A large chunk of my content focuses on sharing recommendations to improve how firms operate.
This time, let me try something a bit different.
Instead of giving you a series of tactics right away, we’ll first walk you through why your accounting firm may be struggling with productivity and how you can systematically fix that.
Let’s go!
Table of Contents
- Why Accounting Firms Aren’t Productive
- Increase Your Accounting Firm Productivity With These 6 Steps
- Bonus Tips to Improve Your Day-to-Day Efficiency
Why Accounting Firms Aren’t Productive
When I first started Future Firm, I actually started the business thinking I’d be a technology and process improvement consultant.
Firm owners who were clocking too many hours would reach out, and I’d consult them on how to streamline their processes, implement better technology, and basically help them be more “productive”.
This coaching included a Technology and Process Improvement Report. Here’s an example:
I usually produced 25 to 30-page write-ups showing what tools and workflows needed to be changed.
But after doing this for a while (and not really enjoying it 😛), I started to notice a pattern…
They had the right tools and decent workflows already in place, but they were still stuck.
That got me thinking about what was really getting in the way.
After coaching hundreds of firm owners, I was able to narrow it down to these common issues.
Issue #1: Most Firm Owners Look for Band-Aid Solutions
Early on, when I worked with firm owners, a lot of them thought that more tech and updated workflows would make their firms more efficient and productive.
I don’t blame them.
When you’re deep in the business every day, it’s hard to see what’s really going on.
But usually, those aren’t the real problem.
It’s just taking attention away from what actually needs fixing.
This is why I tend to always come back and ask myself, “How important is this really?”
An unproductive or inefficient business isn’t usually about the tech or the workflow. It’s often rooted in the business model itself.
I shared this on LinkedIn a while back, which pretty much drives the point I’m trying to make.
And the comment from Kellie Parks is the cherry on top!
When you’re always looking for the next tool or tweak to save time, you miss the bigger picture.
And that bigger picture often involves how work actually moves through your firm.
Issue #2: Everything Goes Through the Firm Owner
I’ve seen this in a lot of firms.
The team finishes a task but can’t move forward because they’re waiting on feedback, review, or a thumbs-up from the owner.
The problem is, when the owner is the bottleneck, nothing flows.
I shared this thought on LinkedIn some time ago, and it still holds true.
When the firm owner is in the middle of everything, the work slows down (ie. the opposite of productive).
As the practice grows and takes on more clients, the owner ends up working more just to keep things moving.
At some point, the workload becomes unmanageable.
Instead of focusing on growth or higher-level work, they’re pulled into the small stuff. And the team ends up waiting around with nothing to do.
This bottleneck issue gets even worse when you factor in another common problem I see in firms…
Issue #3: Not Enough Team Capacity
Growth, in some varying degree, is what most firm owners want.
But growth brings more work.
That’s why many of them tend to bite off more than they can chew.
They keep accepting new clients because they want to grow, but before they know it, they can’t keep up with the work anymore, and their productivity dips even further.
When this happens, many of them think they need to add more automations to be more productive.
Don’t get me wrong. I love automation. It can save a ton of time.
However, at some point, the tools can only do so much.
If your team has 300 hours of capacity but your clients require 400, there’s nothing automation can do to fix that.
And when this happens, work-life balance in the firm starts to fall apart.
On top of that, client requests keep piling up. And most firm owners don’t want to turn them away.
Issue #4: Saying “Yes” to Every Client Request
As I shared in one of the emails I sent to my Future Firm Accelerate members, helping clients is one of the reasons why many firm owners started in the first place.
I get it…
Most genuinely want to help. But saying “yes” to every little request adds up.
Those small, often unpaid favors might not seem like a big deal in the moment.
But over time, these requests chip away at your productivity and take away time that could be spent on other matters.
Part of the issue comes from poor pricing and scoping strategies.
The other part likely comes from a lack of discipline.
You can’t grow with a model like this.
At some point, always saying “yes” starts to hurt the business more than it helps the client.
Increase Your Accounting Firm Productivity With These 6 Steps
Here’s what I’ve learned from working with hundreds of firm owners:
The four issues I talked about above rarely exist in isolation. They feed off each other.
These lead to a cycle that keeps you stuck, no matter how many new apps you try or processes you tweak.
The real solution is stepping back, looking at foundational issues, and redesigning how your firm operates from the ground up.
Here’s how you do that.
Step 1. Implement Capacity Planning
Capacity planning is one of the easiest ways to cut down on overwork.
Less work = more time and energy, which leads to better productivity.
Without capacity planning, you’re just guessing how much the team can take on.
