, the new normal for accounting
firms is to find better ways to do more with less. The end of the year is no
longer a time of long lunch hours and holiday parties; instead, your firm can
use this time to tune up your practice.
Your firm management software can make or break your staff’s productivity
in the busy season. The policies and procedures you put into place now can
make a big impact on how successful your business is next year. Follow these
eight tips — or even just one or two of them — to make sure you’re ready for
the new year.
8 Firm Management Tips for a More Productive Tax Season
1. Rev up your firm with
interactive dashboards
Static reports are hard to read, slow to
produce and can’t adapt on the fly to show
the exact information you’re hoping to see.
Instead of paging through line after line of
confusing data, set up interactive dashboards
to access actual information that you can use.
Over the last several software releases,
CCH® ProSystem fx® Practice Management has
introduced a series of dashboards that you
may not be using. Access to the dashboards
is controlled by existing security permissions,
so your staff will only see information they
have permission to see. All you need to do
is select User Options > User Default View
and select your preferred dashboard.
Firm Dashboard — The Firm Dashboard is
designed for partners, to give you a better
sense of the health of the firm as a whole
as well as your own personal KPIs. Partners
can see lists of the firm’s WIP, Billing and
AR, organized by partner, manager, reviewer
and other criteria. Other views show you
your own personal WIP, Billing and AR
KPIs, plus project and client information
just for you. The newest addition to the
Firm Dashboards lets you analyze project
overruns by showing budgeted, actual
and variance hours and amounts.
Employee Dashboard — The Employee
Dashboard is designed to show firm
employees their unreleased, posted,
billed and scheduled time in an easy-toread monthly calendar or weekly view.
The Assignments tab conveniently lists all
of the employee’s tasks in one place.
Client Dashboard — Analyzing an individual
client’s activity is a lot easier with an
interactive view into all of the engagements
for that client. The PTD/YTD Activity view lets
you compare period-to-date and year-to-date
WIP and AR activity for any specified range.
In addition, the Current/Prior Activity view
shows production information by month,
employee or service code. Whether you need
a high-level summary or a detailed list of
activity, these KPIs can help you get a better
understanding of your client relationships.
Project Dashboard — To get a clear picture
of your firm’s projects, you can set up the
project dashboard to view and sort projects
by type, client, status, partner, manager
and more. Employees and managers can
quickly update project statuses from the
dashboard, track milestones through the
timeline of projects and see task details
sorted by a number of different criteria.
For best results…
Learn more about the Practice Management
dashboards and other new features by
booking a custom Practice Management
Consulting session tailored specifically
for your firm. Even a quick one-hour
question-and-answer session with
experienced consultants can help you
utilize your software more efficiently.
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8 Firm Management Tips for a More Productive Tax Season
2. Times change, so update your
best practices
Most firms change over time, but their best
practices don’t always keep up. If your firm
has recently gone through a merger or
expanded to new office locations, or if you’re
just trying to adjust to changing business
demands, a review of your best practices
documentation is a good place to start
looking for and eliminating inefficiencies. And
if you don’t have a Policies and Procedures
guide at all, now is the time to create one.
Some questions to ask when
evaluating your best practices are:
Many firms have been using Practice
Management for years without reevaluating
their best practices. The software has changed,
with new features and enhancements that you
might be missing out on, and the business
environment has most certainly changed as
well. Clients are more technologically savvy
than ever, and they expect their accountants
to be at least as efficient as they are.
• Is everyone using the software consistently?
The legislative atmosphere has changed as
well, and your firm needs to be in compliance
with record retention and data security laws.
Make sure your policies and procedures
are not just efficient, but also compliant.
• Is everyone in the firm tracking time
accurately?
• How can we speed up the billing process?
• Can employees easily find out the status of
their projects?
• Which of our procedures could be improved?
• Are there areas of the software that we
aren’t using well, or not using at all?
• Have we installed the most recent
release of the software, and do we know
how to use the newest features?
For best results…
Best Practices Consulting can help you
understand what changes would be beneficial
for your firm. A web-based session can
take the form of an open question-andanswer session or a review of current
recommendations. You can even have a
consultant to come to your firm and shadow
your staff to make recommendations
for improving their daily workflow.
