Conquering Workflows & Systems For Bookkeepers & Accountants | with Alyssa Lang (Workflow Queen)

Lessons from Year-End: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What to Improve

• Season 1 • Episode 102

Share episode

In this solo episode, Alyssa Lang covers essential strategies for improving year-end workflows for bookkeepers and accountants. Alyssa discusses practical ways to reflect on past processes, create plans to address bottlenecks, and leverage tools like Content Snare to automate client communication, ensuring a smoother and more efficient year-end experience in the future.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How to conduct a year-end debrief to identify what went right and wrong
  • What steps to take to fix year-end bottlenecks and improve workflows for the future
  • Why creating templates and specific softwares can streamline client requests
  • When and how to set expectations with clients to ensure smoother year-end

Resources mentioned in this episode:

👉🏼 Join our FREE POWER to Breakthrough Bootcamp (Feb 17th - Feb 21st)

⚙️ Content Snare

💻 Effortless Client Requests for Bookkeepers & Accountants 💻 Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants

⚙️ Notion

⚙️ Asana

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @workflowqueen

For more information about the Conquering Workflows & Systems for Bookkeepers & Accountants Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

Visit our website: workflowqueen.com

Check out our courses: workflowqueen.com/courses

Follow the Blog: workflowqueen.com/blog

Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alyssa-lang-wq

Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/workflowqueen

Connect on Facebook: Facebook.com/workflowqueen

Podcast Publishing Tools we use:

