Est. 2011 · Bench of 38 · Seats booked Jan through Apr
Meet Accounting Staff runs a bench of 38 seasoned preparers, reviewers, and full-charge bookkeepers who float into regional tax outfits — the three-to-fifteen-office kind — from after Thanksgiving through the April deadline, and again for the September and October extension walls. Not permanent placement. Not staff augmentation by the year. Four months, clean in, clean out, and the firm owner gets her Saturdays back.
Working the Upper Midwest corridor: La Crosse up through the Fox Valley, west to the Red River, north to the Iron Range. Firms outside that footprint we politely refer to two peers we trust in Des Moines and Indianapolis.
A seven-office regional chain headquartered in Wausau works 1,200 individual returns through February and March with a staff of nine full-timers. They need four more bodies at the review desk by MLK weekend or the Schedule Ks stack up past ten deep. That's the phone call we take in October.
We send Margaret — retired audit senior, twenty-two years at a regional firm, does nothing but state extensions and K-1 review from the second week of January through April 15. We send Phil, who works the front counter from noon until the last walk-in on Saturdays because he doesn't like mornings anymore. We send whoever fits the seat the firm owner actually needs filled, not whoever is nearest the phone.
Owner called in mid-October with a 1040 volume up 22% and a senior reviewer out on maternity leave through April 10. Sent two preparers to the Rice Lake and Ladysmith offices for twelve weeks each and one reviewer circuiting between all five on a Tue/Thu/Sat cadence. Closed busy season seven work-days ahead of last year.
They'd been relying on the same two floaters from a Milwaukee staffing firm for four years. The floaters went to a competitor. Standing order now: three preparers at the Menasha flagship, one reviewer at Appleton-North, one at Oshkosh. Pre-season calibration starts first week of December; bench rotates out the Monday after April 15.
Two-partner outfit. One partner works individual returns, the other works the lumber and mining S-corps. They wanted extra hands only at the Virginia and Grand Rapids offices, and only on Mondays, Thursdays, and the three Saturdays before April 15. We sent Gail, who retired from a Duluth firm in 2018 and prefers Mondays to Fridays anyway. Fourth year in a row.
New firm owners come in mostly two ways: a current client owner mentions us at the state society's fall roundtable, or a preparer we've placed before brings us a colleague's shop. We hold the first Monday in October for scoping calls with returning firms, then the second week opens for new ones. By Halloween the bench is usually 80% committed; by Thanksgiving the last seats fill and we close the book.