Suppress your inner Scrooge – be festive, not grumpy, this busy season

By Gareth Charles, Sales Director

Do you become more Scrooge-like around the Christmas period, getting increasingly grumpy and irritable as you reach peak busy season?

With the enormous volume of work you have as we approach the season of Self Assessment tax returns and other important deadlines like Corporation Tax, it’s no wonder you may feel a tad on edge.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Let 2019/20 be a chance to turn over a new leaf, and be more like the chipper, generous Scrooge who emerges after encountering the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.

Emotions drive full tilt approach

We appreciate that your flat-out working approach is driven by some powerful emotions.

There’s the fear of losing control and being unable to keep on top of the demand – carrying with it the risk of hefty penalties for failing to meet key compliance deadlines for HMRC and other governing bodies.

Then there’s the stress you feel from lacking the resources and capacity to cope – and the accompanying impact on the rest of your staff. You don’t want to gain another Scrooge-esque character trait by forcing employees to work on Christmas Day!

There’s also the guilt of being away from family too much at important leisure times. There’s the fatigue of being at the office for long hours, affecting your well being and your family’s.

You may also feel frustrated that you haven’t got a better, easier way to communicate with clients that doesn’t eat even more into your valuable personal time.

Solutions to stop your inner Scrooge emerging

But how can I stop these emotions building and suppress my inner Scrooge, I hear you ask.

For starters, IRIS Practice Management, which puts you in control of your vital deadlines, alerting you about key dates and automating taxation submissions. There’s no last minute scramble to achieve deadlines because it makes workloads clearly visible and enables effective planning of your resources within achievable timeframes.

The stress you feel because of insufficient elves to do those important tasks can also be overcome. IRIS Resourcing lends you a hand – and some. Our team have completed 15,000 tax returns in the last 5 years for our customers. With 14 years of outsourcing expertise to supporting practice and no upfront annual subscription, we can bend to practices’ needs without the cost and time of recruitment and training of new staff.

And you can banish your old ways of being stuck in the office for the whole Christmas periods – thanks to IRIS Hosting. It means you can carry on getting bits of work done whenever you want, from home. No unnecessary commuting to the office, wasting time you could have with the kids. Hosting provides a secure platform for working from your home computer, just as if you were in the office and it safeguards your practice and client data from malware and cyber criminals.

Lastly, you can satisfy that desire for a simpler way to keep in touch with clients and cut down on niggly requests when you’re already stacked with work. Accountant Go, along with OpenSpace, can make the experience of chasing clients and getting approvals for their tax returns much quicker, simpler and more pleasant, automating key processes, such as reminders, and providing clients with a self-service portal to access personal information any time they want from their phone. With OpenSpace’s e-approvals, there’s no last minute dashes in the car to see clients to approve their returns before submission, it’s all done online.

Feel better this busy season

The countdown to busy season is on. So, before you begin to take the pathway to Scrooge-dom, consider how great you can feel instead.

Think about the solutions available and give one of our specialists a call on 0344 815 5550 to discuss how we can support your practice.