Issue #53 - How to Ignore Your Email for 2 Weeks
A proven playbook for stress-free time off (even if you’re a firm owner)
Welcome to “Get Work Done,” where we discuss the complexities of efficiently running accounting and bookkeeping firms. This newsletter is brought to you by Financial Cents and delivered to your inbox every 2 weeks.
Small Change, Big Results
If tax season already feels like a distant memory, congrats: you’ve officially made it to systems-building season. This is the stretch where firm owners either create the infrastructure that will carry them through the next crunch, or don’t (and suffer the consequences come April).
Case in point: Alisa McCabe, CEO of First Steps Financial, recently went two weeks without reading a single email. Not “checked her inbox twice a day just in case,” but a real-deal, honest-to-goodness break from the daily grind of reading and responding to messages. She forced herself to remain present during her time off, stayed blissfully unaware of the “urgent” fires that would’ve bubbled up to her in the past, and came home to find that her firm hadn’t just survived—it had actually gotten better.
That was the premise behind “Buddy System: Out of Office Ready,” the third session in our Summer Workflow Camp series, where Alisa walked campers through exactly how she built her airtight out-of-office system. TBH, it has nothing to do with setting the right vacation-mode Slack status, distributing a detailed pre-vacation memo, or drafting the perfect email autoresponder. Instead, it hinges on:
Choosing the right second-in-command using the GWC test.
Building a decision matrix so your team can make calls the way you would, without needing to ask you.
Sorting decisions into three tiers, so everyone knows what to step in and handle immediately, what to loop you in on, and what to treat as a true emergency.
Following Alisa’s three non-negotiable OOO rules: don’t read email, don’t call to check in, and have faith in your team.
Camp wrapped last week, but the resources from Alisa’s session are still up for grabs. Check out the session recap below, and be sure to download all the free templates and handouts (including Alisa’s full Out-of-Office Checklist, Decision Matrix, client notification templates, and a “fire drill” plan for testing the whole system).
👉 Read the full “Buddy System” recap →
👉 Download the Out-of-Office resources →
Community 🫶
Gain career confidence in the Black Female Accountants Network
BFAN exists to help its members share knowledge and experience, celebrate professional wins, and use real tools and resources to keep growing their careers. Follow along on Instagram for the day-to-day, and if you’re looking for a reason to get out from behind the screen, mark your calendar for their Women in Leadership Summit (WILS) on October 24, 2026: a day built around leading with more confidence in your career, business, and community. Registration is open now.
Go beyond the typical water cooler group with Realize
Jason Staats built Realize as the alternative to yet another free “water cooler” community underwritten by a software vendor with an agenda. It’s a paid, high-effort space instead: real mastermind groups, actual paid community managers, advisors in residence, and a running calendar of live events featuring AMAs, book clubs, monthly workshops, and quarterly meetups for tools like Karbon, Keeper, Canopy, TaxDome, and yes, Financial Cents. Realize has already helped 500+ accounting leaders build more confident, sustainable firms, and it might be worth a look if you’ve outgrown Facebook-group energy.
H🔥t Today
Last chance to take the AI survey and score $500 (we really mean it this time)
We’re extending our AI-in-accounting survey through the end of this week (August 7) to give all those last-minute stragglers one last chance to share their unfiltered thoughts. Where’s AI actually saving you time? Where’s it falling flat? Where do you think this is all headed? Your answers will be distilled into a public data report that’ll inform the next issue of Two Cents Magazine, and if you complete it before the extended deadline, you’ll be entered to win a $500 gift card.
The Fed held rates steady (again), but this time the decision wasn’t unanimous
On July 29, the Federal Reserve voted 9–3 to keep its benchmark rate at 3.5%–3.75%, marking the fifth straight meeting without a change. What’s new this time: three regional presidents dissented, pushing for a hike instead, and mortgage rates have already crept toward a one-year high amid geopolitical tension in the Middle East. The “so what” for your clients: borrowing costs aren’t moving anytime soon, and the dissent signals real disagreement inside the Fed about where things should go next. If you haven’t talked cash flow and financing plans with clients recently, this is a good nudge to bring it up.
