Private & confidential
Where your team's time really goes — and the easiest ways to get it back.
We measured 10 business days (measured off-season) across 24 computers — Partners (4) · Tax staff (9) · Bookkeeping/CAS (6) · Admin (5). Not a survey, not interviews: how the work actually happened.
Things worth knowing
Nothing here is anyone doing a bad job. It's work that repeats, or happens in two places at once — exactly the kind that's easiest to hand off.
Even off-season, preparers get 8-minute focus stretches. In season this compounds into evenings. Most interruptions are status questions the systems could answer.
Missing-item emails, portal reminders, and “did we get the K-1?” checks consume 38% of admin time — pure follow-up mechanics an assistant runs on rails.
K-1s, 1099s, and brokerage PDFs get keyed into the tax software by hand — about 260 documents a week in season-equivalent volume. Document reading turns them into review work instead of entry work.
Bookkeeping spends its largest block re-categorizing transactions and fixing feeds in QBO — draft-first automation clears the routine 80%.
Your tax suite, QBO, and the client portal all expose integrations — the chase, the entry, and the status tracking can flow.
Where the day goes
Share of active time by kind of tool, across all 24 measured machines — and where information gets carried by hand between programs.
| Information moves by hand | Into | Times / week |
|---|---|---|
| Email attachments | Document management | 290 |
| Client PDFs (K-1s, 1099s) | Tax software | 260 |
| QuickBooks Online | Excel workpapers | 150 |
| Practice management (status) | 120 | |
| E-file portal | Tracking spreadsheet | 70 |
Every row is a person being the integration between two programs. Connect the programs and the row disappears.
The opportunities, ranked
Ordered by where we'd start — payoff weighed against effort. The list adds up to the headline; where two touch the same hours, we sequence them rather than count twice.
| # | Opportunity | Team | Hours/yr | Value/yr | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | An assistant for email triage, drafts, and follow-ups | Everyone | 820 | $36,900 | quick win |
| 2 | Client document chasing that runs itself | Admin · Tax | 680 | $30,600 | quick win |
| 3 | Engagement letters + organizers from templates | Admin | 310 | $13,950 | quick win |
| 4 | Source documents read into workpapers (K-1s, 1099s) | Tax staff | 740 | $33,300 | medium |
| 5 | QBO categorization drafts for CAS clients | Bookkeeping | 520 | $23,400 | medium |
| 6 | Workpaper indexing and filing, automated | Tax staff | 350 | $15,750 | medium |
| 7 | E-file confirmations tracked automatically | Tax · Admin | 280 | $12,600 | medium |
| 8 | Protecting preparer focus (in-season mode) | Whole firm | 1,050 | $47,250 | bigger project |
| 9 | Instant answers on client status and history | Everyone | 430 | $19,350 | bigger project |
A simple plan to get started
Start small; let the early wins pay for the bigger steps. The dollar figures are time you get back each year — not what setup costs.
- →An assistant for email triage, drafts, and follow-ups
- →Client document chasing that runs itself
- →Engagement letters + organizers from templates
The chase and the letters — set up off-season, felt on January 2nd.
- →Source documents read into workpapers (K-1s, 1099s)
- →QBO categorization drafts for CAS clients
- →Workpaper indexing and filing, automated
- →E-file confirmations tracked automatically
Tax suite, QBO, portal, and documents flowing — entry becomes review.
- →Protecting preparer focus (in-season mode)
- →Instant answers on client status and history
Season-mode focus protection and firm-wide answers — planned with the partners.
What year one looks like
Phases come online in months 2, 4, and 8. Monthly run-rate of time recovered, cumulative — conservative by design.
How you compare
Against the typical operation of your size and industry that we measure. Illustrative benchmarks — the point is where you sit, not decimal precision.
| Metric | You | Typical |
|---|---|---|
| Admin time on document chasing | 38% | 20–25% |
| Source docs keyed by hand | ~260/wk | <80/wk (automated firms) |
| Median preparer focus stretch | 8 min | 15 min |
| Stack connectable | Yes | Usually |
A day for Tax staff 3 — before and after
Same person, same job, same morning. The difference is what the systems do on their own.
- ·8:30am — inbox: 30 client emails; six are missing-document threads to re-chase by hand
- ·Mid-morning — a stack of brokerage PDFs keyed into the tax software
- ·1pm — “where’s my return?” calls answered by opening three systems
- ·4pm — e-file confirmations copied into the tracking spreadsheet
- ·Median focus: 8 minutes — off-season
- ✓8:30am — the chase ran overnight; only true exceptions remain
- ✓Source documents arrive read and staged in workpapers — review, not entry
- ✓Status questions answered from one pane, or self-served via the portal
- ✓E-file statuses tracked automatically; the spreadsheet is retired
- ✓Recovered time goes to review depth — the work clients actually pay for
Your systems can already do this
Most of what we found needs connection, not new software. Automated Edge sets these up and runs them for you.
Document import and e-file status tracking hang off it.
Categorization drafts + feed-repair alerts, client by client.
The chase automates against what actually arrived — no more “did we get it?”
The assistant and the follow-up rails start here.
What we measured, computer by computer
Six of the 24 machines shown. Roles, never names — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people. Click any card for that machine's detail.
How this rolls out without breaking your week
The change-management is the product. Four rules we run every engagement by.
One person per team helps tune their own workflow first and shows the rest. Adoption follows proof, not announcements.
Every automation runs in draft-first mode before it acts — you see what it would have done for a week, then turn it loose.
Each change can be switched off in one step, independently. The old way keeps working until the new way has earned trust.
A standing monthly review: what saved time, what needs tuning, what to add next. The plan updates with the evidence.
| Wk 1–2 | Systems connected read-only; draft-mode assistants watching, not acting |
| Wk 3–4 | Quick wins go live team by team, champions first |
| Wk 5–8 | The system connections: the copying between programs stops |
| Wk 9–12 | First monthly review with measured savings; bigger bets scoped with real usage data |
How this was measured — openly
- ✓Every person was informed in writing before measurement began; signed acknowledgments on file.
- ✓Never captured, at any tier: keystrokes, clipboard contents, email bodies.
- ✓Roles are shown instead of names throughout this report — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people.
- ✓All captured data is encrypted, scoped to this company alone, and hard-deleted five business days after this report is delivered.
What happens next
The chase and the letters, live before season. The Assessment fee credits against it.
Tax suite, QBO, portal, and documents joined — entry becomes review, statuses answer themselves.
Chase conversion, entry hours saved, season readiness — reviewed with the partners monthly.
This is the deliverable the Assessment produces for a business like yours — measured on your machines, tied to ROI, with the consent architecture on every page. The real one is built from your 10 business days.