Buermann & Drake, Ltd.
Buermann and Drake, Ltd.,
721 5th Ave.
New York, New York 10022
Hello All,
As we are heading into yet another tax season there are a few topics the partners here at B&D would like to touch on before our all staff meeting next week.
The intention is that in bringing forward these new policies and goals now, it will allow time for questions or ideas to ruminate! Bring any and all concerns to the meeting for discussion.
It’s been a long year transitioning roles from Jasmine to our new Fearless Leader, Craig. New leadership— new vision!!!
For years here at Buermann & Drake we’ve preached on the importance of striving for perfection. Error free and timely returns were our goal. “Taking the time to get things right.”
What an unrealistic standard for our staff to strive for and our clients to expect.
Switching gears this season, we are implementing the firm-wide slogan of “As good as we could!” Let’s face it! We don’t know everything, and no amount of CPE will teach us everything! Just imagine how many numbers there are - we couldn’t possibly know them all.
In that same vein, we have decided that our clientele load is on the lighter side. Due to the fact that we won’t be spending grueling hours poring over each return we will be freeing up hundreds of billable hours for new clients! Expect to have an influx of meetings on your calendar for Meet N’ Greets.
A hot topic this time of year is contract hours. Normally we require your contracted overtime to be fulfilled before allowing hours to be banked. This year, we have decided to do away with banking hours all together - let’s really pour ourselves into the office this tax season. There will be a following email from HR explaining this new policy.
You might have noticed the construction happening in the back of the office the past few weeks. We have been waiting with anticipation to announce napping stations are being installed! During discussions about our new tax season hours policy being rolled out, a big question all the partners were asking was “when will everyone get time to sleep?” This is our solution. Science tells us how beneficial power naps are and now, coupled with our napping stations being available, you will have the ability to almost never have to leave the office!
Another former policy that we are doing away with is the enforced hour-long lunch breaks. We discussed the topic thoroughly and have come to the conclusion an hour-long mid-day break doesn’t, in fact, have all that much of an effect on mental health. Going forward during tax season, we are asking you all the be diligent in eating fast and getting back at it. The firm is hopeful to see 15-minute lunches on your timecard. If absolutely necessary, take up to 30minutes; keeping in mind that an excess of longer lunches will warrant a discussion.
Remember to be honest and diligent when it comes to filling out your timecard!
In preparation for our busy season, we have hired a few interns to tie up all loose ends. Formerly, we homed the interns in the cubes that have now been build-out into our sleep stations. Because of this, we have set up workspaces by the elevator room on the first floor. Please stop by sometime this week to welcome them, keeping in mind non-work-related chatting will be deducted from your PTO.
Our new interns will be in charge of 8879 retrieval, coffee runs, and making sure files are properly organized before sending up to our admin staff for processing. They will also be keeping track of whose files have unnecessary staples in them. Disciplinary action will be taken on individuals who are not following our three staple per PIT rule.
Staples are annoying and time consuming to remove. Be mindful of staple usage!!! Please utilize the paper clips we have made readily available in our supply closet. Due to everyone’s hatred of small paper clips we have banned them from the office.
Please let clients know that we will be charging extra this year for unnecessary staple and small paper clip usage in their tax organizer drop offs. We expect our front-end staff to communicate and enforce these new rules.
A big complaint from the Reviewers last season were the cryptic messages written on the Due Diligence forms. Verbiage we have to research in the Urban Dictionary is strongly discouraged. The age of our Reviewers must be taken into account, they do not understand slang.
An issue we’ve ran into time and time again is clients leaving drop-off information in our office for months on end. This problem exponentially increases from January-April. We have found a solution that both incentivizes clients to get into the office for pick up and will contribute to employee moral!
Going forward, we will be holding onto information for a month as a curtesy to our clients, however, beyond that point we will be tossing the information into the new dumpster you will find in the parking garage.
At the end of tax season, we will be rolling this dumpster into the parking lot and burning it, along with any left-over cardboard and the stack of pallets we’ve been collecting in the parking garage! This fulfills the requirement to destroy sensitive information in a way which is significantly more fun than using the shred bins! I am sure you are all aware of the rising cost in using our shred it bins during our paper heavy months.
We have included verbiage in our Client Newsletter informing them of this change.
There has also been a concern regarding the level of advertising we are doing to get new clients in the door. Mr. Murray has pitched a few ideas for us to print on the back of our business cards to handout at our community outreach events - please view below and vote on the one you like best!! As always, we are wanting to put our best foot forward in the public eye - we think these updates will give us the boost we are looking for.
We are beyond excited for the new changes happening at Buermann and Drake!! We anticipate this being another fantastic year for the firm!
- Partners of Buermann and Drake, Ltd.,
