Surviving January: How to ease the busy season

Well, don’t you know it; January has snuck up on us all again. Whilst most people are tucking into a Christmas dinner and enjoying a bit of time away from the office, practice accountants across the UK will barely have finished their last bite of Christmas pudding before the dread of tax return season kicks in.

January can be a challenging time for accountants in practice. The tax return deadline looms and clients can be demanding. Even though they’ve had since 6th April to get themselves ready to file a tax return, a large proportion of them seem to leave it to January. Every single year.

In fact, by January 2019, only 52% of the estimated 11m taxpayers who needed to complete a self-assessment tax return had done so – leaving about 5.5m taxpayers to file a tax return during January. No wonder accountants are stressed out.

So how do you deal with what can be the busiest month of the year? What would make things easier?

I’ve got a few suggestions that might help ease the burden. Hopefully, you’ll be able to implement at least some of them in time for this year, and if not, definitely in time for next year.

Client expectations 

First of all, let’s deal with clients and expectations. For a client who walks in on the 25th of January with a bag of receipts and stress-induced sweating, getting their tax return completed and filed before 31st January is a priority.

That doesn’t mean that it has to be a priority for you. There are a few things you could do here. If you have space in your diary to get their work done on time, then, of course, you can go ahead and do it!

But if you’re already snowed under until the end of January and beyond you can consider turning the work away in the first instance. Or offer to get it done, but that your diary is full and it won’t be filed on time. That puts the onus directly back onto the client to decide what they’d like to do – would they like to continue to shop around to try and find an accountant who can do it in time, or take the hit this year and chalk it up to lessons learned? Who knows… maybe they’ll get their paperwork sorted a little earlier next year!

We’ve all encountered clients who are very vocal with their feelings if things can’t be done on time, but this is the time to calmly do some client education. Before we hit the month of January, make sure that you contact all current clients giving them the latest possible date that you’d accept work.

Put an update on your website about deadlines and timescale expectations for both current clients and walk-ins. And if you’re not accepting any more work in January, then just say so. I’d recommend including these sorts of deadlines in letters of engagement with clients if you don’t already – I know, I know…they never read them! It will at least give you something to back up your position should you need to though.

Be honest with yourself

Now let’s look at your expectations of yourself. How much work do you want to do in January? Ultimately, this can all be controlled by you. Granted, it may not feel that way when a client is demanding a last minute tax return – sometimes it just feels easier to acquiesce. But if you go into January with set expectations of what you can realistically manage, then you should find it easier to choose the right amount of work to do.

Be honest with yourself. If you’re totally OK with working extra hours in January for the extra money, then you can go ahead and do that. You still need to set yourself some boundaries in terms of working hours and out-of-hours contact from clients, but ultimately if you’re up for it then you can work your little Christmas socks off.

However, lots of us got into running our own practices to achieve a level of work-life balance. That includes January!

Once you’ve decided how much work you’re realistically going to take on, make sure you schedule in some time for yourself. And I mean, you should literally put it in your diary and treat it like any other appointment that you have to keep. Get to the gym, go for a walk, have a nice bath – whatever floats your boat. Just make sure that you do it.

It’s far too easy to let time for yourself slip to the side when you have a lot of work to do, but ultimately you’ll find yourself more efficient if you’re taking some time for yourself – and less resentful of any increased workload if you’ve met your own needs each day.

Don’t back down

Finally, stick to your guns. It’s very easy to give in to other people’s demands on your time when you want to do your best for them. It’s never nice to encounter a client at their wits end who is terrified of a late filing. Sometimes we end up taking on work that we really shouldn’t because we feel sorry for the client when they’ve got themselves into a pickle.

Of course, it’s your choice how to approach these situations, but if you’ve stated your position that “I’m afraid my diary is full and I won’t be able to take this on”, and they still pester you, then they are not respecting the boundary that you have clearly communicated.

If you back down now, then they know you’ll do it again in the future. My advice would be to decide on your strategy and then stick to it. You have to look after yourself as well as your clients!