It's the holidays, that special time of the year when children wish for their dream gift and CPAs pray that the looming busy season won't be another nightmare.

Rabecca Eunis, CPA, knows the feeling. As a new accountant working for her father's firm, Eunis learned to dread and despise tax season. The mad, miserable dash to Tax Day was so stressful that Eunis launched her own practice vowing that her team wouldn't suffer the way she did. Fun, she believed, should be a key part of busy season.

Eunis put her new approach into practice, and it paid off for both her and, eventually, her father. How did she make busy season less stressful and more fun? And how did that benefit her father as well as her firm? Eunis explains all in this episode of the Small Firm Philosophy podcast, produced by the AICPA's Private Companies Practice Section in partnership with the Journal of Accountancy podcast.

Things you will learn in this podcast

• Avoidable practices that make busy season harder than it needs to be
• Ways to preserve as much family and free time as possible for team members
• Tips for injecting fun into the most taxing time of the year
• What bowling in the dark is and how it applied to busy season
• The impacts of these policies on staff productivity and firm growth.

Reference mentioned

• PCPS busy season fun calendar