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PRUNING


We have a large yard with a variety of plants. One of my favorite plants in the garden
is the grape vine. A grape vine is a very fast growing and beautiful plant. They love to grow wrapped around anything near them, and they will reach out to climb nearby trees, fences or anything stationary. If left unattended the vine will aggressively grow covering everything surrounding the vine, but vine will produce very little fruit. What the vine needs is to be aggressively pruned, removing almost all of the canes from the main vine, forcing the plant to produce the beautiful grapes we all desire. You can almost never over-prune the vines.

Our accounting practices are very similar to the grape vine. If you do not prune the practice it will take over every free moment you have, sucking the fun out of the accounting practice. As you are reviewing your client list to send out tax organizers, it is a good time to begin pruning the non-productive clients. This will give the clients plenty of time to find another accountant. The question is how many clients and who do I cut? The number of clients you prune is up to you. Who should be cut can be a subjective calculation. The following is a list I use:• Clients no one in the office likes to call. I do not want clients that I do not enjoy being around.

• Clients who are not reporting all their income. They are untrustworthy and become problems.

• Clients that are not following my advice. There are many penalties applied to tax preparers for inaccurate tax returns. I cannot afford to continue to service clients who are not listening.

• Clients that are slow paying, not timely providing information to me, not providing accurate information and not taking responsibility for their situation, are gone. Even if they owe me money, I’m just burning time and not getting paid for it.

• Clients that I am not making money on. Either I need to increase their fee, delegate the client to someone else in the office or they need to become someone else’s problem.

The downside to pruning the above clients from your practice is you will have fewer clients and work fewer hours. Recapture some of these hours by investing the hours in your top clients. I have always found that my top clients have more work for me to do. Perhaps you can invest the freed up hours in the community working on something larger then yourself. Who knows, you may find additional clients that you enjoy. Invest the extra hours in WAA and develop your leadership skills. Invest these extra hours learning a skill in your profession; this will increase your value to your clients. 

One caution to pruning is not prune out of spite or anger. I had a client who was a little slow in paying, and who became very demanding. I was ready to fire the client and free up my time. Prior to doing this I went over my past year’s billings and money I received from the client. I determined that this was my second largest client, and he provided me very interesting work. I sent a party basket to the client instead. This client became a good friend and we still keep in touch long after his business closed. I am so glad I took a second look.

Good luck on your pruning this season.

Bob McKinley, CPA
Robert P McKinley, CPA, PC
[email protected]