How Integrated Solutions Revolutionize Workflow Management in Accounting

For CPAs and accounting firms, workload compression is an accepted part of your job. It’s expected that at the start of every calendar year, “tax season” starts, and it’s accepted that you work overtime, weekends, and nights to get as much work done as possible. For some firms, you’re not just working overtime; you’re working double time, working as much as an 80 work week. That compression of work can feel debilitating and is a major cause of why 99% of accountants suffer from burnout. 

Chronic workplace stress and burnout from tax season create a significant dip in productivity, and your team is more likely to make simple errors. Not only is that stress damaging your firm, but employees who suffer from burnout are more likely to get sick, develop depression, suffer from hypertension, and even put them at greater risk for Type 2 diabetes. 

One of the best ways to fight the burnout pandemic in CPAs is to provide your team with the necessary technology support. By relying on technology and using an integrated solution throughout your firm, you can revolutionize how your firm gets through the hectic tax season. Here’s your chance to learn more about how technology can help fight workload compression and burnout in your firm.

The Power of Integration

To get the most from your firm, it’s not enough just to have powerful software tools available; they must be integrated. Software integration is when all your software works together, allowing you to benefit from each program simultaneously without switching between tabs, windows, or programs. 

IRIS Firm Management solutions integrate key functions in your firm, such as billing, client management, and reporting, creating one seamless workflow and eliminating the time you used to spend juggling between programs. This streamlined workflow allows you to accomplish more with your time without requiring you to do more work, helping to make even the compressed work of tax season feel easier to manage.

Real-Life Success Stories

The Pun Group experienced a night and day difference to their processes when they chose to integrate their firm using IRIS firm management software. They immediately saw a difference in how work was being done, with them being able to automatically generate firm wide reports giving them up to the minute knowledge of key performance indicators across their firm.

When talking about IRIS Firm Management, Isabela Lopes, the Chief Operating Officer for The Pun Group says, “The software is intuitive and robust, easy to understand, and user friendly. . . Finally, we have a software that will help us run the firm instead of us having to run the software.”

Tips for Maximizing Efficiency with IRIS

IRIS Firm Management solutions provide you with a lot of professional-grade tools that you can choose to use with your firm, but it’s common for firms to overlook an underused feature or function that could really help your firm. Here are a few quick tips you can use to get the most from all of our firm management software. 

1. Tips for Maximizing Efficiency with IRIS

There are repetitive and redundant tasks in your firm that are a massive time sink. They’re unavoidable and necessary, but they take a lot of man-hours to get done. However, IRIS Firm Management makes automating many of those tasks possible. Automation will free up your calendar by removing those repetitive processes while still making sure those essential processes are completed. 

2. Collaborate More

Collaboration gets a bad reputation thanks to middle school projects where no one does their part, but when managed correctly, it can be a powerful tool that helps your entire team achieve more. Collaboration is only possible when it’s easy to track projects, assign responsibilities, and have clear communication with your team—all of which IRIS Firm Management helps make possible. IRIS makes it easy for your team to help each other and collaborate on projects so each of you can bring your experience and knowledge to a project. 

3. Establish More Communication with Clients

Clients want transparency and communication is the foundation for building that relationship of trust. The best part about frequent communication with your clients is that you don’t have to communicate as much because you are continually talking with them. Think of your relationship with your clients like you would with your best friend or family member. If you haven’t talked to them for months, when you talk to them, you have to go back and catch them up on everything that’s happened in that time, where if you talk to them every week, you only have to focus on what’s happened in that week. Plus, it’s a best practice to always keep your messages short and to the point.  IRIS Firm Management makes it easy to keep in touch with your clients, helping you become more transparent and build on your professional relationship of trust.

Technology will Continue to Drive Efficiency

Accounting is in a crisis because there is a shortage of accountants. There is a growing demand for CPAs but a diminishing supply of qualified CPAs. The only way for the market to solve this problem of supply and demand is to leverage technology to help the existing pool of CPAs do more with their time.

Streamline Your Firm with IRIS

With over 40 years of experience in the market, we understand the pressure you’re feeling and know what solutions you are looking for. Discover how an integrated firm management solution from IRIS can revolutionize your firm, helping you achieve more while also helping improve client communication and retention.