
SFP 76: How to make busy season more fun and more productive
11/29/22 • 26 min
It's the holidays, that special time of the year when children wish for their dream gift and CPAs pray that the looming busy season won't be another nightmare.
Rabecca Eunis, CPA, knows the feeling. As a new accountant working for her father’s firm, Eunis learned to dread and despise tax season. The mad, miserable dash to Tax Day was so stressful that Eunis launched her own practice vowing that her team wouldn’t suffer the way she did. Fun, she believed, should be a key part of busy season.
Eunis put her new approach into practice, and it paid off for both her and, eventually, her father. How did she make busy season less stressful and more fun? And how did that benefit her father as well as her firm? Eunis explains all in this episode of the Small Firm Philosophy podcast, produced by the AICPA’s Private Companies Practice Section in partnership with the Journal of Accountancy podcast.
Things you will learn in this podcast
- Avoidable practices that make busy season harder than it needs to be
- Ways to preserve as much family and free time as possible for team members
- Tips for injecting fun into the most taxing time of the year
- What bowling in the dark is and how it applied to busy season
- The impacts of these policies on staff productivity and firm growth.
Reference mentioned
It's the holidays, that special time of the year when children wish for their dream gift and CPAs pray that the looming busy season won't be another nightmare.
Rabecca Eunis, CPA, knows the feeling. As a new accountant working for her father’s firm, Eunis learned to dread and despise tax season. The mad, miserable dash to Tax Day was so stressful that Eunis launched her own practice vowing that her team wouldn’t suffer the way she did. Fun, she believed, should be a key part of busy season.
Eunis put her new approach into practice, and it paid off for both her and, eventually, her father. How did she make busy season less stressful and more fun? And how did that benefit her father as well as her firm? Eunis explains all in this episode of the Small Firm Philosophy podcast, produced by the AICPA’s Private Companies Practice Section in partnership with the Journal of Accountancy podcast.
Things you will learn in this podcast
- Avoidable practices that make busy season harder than it needs to be
- Ways to preserve as much family and free time as possible for team members
- Tips for injecting fun into the most taxing time of the year
- What bowling in the dark is and how it applied to busy season
- The impacts of these policies on staff productivity and firm growth.
Reference mentioned
Previous Episode

SFP 75: Two cyberthreats CPA firms should fear this Halloween
Ghosts, goblins and ghouls aren't the only scary things to watch out for this Halloween season. Hackers and criminal organizations are up to their old tricks -- and some new ones -- in their tireless efforts to breach your cyberdefenses and treat themselves to your computer networks and data.
So what kinds of spooky schemes are haunting CPA firms? And what can practitioners do to protect themselves and their clients? The Small Firm Philosophy podcast addressed those questions with Sarah Ference, CPA, a risk control director at CNA, the underwriter of the AICPA's professional liability insurance program.
Ference advises firms of all sizes on how they can manage their professional liability risk. In this episode, she identifies two cyberthreats being seen more often in accounting firm cyber-insurance claims and discusses ways firms can lower their risk of being victimized.
The Small Firm Philosophy podcast is produced by the AICPA's Private Companies Practice Section (PCPS). PCPS members can see an edited transript at https://www.aicpa.org/news/article/q-and-a-2-cyberattacks-cpa-firms-should-fear.
This episode of SFP provides information, rather than advice or opinion. It is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge as of the publish date. This article should not be viewed as a substitute for recommendations of a retained professional. Such consultation is recommended in applying this material in any particular factual situations. Examples are for illustrative purposes only and not intended to establish any standards of care, serve as legal advice, intended to constitute a contract, or acknowledge any given factual situation is covered under any CNA insurance policy. The relevant insurance policy provides actual terms, coverages, amounts, conditions, and exclusions for an insured.
Next Episode

SFP 77: The CPA’s guide to technology (and tech gifts)
The CPA’s guide to technology (and tech gifts)
There are few, if any, people in the accounting space who know more about technology than Inspector Gadget.
No, not the cartoon character with the go-go arms from the 1980s. The man wearing the trench coat in this case is David Cieslak, CPA.CITP, CGMA, executive vice president and chief cloud officer for RKL eSolutions and a popular speaker whose Inspector Gadget keynote session has been a highlight of accounting conferences for many years.
If you want to be clued in to what’s going on with technology, both in accounting and with consumer products, Cieslak is the man to talk to. So that’s what we do in the latest episode of the Small Firm Philosophy podcast, produced in partnership with the Journal of Accountancy podcast
Topics covered in the conversation include:
- The three steps accounting firms can take to make the most of their technology spending.
- Why CPAs should not wait too long to update their laptops and desktops
- What true cloud is and what to look for in cloud-based applications
- What tech products could be great holiday gifts for CPAs to give or receive.
SFP episode referenced
Products mentioned
- CPE through podcasts: Earmark, lumiQ
- Apple IPad Pro
- Apple Watch, Apple Watch Ultra,
- Samsung Galaxy Watch5
- Google Pixel Watch
- Amazon Echo
This episode is brought to you by the AICPA’s Private Companies Practice Section (PCPS), the home of small firms. To learn more about PCPS, email [email protected] and schedule a free webtour.
Note: If your podcast app does not hyperlink to resources, visit https://aicpasmallfirm.libsyn.com to access show notes with direct links.
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