Category: Operate A More Efficient Tax Firm

For two months now, I’ve been telling you to get ready for second season. Well, guess what?

Surprise, it’s here!

Unless your lifestyle plan revolves around shutting down for the rest of the year, there is absolutely no reason for you to make less money in the next several months than you did during tax season. In fact, the smartest of tax professionals will actually make more money than they did during tax season.

Here are six quick strategies to employ to help you achieve this:

1. Put in place a year-round client touch strategy. Maintaining regular, year-round contact with your tax return preparation clients is the absolute best way to ensure that they come back next year.

2. Don’t stop your seasonal lead generation efforts. Most tax professionals stop their active lead generation after tax season, which is a massive mistake. Taxpayers need their tax professionals all year, so be sure to provide your ideal target clients with the opportunity to discover who you are and what you can do for them. Shameless plug: If you haven’t yet created your online lead generation strategy, learn how here. You can also jump straight to pre-ordering the manual, before the price goes up by $30 on Saturday.

3. Look for additional opportunities to serve your existing clients. How can you assist them with ACA compliance? How can you save them money on their 2014 tax bill? Who can you help in setting up payment plans for their 2013 and prior tax bill? Be of greater service to your existing clients, and reap the rewards.

4. Fire your worst clients. There are some clients that simply aren’t worth your time. They aren’t worth the stress they create for you, and some clients simply aren’t profitable. Trim the fat, and live happier and more profitably within your practice.

5. Seek out networking opportunities. Network within your professional sphere to find sources of referrals. For example, if you have an extensive examination representation practice, then seek out other tax professionals that do not practice in that arena to connect them with their clients that are in trouble. Simultaneously, network within your local community to find new business and individual clients for your various services.

6. Test a lot of brand new marketing campaigns simultaneously for all your services. I already said to continue your seasonal tax prep marketing campaigns. But when was the last time … Continue reading

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is for my recommendation on a good client management/case work management system for working tax resolution cases.

When I started in tax resolution, no such system existed, so I ended up programming my own. That system worked for my needs and the needs of my firm, but it was light years away from being something worthy of releasing to the entire world.

Since then, a couple of companies have sprung up to attempt to fill the void, with varying degrees of success in creating usable tools. I’ve never felt good about recommending either of the existing options, however, for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into here. Oftentimes, I simply end up suggesting that tax resolution professionals use a different non-tax specific platform, like 37Signals, SalesForce.com, or Insight.ly.

However, I was recently introduced to a brand new tax resolution case work management system that I have really taken a liking to. The system is called BeanStalk, and it is built to accomplish one task: Streamline your entire case work process.

BeanStalk is beautiful because it doesn’t try to be all things to all people, like some other software solutions. BeanStalk is all about the case work side of things only — the system picks up where your sales process ends and your client intake process begins.

BeanStalk is built to follow a logical case flow. It has built in client intake processes, and even allows for a secure, client-facing web portal for your clients to enter their 433 information (which saves you staff time and increases efficiency). The system has an awesome built-in financial analysis engine, allowing you to more efficiently determine OIC and CNC eligibility.

Along with the deadline reminders and other case management functions you would expect, BeanStalk provides the ability to automatically fill in all the necessary IRS forms for you when you need them — no more fillable PDF forms!

The system is built to handle cases as efficiently as possible, and the company founder is an experienced tax resolution attorney, so he’s designed the system from a tax professional’s perspective, not a programmer’s point of view.

I know you’re busy with tax season, but I’d really encourage you to check out BeanStalk before April 15th rolls around. Spend some time playing with BeanStalk (they offer a free trial so you can check it out), and I think you’ll … Continue reading

There are only a few hours remaining for you to pre-order the first edition of the Tax Resolution Systems manual. I’m meeting with my local printer at 3pm Pacific today, so I absolutely need a final unit count prior to that.

If you’ve been on the fence about ordering, don’t forget that, after today, the price for this complete set of checklists for running a tax resolution practice will go up to it’s normal price.

Order your copy here –https://taxresolutionacademy.com/systems

If you’ve never used a checklist-based system to do anything in your practice, then you’re in for a high-efficiency injection of organization and systemization into your practice by following checklists.

This manual includes checklists for everything from your lead generation marketing and conducting sales consultations, all the way to actually resolving the tax debt itself. Using checklists like these to establish procedures and routines in how you do things streamlines your entire operation. It sets standards that you can enforce upon your employees. It also makes your practice worth more if you intend to sell it.

You’re always going to want to spend time tweaking and improving systems, and creating new ones for unique situations in your own practice. And most tax professionals intuitively know this. The problem is that it’s such a daunting task to get started, because nothing like the Tax Resolution Systems checklist compendium has ever existed before.

In exchange for this 50% off price, all I ask is for your feedback on the manual itself. If a checklist step doesn’t make sense, or you think of a checklist that should exist but I didn’t think of it, let me know. All users will be mailed an “update packet” in October with any significant additions/revisions.… Continue reading