Issue #40 - The Most Valuable Thing You’ll Earn This Month Isn’t Money
It’s clarity, and maybe 12 CPE credits while you’re at it. Plus how to unplug from your phone and prepare for the next generation of accounting pros.
Welcome to "Get Work Done," where we discuss the complexities of efficiently running accounting and bookkeeping firms. Brought to you by Financial Cents and delivered to your inbox every 2 weeks.
Small Change, Big Results
Clear the Chaos, Find Your Calm.
There’s a strange thing that happens when you’re swimming in the ocean.
If a wave hits you and you panic, thrash harder, fight the pull, you sink faster. But if you pause, take a breath, and let yourself float for a second, the ocean actually brings you back up. The calm of the water saves you.
That’s what running a firm often feels like.
You start out swimming with purpose, steady strokes, and clear direction. Then the current changes. Client demands rise like tides. Your team feels stretched. You start working longer hours just to stay above water. You add tools, hire help, patch holes, but somehow it only makes the water choppier.
The lesson is that you can’t outswim chaos. You have to find calm inside it.
That’s the heartbeat of WorkflowCon 2025: a space for accounting firm leaders, operators, and their teams to stop paddling for a day and actually float. To look at the current beneath your work — systems, processes, people — and learn how to build a firm that moves smoothly, not frantically.
Over two days, you’ll learn from experts who’ve been through the storms how to scale without losing your sanity, how to simplify client management, and how to use AI to take back your time.
Here’s the best part: the sessions will help you get your firm back in shape while also moving your career forward. You can earn up to 12 CPE credits while learning how to clear the chaos in your processes, reclaim your time, and find calm in how you work.
It’s a rare kind of maintenance, the kind that doesn’t just get you back on the road, but makes the next stretch smoother, quieter, and faster.
Community 🫶
The 6-Figure Bookkeeper’s Club by Joe Wood and Zoe Whitman
This is a supportive, women-led community that focuses on helping bookkeepers build businesses that fit around their lives. With practical resources, coaching, and a focus on confidence and profitability, it’s designed to empower bookkeepers to charge what they’re worth and succeed on their terms.
The Accountant's Lounge
The Accountant’s Lounge is a community where accountants, bookkeepers, CFOs, and tax professionals have the opportunity to learn, network and scale our businesses together.
Within the group, they talk about ALL the things. From accounting software to taxes, budgeting and goal setting, money mindset, setting prices, outsourcing, workflows, and everything in between.
H🔥t today
The accounting graduate pipeline: Where do things stand?
If you’ve been worried about the accounting talent shortage (and who hasn’t?), the latest update from Journal of Accountancy actually brings a little relief. For the first time in a while, we’re seeing some positive movement in the accounting graduate pipeline.
Yes, the total number of accounting degrees awarded fell again, about 6.6% last year. But here’s the part that caught my attention: enrollment is up more than 12%, the highest since 2020. That means more students are at least starting accounting programs, even if fewer are graduating right now. To me, that’s a hopeful sign that the interest is coming back, and maybe, just maybe, our collective outreach is paying off.
However, fewer master’s grads and a big drop in CPA exam candidates (partly because of the exam overhaul) remains a challenge. Still, roughly three-quarters of firms plan to hire as many or more grads this year, which shows that demand clearly isn’t slowing down.
For firm owners, this is the time to double down on your people strategy. That means making your firm stand out to young talent, through culture, flexibility, growth paths, and technology. The next generation is coming; we just have to meet them where they are and make accounting careers worth choosing.
Tax Pros Anxiously Await Guidance on New Overtime Deduction
Tax pros are buzzing about a new provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a temporary above-the-line deduction for overtime pay. Right now, qualifying employees can deduct the premium portion of their overtime (that “half” in “time-and-a-half”) from gross income. The cap sits around $12,500 for single filers and $25,000 for joint returns, with phase-outs for higher incomes.
So, why does this matter for firm owners? Two reasons: clients and compliance.
For clients with hourly or overtime-eligible staff, this is a tax-planning opportunity worth preparing for now. On the compliance side, firms (and their clients) will need to ensure payroll systems can separate regular pay from overtime premiums and track qualified hours accurately.
The IRS hasn’t finalized guidance yet, and several questions remain like whether state-level overtime rules or employer-paid bonuses will qualify.
Swipe this workflow template
Swipe this Client Weekly Accounting Checklist Template by Tonya Schulte
Get more templates from firm owners like you in our community template library.
Meme
Well, well, what do we have here?
Events
📍Digital CPA 2025 - Dec.7 - 11 (Washington D.C)
Digital CPA (DCPA) is an annual accounting conference that has been held for over a decade. CPA.com, formed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), organizes the event, which is for accountants interested in creating a better future for the profession.
The conference will offer you a chance to get professional insights from industry leaders that will shape your thinking. You should also attend if you are into client advisory services or want to offer this service.
📍 Ensuring Success 2025 - Dec. 10 - 11 (Virtual)
Ensuring Success is an annual virtual accounting/tax conference organized by the CPA Practice Advisor at the end of the year.
It is designed to help professionals in the accounting and tax industry learn and earn CPE credits before the end of the year. The free event, which is live-streamed for two days, features an impressive lineup of accounting and tax industry leaders and experts sharing insights on topics like practice management, taxes, accounting technology, and more.
Firm Spotl💡ght
400+ Projects, 8 People, One Team: Inside Payroll Restoration’s Workflow Machine
When other accounting firms hit a wall with payroll issues, they call Shannon Ballman Theis.
Known as “the accountant’s accountant,” Shannon has built a reputation for solving the kinds of payroll problems most people avoid, the messy, confusing, IRS-letter-triggering kind.
From her home base in Minnesota, Shannon founded Payroll Restoration with a passion for untangling the payroll puzzles no one else could (or wanted to). Her team steps in when businesses receive IRS or state notices and don’t know where to turn. “We help address the payroll issues they’re having,” Shannon explains. “We also do ERC reviews to help businesses that may have gotten the wrong amount of ERC.”
Fast forward 14 years, and the solo shop has evolved into a powerhouse team of eight accountants, all focused on one thing: helping businesses regain payroll compliance.
But with 400+ active projects and a small team, staying organized became mission-critical. That’s where finding the right practice management system made all the difference. Instead of wasting time figuring out what to do next, Shannon’s team now logs in each day knowing exactly what to work on and gets straight to helping clients.
Here’s how Payroll Restoration keeps its lean team running like clockwork ⬇️
Put Your Phone Away
This CNBC article has made one thing clear: if anxiety levels are high, your phone might be part of the problem.
Constant pings, endless scrolling, and the need to constantly check in keep the brain on alert, making it nearly impossible to unwind truly. Jonathan Haidt, author and professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, says that even brief breaks from screens can reset the nervous system and help restore focus.
Putting your phone down doesn’t mean disconnecting completely, but about creating moments of calm in a world that never stops buzzing. A few minutes of quiet might just be the simplest stress fix out there.
What Are Your Thoughts?
Share your POV in the comments.
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Until Next Time,