8 Firm Management Tips for a More Productive Tax Season
3. Find and reward your achievers
Very few firms are content to make do
with the clients they already have. But
did you know that your firm management
software can help you improve your
business development efforts? It might
not be the first thing you thought of during
the implementation process, but Practice
Management has several marketing features
that can help you bring in new business.
If you’re not already using Practice
Management’s marketing features, now is
the time. You can generate contact lists,
marketing letters and mailing labels to stay
in touch and market your firm’s services
to prospects and existing clients. Then let
Practice Management help you track leads and
prospects to see which marketing methods
and referral sources are most productive.
Identifying your firm’s achievers — those
employees who bring in the most business —
can help you reward your most valuable
employees and motivate everyone on your
staff. Do you need to know how much time
your staff spends on business development?
What type of business they’re bringing in?
Who they’re working with to get it done?
You already have the tools you need to
report on these efforts. Don’t let this oftenoverlooked area of your software go to waste.
For best results…
Sign up for our two-hour Marketing course
that focuses on using features within
Practice Management to better track your
marketing efforts. The course will help you
determine how your employees attain new
business; understand how maintaining
up-to-date information about leads and
prospects can lead to more business; and
track marketing methods, referral sources
and employee marketing efforts. The
course also covers the use of mailing lists
to generate quick labels and letters.
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8 Firm Management Tips for a More Productive Tax Season
4. Turn your firm data into information
It’s easy to get stuck in a data rut — relying on
the same reports that don’t quite show the
information you want to see. In fact, Practice
Management has more reports than any of
the competition and a built-in report writer to
help you get exactly the information you need.
To help familiarize you with the huge selection
of available reports, Practice Management
includes a Sample Reports Guide that shows
every one of the 100-plus reports, including
instructions for using each report, available
fields and detailed field definitions. With
detailed reports for just about anything you
can think of, you’ll be able to more easily
reconcile the month end, find past-due clients,
compare billable and nonbillable hours to
total employee hours, view time posted
for the month, and stay on top of invoices
and AR transactions as they are posted.
The report list on each tab can be sorted
by Report Name or Report Type, making
it easier for you to locate the reports you
will need. To sort the report list, click the
column heading; then click the column
heading again to reverse the sort order.
Use the navigation bar (on the left side of
most of the reports) to select the sort criteria
for the report. The sort criteria determine
how the information will display on the
report and in what order. These reports can
be sorted by up to three levels — primary
sort criteria, secondary sort criteria and
detail sort. Use the report’s tabs to define
the criteria for your report. The selected sort
tab will change depending on which sort you
choose from the navigation bar (including
Department, NAIC Code, Line of Business,
Entity, Work Type or Group). If more than one
tab is active, combine the criteria on these
tabs to narrow the scope of your report.
Once you’ve identified the reports you
need to run your firm effectively, set up
the Report Queue to run your reports on a
regular basis. Scheduling and batch-running
reports helps keep the information flowing,
so you always have the current data you
need to make informed business decisions.
Even if you’re totally happy with the reports
you have, consider evaluating your reporting
procedures to see if you can save time
or save paper by using a more paperless
process. Report output options include
printing to electronic file formats like PDF,
RTF, HTML, Word, Excel® and Outlook®. Onscreen reporting can make the reporting
process more efficient and cost effective.
For best results…
A convenient, two-hour Reports course can
help you find the report you need, create
custom reports with the report writer, and
identify areas of your reporting process that
could be streamlined. Or, if you just want to
know more about Practice Management’s new
report templates, a one-hour custom consulting
session can answer all your questions.
8 Firm Management Tips for a More Productive Tax Season
5. Fine-tune your project management
The best way to manage projects is by
using project tracking features that are
integrated with your time and billing. If
you’re tracking projects manually or with a
separate project-tracking system, consider
using Practice Management’s integrated
project-tracking capabilities. Good project
tracking must be integral to your system
because it involves time entry, contact
management, billing and reporting.
