The period after the peak tax season for any CPA firm or accounting practice should not be about sitting back and relaxing. Sadly, that’s what most firm owners and partners do. They sit in a conference room, complaining about the same three clients who sent their records in an unsearchable shoebox on April 10. Then they get back to their routine work at their desks. Until the next extension deadline, this cycle is why staff churn remains nearly 20% across the profession, according to the 2024 AICPA National Management of an Accounting Practice (MAP) Survey. We are burning our best people because we refuse to fire our worst clients. The window between tax season’s end and Q3’s compliance push is narrow, usually eight to ten weeks; maybe less if you have extended returns stacking up. What you do with that gap, or fail to do, shapes how next season goes.
Assessing Capacity and Pricing Discipline
As a practice owner, your first step should be to assess your firm’s billing capacity, not headcount. Pull your WIP from the last 90 days and review everything that took the most time on your schedule. In most cases, you will find a pattern: a handful of clients consuming disproportionate hours, usually at fixed-fee rates that have not been changed since 2021. The American Institute of CPAs’ 2023 PCPS survey found that fewer than 40% of small and mid-size practices formally reviewed their fee structures after the prior tax year. We believe this is not a staffing problem but a pricing discipline problem.
Timing the Client Conversation
For most CPA firm owners, the instinct is to protect the client relationship that has been around for years. However, if you are undercharging your clients by 30%, it isn’t a relationship you can sustain. It essentially amounts to a subsidy you are giving to your client. Once the season is over, your first move should be to identify the right moment to have the conversation with the client and to back it with the right data. The work is fresh, and the client has just seen the output. If you wait until October to have this discussion, it will just get awkward for everyone.
Even beyond pricing, this is the perfect time for an honest assessment of what you are doing personally and what you should not be doing. If you are spending your entire tax season reviewing work that can be easily handled by junior staff under proper supervision, then there is a problem. The good news is that these are fixable problems, and with the right workflow in place, you can easily address them.
The practical implication
You need to reserve a few days in May specifically for your firm-level work and not client work. You need to review your pricing, the service offerings you make, the workflow gaps, and staff performance against the actual deadlines they held or missed. Now, some firm owners do it mentally, in fragments, between the client calls, but let us tell you, it is not the same. You need to blog the calendar and treat it as real billable in value if not in billing, and produce something written, even rough notes are enough, just something that you can refer back to in Q3.
On the question of capacity specifically
If you are already worried about the volume that might come your way next year and want your firm to handle it without adding extra headcount, it is the right time to start considering outsourcing discrete compliance functions. However, you need to act now; if you wait till January, you will already be under severe pressure. Outsourcing takes time to set up, test, and integrate. Starting the assessment in May gives you the runway actually to get it right. If you are ready to test the waters with outsourcing, write to us at marketing@datamaticsbpm.com, and our accounting and bookkeeping experts will reach out to help you get started.
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Is post-season the right time to let underperforming staff go, or does that create more disruption?
It depends on whether the underperformance is a skill gap or a fit problem. If it’s skill-based, summer is the best time to put a structured improvement plan in place with real milestones. If it’s a fit, the disruption of replacing someone in May is considerably less damaging than carrying them through another busy season.
How do I raise fees without losing clients who've been with the firm for years?
Frame it around scope, not inflation. If their work has grown in complexity — more entities, more advisory calls, more year-round contact- show them that. Clients who leave over a fee increase that’s justified by a scope change were probably already marginal relationships.
What's actually worth outsourcing versus keeping in-house?
High-volume, rules-based compliance work, individual returns, bookkeeping, payroll reconciliation, tends to outsource well because the inputs and outputs are well-defined. Advisory work, client relationship management, and anything requiring firm-specific judgment stay in-house. The mistake most firms make is trying to outsource the wrong category first.
