Find out if next tax season is even possible.
Nobody ever taught us how to work out what a firm can actually carry, so most owners have never run this number. Give it ninety seconds and it gives you yours, with the extension deadlines counted, so you can see where the work really lands.
Your book
Example firm loaded. Replace the numbers with yours.
Other means 1041s, 990s, anything else with an April deadline.
Include review, chasing documents, and the back-and-forth. Most people guess low.
Last season's number, not a plan. It tells us how much of the book was actually due by April 15, which is what set the hours the crunch asked of you. Extended 1040s and 1120s are due 10/15. Extended 1065s and 1120-S are due 9/15.
Beyond the tax return Optional. Bookkeeping, payroll, and one-time projects.
Bookkeeping, payroll, and one-time project work draw on the same hours as tax prep. Leave everything at zero if this doesn't apply to your firm. Only the hours that fall inside the window above are counted; whether year-round bookkeeping fits the whole year is a separate question from whether tax season fits.
Other recurring means sales tax filings, management reports, anything billed monthly.
Billed and staffed by the month, so we multiply by twelve behind the scenes to fold it into the same hours pool as everything else.
Cleanup means catch-up bookkeeping projects. Other means anything else one-off: entity setup, elections, ad hoc consulting.
The season you want
We model the year the way most firms live it. Nobody said it has to be shaped that way. Switch it off and we'll tell you how many returns have to move past April 15 to make a flat year true.
Only people who actually prepare returns.
Not what you worked last year. What you want. Each preparer gets these hours, so the firm's capacity is this number times the preparers above.
Extension season still has to fit somewhere.
Kids' events, a long weekend, being sick.
Ten is the most a human can do here before it becomes a different conversation, about burnout, not scheduling.
Net of weekends, vacation, conferences, and admin days already taken out. That window ends two days before the last filing deadline, because nobody is preparing a return on October 15, and it holds about 183 weekdays. Some firms cram prep into a ten-week crunch inside it, others spread it across nearly all of it. The days you dial in here are the days you actually intend to sit down and prepare returns, not the calendar span.
Tax prep, bookkeeping/payroll, and one-time projects, combined.
last season asked
you wanted
available
capacity
The Review recalculates this after fixing production time, then runs your pricing and clients against it.
Every deadline, in order
| Due | What must be done by then | Load | Share of capacity used |
|---|
The ceiling assumes about 183 available weekdays per preparer between February 1 and October 13, two days before the last filing deadline, worked at a sustainable ten hours a day. If the book needs more hours than that even on paper, no amount of rescheduling fixes it. Only releasing or repricing work does. Everything here is deliberately an estimate, not a measurement. Rough hours per return type still tell you whether the gap is a five-return trim or a fifty-return problem, and that is the number that matters for the conversation. Fees are a separate step, once the return count itself is right-sized.
Download the PDF now, or have it emailed to you. Opt-in only: your email and the numbers on this page are the only things sent, and only when you press the button. A copy goes to us so we can follow up if you want us to.
This is Lever two of the three levers The Review runs across your whole firm. The review finds what your work should take first, so the capacity number it gives you is built on the firm you could have, not the one you've got. Then it runs your pricing and client list against that number, and hands you a written report you approve or veto.
Book a session to go through your resultsNothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere unless you ask us to email you your results. It is arithmetic in your browser and it disappears when you close the tab. Deadlines assume calendar-year filers: 1065 and 1120-S due March 15 (extended September 15); 1040, 1120 and others due April 15 (extended October 15).