In addition to carrying out the routine tax and accountancy compliance work, the coming weeks should also be used for identifying additional fees during tax season. You may want to circulate this article to anyone in the firm who is involved in a client charging role!
It’s one of the busiest times of the year for accountants. However, whilst you’re up to your eyeballs in tax returns, it can be one of the most productive times in terms of securing additional work from your clients.
In the midst of calculating what tax your clients need to pay, look at their information with a different hat on and ask yourself:
- Have their personal circumstances changed in the past 12 months?
- Are they now married, separated, divorced or widowed?
- Have they now got a family?
- Are they employed or have they started their own business (or vice versa)?
- Are they approaching retirement?
These types of changes could lead to conversations about your personal or business tax planning services. You may also be able to identify other family members you could support with accounting or tax services.
Where changes have happened that impact their business, is there anything that you can do to help mitigate their tax liabilities before the start of the next financial year?
For firms who offer a probate service, such questions should lead to conversations about their Wills and whether these are up to date, creating or updating lasting power of attorney documents, reviewing or setting up trusts and highlighting the benefits of using your firm for any future probate work as opposed to using local banks or solicitors.
Client service is enhanced and additional fees are generated when we talk to our clients. So use the tax return process to kick-start a conversation about how else you can support your client. In many cases, these conversations should be seen as providing ‘client care’, which will also lead to additional fees being generated.
