Every firm runs the same gauntlet. Most do it the slow way.
Walk your tax prep workflow stage by stage, rate where the hours land, and see exactly what your season is costing you.
Your tax prep workflow, stage by stage.
The defaults are industry benchmarks for a document-heavy 1040. Adjust them to match your firm.
Before the work starts: Engagement Setup
Your team opens the engagement: confirm the prior-year return, assign staff, set scope, and log it in your practice management system.
Managed in your practice management system.Client Organizer & Document Collection
Every return starts with a request: send us your documents. The reality is messier. Clients submit partial packages. W-2s arrive in January, K-1s in March, amended 1099s in April. Staff spend hours tracking what came in and what is still missing.
Document Validation
Collecting the documents is not the same as confirming they are correct. A W-2 from the wrong tax year. A 1099-DIV missing a brokerage account. These errors are common and costly, mostly because catching them manually takes time that is not available until prep is already underway.
Workpaper Organization, Binder Prep & Prior-Year Carryforward
Organizing a return means building the binder structure, bookmarking and annotating PDFs, and pulling prior-year carryforward amounts (net operating losses, capital loss carryforwards, basis schedules) into this year's return. The carryforward step alone is a quiet time sink.
Team Collaboration on Binders
A return rarely moves through one pair of hands. Questions arise mid-prep. Someone needs a document uploaded to a folder only they can see. A status update gets sent by email and never reaches the person who needed it. For firms processing hundreds of returns, the coordination overhead compounds.
Return Preparation — Draft + Lead Sheets
This is the work the client is paying for. The preparer builds lead sheets, reconciles the numbers, works through the schedules, and produces the draft return. For a document-heavy 1040, this is where the hours go.
Review
The manager or partner review is a bottleneck at most firms. Returns queue up waiting for a senior set of eyes. The constraint is rarely the reviewer's judgment. It is the time spent getting to a position where judgment can be applied.
Data Entry & E-File
After a return clears review, the numbers move into the filing system (Drake, CCH, ProSeries, UltraTax, Lacerte). For firms without a direct integration, this means re-keying data that has already been validated, organized, and reviewed.
Extension Management, Billing & Post-Filing
Extensions, invoicing, signed-return delivery, and workpaper archiving sit downstream of the covered workflow.
Managed in your billing and practice management tools.Your firm's time per return, by stage
These are your numbers. The total reflects a typical document-heavy 1040.
Now scale it to your whole firm ↓
One last number.
You have rated your workflow stage by stage. Now scale it to your firm.
Here is where your season goes.
See what this looks like with SignalsHQ.
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No spam. One email with your personalized workflow breakdown.Which stages are costing your firm the most?
Most firms we talk to feel the pressure hardest in two or three places. Our team can show you exactly what SignalsHQ looks like inside your workflow: 30 minutes, no generic demo.