So if you're anything like me, then you absolutely know that year end is always one of the most chaotic times of the year. For most bookkeeping and accounting firms. So if you feel that in any way, or even if it went really smooth for you, this episode is still for you. In today's episode, I'm breaking down exactly how to stay motivated after year end, the simple tweaks we made that completely transformed how we handled this busy season and how you can start preparing now to make next year's year-end process so much smoother. I'll also be sharing a simple debrief strategy to capture what worked and what didn't while it's still fresh in mind. The biggest mistakes firms make after year end that keep them stuck in the same cycle over and over again. How we streamline our client requests, communication and tracking. So it felt way less chaotic this year. And if you want to completely overhaul your systems and processes. I've got something exciting for you. I'm so pumped for you guys for this episode, you're going to want to grab a pen and paper. There's a lot of information. You might feel a little bit overwhelmed only because I give you so much gold, but guys, I love pouring everything into each of these episodes. So you can truly walk away with real actionable strategies and tips to improve the success of your firm. So year-end is finally behind us and maybe you might be still working through your end, but if you're anything like me, it probably has felt like the longest and most exhausting January ever. So closing out financials, prepping your clients for tax filing, chasing down documents from your clients. It's just a real wind of stress. Deadlines and true last minute, chaos. And now that it's over, the last thing that I know you want to do is revisit this process, right? But here's the thing. If we don't take the time to actually reflect and actually fix the pain points that we ran into through year-end. We're just going to guarantee ourselves at another year of this pain and struggle is just going to come back again every single year in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing some practical ways to stay motivated after your end, how to document, improve your process for next year. And the simple tweaks that we've made in our firm that made a massive difference in our year end. And speaking of setting yourself up for a better year, I want to personally invite you guys to join us for my power to breakthrough bootcamp. That's happening February 17th to February 21st. This free live event is all happening to help you guys refine your offers, build scalable systems and develop a team that actually supports your growth so that you can become what I call a removable CEO. This is a free bootcamp. I think you guys are going to really enjoy this, especially if you really felt the pains of year end. And you want to make a difference. You want to make a change and you don't want to be drowning every year doing this again. And again. You can go to workflow queen.com backslash bootcamp, or you can click the link in the show notes below, but let's go ahead and dive into today's episode. So I just want to kind of take a step back real quick. As of recording this, it is literally February 1st. Which means I am out of January. I do have my own firm on top of also managing workflow queen over here. Thankfully, I do have a team at my firm. However, even I was pulled into year, end this year and it felt just like the longest. Longest month ever. Honestly, it felt like a whole entire year. In January. I was like, I remember seeing something on Instagram that said, oh, wow, this feels like the 74th day of January. If you're feeling that right now, I just want to like, hear and see you. So. Let me kind of take a step back, but. Outside of the chaos of your end. And I will tell you, we had a really good system, really good things down. And we I'm gonna talk today about some of the things that we did prior to your end to prepare ourselves because we don't do tax filing at my firm. However, we do have to make sure we close out the clients to get ready for tax filing with their prepares. So we usually aim to do this all in January. Obviously, sometimes if our clients aren't answering our questions, Then it might have to extend into February, but most likely we're closing out most of our clients in January at the end of the day. So on top of year-end chaos and just everything that was going on, I also had a lot of personal stuff happening. So if you've been following this podcast for quite some time, you might've noticed that we didn't do any new episodes for almost four weeks. And there was this, honestly, because I was just going through a lot personally. And so I really just wanted to share and just like, have you guys understand that I am just like you guys. I do have my own ups and downs. There's a lot of things that are happening in my role. We shut down the companies, both of them for two weeks. And so that's workflow queen and my for magnetic profits. And that means that our team got the time to rest. We fully pay them for this time off. So that way they can be with their family. Uh, they can reconnect, then they can get ready for the new year. We can just hit the ground running well, during my. I of course I was being crazy. And during us being shut down for two weeks, I decided to hire, which is great. But as you guys all know hiring, isn't just something that you start tomorrow and you have someone by the end of the week, you should not be that fast in your hiring. To be honest, if you're going that fast, you're most likely picking the wrong individual. Cause you're just trying to hire someone quickly. But I wanted to share with you guys like this new hire that I recently hired, took almost a month and a half for me to. Interview job posting everything. And granted, I can put up a job posting tomorrow for new roles, because like we already have a really good hiring system, but I decided one of my team was out of office. We were hiring full-time marketing and content specialist. That was going to be 80% here at workflow queen and 20% in my firm. And with that being said, it was like almost the perfect timing, to be honest, because I got to kind of take a step back and hire while everybody else was out of office. No one was bothering me. All of our clients knew the end, like people here at workflow queen. Also knew that we were shut down for two weeks. So. To take a step back. As we started January and I'm in the middle of this new hiring process. Unfortunately, I'm also located in Southern California. And as most of the