When we meet with students for on-campus recruiting, one of the main discussions between our campus recruiting teams and students is what goes on during busy season (Jan 1st through April 15th).
This is a big time of year for us, 50% of the firm’s billable hours are charged during this season. It only makes sense that this be one of the main focal points of discussion when we are doing recruiting. One thing we do not always get to talk about with students is what happens leading up to the beginning of busy season. This article is intended just to let readers know what happens before our interns arrive.
Goal setting - “You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal.” – Zig Ziglar
At Smith & Howard, we place a strong emphasis on goal setting, tracking and evaluation. We do this through our Career Development Meeting process. We conduct formal and informal meetings quarterly at all levels. We start the year off with goal setting, revisit goals throughout the year to ensure we are on track and we regroup at year end to evaluate. Prior to the start of busy season, we take a look back to celebrate our successes and identify growth and development opportunities for the future. This allows us to focus our efforts on goal setting for the future and how we can continue to work together to improve the firm and ourselves. We grow stronger together.
Planning - Proper planning prevents poor performance.
As busy season approaches, we reach out to all of our clients with calendar year ends to set up planning calls and meetings. We use these interactions to get an overall understanding on what has occurred throughout the year so that we can ensure all of our projects (whether it be assurance, tax or advisory) have the appropriate level of staffing. We also use this for the purposes of ensuring the clients are positioned properly from a tax planning standpoint and to get an understanding of changes in our client’s business so that we can make proper risk assessments for our audits.
Training - Committed to excellence in all we do
Stephen Covey’s 7th habit in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, is “Sharpen the Saw”. At Smith & Howard we commit ourselves to be continuously learning and always sharpening the saw. The field of accounting is ever-changing and new laws, guidance and standards present themselves on a very regular basis. In order to provide the highest level of technical competence to our clients, we have to stay on top of these changes. The assurance services department conducts their in-house training in November to prepare itself for upcoming changes in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Generally Accepted Auditing Standards and our tax department attends various training sessions in December to keep current on changes in tax law and compliance requirements.
These steps keep us current on technical issues, but our training does not stop there.
We also look for ways to improve our soft skills. We recently did accountability training with an expert by the name of Mike Scott. This training ensures we are totally accountable to our clients as well as one another.
These are just a couple of examples of the efforts that our folks make to ensure that we are well-prepared to enter our busy season and provide the highest level of service to our clients.