Using Projects in Practice Management
lets you compare project budgeted time to
actual time recorded so you can evaluate
project profitability. This information will
be most accurate when it is integrated
with time entry, so billable time is
recorded as seamlessly as possible.
In addition to helping your staff work more
efficiently, integrated project management can
help your firm’s accounts receivables. Billing
by project can help your firm get paid more
quickly, especially for slow‑paying clients.
Creating and maintaining projects isn’t
difficult, so if your staff isn’t using project
tracking, they may just need a refresher
to help them remember to do it. The
end of the year and early January is an
ideal time for this type of training to
ensure your firm’s procedures are fresh
in their minds for the busy season.
For best results…
The Projects Administrator course explains
how to create and maintain projects, including
assigning employees and creating project
budgets. This two-hour course can even be
completed online for minimal downtime.
6. Get new staff and interns up to speed
If you’ve recently hired new administrative
staff, acquired new staff through mergers,
or are planning to hire interns for the
busy season, new employee training is
a must. Make sure firm administrators
know how to create new clients and
prospects the right way, understand the
importance of maintaining up-to-date client
information, and use the administrative
utilities provided. Even for seasoned
administrative staff, a refresher course on
how to complete year‑end procedures or
how to set up temporary employees can
help make things run more smoothly.
Any staff that you’ve hired recently or
acquired through mergers should be trained
on entering, reviewing, and releasing time
and expense transactions, monitoring client
and project alerts, and updating project
statuses. Even if this was done previously,
refresher training before the busy season
can help improve compliance across all staff.
And of course, any interns and temporary
employees hired on for the busy season
will need to be brought up to speed with
your firm’s policies and procedures.
If you’re planning to hire new employees in the
coming year and will need to add additional
people to your Practice Management software
license, consider buying these licenses before
the end of the year to lock in this year’s price.
As we all know, prices for everything go up
all the time, but a little extra planning can
save your firm a lot of money in the long run.
For best results…
Sign up your staff for Practice Management
End User training and/or Administrator
training. When you let Wolters Kluwer
conduct your new hire training, you’ll free
up more seasoned staff for billable work,
and refresher training ensures everyone is
familiar with the latest best practices.
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8 Firm Management Tips for a More Productive Tax Season
7. Streamline your billing
Conventional wisdom says that the faster
a client receives a bill, the faster you’ll
get paid. So what can you do to get the
bills out faster? A complete review of your
billing processes, beginning with how you
make billing decisions and including how
you generate, edit and review invoices
as well as how you post invoices to AR,
can help you identify inefficiencies.
Making billing decisions and generating
invoices should not take up an excessive
amount of time. One clue that your billing
process could be more efficient is if only
a limited number of staff members are
involved with billing. Practice Management
security features allow anyone to become
part of the process. With additional staff
involved in billing, your firm can save
time on billing, freeing up more time
for revenue-generating activities.
Using a lot of paper is another clue that your
billing process could be enhanced. On‑screen
billing doesn’t just save paper — it also saves
time. If it takes too long for your invoices to
get out the door, a more paperless process
can help keep things moving. When billers
complete billing decisions on screen and
generate invoices more quickly, your firm
will improve cash flow and profitability.
For best results…
Take a refresher course in billing. The Biller
course can help your firm be more efficient
and train staff who are new to the billing
process. Our consultants can teach your
staff better techniques for efficient billing,
with hands-on training that will make a
difference during the busy season.
8. Keep your network humming
Finally, a well-informed IT department is
essential for successful firm management.
IT personnel, whether they are in-house
or sourced externally, should understand
the maintenance and back-end support
requirements for your software. Your firm
should have a comprehensive data backup
policy, as well as policies for file storage, file
sharing and security. The data in Practice
Management is central to your firm’s
survival — make sure your IT staff understands
the database and manages it effectively.
For best results…
IT Consulting helps your IT personnel
optimize your network and hardware
to run your software efficiently.
Contact information:
Wolters Kluwer
2700 Lake Cook Road
Please visit CCHGroup.com/PracticeManagement
for more information.
Riverwoods, IL 60015
United States
800-739-9998
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2016-2023
© 2016 CCH Incorporated and its affiliates. All rights reserved.
When you have to be right