After 40 years in accounting, I still get the chills during February. The busy season trauma runs deep.
Let’s be brutally honest: the mindless data grunt work that dominates busy season isn’t just annoying; it’s driving your best people out the door.
The good news? Solving this problem isn’t just achievable – it’s far simpler to do than you’d expect.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Why normalizing busy season burnout is the most expensive mistake you’re making
- Three action steps to eliminate 8+ hours of data drudgery per audit before next busy season
- How to break the “busy seasons” cycle (yes, plural – because let’s face it, is your team ever not “busy”?)
The Madness Loop: Same Pain, Different Year
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.
Yet here we are. Another busy season ends, the team recovers, and we immediately forget the pain until it starts all over again. Meanwhile, your auditors are updating their resumes.
KPMG’s research shows junior auditors spend a staggering 76% of their time on data preparation rather than analysis. That’s not what they signed up for when they earned those accounting degrees and passed those CPA exams.
I distinctly remember my first busy season decades ago – bleary-eyed at 11 PM, manually ticking and tying numbers, wondering if I’d made a terrible career choice. Today’s auditors deal with the same soul-crushing tasks, just with fancier spreadsheets.
See how other firms are saving 8+ hours per audit. Schedule a conversation →
“Busy Season” Is No Longer Just a Season
Here’s another uncomfortable truth: February/March might be your main crunch in North America, but as one client recently told me, “That’s just the first busy season of the year.”
When exactly are you supposed to modernize your processes when you’re “busy” year-round?
The answer isn’t working harder. It’s eliminating the work that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
What If You Could Eliminate the Worst Part?
Imagine walking into your next client meeting with standardized data already analyzed – no chasing files, no reformatting reports, no back-and-forth emails.
This isn’t fantasy. Hundreds of audit teams are already doing this by solving the data problem first with Validis. Including 18 of the top 25 global firms.
As Satpal Nagpal, Audit Practice Leader at GHJ says:
“We’ve not only gained over 40% in productivity, but Validis has helped us create more rewarding roles for our auditors.
Our teams now spend less time chasing data and more time analyzing it to deliver valuable insights.”
Want to see standardized, audit-ready data in action? Book a demo →
The Cost of Doing Nothing
While you hesitate, consider what data grunt work is really costing you:
- Talent exodus: Junior auditors leaving for tech companies where they actually use their brains
- Quality risks: Error-prone manual processes threatening audit integrity
- Margin compression: 8+ hours of low-value work per engagement directly impacts your bottom line
- Competitive disadvantage: While you’re stuck in Excel hell, competitors are delivering actual insights
3-Step Action Plan: Get Busy-Season Ready in 28 Days
- Stop the bleeding (Week 1-2): Schedule a 30-minute Validis demo to see how automated data extraction would work with your clients
- Build momentum (Weeks 3): Implement Validis for a phased roll-out of clients (implementation takes days, not months)
“From kick-off call to the first data upload it took less than two weeks. It was almost a little too easy to implement,”
Says Lori Warden, CPA, CGMA, Assurance Practice Leader at ATA.
- Transform your practice (Week 4): Train your team on focusing on analysis, not data prep, and watch realization rates climb
Don’t wait until you’re drowning in next busy season to make a change. The window between busy seasons is your opportunity to break the cycle.
Ready to reclaim busy season? Let’s talk about your specific needs →
The Future Is Already Here
Top firms are moving beyond the “necessary evil” mindset of busy season burnout. They’re creating environments where auditors actually do what they were trained to do – analyze, assess risk, and deliver insights.
As Jim Bourke from Withum puts it:
“Validis is one of the first technologies where we have immediately increased realization on deployment for every single client that we’ve deployed it on. We had immediate return on our investment day one.”
The question isn’t whether you can afford to modernize your audit process. It’s whether you can afford not to.
The definition of leadership is making tomorrow better than today. What will you do differently to ensure next busy season isn’t just a repeat of the last?
We get financial data. You deliver the insights. That’s how modern audits work.
Book your 20-minute demo today and take the first step toward a better busy season →
