Amanda's Tax Service Case Study

Many people strive for the American Dream…owning their own business, being their own boss, and having the capability to make their own schedule. In this article, Amanda Smith seemed to have her version of the American dream all planned out, until it slowly started to slip away.

After working for big accounting firms for six years, Amanda decided to open up her own accounting and tax service firm. She hired one other employee, Lisa, to help her with a myriad of business operations around the office. Lisa was a hard worker and Amanda began to develop a great trust in her. As tax season approached and Amanda’s client list increased, she was forced to hire more CPAs. Because of her hectic schedule, Amanda tasked Lisa to do all the interviewing. With Lisa’s recommendations, Amanda hired three more CPAs. Because the new hires had worked at other firms before, Amanda assumed that they new exactly what to do, so she spend little time training them. She also assumed that the clients would work to bring in their own clients, a regular practice at most firms.

On tax day of that year, one accountant asked if Amanda could file the online extensions for more than 50 organizations and individual clients, which she though was an unusually large number of extensions for such a small accounting firm. As tax season came and went, Amanda and Lisa began getting calls from clients who were receiving letters from the IRS informing them that their paperwork hadn’t been filled correctly. Worried about her firm’s reputation, Amanda vowed to solve this problem. She was also faced with the fact that the other accountants weren’t bringing in many clients on their own. Amanda ended up having to let one of the go and worried that she might have to let the others go if the clients with tax problems didn’t return.

In the end, Amanda had to face the harsh realities of being a small business owner as she faced many challenges along the way.

This paper will examine the factors that are hurting Amanda’s new business and how she can change her current habits and turn her business around.

As a manager, Amanda failed to realize the 4 key principles of management and because of it, her business was in trouble.

Planning

Planning is the core area of all the functions of management. It is the foundation upon which the other three areas should be build. Planning requires management to evaluate where the company is currently, and where it would like to be in the future. From there an appropriate course of action to attain the company's goals and objectives is determined and implemented (Certo & Certo).

When starting her business, Amanda failed to properly plan. She had no plan for the direction in which she wanted the company to go. She had no plan for her target number of clients,