Your 2023 to-do list

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We at Accounting Today have talked and written and reported pretty much endlessly about the vast amount of change going on in the accounting profession, and the pressure that puts on firm and practice leaders — and really, everyone in the profession — to continually adapt to the constant flood of new developments. 

And that can be very difficult, particularly given how many different areas and aspects of the profession are undergoing massive evolution, and how many things people are told they need to do to keep up.

So to make it a little easier to get started, it's a little bit of a tradition here that at the start of the year we put together a to-do list of 12 things you can do to get moving with that adaptation. That's just one a month, and they're bitesized, so you can tackle them and complete them in a reasonable period of time — while still doing all the million other things you have to do every day.

January: Examine your prospect pipeline

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Make sure you have enough potential new clients in there to provide enough revenue to cover your growth goals (and remember to add a little to cover client attrition) and that you have the right mix of ideal clients by service offering. Finally, be sure that you're tracking how often and how you've "touched" each prospect, so that you can review your progress throughout the year.

February: Rethink your jobs

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Take all the open positions at your firm and list out all the individual tasks and work that each is responsible for — then see if you can reshuffle those responsibilities into those that require an accountant, versus those that can be done by non-accountants or machines. Given how hard it is to hire CPAs and accountants, you want to make sure that those you are hiring are only doing work that you really need a CPA or accountant for.

March: Take a look forward

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Read an economic outlook for an industry you serve, or your geographic region, or even the economy as a whole. Identify a couple of insights or predictions that might directly impact your clients — and then share them in a quick note or phone call.

April: Don’t complain

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Don't tell anyone how hard tax season used to be, or how hard it is, or how hard it's going to be. In fact, don't ever tell anyone how hard things were or are or will be. The profession has a bad reputation as a place where people work way too much and have no work-life balance, and a lot of that is driven by veteran accountants humble-bragging about how bad they've had it.

May: Work on your teamwork

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Start a team at your firm — it could be for a proper competitive sport, like softball or volleyball, but it could also be for something more fun, like dodgeball or ax throwing, or even trivia, line-dancing, or full-contact origami. The point is to give staff an opportunity to build connections and memories (And if you have enough staff, create more than one team and have them compete.)

June: Get to know your clients

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Meet with eight of your best clients — two a week — just to discuss what's keeping them up at night. Come away from each with a list of questions to research and find answers for (but remember that you don't necessarily have to provide the ultimate solution yourself; it may be more a matter of identifying an appropriate professional or other service provider). The goal is to deepen your understanding of your client, and thus deepen the relationship.

July: Make a naughty list

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Identify five clients you'd like to fire. Five probably leaped to mind as soon as you read that — but hold on. Take a step back and identify who your ideal client or clients are in terms of industry, service needs, personality, promptness in payment or whatever else matters to you, and then go back with those criteria in mind and pick again.

August: Use your list

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You know those clients you identified last month? Fire one a month for the rest of the year, and make sure that the pain is spread across your partner group, so no single person feels their book of business is unfairly targeted — and that no one gets away from the responsibility for cleaning up your client roster.

September: Spread the word

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The profession needs to reach out to people at younger and younger ages to help make up for the decline of people entering accounting, so speak to a high school class or a business club or a career day about accounting (your state CPA society can help you find an opportunity for this). Again, don't talk about how hard it is, and you can probably skip how much math it requires. In fact, don't mention work or math at all. Talk about how much money you make, and how much of a difference you make in people's lives and their businesses.

October: Have a better Tax Day

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Leave the office at 5 p.m. on Oct. 15. C'mon — seriously. You've known about these returns since April 18, and had the whole summer to get all the information you need from your clients. And if you yourself absolutely can't get out by 5 p.m., at least send your staff home.

November: Make a proactive FAQ

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List five questions that clients routinely ask you. Maybe they're ones that routinely crop up in the life of a small business; maybe they're common tax questions; maybe they just come out of left field and are annoying. If they're in the first category, consider reaching out to clients with the answer before they get a chance to ask — "Hey, when businesses like yours get to this stage, they often have to deal with this … ." For common issues, come up with a boilerplate answer — and share it with your staff, so you're all giving the same response, and have it at your fingertips.

December: Take a real break

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Holy cow, it's December again already. Where did the year go? I'm exhausted, and you're probably exhausted too. Take some time off; in fact, take the week off between Christmas and New Year, and give your staff that week off, too. In fact, close the office entirely — that tells staff that you're serious about it, and removes the pressure many feel to show up even when they've been given time off. (The same holds true for things like Summer Fridays: Closing the office, even if it's for the afternoon, is much more effective than just saying, "You can have the afternoon off.")
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