What I Learned During My First Busy Season
By Josh Weinrobe, Associate
Going into my first busy season as a first-year accountant, I had heard mixed things about it. Some had said that it would be the most difficult three months of my life. No sleep, working late nights, eating poorly…I had even heard it described as impossible. However, others had told me that it would be easy, and you wouldn’t even notice the extra hours. After going through busy season, I can say I landed firmly in the middle. I am not going to sugarcoat it and say that it was extremely easy. There were days that were harder than others. But to anyone who has heard the opinions of the former, that it is barely survivable, I am here to tell you that you will be able to make it through, and you’ll learn a lot more than you could ever have expected.
Lean on the Team
You won’t make it through your first busy season solely by putting your head down and grinding it out. While it can be tempting to put in earbuds and work through a long day trying to get ahead of all of the work on your desk, you’ll quickly notice that the quality of your work will decline. A 13-hour day with 12 hours of work, lunch, and a walk will feel easier than 12 hours of work straight with no breaks. At Kernutt Stokes we have staff lunches every Wednesday during busy season provided by the firm. Those days when everyone came together to have lunch often felt like the best day of the week. The Saturdays during busy season when they would bring in donuts and pizza gave us something to look forward to at the end of a long week. On top of the meals provided during these lunches were the connections formed during them. Getting to sit down with my peers who were experiencing the same stress and emotions as I was made it a lot easier to rationalize the workload. In Eugene I had five others in my starting class who were learning the same thing I was while going through their first busy season too. Kernutt Stokes encouraged these relationships and allowed them to play a major role in my first busy season.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions
The connections you form at these lunches while you aren’t working will also prove important in the work you do. Going into busy season there will be a lot you don’t know which is to be expected. At some points it can be uncomfortable being in a situation where you don’t know what to do. But these scenarios prove extremely beneficial during busy season because they are where you learn the most. However, you are only able to learn in these situations if you can ask for help. It can feel daunting at times to ask for help because you may think what you need help with is “beneath” or too small for the person you are asking. You may feel like you should know the answer and feel that asking for help would make you look worse. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The seniors and managers at Kernutt Stokes are more than willing to help with any problem you may have on your projects. They are all aware that there are things you don’t know because they were in the same spot when they started.
Stay Organized During Busy Season
While your busy season experience is heavily influenced by those around you and the help you receive, there are some aspects of busy season that you will have to take into your own hands. With so many projects moving at once, it can be easy to forget what you are working on. You may be working on a tax return in January that you won’t see again until April. Even if you don’t have that large of a break between the work for a certain project, it will be impossible to remember every detail of what you are working on. Organization skills will be one of the biggest factors in determining your busy season’s success. Taking consistent notes on what you do and don’t understand will help provide a baseline for your next project you are working on while also ensuring you are able to receive the help necessary to complete the one you are currently working on. These notes will also allow you to be helpful to other staff when they run into a similar problem that you may know the answer to. Reminding yourself of where you are on all of your projects as often as possible will ensure that you don’t fall behind on them.
Find a System That Works for You
One method I used during busy season was sending weekly update emails to the managers and partners for every tax return I was working on stating where I was in the process and any items we still needed. At the end of every week, I would write down a list of all of my returns, remind myself where I am in all of them, and then send the information to the corresponding partner. These weekly update emails provided multiple benefits to my work: they helped me stay organized, created a record I could reference throughout the week, and they benefitted the partner by letting them know any items we still needed. While I would send emails regarding open items as soon as I had discovered what was needed, the weekly update emails would serve as good reminders for the partners who had even more returns to think about than me, ensuring that none of the items we needed would fall through the cracks.
While I can provide advice based on what I learned during my first busy season, you will gain twice as much from experiencing it yourself. There is no one way to go through every aspect of busy season and the methods I used may not work for everyone. But no matter what approaches you have, whether it’s for your first busy season or not, one thing remains the same: you’ve got this.
If you’re curious about what busy season is really like and want to learn more about starting your career at Kernutt Stokes, visit our Careers page or connect with us at an upcoming campus event. We’d be happy to answer your questions and share our experiences.