Why CPA Firms Break During Busy Season
July 1, 2026 · ALB Growth Agency
Most firms don't have a capacity-planning system. They have a set of informal expectations about who can absorb what, updated in real time by whoever happens to notice a bottleneck first. For eight months of the year, that's survivable.
During busy season, every one of those informal expectations gets tested simultaneously. Review backs up on the same one or two partners it always backs up on. The same document-chasing cycle repeats with every client, because there was never a standardized onboarding sequence to prevent it. Overtime becomes the default coping mechanism instead of a rare exception.
None of this is a busy-season problem. It's a capacity-visibility problem that busy season simply makes impossible to ignore.