At a glance
- The firm: A regional CPA firm (20 staff, 3 partners)
- The problem: Intense tax season compression (January to April), staff accountants working weekends on raw prep, partners doing their own admin, and client documents sitting unsorted
- The team today: 4 specialists across accounting prep, year-round bookkeeping, and administrative support
- The impact: $153,335 in annual overhead savings (about 59%), elimination of the annual seasonal retraining cycle, and a new recurring bookkeeping service line
- The timeline: Phased rollout starting with tax workpaper prep, scaling to client admin and permanent monthly bookkeeping
The situation
In public accounting, partner profitability and retention depend on billable leverage and clean document intake. When senior staff and partners are bogged down categorizing transactions, chasing missing W-2s, or handling administrative scheduling, higher-value advisory work and timely filings take a back seat. During the January-to-April compression, workloads surge, forcing staff into unsustainable weekend hours and burning out core talent.
This 20-person regional firm operated with three partners and a small core of staff accountants. Every tax season brought the same operational friction: client records sat waiting to be sorted, staff spent billable hours on raw workpaper prep, and partners handled their own administrative tasks. Previous attempts to hire seasonal US contractors proved costly, required weeks of repeated onboarding, and reset to zero as soon as the season ended.
How we started
The firm began ahead of busy season by targeting the earliest bottleneck in tax prep: document intake, transaction sorting, and preliminary workpaper assembly. It started with a single Accounting Assistant inside the firm’s tax and trial balance software to build reconciliations and draft workpapers for staff accountant review.
Once that specialist proved the workflow and established clean handoffs, the firm moved quickly to protect the rest of the office. An Administrative Assistant joined to take over engagement letters and missing-document requests from the partners, followed by a second Accounting Assistant to absorb tax peak volume. To eliminate the post-tax lull, the firm added a dedicated Bookkeeper to manage client accounts year-round.
How the team grew
- Month 1: 1 Accounting Assistant (workpaper prep, reconciliations, and initial data categorization)
- Month 2: 2 specialists (added 1 Administrative Assistant for document requests, engagement letters, and scheduling)
- Month 3: 3 specialists (added 1 Accounting Assistant to scale capacity ahead of tax deadlines)
- Month 4: 4 specialists (added 1 Bookkeeper to manage monthly client accounting and smooth out seasonal revenue dips)
The team expanded in deliberate steps, establishing repeatable prep and admin routines before bringing on full-year accounting capacity.
The team
- 2 Accounting Assistants: Prepare workpapers, categorize transactions, and reconcile bank and ledger accounts for staff accountants to review.
- 1 Bookkeeper: Manages monthly client bookkeeping year-round, creating steady recurring revenue between tax seasons.
- 1 Administrative Assistant: Issues document requests, follows up on missing client items, coordinates partner meeting schedules, and prepares engagement letters.
Licensed staff and firm partners still review and sign off on all client work. Specialists work inside the firm's own systems, with access the firm grants, monitors, and controls at all times.
The results
- $153,335 in annual overhead savings: Operating costs for these four administrative and prep roles dropped by approximately 59% compared to domestic hiring benchmarks.
- Shift from preparation to review: Staff accountants spend busy season reviewing assembled workpapers instead of manually sorting data, eliminating mandatory weekend shifts.
- Partner time reclaimed: Partners offload routine admin and document chasing, returning billable hours to advisory work and high-value client relationships.
- Zero annual retraining: Retaining permanent, year-round remote specialists stops the costly cycle of recruiting, onboarding, and losing temporary staff every January.
- A new service line: Dedicated year-round bookkeeping capacity transforms what was once an unbilled administrative burden into a profitable, recurring monthly service.
The numbers
- US cost for the same four seats: $259,415 a year
- employmagic cost: $106,080 a year
- Estimated savings: $153,335 a year, about 59%
By role:
- Accounting Assistant (2 seats): $131,742 in the US ($65,871/seat) against $54,080 with employmagic ($27,040/seat), saving $77,662
- Bookkeeper (1 seat): $65,871 in the US against $27,040 with employmagic, saving $38,831
- Administrative Assistant (1 seat): $61,802 in the US against $24,960 with employmagic, saving $36,842
US costs use the US Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 median annual wage for the closest occupation (bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks; secretaries and administrative assistants), plus 30% for benefits, payroll taxes, and recruiting. For comparison, BLS puts the full cost of employee compensation at about 1.43 times wages for private industry overall (June 2026), so 30% is on the cautious side. employmagic costs use our starting rates for one full-time specialist at 40 hours a week, the same 2,080 hours a year the US salary covers. Faster hiring and lower turnover would add to the savings, but they are left out to keep the figures conservative. Your pricing depends on the roles and hours you need.
What made it work
- Separating prep from review: Isolating transaction entry and workpaper drafting from review allows licensed CPAs to focus exclusively on higher-tier technical analysis.
- Retaining institutional memory: Keeping specialists on year-round preserves operational knowledge and eliminates the annual January onboarding tax.
- Starting small: Testing the model with a single workpaper specialist allowed the firm to confirm security controls and software integration before expanding.
- Dedicated document intake: Putting one specialist in charge of chasing missing items prevents client files from stalling in pre-prep queues.
Is this a fit for you?
This model works best for regional CPA and accounting firms where partners and staff accountants lose billable hours to document collection, transaction categorization, and basic workpapers. If your firm faces mandatory overtime or spends weeks training seasonal temps every winter, start with one specialist on your workpaper backlog, prove the handoff, and scale into year-round admin and bookkeeping.