As I mentioned in one of my podcast episodes, when I ran my previous firm (Xen Accounting), no one worked overtime, no one worked nights, and no one worked weekends, including me.
And that’s even during busy season. I thank capacity planning for all of that.
In fact, it’s largely helped in maintaining work-life balance for me and my team.
Here’s how to get started:
- Look at how many hours you worked last year and how many you want to work this year
- Do the same for client hours, like how much time is spent with clients now, and what feels sustainable
- Count how many full-time team members you have, and how many can handle client work without your help
- Estimate how many hours each client takes on average
- Compare total team capacity to the actual workload
If the numbers show there isn’t enough capacity, something needs to change.
That could mean hiring more team members, adjusting what you’re offering, or holding off on taking new clients until there’s room.
No automation is going to solve an overloaded calendar.
To give you an idea of how it should look, here’s an example of a completed capacity plan:
Step 2. Remove Yourself from Client Work
One of my coaching clients was working 46 hours a week.
Out of that, 33 hours were spent on client work.
She didn’t even want to be doing it. She only wanted to spend 10 hours per week on client work.
And as the firm owner, she would’ve been more productive if she focused on the work where she could have the greatest impact.
If the team has capacity, client work should be handed off to them.
That being said, I know a lot of firm owners struggle with handing things off, especially client-related work.
Here are a few steps to get you started in removing yourself from client work.
1.) Don’t Wait for Perfect: You don’t need someone who can do the work exactly like you. Instead, you hire those who can do it 80% as well as you can. The other 20% comes with coaching, practice, and trust.
Like Dan Martell said, 80% done by someone else is 100% awesome.
2.) Map Your Client Work by Complexity:
- Level 1: Routine tasks your junior staff can handle
- Level 2: Moderate complexity work for experienced team members
- Level 3: High-stakes work that truly requires your input
You might be surprised that a large chunk of what you think of as “essential” client falls into Levels 1 and 2.
To give you an idea, here’s an example.
1.) Delegate One Piece at a Time: Start small. Pick one task or one client responsibility and hand it off. Be clear about expectations, give them something to follow (like an SOP).
Then gradually build from there.
2.) Shadow and Supervise:
- Week 1: They shadow you
- Week 2: You shadow them
- Week 3: They lead, you’re on standby
This gives your team a safe way to learn and gives you time to step back without losing control.
Step 3. Fix Your Firm’s Structure
If productivity is a problem, one of the first things to look at is how the team is set up.
In many firms, too much work gets funneled through one person. Most of the time, it’s the firm owner/partner. This kind of structure is known as a traditional firm structure.
Firm owners who use this structure try to solve the bottleneck by hiring junior staff.
But that just creates more work and more stress in accounting firms as a result.
Why?
It’s the owner who has to review every file and manage every step. Not very ideal, especially if you have a growing client base.
This is why I recommend a modern firm structure.
With this setup, you have senior team members who can take on complex work without constant direction. They should also be able to review junior work and keep things moving and become more productive without needing you involved at every turn.
Yes, I know that senior team members can hurt your bottom line temporarily, but like I shared on my LinkedIn, you won’t be able to escape the burden of managing everything in the firm unless you do so.
You can read more about this topic in my blog post on accounting firm structures.
Step 4. Package Your Services
A lot of firm owners struggle with inefficiency because they offer custom services to every client.
But when every client has a different setup, it becomes harder to create systems or hand work off to the team.
As a result, a lot of productivity is wasted just on onboarding clients.
In one of my older podcast episodes, I talked about this idea. You can’t scale if you give your clients too much choice in how the work is performed.
Instead, I recommend reducing the amount of choice you offer.
That’s where packaging your services helps. Instead of starting from scratch every time, you offer a few clear options that are easy to deliver and repeat.
Once you standardize your delivery, you can complete work faster and more efficiently, which means you can either charge more for the same time investment or maintain margins while being more competitive.
When discussing packages, I always suggest three-tiered pricing.
Why?
It’s very effective.
Here’s an example of a three-tiered pricing plan that I made using Ignition (affiliate link).
And just like we covered in Step 1, if capacity is tight, that should guide whether or not to take on a new client. Packaging makes that decision a lot easier.
Step 5. Increase Your Firm’s Pricing
Let me start this by asking, “What if you dropped the bottom 15% of your clients?”
- The ones who are always complaining
- The ones who drain your energy
- The ones who likely bring in the least profit
As I said in a podcast episode, I know that most firm owners avoid this because it feels like cutting revenue. But in many cases, you’re not losing much profit at all.
Why?
Bad clients are usually unprofitable and/or unpleasant. They can also hurt your efficiency by taking away time for your other clients.
