Tax season and simple in the same sentence?? I know; it sounds crazy. Five years ago, I would’ve laughed (and cried) at the thought. But here’s the truth: tax season can be simpler. How? Because we know it’s coming, and we have the tools to make it more manageable. By extending tax season with proactive processes and leveraging tools like QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) and ProConnect Tax Online (PTO), we can isolate our busiest season to just filing season. In this blog, I’ll share how to integrate a seamless books-to-tax workflow, create cleaner books, and optimize your processes to not just survive but thrive this tax season.
Leveraging QuickBooks Online for Accuracy and Productivity
We’ve gone all-in on QuickBooks Online (QBO) for bookkeeping. Our ideal clients either already use QBO or are open to using it. By focusing on one platform, we’ve become really well-versed in it, maximizing our proficiency and productivity.
From the very start of a bookkeeping engagement, we format our clients’ chart of accounts with tax preparation in mind. This simple decision reduces the need for heavy reorganization of data when populating a tax return, either via mapping QBO accounts into ProConnect Tax Online during the books-to-tax process, or entering it into a different platform. Even if we’re not handling the client’s tax prep, the thought process helps tax professionals input data quickly without sacrificing subaccount details that clients love.
QBO also gives us access to time-saving tools that help us focus on what matters most – delivering clean, accurate, reliable financials:
Bank feeds and bank rules – saves us literal hours of data entry each month. Our firm’s golden rule: If you see a transaction more than once, it’s probably time to create a rule.
Receipt forwarding and statement imports – Not having to look elsewhere for receipts submitted by the client, or pull the statement ourselves from the bank’s website saves us a few clicks. And now with QBO auto-populating some statement balances and statement ending dates for certain banks, it’s even quicker to reconcile.
Automated report scheduling – this is another time-saving gem. Some clients want to see specific reports regularly, like detailed transaction reports or AR aging. Automating the delivery of these reports allows us to set it and forget it. As long as the books are current, QBO handles the delivery seamlessly.
Clean Books = Cleaner Tax Season
A few years ago, we made a tough decision: we only prepare tax returns for businesses where we manage the monthly bookkeeping. It wasn’t easy, but it transformed filing season for us and our clients. No more last-minute messes.
By keeping up with monthly bookkeeping, we can:
Proactively review financials and provide timely advice and tax estimates.
Maximize deductions by accurately tracking income and expenses year-round.
Flag nondeductible expenses, like entertainment or lavish gifts, before year-end.
Regularly track vendor expenses to flag missing W-9s to simplify the 1099 prep.
Build an advisory revenue stream, helping clients make stronger decisions.
Start tax returns sooner because we’re not waiting on ‘tax-ready’ data.
For our sole proprietors and single-member LLC clients, we even added a monthly process for tracking home office expenses and mileage. By capturing these details in real-time, we eliminate the last-minute tax scramble that used to stress clients out.
Using Insights to Strategize for Financial Success
Clean books aren’t just about compliance—they’re the foundation for proactive strategy. Accurate, up-to-date data equips us to help clients improve cash flow, streamline operations, and plan for taxes and retirement with confidence. For clients, it removes uncertainty and provides financial peace of mind.
Collaborating with Tax Counterparts for Seamless Compliance
While we handle tax prep for many of our clients, there are some who have great relationships tax professionals they trust—and that’s fine by us. We’ve built a process that makes collaboration seamless:
We provide a Year-End Tax Reporting Package (a neatly bundled set of all necessary documents) in every bookkeeping tier.
We offer an annual call with tax professionals to answer questions and clarify details.
The key to working well with tax counterparts is understanding how tax impacts the books. You don’t have to be a tax expert, but small changes make a big difference. For example, splitting gifts into deductible vs. non-deductible portions and separating meals from entertainment saves tax pros significant time and reduces questions at year-end.
The Power of the Prep (for Taxes) Feature
Even if you’re not using ProConnect Tax Online, the Prep for Taxes feature is a game-changer for your workflow. It standardizes workpapers across clients, eliminating the filing season chaos of ill-formatted spreadsheets and Word docs, or (my personal least-favorite) handwritten income statements. If you are using ProConnect Tax Online for tax prep, the magic gets better. Account mapping functionality allows QBO data to be imported directly into the tax return. That 15–20 minutes you’d usually spend manually entering data? Reclaimed. And once mappings are set up, they’re saved year after year, ensuring consistency and freeing up even more time for years to come. That’s time we can use for value-added activities like more detailed tax return reviews, advisory services, or simply getting home just a bit earlier to recharge.
Simple, Strategic, and Ready for 2025
Tax season doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Will it be busy? Yes. Will it demand more of us than the other months? Without a doubt. Would I choose tax season over a 3-month long vacation? Not a chance. But leveraging tools like QuickBooks Online Accountant and implementing a proactive books-to-tax workflow, it can be simpler and less stressful.
At the end of the day, a clean, well-maintained set of books isn’t just about tax compliance—it’s about empowering clients with clarity, confidence, and the insights they need to make stronger financial decisions all year long. And for us, it’s about creating a process that promotes proactivity, strengthens client communication, and ensures tax season feels less like a chaotic sprint we never trained for and more like a race we’ve finished before and will absolutely finish again.
Disclaimer: This is a paid partnership with Intuit.