world knows there was massive fires that were happening and destroyed a lot of beautiful homes. Here in the LA area. And I'm about, I will say probably about an hour away from LA. So thankfully I was not affected by the fires. However, because of the really high winds that we experienced if you caught any of the news of what was happening with the LA fires. Wind was a very huge proponent in how fast it spread. The winds were the most insane that I've ever seen them here where I live. I live in lake Arrowhead, California. And my house that I have is on the top of a mountain. And I'm more towards the rim of the mountain, which means that I get a lot more of the wind than most places here in lake Arrowhead. And so anyways, because we experienced so much wind up here, we have a really big, big fire risk concern. We recently went through a fire scare in the summer called the line fire. And that was really scary. I'd pack up my trailer. Cause I didn't know if the fire was going to move our way. It was a whole thing. So. They were being super cautious with our city and with the mountain community and they shut down our power over a span of two weeks. I lost power for 10 days. And yes, I have a generator and I'm very grateful for that. But what it did to me was, even though I was able to do my best, I have star languages, my internet, I use for when I'm traveling and my travel trailer. Thankfully, I have that. However, it's not the best internet then, plus it's quite stressful because one, my car was actually in the shop. At the same time, I had no way of getting gas for my generator. All of the gas stations up on the mountain were shut down. We had to drive all the way down the mountain, which is like 45 minutes just to be able to get gas. It's just a whole thing. So. I'm sharing this with you guys, because I went through quite a stressful January and to top it off, I was kind of pulled into our year end this year to support the team because they were falling really behind and nothing that it was their fault. It's just like we just had. good amount of clients and it was just a lot, right. So our team came back and then my operations manager was out of office for a week. And then one of my other team members was in Thailand traveling. So I'm sharing this with you guys because life will life. And when life is lifeing, as much as I love that I have a team that usually land on. It's also really hard when the team is also not there and they're out of office and things are happening and I want to support this work-life balance for everyone, but it's hard because as a business owner, at the end of the day, you have to. Take ownership for the company that you own and when everyone else has gone. And everything else is falling apart. You have to be pulled in. And so I just want to like acknowledge to anyone who is feeling that this month, that like I hear you. I see you. I get it. That is why I didn't record any podcast episodes. I was so in like, Like just getting things done mode to make sure that our team was set up, that we got this new hire on which thankfully she started last week. Her name is Rachel, and I'm super excited about her being on the team. And it was just a lot. So I just wanted to share that to start with you guys, that I know what you're going through. And if you want to share any of like the ups and downs that you experienced through year end, and just like what was happening in January for you? Like, it's just a lot also guys, we went through a whole new. Presidential exchange. So like that's also another, like just there's so much happening in January. It was just a lot this year. So I want to take a step back in this episode and really just talk through the ways that we try to improve our year-end before we even went through year end. And then also some other things like how we created plans to fix our bottlenecks for next year. What we did that we changed and made a huge difference on this year's year end as we went through it. Which guys year-end in the U S. I could mean anything like general year-end plus like 10 99. So if you file 10 90 nines, if you're in another country, then you might experience something different. But for us, that's what our year-end is. So in today's episode, I'm going to break down a lot of that stuff, but it's so important guys that I know as much as we were drowning. And as much as it sucked while we're going through it. And then we probably had tax repairs, like breathing down our throat to being like, when are the books ready? I get it. I understand. At the same time we have to take a step back and say, what can we do now to recognize what we went through? So that way we could fix it for next year. I know that you're in, only comes around once a year. But however, it is one of the most crucial pieces of success to make sure our clients are set up for tax filing. So let's talk about my action plan for today. I highly recommend you guys grab a notebook or you come back to this episode. Whenever it feels great. But step one is do a year end debrief while it's fresh in your mind. This is probably. I don't know one of my absolute favorite processes other than our client experience process. I love debriefs. I love coming back to the team and being like, what did we feel? What happened? You know, what can we improve for next year? Was there anything that we could've done differently? Stuff like that. So, I highly recommend that you set aside at least 30 minutes to an hour. Just you, not the team yet, but just you and just sit, you can journal, you could do it on your computer. It doesn't matter. Just don't let any distractions come up for you. And sit down and write down everything that you can remember of what you just went through in January for year-end and 10 99 filing. And say what worked, what felt chaotic and what can we actually improve on? If you have any ideas along the way of things that may be like, Ooh, we, it would have been nice if we would have had automation here or if this would have happen, or if we maybe sent out a form prior to the clients to do XYZ, jot that down, give yourself self the space. Then what I want you to do is once you've dropped this down for yourself, if you do have a team, so even if you have a contractor of five hours, A month for you still ask them. Ask your current team. The same thing. I want them for 30 minutes to be able to sit down and say what went right? What went wrong? And what can you guys improve? Any ideas, things that they might bring up, you might not realize that whatever you think in your head is the problem or what worked really well might