What is Busy Season Accounting: Survival Tips for Accountants

Introduction 

For accountants, the accounting busy season can often feel overwhelming. Whether it’s a rush to meet tax deadlines, the pressure of year-end closings, or quarterly reporting stressors, this period can surely drain your time, energy, and efficiency. However, with the right strategies, accountants can better manage these challenges while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. 

In this blog, we take a look at what constitutes busy season accounting and provide you some practical survival tips that will help you thrive during these demanding periods.

What is Busy Season Accounting? 

Busy season accounting generally falls in the first quarter of the year from January to April, when accountants have to manage immense workloads. During this time they are involved in multiple important tasks, such as preparation of tax returns, year-end financial closings, and generation of quarterly reports. 

Tax deadlines, especially in the first quarter of the year, put a heavy burden on accountants because they have to make sure all filings are correct and filed before cutoff dates. Similarly, year-end closings further add to the workload, given that businesses have to reconcile their financial records, create financial statements, and close out their fiscal year. Quarterly reporting, especially for publicly traded companies, adds yet another level of responsibility for accountants. 

Primary Contributors of Busy Season Accounting

These overlapping demands of tax filing, year-end closing, and quarterly reporting constitute the “busy season” in accounting, where accountants have to deal with a high volume of work within tight time frames. The first quarter of the year is especially important for businesses, as they must report financial performance to regulators, investors, and other stakeholders. 

Let us understand some of these accounting tasks in detail:

1. Tax deadlines

   One of the major factors that contribute to the busy season in accounting is that of meeting tax deadlines. Accountants prepare, review, and file tax returns for businesses and individuals. Depending on the country, tax filings can occur quarterly or annually. Based on this, the busiest time of year for tax preparation is usually the final months of a fiscal year. 

   Accountants have to keep themselves posted on the latest tax rules and regulations, ensure the availability of all necessary documents, and file the returns timely. Failure to observe these timelines attracts penalties, and for this reason, tax filing is a significant part of the busy season.

2. Year-end closings

   Another big contributor to the accounting busy season is year-end closing.This is when companies finalize financial statements by reconciling accounts and making sure that all transactions are recorded correctly. The preparation of a balance sheet, an income statement, and a cash flow statement provides an accurate picture about the financial health of a company. 

   For public companies, the year-end financials need to be reported not just to their owners but also to regulators, which, subsequently, places pressure on accounting teams to perform their job with accuracy and speed.

3. Quarterly reporting

   Most large companies and public businesses are required to report their financial statements quarterly, and in the United States, these reports are typically referred to as 10-Q filings. These reports portray the company’s revenue, profit, and key financial activities for the last quarter. The preparation of such reports requires a lot of data gathering, analysis, and presentation, sometimes within short periods. 

   Preparing and filing these quarterly reports results in seasonal busy periods for accountants, as they need to ensure that the reports are accurate and in conformance with regulatory requirements. Even small errors in such reports result in serious damage to the financial reputation of a firm and its performance on the market.

9 Survival Tips for Accounting Busy Season

The busy accounting season can be quite burdensome, with pressing deadlines, high-pressure tasks, and consequently long hours of work often becoming the order of the day. However, by using effective strategies and deploying appropriate tools, accountants can easily get through the season with less stress and greater productivity. From early planning and prioritizing tasks to leveraging automation and work-life balance, the right approach can make all the difference in your successful management of the busy season. 

Let us look into some tips for accountants to successfully navigate the busy season of accounting. 

1. Planning and preparing early

   The busy season can be effectively managed if one starts planning well in advance. Create a detailed timeline of the upcoming deadlines and requirements. Ensure your team is in sync with regard to key responsibilities. Advanced setup of the schedule negates the possibility of last-minute rushes and any possible errors. Additionally, by leveraging a year-end accounting checklist, the accountants can plan their tasks better. 

2. Shuffling tasks in order of importance

   Not all tasks are equal, so make sure to prioritize your work, focusing on the most critical deadlines first. This may include items such as tax filings or major client deliverables. The earlier you complete high-priority tasks, the more manageable your workload, which makes it easier to eliminate stress and meet deliverables.

3. Leverage automated accounting software

   These tools help in raising the effectiveness and efficiencies of busy season preparation. Automated accounting software streamlines tasks such as data entry, reconciliations, and reporting, reducing manual errors and freeing up valuable time for accountants to focus on tasks that are more complex and require analysis.