The IRS just made penalty relief a lot less painful
Starting this summer, eligible taxpayers will get failure-to-file, failure-to-pay, and failure-to-deposit penalties abated automatically. That means no more manually requesting first-time abatement and hoping whoever picks up the phone knows the Internal Revenue Manual as well as you do. The new “Automatic Exemption from Penalty” program covers tax year 2025 and 2026 returns for taxpayers with a clean three-year compliance history. The Taxpayer Advocate estimates it’ll help roughly 1.5 million taxpayers a year, versus the 220,000ish who got relief under the old manual process. The good news for you? Fewer FTA calls to make on your clients’ behalf. Just know some clients may still get an errant penalty notice during the transition.
Swipe this workflow template
Swipe this Biweekly Payroll template from Priti Lad
Get more templates from firm owners like you in our community template library.
Meme
Relatable? 😆
Firm Spotl💡ght
How Angela Jenkins turned her “chaos to calm” mantra into a successful bookkeeping practice
Angela Jenkins has been turning chaos into order since she was a little girl rolling her dad’s spare change into paper wrappers at her family’s kitchen table in Philadelphia. Nine years ago, she turned her penchant for financial organization into Mindfull Money Matters (yes, the two L’s are intentional), a boutique bookkeeping firm serving almost entirely women and entrepreneurs of color, communities she believes have been historically shut out of financial literacy.
Jenkins built her client list slowly and selectively, mostly through word of mouth, and she isn’t shy about turning away anyone who doesn’t feel like the right fit. The result: a roster of about 15 clients she reviews constantly, a team she trusts completely, and a distinct guiding philosophy: “I’m just telling you what the numbers say; there’s no judgment here.”
After a health scare last year forced her to slow down for a few months, Jenkins came out the other side more committed than ever to building the “audacious” version of her firm: one that layers cash flow projections, hiring timelines, and long-range planning on top of the books.
Check out Angela’s full story in Two Cents Magazine →
Events
📍 Firm Talent Summit — August 12 (Virtual)
Presented by Accounting Today, this half-day virtual summit tackles the workforce reckoning head-on: shrinking graduate pipelines, mid-career departures, and the scramble to find talent through non-traditional channels. Sessions cover expanding your hiring pool, building legitimate upskilling paths for your team, and using outsourcing strategically instead of as a last resort. It’s free, and several sessions are CPE-eligible.
📍 IRS Nationwide Tax Forum — September 1–3 (Orlando, FL)
Three days, 40+ seminars, and actual face time with IRS subject-matter experts through the Case Resolution Program (appointment required). Sessions cover the latest federal tax law updates and IRS procedures, and you can earn up to 18 CE credits along the way. Show up Monday for the pre-forum sessions on practice management and work-life balance, courtesy of NAEA, NATP, NSA, and other partner associations. Standard registration ($329) runs through August 18, after which it jumps to $409—so don’t sit on this one too long.
👉 Learn more →
Noteworthy
Your files can finally name themselves
Financial Cents is all about making AI easy and practical, which is why they just launched the new AI File Renaming feature. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: the moment a client uploads a document, the AI reads it, figures out what it is, and renames it according to your firm’s naming convention. You choose whether renaming happens automatically or needs your sign-off first, and any low-confidence rename gets flagged immediately so nothing weird slips through unnoticed. It’s a small thing that kills an outsized number of “wait, which file is this again?” moments, and that can add up to a whole lot of saved time (especially during a busy stretch). It’s included for all Financial Cents users, regardless of package. Peep the quick video walkthrough below if you want to see this feature in action before trying it out. 👀
That’s all for now. See you in two weeks. 💚