How Accountant Productivity Technology Combats Tax Season Stress
Tax season is here again, and accountants nationwide are working hard to get client returns filed accurately and on time during what is without question their busiest season. Tax time is typically stressful, but accountants may make it through without breaking a sweat thanks to accountant productivity technology that helps them stay connected with clients and file their returns as efficiently as possible. Here's how:
Accountant Productivity Technology Keeps Everyone Connected
During tax season, accountants often find it challenging to serve their existing client base while also fielding urgent last-minute inquiries from potential new clients. To accomplish these twin goals, tax professionals can take advantage of a few smart productivity tools, maintaining high availability and delivering the reliable communication that clients value. These tools also increase efficiency in the process, streamlining accountants' workflows and enhancing their productivity.
When the phone is ringing off the hook at tax time, an accountant may feel hard-pressed to make any meaningful progress with the pile of tax returns in front of them. During these busy times, it can be beneficial to use a virtual receptionist, ensuring a professional presence to the outside world and smoothly directing each incoming call to the right department using a robust phone menu system. This helps clients easily reach the resource they need while cutting down on call clutter and hold times. An office can also configure specific settings for daytime and after-hours calling to make sure clients receive the service they expect no matter when they call.
Visual voicemail is another smart communications feature that is particularly handy around tax time. It provides accountants with a text-based voicemail transcription of a message from a missed call. If a call comes in while they're busy on another call or in a meeting, they can glance at their visual voicemail to get the message. With a quick scan, they can read the transcript and decide how best to prioritize the call during their workday. Since visual voicemail appears in readily shareable text format, it's easy to send a message along to a colleague for follow-up or to copy and paste part of it into a document as needed. This way, accountants can stay on top of their clients' needs, save a record of their communications, and keep their tax returns moving toward completion.
When busy tax professionals can provide more clients with the high-quality, reliable service they expect, it's a win-win for accountants and taxpayers alike.
Managing Availability at the Office and on the Go
Another way accountants can keep up with the busy pace of tax season is by taking advantage of productivity solutions that streamline their communications, such as desktop and mobile applications. Although accountants must be available to their clients, they also need to set aside dedicated blocks of time to focus on preparing returns, ensuring that they continue to deliver the high-quality work that results in satisfied clients and enthusiastic referrals. To accomplish this, accountants can use a desktop or mobile app to manage when and how they receive calls, ensuring that they only come through at a time when they are available to talk.
Accountants can also keep in touch with their clients while out of the office thanks to convenient mobile applications that provide full access to their office phone system, which conveys a professional presence to clients at all hours of the day. Accountants can talk with, text, or message clients using their business line from any location they might be, whether that's on the train home or waiting for a cup of coffee. Busy tax professionals can even seamlessly transfer calls between devices as they shift from location to location, moving through their busy day without interruption and providing continuous service to clients along the way. This keeps them productive wherever their work takes them.
Sharing Documents with Clients
As online filing becomes the norm, accountants need to digitially share tax documents with their clients quickly and seamlessly, which is why electronic document sharing is a key accountant productivity technology. Cloud-based communications systems can lend accountants a productivity boost, too.
For example, accountants can easily share draft tax returns or receive input documents detailing expenses from cloud-hosted platforms with their clients using a handy mobile app, ensuring that everyone quickly and easily accesses essential tax return information on the go. Clients today expect the convenience of accessing shared documents on demand, while accountants depend on being able to flexibly collaborate from any device anywhere.
Tax season is indeed stressful, but smart solutions for accountants can enable streamlined workflows, so more gets more done in less time — all while maintaining a high level of client satisfaction. When busy tax professionals can provide more clients with the high-quality, reliable service they expect, it's a win-win for accountants and taxpayers alike.