   

4. Automating data collection to prepare client documents early

   Gathering client documents can be somewhat time-consuming and, at times, frustrating, especially when you are handling a number of clients at any one time. Data-entry automation enables you to accurately collect the information you need by reducing follow-ups with clients, thereby speeding up the accounting process.

5. Grouping similar tasks together

   To optimize your output, group similar tasks together. For example, do all reconciliations in one session or batch together tax filings for several clients. This methodology reduces context-switching and allows you to maintain focus on specific types of tasks.

6. Delegating tasks evenly among your team

   No one person should necessarily bear the full brunt of the busy season. Delegating the responsibilities among team members helps ensure work is completed effectively and on time. Effective delegation also prevents team burnout and ensures no one becomes overwhelmed by his or her workload.

7. Communicating effectively with your team and clients

   Regular and timely communication is of utmost importance during the busy seasons. As such, schedule regular check-ins with your team to ensure that everyone is on the right track and identify roadblocks early. Similarly, communicate openly with clients to clear expectations and prevent misunderstandings from occurring.

8. Outsourcing to free up valuable time

   If your team is stretched too far, outsource responsibilities such as payroll accounting or data entry to a third-party service provider. Outsourcing non-core functions allows you to focus your resources and energy on value-added activities that require your experience and expertise.

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9. Work-life balance

   During the busy season you might prioritize work over personal well-being, however this might lead to burnout. To that end, it becomes very important to make balance a priority for your life, personally taking the time for yourself, whether setting aside blocks of time or taking breaks throughout the day to recharge. A healthy work-life balance keeps you productive and focused throughout.

   

How HighRadius Can Help?

HighRadius offers a cloud-based Record to Report Solution that helps accounting professionals streamline and automate the financial close process for businesses. We have helped accounting teams from around the globe with month-end closing, reconciliations, journal entry management, intercompany accounting, and financial reporting.

Our Financial Close Software is designed to create detailed month-end close plans with specific close tasks that can be assigned to various accounting professionals, reducing the month-end close time by 30%. The workspace is connected and allows users to assign and track tasks for each close task category for input, review, and approval with the stakeholders. It allows users to extract and ingest data automatically, and use formulas on the data to process and transform it. 

Our Account Reconciliation Software provides an out-of-the-box formula set that can configure matching rules and match line-level transactions from multiple data sources and create templates to automate various transaction processing required for month-end close. Our solution has the ability to record transactions, which will be automatically posted into the ERP, automating 70% of your account reconciliation process. 

Our AI-powered Anomaly Management Software helps accounting professionals identify and rectify potential ‘Errors and Omissions’ on a daily basis so that precious resources are not wasted during month close. It automates the feedback loop for improved anomaly detection and reduction of false positives over time. We empower accounting teams to work more efficiently, accurately, and collaboratively, enabling them to add greater value to their organizations’ accounting processes.

FAQs

1. When is busy season accounting?

Busy season accounting generally corresponds to the first quarter of the year, i.e., from January to March, when the accountants need to manage a large number of high-priority tasks. Further, these tasks, such as tax filing, come with deadlines, which further adds to the workload of the accountants. 

2. How many hours do accountants work?

Generally accountants’ work schedule involves around 40 hours of work per week. However, during the accounting busy season, accountants need to manage multiple tasks such as tax filing, year-end closing and quarterly reports, due to which they might be working for 50-80 hours per week. 

3. Do accountants work long hours?

The number of hours accountants work usually ranges from 40 to 45 hours per week. However, during busy seasons such as tax season, year-end closing, and quarterly closing, owing to the large number of tasks they need to perform, they often need to put in more effort, resulting in them working 60+ hours per week. 

4. What do tax preparers do in the off-season?

During off-season, the tax preparers can focus on preparing strategies for proactive tax planning, such as reducing liabilities and optimizing investments. They can also focus on activities such as payroll processing, internal audits, financial statement review, while also using this time to upskill and stay updated on changing regulations.

5. When is the audit busy season?

The audit busy season usually corresponds to the time period of January to April. However this also depends on the fiscal year end that the business follows. During this time auditors perform key tasks such as reviewing financial statements for accuracy and regulatory compliance.