How to embrace change and unlock your firms potential

You work to improve your tax and accounting firm — increase profitability, expand into new areas, and find a better work-life balance. But you and your staff are already working hard and putting in long hours, and the demands on your team are becoming increasingly complex.

Tax firms are feeling the pressure of changing tax regulations, along with clients who expect greater accuracy and faster responses in the digital age. As a result, you may spend workdays reacting to problems instead of focusing on the proactive work that improves profitability and client retention.

The right technology can streamline your firm’s workflows and automate manual processes, creating more time for tax strategy and advisory services. With a proactive approach, your firm can deliver better value to clients — and in less time, with increasing profitability. Technology can help solve the three main problems faced by firms:

1. Keeping track of ever-changing tax regulations
2. Improving productivity despite manual processes
3. Retaining clients while maintaining an increasing workload

Explore the impact of these challenges on your firm and learn why investing in technology is the key to overcoming them.

Keeping up with tax regulations and compliance

In today’s ever-changing environment, keeping up with the latest tax regulations and compliance requirements is essential for long-term success. You need to stay on top of regulatory issues that could disrupt your workflow and impact your clients, but no one has time to research every single federal, state, and municipal change. So you need software that does it for you.

The right software allows your firm to:

• • Update tax returns as soon as regulatory changes are implemented. The software automatically updates behind the scenes. As a result, your staff no longer has to spend hours researching and implementing changes manually.
  • Identify problem areas in advance. The software acts like a spell-checker for tax returns, alerting your staff to conflicts such as missing data and incorrect numbers. The software also prepares an automatic checklist, helping to ensure your staff prepares returns completely and accurately.
  • Automatically prepare returns for any jurisdiction. The software’s coverage of entity types, states, and localities should eliminate the need for your staff to research regulations in each geographic area. This software will also grow with your firm, so you can confidently expand into new regions.

By proactively staying informed about tax regulations and leveraging available tools like Thomson Reuters ® UltraTax CS, firms can unlock their potential by taking advantage of opportunities presented by new developments while also minimizing risks associated with noncompliance. With these strategies in place, firms can confidently move forward into a new era of growth without worrying about potential pitfalls associated with staying current with regulatory requirements.

Maximizing efficiency and streamlining processes

In order to stay competitive, firms must embrace technology in order to maximize efficiency and streamline processes. By automating repetitive tasks, firms can free up employee time for more value-added activities, while also providing insights into progress towards goals.

The right technology allows you to automate your workflow across all of your clients.

You likely hired your staff accountants for their knowledge, intelligence, and work ethic — not for their ability to type numbers into spreadsheets. The right software automates manual tasks that drain your firm of time and talent, empowering your staff to focus on more strategic and rewarding work.

With automation, you can:

• • Enter data once — and only once. UltraTax CS allows you to link returns using a tax ID number, so your staff doesn’t have to make the same changes across multiple documents. By reducing manual data entry, firms can decrease the margin of error and the time needed to review returns for accuracy. The result: more returns completed in less time.
  • Keep your staff working without interruptions. UltraTax CS updates automatically so that no staff member is forced to waste time waiting for software updates.
  • Review problem areas using sophisticated diagnostics. With automation, accountants no longer have to manually detect blank fields or numbers that don’t add up. By comparing a tax return with last year’s documents, the right software like UltraTax CS flags problems before it’s too late to fix them.

Listen to what Tim Downing, Owner of Downing & Company, had to say about UltraTax CS and how it changed his company’s tax preparation process. 

Retaining clients while maintaining an increasing workload

No firm wants to lose clients, especially considering it costs more to acquire new clients than to keep an existing one.

In order to maintain a high level of customer service while managing increasing workloads, firms must be willing to embrace change and leverage technology. As millennials and Gen-Zers become business owners and decision-makers, they’re looking for digitally sophisticated firms that can solve their problems with technology. Client needs also extend beyond tax preparation into issues of compliance, expansion, and business strategy. Many clients are seeking more than a tax preparer — they want a strategic partner that can support them in growing their business.

Maintaining client loyalty and meeting the demands of an increasing workload can be a challenge for any firm. Clients rightly expect accurate tax returns, however, they may not be aware of the added value that a CPA firm like yours can provide. By anticipating your clients’ needs and offering strategic insight and advice, your firm will remain in demand and one step ahead of the competition. As a result, your clients will see you as a trusted partner rather than just a tax preparer.

UltraTax CS helps your firm develop deeper client relationships by allowing you to:

• • Unmask client needs ahead of time. The software enables your firm to proactively communicate with clients, whether it’s sending reports, notifying them of legal changes, or sending reminders to make estimated tax payments. With this solution, you’re in the position to be the first to identify potential problems — and solutions.
  • Interact with peers for best practices and advice. When you use UltraTax CS, you’re joining an active and welcoming community. You can connect with other users to ask questions, share advice, and benchmark against your peers to see how your firm compares.
  • Give direct feedback that drives the development of new program capabilities. The UltraTax CS Ideas Community connects software users to developers, inviting firms like yours to share suggestions on features that would make life easier for them and their clients.

Embrace your firms potential

Increasing client demands and tax law revisions are changing the world for tax professionals. Isn’t it time your tax firm started changing with them?

By investing in the right technology, tax and accounting firms can maximize their potential and unlock new opportunities for growth. From staying informed about tax regulations to automating manual processes, the right software solutions will help your firm save time, increase productivity, and improve client retention. So don’t wait for tomorrow; embrace change and invest in technology today and unlock your potential.