Kenny Harper interviews Brenda Canaan about reducing tax-season chaos by scheduling tax prep and controlling workload instead of accepting documents anytime.

Cannon explains how her firm previously promised 2–3 week turnarounds without knowing capacity, leading to bottlenecks like 105 clients submitting documents on March 15, and how the pandemic highlighted the lack of workload control. Inspired by a podcast, she implemented a scheduling system using Calendly, Make, and Airtable, then co-developed the Schedule E software to better track client scheduling, automate reminders, and support flexible calendars by preparer or client type.

She emphasizes proactive client communication about extensions, using tax projections when needed, improving efficiency, reducing status checks and errors, and using scheduling for capacity planning, client fit, and better work-life balance.

00:00 Why Scheduling Matters

01:12 Meet Brenda Cannon

03:26 From Chaos to Control

05:11 Building Schedule E

06:34 Client Buy In

08:42 Rolling It Out

15:22 Handling Extensions

15:48 Community and Setup

22:28 Capacity and Team

24:51 Lessons and Wrap Up