not be the same for your team. So you might be able to get different insight and please put your ego aside to know that like your team's not coming at you. They're just being really honest because you asked for it. Like see what your team has to say, see what they are willing to bring up to you as far as like, Hey, look, you really stressed me out because you put so many clients on my plate. That is such great information for you to hear. So encourage your team to do the same thing as well. I want you guys to write down anything that you guys wish that what you had done in your year end, whether it's through 10 90 nines or your actual year end to get your clients ready for tax filing. I want you guys to sit down and see. What did we send out? That was like redundant. So like, I'll give you a great example of this. Let's just say that when you are done preparing the books, you guys, you and your team, and. Even yourself, if it's just, you went through your, client's books for a final time for 20, 24 to make sure you know what You're good to go. You're ready to start tax filing. You're ready to reach out to your tax repair. Let's just say that you use the same email, like consistently pretty much. Maybe you kept retyping it every time, but it's the same email with the same concept, letting them know their books are ready to file. I want you to go back and I want you to write down all the things that you felt were redundant in your process. Not a bad thing and ask yourself, is there a way I can template this or save this for the future so we can reuse next year? Is there a way that I could take this thing and create a project out of it or create a task that next year we won't forget these steps. I want you to take a step back and look at those things. So for us, we added a new layers this year and we did. And once I did today was my day of reflection of year end. So I sat down today, it's a Saturday and it was a perfect time for me to say, these are the typical emails that we sent. Here's some new layers that we added. Added in that worked really well. These parts we didn't like at all, we would change this, this time around. I just jotted it all down. And the cool part is my team's going to do the same this coming week and give me some feedback as well. So step number one, like I mentioned before is to do a year end debrief. While it's still fresh. If you want to share with me what you experienced that maybe you're not really sure what went right, or what were wrong or some ideas come over on instagram@workflowqueenorcomemailusatsupportatworkflowqueen.com. I always love to hear from you guys. I love when you email in, I love when you reach out on Instagram about what you're experiencing, because usually I also give you guys some golden nuggets along the way as well. So step number two. And my plan is to create a plan to fix year end bottlenecks. So if you don't know what a bottleneck is, that just means something that's kind of getting in the way. So you need to create a plan to fix that. So now that we've done our, big brain dump of the things that went, right, the things that went wrong and some improvements that that can be made. I want you to give yourself some space. For me, I plan to take the whole rest of this week. Until the hell out. That's the best way I can say it. I'm actually going to go down to one of my best friend's house. She's out in New York right now, and I just need to get out. I just need to get away from lake Arrowhead. I just want to get away for the weekend and just be somewhere else. So I'm gonna take my dog with me and we're gonna stay there until like Tuesday. I'm going to go to my favorite coffee shop. I'm going to eat at my favorite restaurants and then I'm going to come back recharged. So give yourself a week break to just be like, oh, that was a long season. But when I come back after this week, I'm going to focus on process improvement. If you haven't up until this point, documented processes written down your SLPs, or even filmed dress ops or templated emails, I highly encouraged that you do so, because next year. It's going to be less painful. So I want you to think through what clients did you not like working with? Which ones were really hard to get information from. Maybe you this whole time have been emailing your clients, asking them to submit stuff to you. Via year end, was there a better way that you could have added a software that could easily be able to request that information while nudging them without having to remind you to nudge them, stuff like that? What can we do to fix these bottlenecks? I also want you to look at what was your internal tracking? So I know some personal friends in the industry who we have talked every single day, all the time, and I was on the phone with them. They were like, I don't know how we're so behind by 26 clients, like 26 of our clients at the end of January are still not closed out. And I was talking to her and I'm like, okay. So take a step back and look and follow the trail of breadcrumbs. Where did this get stuck? Why did that happen is because you didn't have enough team, is it that you guys didn't prepare far enough in advance? And really looking at those things and looking at what was the reason that we got super behind, how can we improve that? She's actively working on that. So next year they don't have to run to the same scenario. So during this plan, we can be planning it, but also making some changes. In the process, but you want to look at things holistically to see what parts of our year end can I actually fix in this process? So let's just say that during that time you guys were onboarding new team members. Or maybe you forgot to document stuff, or you were just remembering things off your top of your head. Those are good things to build into your plan, that I am going to create some sort of a checklist that will make our life so much easier during year end. And if you want some more guidance on refining your processes and making them so much more repeatable, so that next year you don't have to make the same mistake. Then we'll be covering this a lot of this kind of stuff of how to identify your biggest bottleneck in the business. Through our power to breakthrough bootcamp, it's absolutely free. You can go to workflow. queen.com backslash bootcamp. It's from February 17th through February 21st. And we're going to be covering a wide range of things, but this is really for those of you who are scaling in your firm. Unfortunately the bootcamp isn't for newbies only because this will really overwhelm you because we're really helping