Whenever I receive a call from a client during busy season, the first words out of their mouth are “You must be busy!”
Working professionally as a CPA for almost 10 years now, I have tried to determine how the bottleneck of busy season transpires. Specifically, what events leading up to April 15th each year cause my workload to be extravagant?
2020 was certainly a more magnified busy season relative to prior years. For one, a tax deadline of July 15th served as a complete paradigm shift. I will break it down into 3 areas of focus: tax compliance, payroll protection program (PPP) assistance, and refinancing requests.
I can remember one specific day where a client sent me a barrage of documents to begin tax preparation. Unfortunately several pieces were missing: a 1098 from their lender, a brokerage statement listing their interest income, and a 1099 for some minor consulting work.
Shortly after sifting through these documents and requesting the missing information, another client called stating how urgent it was that their June financial statements are provided for a refinance. The lender would not approve their refinance until the June statements were prepared and signed off by yours truly.
And this was just the morning.
The afternoon consisted researching the new terms associated with the PPP Flexibility Act. This modification to the original Payroll Protection Program allowed for more lenient loan forgiveness options. Originally, recipients of this loan had just 8 weeks to spend the funds they received in order obtain forgiveness, which created hysteria. Fortunately, the PPP Flexibility Act extended the overall deadline.
In review, I would describe this busy season as a juggle between the three important tasks mentioned above.
With the clients I service looking to keep their businesses on life support, it was critical to them that I adhered to the deadlines imposed. As I progressed, I learned that punctuality was paramount to their survival during this crisis.