Hitting Capacity as a Solo Firm Owner
When you start your firm, you do everything. Everything. That’s the nature of going out on your own.
You’re on your own.
You get the clients. You categorize the transactions. You ask follow up questions. You reconcile. You review the reporting. You write the email. You send the info. You field the questions.
Or maybe….
You get the clients. You input the return. You ask follow up questions. You review the return. You finalize the return. You write the email. You send the info. You field the questions.
You’ve allotted a specific amount of time each week to do all of that (hopefully that’s a boundary you hold tight) and when all the tasks add up to all the hours in the week, you get to this point:
“I can’t take on any more clients unless I bring someone else on.”
I have nothing against hiring. Truly. If you want to build a team and be a people manager, we need great leaders in the industry.
But hiring isn’t your only option.
Before you jump to bringing on a team, stop and review your entire workflow to determine what tasks can be automated or simplified.
When you were first building your firm and your workflow, you probably didn’t care much about speed and efficiency. You probably cared more about accuracy and making the client happy (and I wouldn’t disagree with that focus).
But as you increase your comfort with the complexity of your clients’ situations, give yourself the time to step back and revisit how you do what you do.
This doesn’t have to involve AI either. For what it’s worth, I went through this process in my firm well before I ever touched ChatGPT (which wasn’t until 2023). It can include:
fully utilizing bank rules
auto-importing bank statements where available
scheduling email reminders to clients
standardizing reporting
standardizing service offerings (do you really want to be doing sales tax?)
standardizing workflow process across clients
…which all can be done with your current tech stack, in your current situation, no AI platform needed.
Once you put the time and effort into automating and standardizing what you’re currently doing on your own (and yes, this takes time, so I recommend doing it before you reach capacity), you might find you’ve created capacity and you don’t need to hire so soon after all.
And if you do eventually hire, you’ve got a damn fine, efficient workflow to hand off 😏
Hope this helps,
Erica
PS - I really don’t think you need to lean into AI for what I talked about here, but if you are Claude-curious, I’m hosting short, intro-level Claude workshops on Thursdays in September inside Aligned Accountants.
What’s Happening in Aligned
👇👇 Now Available 👇👇
Recently Added to the Video Library:
Claude Basics with Chad Davis [7.16.26] Chad, founder of Automation Town, walked us through a ton of Claude demos and answered a ton of 101-level questions
Sabbatical Ask Me Anything: Q&A with Erica [8.6.26] Erica gave a high-level run down of her 4-week sabbatical then answered firm owner’s top questions on the fly
AI-Native GL Showcase [self-paced] Get a rundown of Digits, Kick, Puzzle, and COUNT in under an hour without booking a sales call
🤔 Question of the Week > The kids are going back to school, and I’m feeling…?
💬 Current Discussions On > IRS call frustration, reporting software beyond QBO, The Value Builder System, pricing a cleanup, tax prep referral, Ramp vs Bill, and more!
Money back guarantee, if you get in there and don’t see the value. No questions asked.
More details in the link above.