firms who have major bottlenecks and a lot of stuff going on. And a lot of moving parts. If you want to be able to solve this while it's fresh and please come to our boot camp, we are more than happy to support you. So step number three, while we've already created our brain dump of all, did our debrief of what went right? What went wrong during year end and what we can improve on. Then we created the plan to fix your year-end bottlenecks. The next step is that we want to actually look at everything to see what we. We can actually change this year. And see what we can actually fix within the business. So that next year it's not repeated. So that's actually going back and actually fixing things, You know, re tightening things up again. Taking those email templates and storing them somewhere. So next year you can reuse them. Now I wanted to share with you guys what we changed this year, that made a huge difference for a year end. So I highly recommend writing these downs because these are definitely. Some things that I wish I would've thought about sooner. Some of these things. I did collaborate with others in the industry and just like bounced ideas. This is why I think community is so huge because then you can talk to others who are experiencing the same thing to see, Hey, what are you doing differently? Stuff like that. So one of the first things that we did, and I highly recommend that you put this into your process for next year. Because we met with our team before year end to get feedback on what we could improve on based off of what happened last year. So we did this meeting in December, so I highly recommend that you do the same. So it's kind of like a. Like a pre-brief like, it's not even like a brief, it's a pre-brief before we get into year end to ask the team like, Hey, what could we improve? Any thoughts on ways that we can incorporate maybe new systems that we've recently added? Just everybody give your thoughts. And it was an all hands on deck type of meeting. And that was really cool because like the bookkeepers can give us feedback on like what we need to implement or last time around. It made me feel like this. And so that was a really impactful meeting for us. I feel like it really helped us to set the tone and get people excited to move into year, end into January. One of the most recent things that we did. Was we use notion and notion, people ask me this question all the time notion is what we use to tell us how we do things. But a sauna is the task management system that has a task to tell us what to do. And so usually when we're doing tasks, like for example, if we're doing year end for XYZ client, we're referring to notion because in notion we have a client profile page for each of our clients. And in that page, we have notes about that client nuances, the way they track revenue, the way that they track expenses, typical vendors, they use all the accounts that we have to reconcile. When were they reconciled last? Like how do we get access to statements? Notion is really like the Wikipedia and information hub for us to get information. About that client? Well, a sauna tells us what tasks to do. So one of the major changes that we made, we actually did this last year for last year. And I actually came up with it halfway through year end. So it was already in place by the time that we did it this year for year end. But however, we just amplified it a little bit more and tweaked it more before we started year. And this year. So inside of my big group coaching program, breakthrough. We give everyone my notion workspace, the whole entire one that I run my whole entire firm with. And I use that same one. There's a database that we call missing client information. This database is a place where our team, like, let's just say that we ask a client for something and they never give it to us. We will go upload it into this database. So that way in this database, like think of it like a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet will essentially have a line item for the thing that we're still missing from that client. like, let's just say that we ask a client for a loan document and they just never gave it to us. We might just wait again to nudge them about the loan document till end of year, because you know, for them, they don't really mind. Not needing it on the books all year. So like, we all know that we have certain things about our clients at that kind of stuff happened. So. What we did was inside this database. They call it databases and notion. But think of it like a spreadsheet. We had like a template inside of that database for missing information for year-end specifically. And so what we did was it within this page, each of our clients were given a year end. Page and we don't give it to our clients. What we mean is like in their notion page, their lives, this big year end page, within that big year-end page, it reminds us of things that we're going to need to do. Like we need to download X, Y, Z reports to be able to give to the tax repair. They're not necessarily tasks, but they're just for things to remind us that like, don't forget to double-check this, Thing inside of QBL. For example, I don't forget to reconcile any of the payroll accounts in QBO against the actual W2. Don't forget to add any assets on the books. Like it's just kind of like a double check system. And so the reason why we like this as well, the team was actually working on that client's year end. We have different sections within this client's page. That says, you know, notes for clients notes for the tax prepare things that we still need from client, stuff like that, because we don't like to bombard our clients during year end and just constantly send them emails. We actually send them a content snare request. During year, end of all, the things that we still need from them that are going to help us to close out year end, and then we send it off in one, go through content snare. And so this has been such a game changer for us. Like I said, this is the second time around we used it, but it's like a template that lives inside my notion and it just, we just duplicate it every year for that client. And the cool part is within notion. We also on our master client database at pretty much houses, all of our clients and all their information about them. We added a status that said things like, you know, Waiting on clients waiting on us in progress, not started. And I think the other one was completed. And essentially what that allowed us to do is as we were working through year end for clients, when the team was done with that