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Now's the time to make sure your team is prepared for the long tax season ahead. First step: Make sure you have a team.
The start of tax season, like the beginning of any great venture into the unknown, is a time for checking your supplies, testing your equipment and making sure the other members of your expedition are ready to go.
In tax prep, that means reviewing the latest tax law changes, laying in office supplies, checking software upgrades, testing new document and tax-management systems, beginning to gather data from clients, and training staff - if you can find them.
Assembling your crew
Recent high demand for accounting and tax professionals has made it much harder to hire and keep both full-time and part-time help during tax season. As a result, firms have made more use of a wider variety of staffing sources - including temporary agencies, retired staff members, college interns, and part-time preparers. They're also getting more innovative in their use of technology, and in their efforts to boost morale.
Rob Carmines, of Newport News, Va.-based Carmines Robbins & Co., has used remote technology for a number of years to help with tax-season staffing. "We have several people that can work from home and come in periodically," he said. "One is an enrolled agent with an elderly relative. She would not be able to continue working with us without that technology. And another employee works as a bookkeeper at the private school her kids attend. She supplements her income by working for us evenings and weekends, most of the time remotely from home."
Braintree, Mass.-based KAF Financial Group dealt with its staffing problem by facing the work/life balance issue head on, according to founding partner Mark Robinson. "We suffered a fair amount of professional staff turnover in recent years, particularly among the younger people coming into the profession," he said. Last year, the firm closed...