Busy season doesn’t start in January. It starts the week you stop planning for it.
Every audit team knows the feeling. It’s the second week of January, the trial balance arrives three days late, half the PBC list is missing, your senior is on two engagements at once, and the partner wants to know why the file isn’t moving. None of those problems were born in January. They were born in October, when there was still time to fix them and nobody did.
The good news: if you start this week, you have roughly ten working weeks before the holidays. That’s enough time to take most of the chaos out of busy season before it begins. This guide breaks those ten weeks into five two-week sprints, each with a clear goal and a short checklist your team can actually work through.
Answers
Ideally in October. Starting in mid-October gives a team roughly ten working weeks before the holidays to debrief last year, plan staffing, prepare clients and complete interim fieldwork, so less is left for January.
Hold a debrief on last year’s problems, roll forward templates and files, triage clients by risk, build a capacity plan, send tailored PBC lists with due dates, complete planning and interim procedures, and run a readiness check for every engagement before the holidays.
Planning, risk assessment and materiality; walkthroughs of key processes; controls testing through an interim date; and early substantive work such as reviewing minutes and new contracts, testing fixed asset additions and journal entries to date, and analyzing revenue trends.
Move work earlier. Interim fieldwork, early and specific PBC requests, staffing continuity on recurring clients, and staggered report dates all reduce what has to happen between January and April.
Send PBC lists with specific requests and item-level due dates, hold short kickoff meetings with higher-risk clients, raise known accounting issues before year-end, and agree on one shared tracker for requests instead of email threads.
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