Plan staffing and deadlines for a CPA firm's busy season
A tax-season capacity plan that maps returns and engagements against filing deadlines, staff hours, and extension decisions.
The prompt
Help me plan staffing for my accounting firm's busy season so we hit deadlines without burning out the team.
Season dates: [e.g. "January 15 to April 15, plus September and October extension season"]
Work volume by type: [e.g. "220 individual 1040s, 60 S-corp and partnership returns, 15 C-corp returns, 8 audits with March deadlines"]
Typical hours per item by complexity: [prep hours and review hours - e.g. "simple 1040: 2 prep / 0.5 review"]
Team: [name or level, available hours per week, skills, planned time off]
Review bottleneck: [who can sign off on what]
Filing deadlines that apply: [e.g. "March 15 for partnerships and S-corps, April 15 for individuals and C-corps" - confirm current dates]
Client document arrival pattern: [e.g. "60% of documents arrive in the last 3 weeks"]
Build:
1. A week-by-week capacity table: hours needed vs. hours available, split into prep and review, with the gap shown.
2. Review capacity as its own constraint - flag the weeks where partner or manager review is the bottleneck.
3. A cut-off date for client documents, after which a return goes on extension by default.
4. An extension triage rule: which clients get extended early (K-1 dependent, missing documents, complex) and which must file by the original date.
5. Options to close any gap: seasonal staff, outsourced prep, shifting work to pre-season, or capping new clients.
6. A weekly status view the team can update: received, in prep, in review, waiting on client, filed, extended.
Use my numbers only; mark assumptions as [ASSUMPTION]. Remind me to confirm filing deadlines for the current year and any disaster-relief postponements.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Projects & Operations prompts
What to fill in
- who can sign off on what
- e.g. "60% of documents arrive in the last 3 weeks"
- ASSUMPTION
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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