specific client, they can mark it as complete, but it's not really a task. It's just saying that the status of that person is complete. So we can look at our master database in notion to see high level what's the year-end status. And that's really helpful as well as we do, team meetings, we can say, okay, what's going on with this? It says, you're still waiting on the client. What are you still waiting on? That way we can move this needle forward and we can actually make this work. So that was a really great change. If you don't use something like. Notion you can totally recreate something like this inside of a good old spreadsheet or even an a task management system. We just find that notion is just way more powerful for stuff like this. And can go way beyond things like keeper. Zenit a sauna. It truly can. Trump, all those things because of the amount of information we can put in these simple pages. So we actually opened up as well. Another thing that we did this year was we opened up client communication a little bit earlier. So that we could set expectations and response times. So what we did was, and this is a templated email guys, like this is going back to like template your stuff stored somewhere. We have a templated email that we actually use last year, but we beefed it up a little bit more and we actually decided to send it on January. I think it was second is when we sent it. And it was an automated email that came out to all of our clients. Just pretty much stating like, Hey. We're super excited. We're going into year end this year or into this month. And things are going to look a little bit different. Your reports are going to come a little bit later than anticipated mostly because we want to make sure that we're triple checking everything for 2024. So it'll take our team just a little bit more time than usual. Also. We expect you guys as the clients, we expect you guys to get us the information that we need in order to successfully close out your books to get you ready for tax filing, and you can hand it off to your tax repair. This really set the tone last year. I think we sent it out on like January 5th. And I know that it sounds like it's only a three day difference, but sending it out on January 2nd, I feel like made a difference. And it was also a lot of our clients first day back at work. After the holiday, we've got a lot of responses like, yep. We'll be on top of it. Every one of our clients was super on top of it. We only have one client who technically has not answered our last question. So we're just waiting on her. But other than that, all of our clients are done for year end. We're just waiting on her last response, but I'm sure she'll respond next week. So another thing that we did as well is that we looked at what we did last year. We took some of the emails that we had sent out last year. We templated them so that this year we can reuse them again. And then what we also did too, is that inside of contents there, we set up a year end request schedule, but we use our typical like month end requests that we send out, which is templated instead of content snare. We use that same one. And we had just essentially created different language around the automated emails that came out to pretty much be like, Hey, if you don't fill this out, We won't be able to get you ready for tax filing. Therefore you're going to have to get an extension, like, cause you're not getting us what we need or if you still don't respond by X date. We are just going to hand off everything to your tax repair and throw it into an account called. Accountant to advise and they're going to have to. You know, talk to you about it anyway. So it's either you answer us or you answer them no matter what you're going to need to answer someone. That's the language that we have in those like automated emails in content snare. And if you're curious about content snare, I absolutely love content. Sarah been using it for years. I actually, co-created a program called effortless client requests. With one of my besties, her name is Brooke Swan. We actually give you guys every single template that we use and not just within your end guys, I'm talking about throughout the whole year. Things like 10 99 stuff month end. We have lots of onboarding things like clean up stuff. It's great. So if you want to check that out, you can go to workflow. queen.com backslash. Content dash snare. And I'll also link that below for you guys. So another thing that we did as well is that throughout the month, the team was jotting down any issues or adjustments we actually needed to make to our process. So remember, I was telling you at the very beginning, my first step is to go back and reflect on the prior month. And the prior process, we just like, kind of got through and reflect on it and write it down. We're actually proactively doing that as well. However, we just do one final, like, look at this one more time holistically. How did you feel. Feel, but our team in the midst of the chaos is typically writing things down or saying things that, you know, need need adjustments or anything like that. So those are some of the things that we did differently for year-end. Like I said, I highly just encourage you to kind of go back to this episode. It's a lot of information, but while it's still fresh in mind, I do recommend going back and looking at the typical emails that you guys sent, typical things that you kind of did so repeatedly. It's like, why didn't I have this jotted down? I do recommend that you actually take the time to do that. So the last step in my last recommendation is we used Content Snare kind of teased on this one a little bit. To really help us streamline our year end requests. So Content Snare is a software You can like request things from clients. You can have them upload documents, you can have them answer specific questions. You can even tell them about unassigned transactions and say, Hey, we need you to review these and tell us what these are, and then the beautiful part about content so that I absolutely love. Is that in content snare, we actually have the ability to create what's called conditional questions, which means like, I can ask them a question. Like, did you make any payroll payments outside of our payroll software this year? If they say yes, then it'll ask them another question asking for. Uh, those reports and that information, if they say no, it won't even offer them that question. It's pretty cool. And I'll just keep going. And so for us, we actually created a year end, automated sequence within content snare. So one that means