Eliminating a 9-Month Bookkeeping Backlog Before Tax Season
Client Profile
A growing U.S. CPA firm with approximately 120 small business clients was struggling with bookkeeping backlogs due to staff shortages and increasing client demand.
The Challenge
As tax season approached, more than 30 business clients had bookkeeping records that were between 6 and 9 months behind. The CPA firm’s internal team was spending excessive time on cleanup work instead of focusing on tax planning and client advisory services.
The firm faced:
- Delayed financial reporting.
- Increased tax season pressure.
- Staff burnout.
- Risk of missed deadlines.
Our Solution
Athics Global deployed a dedicated bookkeeping team to:
- Reconcile bank and credit card accounts.
- Review uncategorized transactions.
- Clean up general ledger discrepancies.
- Prepare year-end workpapers.
- Coordinate directly with the CPA firm’s managers.
A standardized workflow and review process were implemented to ensure consistency across all client files.
Results
- 30+ client books brought current before tax season.
- Over 500 hours of bookkeeping work completed.
- Internal staff redirected to higher-value tax and advisory work.
- Improved turnaround times for year-end tax preparation.
- Client retention improved due to faster response times.
Key Takeaway
By outsourcing bookkeeping cleanup and catch-up work, the CPA firm transformed a potential tax season bottleneck into a scalable and profitable workflow.