I used to think dedication meant being available at all hours. Send the email at 11 PM. Follow up again on Saturday. Chase down documents during lunch. That's what committed professionals do, right?
Wrong. All that late-night email checking taught me one thing: I was working around a broken system instead of fixing it.
During my years as a partner, I had this recurring conversation with my team. They'd come to me frustrated: "This client still hasn't sent us what we need. We've asked three times. We're two weeks behind schedule."
My response was always the same: "Follow up again. Call them. We need to get this done."
But here's what I couldn't admit at the time: We had no right to be frustrated.
We hadn't told the client what we needed in our engagement letter—not specifically. We hadn't reviewed expectations before busy season started. The real problem? We'd set everyone up to fail from the beginning.
Here's what made this so hard to see: everyone was pointing at the same problem, just from different angles.
My team would say: "The client isn't getting us what we need on time."
The client would say: "We're doing our best, but we have our regular jobs to do. This engagement feels like a second full-time job."
Both were right. Both were frustrated. And neither could fix it because the real issue wasn't about effort or availability—it was about a process that never existed in the first place.
I remember one engagement that made this painfully clear. Long-term client, solid relationship. I sent what I thought was a straightforward request for their quarterly financials.
What came back was incomplete. Missing schedules. Wrong date ranges. Some documents in PDF, others in Excel, none matching the format we needed.
So I sent another request. More specific this time. Still incomplete.
I remember sitting at my desk late one evening, drafting yet another follow-up email, when it hit me: I had no business being annoyed with this client.
I'd never told them what "quarterly financials" actually meant to us. I hadn't explained which reports, what date ranges, or what format. I hadn't shown them an example of what "complete" looked like. And I definitely hadn't set any consequences for delays—because I'd never set clear deadlines in the first place.
I was asking them to read my mind, then getting frustrated when they couldn't.
That engagement ran three weeks past deadline. My team worked multiple Saturdays in a row. I personally spent hours just tracking down documents we'd already requested.
When you're constantly scrambling to fix preventable problems, you can't plan your work. You can't have a sustainable rhythm. You're always in crisis mode, always reacting, always behind.
I started hearing frustration from my team: the inability to plan their evenings, the constant uncertainty about when they could actually leave the office, the feeling that no matter how hard they worked, they were always playing catch-up.
The chaos wasn't coming from the work itself—it was coming from our lack of discipline upfront.
When you don't set clear expectations, you can't hold anyone accountable. When you can't hold anyone accountable, you can't create boundaries. And when you can't create boundaries, your team never gets to rest.
I didn't try to overhaul our entire process. I picked one upcoming engagement and made myself answer specific questions before we started:
What information do we actually need?
Not "everything eventually." I listed specific documents, specific formats, specific timing. I created a checklist with examples of what each item should look like.
How can I explain this so the client understands why we need it?
For each request, I wrote two sentences about what we'd do with the information. Context made a massive difference.
What happens if something comes in late or incomplete?
I put this in writing before the engagement started:
Where will all our communication happen?
I had been using email, phone calls, our portal, and text messages with a single client. I consolidated everything into one place where both teams could see what was outstanding. Firms report significant time savings—often 40% or more—when they consolidate client communication. Tools like Suralink's Request List Management create this kind of centralized collaboration, giving both firms and clients visibility into what's needed.
How can we spread this work throughout the year?
Instead of requesting everything at once during busy season, I identified what we could collect quarterly or even monthly. This gave the client breathing room and gave us time to catch issues early instead of discovering problems when we were already behind.
That next engagement was the smoothest busy season experience I'd had in years.
The client knew exactly what we needed because we'd told them specifically. They understood deadlines because we'd put them in writing and reviewed them together. When something came back incomplete, we had a clear process for addressing it—no panicked follow-ups, no confusion.
My team could plan their work because they weren't constantly waiting on information. They left the office at reasonable hours most nights. When someone needed time off, we could actually accommodate it.
The work still got done—actually, it got done faster. But the chaos was gone.
A lot of firms wait until they're in the middle of busy season to realize their process is broken. By then, all you can do is survive it and promise yourself you'll fix it next year.
But next year comes, and you're too exhausted from surviving last season to make changes. The cycle repeats.
Break that cycle now. Before your next busy season hits, pick one upcoming engagement—not all of them, just one. Before you send that engagement letter, answer these questions:
These changes sound small because they are. But small changes in how you set up an engagement create massive changes in how that engagement actually runs. Tools like Suralink's Workpaper Suite can help you implement these changes systematically, keeping request management and workpaper preparation connected in one platform.
Your team shouldn't have to work every Saturday because you didn't tell a client what you needed. The chaos isn't inevitable. You've just been tolerating it for so long that it feels normal.
It doesn't have to be.
Amy Vetter, CPA, CGMA, is CEO of The B³ Method Institute and author of Disconnect to Connect. She works with accounting firms to create cultures where sustainable success and team well-being drive measurable business results. Learn more at amyvetter.com , businessbalancebliss.com or connect with her on LinkedIn at amyvettercpa.