that our team did not have to follow up with our clients. They didn't get us stuff. Content Snare does that stuff for us? And it automates, like being able to nudge them, to remind them to send emails and the way that content snare differentiates between things like keeper or Xanax. Is with innkeeper and Xanax. You can have an automated email that goes out once a week to nudge your clients, but it's very generic. You cannot customize the email to talk about year-end specifically. It's just really generic emails, just reminding your clients of all the things you're missing with content snare. We are asking questions about that specific instance. Of year end stuff. It's not distracting them on anything else. And it has verbiage and language within that email that says, if you do not get this to us, you will not be able to tax file or you will have to get an extension because you will not be ready. Or if you don't get it to us, you're just going to have to go answer the questions with your tax preparer. And so it just made life so much easier. This is now my third year using content snare during year end. I believe it's like Brooks fifth year using content snare, which is so fun. So if you're interested in how I use content snare, How we set it up. The whole structure you want all my automated emails, everything that's included with the request, you can go to workflow, queen.com, backslash content dash snare. And also drop that in the show notes as well, because that will give you my exact year end requests set up plus all the month end onboarding cleanups, AP AR all that fun stuff. So. Just go in and pop over there. If you want it to be so much smoother throughout the year, plus another year end as well. So a couple of things before we end off today, I always like to end the episodes with. A couple of objections that you might be coming up with as I'm talking through this process. Here's a couple of things. I think most of you are thinking right now. I don't have time to fix your end. I'm going directly into tax season. I'm drowning and cleanups. I don't have the right team. I just don't have time. I will tell you guys, if you just want the same thing over and over again, the same chaos. The same overwhelm, the same feeling. It doesn't matter the process. It doesn't matter if it's your end. Doesn't matter if it's 10 90 nines. Doesn't matter if it's month end. It doesn't matter if it's onboarding, you're still going to continue to feel this way. My favorite saying ever is slow down to speed up. If you truly want to launch the business further than what you currently are sitting at right now, you have to be able to slow down. And make small tweaks. So that next time around it will be so much easier. We have to break this cycle. Of the way that we've constantly just survived. We need to change something. Some of the other things that you guys might be saying is I already use templates, but clients still don't respond. There's nothing that we can do to get our clients to do anything. We can only do as much as we can to create more expectations that are communicated upfront and making sure that we have automations that are nudging them without putting that stress on you. And so while we can't always get what we need from our clients at the end of the day, guys, you set the expectations maybe next year in your year end, you have something in your contract that states or something you remind them about that. If by January 31st, you don't get us what we need. We're throwing it into a special account. And then your tax preparer is going to have to ask you this question. I can only care as much as my client cares. I can not take the time to care more about my client's books than they do about their own books and their own financials. That is up to them. And so I know that no matter what we do, or sometimes our clients won't respond, but I will tell you if you set those expectations up front, that you are not here to mess around. People will get it done. I promise because we set some really clear expectations and our clients are amazing and they get us what we need. Some of them just have a hard time answering right away, but we'll eventually get it from them in a reasonable amount of time that they know is within the expectation guidelines that we gave to them as well. I know that this is a lot of information. I highly recommend that you come back to this episode and just write some things out. I really encourage you to follow the steps of like jotting down what went right and what went wrong. And if you guys need support, I really encourage you to come to our power, to break through bootcamp. It's absolutely free. Like I said, it's, for those of you who are at the scaling phase, maybe you want to grow your team. You want to just get out of this feast and famine feeling. You want to have better systems in place. You want to reevaluate your current offers because maybe you're just attracting the wrong clients and you need to start restructuring your pricing for true profit. And to be able to grow the business. Then this is a bootcamp for you. We're going from February 17 to February 21st and he can go to workflow. queen.com backslash bootcamp. And we would be so honored and so thrilled to support you. And if you're listening to this episode a little bit later after we've already ran this bootcamp, don't worry. You can always just join the wait list and we will let you know the next time it opens up. Don't worry, guys. There will be replaced. I get this question all the time and it's all over our sales page. Which is actually free for the power to breakthrough bootcamp. Yes, there will 100% be replays, but they're only available for a short period of time. So I do recommend if you can at least catching up on the replays or joining live while you can. So going back to what we talked about here to really just reinforce everything from year end is step number one, do a year end debrief while everything is still fresh. Step two, create a plan to fix anything that didn't work for you guys. Step three, learn from what happened. And what worked and what didn't work and change those things now and get some ideas of what I shared with you guys, as far as what we changed. And step forward using things like content snare notion, or other softwares or automation tools to help you simplify your next year and process. So without further ado, I'm super excited for the next episode. And I just can't wait for you guys to hear from this lovely guest of ours in our next episode. And let me know if you have any cues about your year end and ways to improve it.