And the more of them you carry, the harder it is to grow.
To get an idea of how much bad clients hurt your bottom line, calculate this:
Take your lowest-paying client. How many extra hours do you spend on them compared to your best clients? Multiply those extra hours by your hourly rate.
That’s your hidden cost.
And once you let them go and have more time freed up, it can go toward just a few great clients who pay more and need less.
Here’s the goal:
- Keep the clients you actually want to work with
- Let go of the ones who take up too much time and energy
- Free up space for better opportunities
One of the most effective ways to do this is using the “Gradual Increase” method.
Instead of firing clients immediately, raise their rates significantly. Either they’ll pay (and suddenly become profitable) or they’ll leave on their own.
The thing is, the hardest part about this step isn’t the strategy. It’s realizing that some revenue just isn’t worth the cost.
Step 6. Document Every Process
In many cases, things don’t get done simply because the team doesn’t know how to do them.
That’s where documentation comes in. When your processes are written down or recorded, the team has something solid to follow. It helps:
- Cut down on mistakes
- Keep the work consistent
- Increase your team’s efficiency in different processes
- Save you from answering the same questions again and again
Loom videos and basic SOP templates are more than enough to start. Just record what you’re already doing and turn that into a simple guide.
You can even use tools like Loom and ChatGPT together to build out your SOPs faster.
Here’s how you can do it:
And like I mentioned in Step 2, a lot of firm owners struggle with delegation.
Clear SOPs make that handoff easier. When the team has a guide to follow, it’s easier to step out of client work without things falling through the cracks.
If you’re looking for a starting point, I also wrote a guide to accounting workflows that can help you document and structure your firm’s core processes in a simple and repeatable way.
Bonus Tips to Improve Your Day-to-Day Efficiency
Improving your firm’s productivity doesn’t always come from big changes or complex strategies.
Here are a few tactical things you can do to get that extra boost in your firm’s efficiency.
Start With a Checklist
If you want to stay on track, you need to start the day with intention. I do this by writing down what I need to get done on paper. Then I work through that list.
I’ve shared this before in my Future Firm newsletter, and it’s still one of the best habits I rely on.
Of course, you don’t have to do it exactly the way I do.
You can use something like Google Tasks, Notion, or Trello if digital is more your thing. The important part is to start your day by looking at that list and building a habit around it.
You’re more productive when you move with purpose. This helps you achieve that.
Use AI by Default
There’s really no reason not to use AI at this point. Tools like ChatGPT and some of the newer accounting chatbots can help get things done much more efficiently.
This is one of the reasons why I made AI use mandatory for my Future Firm team.
Whether it’s writing an email, reviewing a document, or answering a question, AI can give you a good starting point.
It’s also helpful when your team needs you, but you’re tied up.
That’s one of the reasons I created RyanBot, which is basically my digital clone. It lets my members get answers even if I’m not around.
Start small. Use AI to help with simple tasks. Then build from there.
Cut Off Tools You Don’t Need
It’s easy to keep adding new software, thinking each one will boost efficiency.
But in many cases, it does the opposite. Your team ends up juggling logins, switching tabs, dealing with learning curves, and ultimately, wasting time.
A simpler, more streamlined setup works better. It can also help reduce costs.
Look for tools that overlap and cut what isn’t helping. For example, here at Future Firm, we use Missive (affliliate link) to combine chats and emails.
It lets us share and collaborate on emails directly, instead of forwarding things around or bouncing between Slack and inboxes.
Keep the tools that work well together and actually support how your team gets work done.
Feel free to check out my guide to building an accounting tech stack to find out how you can do that.
Use a Task Management Method
As a firm owner, there’s always a lot to keep track of.
And when everything’s floating around in your head, it gets overwhelming. It can feel hard to disconnect or even know where to start.
In one of my podcast episodes, I talked about a system that’s helped me with this for over 10 years. It came from the book Getting Things Done by David Allen, and it’s had a big impact on how I run my business.
The concept is simple. Dump everything that’s on your mind into one list. Each week, review that list, organize it, and figure out what to act on.
Then, every quarter, zoom out. Look at all your tasks across all areas and reset your priorities.
This routine helps clear mental clutter, gives structure to your week, and keeps you focused when things get busy.
Improve Your Accounting Firm’s Productivity the Right Way
Glad you made it to the end.
Take the steps above and adjust them to fit how your firm works. You don’t need to do everything at once. Even one or two changes can make a big difference.
You can always bookmark this post and come back to it when you’re ready to make the next move.
Now, I would like to hear from you.
Have something that’s worked well in your firm? Or a question about any of the steps?
Just let me know in the comments. 🙂
