At a glance
- Resource planning strategically matches staff to specific work months in advance.
- It improves utilisation, aids strategic hiring, and reduces staff burnout.
- Map future work, assess team capacity, and allocate tasks systematically.
- Success requires full partner commitment and clear client timeline agreements.
Most accounting practices believe they plan ahead. But too often, partners are left counting heads in peak periods, hoping they have enough team members to handle the workload. This approach treats accounting like any other service business, where unpredictable client demands drive workload.
But accounting is unique; unlike lawyers handling one-off transactions, accountants work within recurring cycles that create forecasting opportunities. Annual reporting deadlines repeat with predictable intensity. Client advisory needs often follow seasonal patterns tied to business planning cycles and regulatory requirements.
Resource planning leverages this advantage by matching specific staff to specific work months in advance to maintain profitability and sustainability.
What does resource planning involve?
Scott Burridge, a partner at advisory and accounting company Findex, describes resource planning as strategic and proactive. “It involves assigning the right people to the right work at the right time, taking into account individual skillsets, development goals, seasonal demand, and client expectations,” he says.
Resource planning goes beyond basic capacity planning, which simply asks whether you have enough bodies to handle the workload. Resource planning forces you to answer questions that drive business decisions. Do you need additional staff next quarter? Should you focus on winning more work? How can you prevent overservicing before it erodes your margins?
Successful resource planning is an ongoing process rather than an annual exercise. Staff leave, skills develop, and client needs change throughout the year, and your plans must adapt accordingly. “Everything moves fast and skilled people are hard to find. The competition for talent is fierce, and the availability of the right resources can shift quickly, so we can’t afford to ‘set and forget’,” Burridge says.
The strategic payoff
Experts tend to agree that done right, resource planning can deliver meaningful impact on the metrics that drive practice profitability.
Billable utilisation improves: Practices can lower the rate at which expensive senior staff are assigned to routine work. They can also minimise the number of times junior team members struggle with tasks beyond their capability.
Service delivery grows more accurate: Precision in allocation helps prevent overservicing, and projects are more likely to finish on time and budget, improving client satisfaction.
“The competition for talent is fierce… so we can’t afford to ‘set and forget.’”
Scott Burridge
Strategic hiring gets easier: The forward visibility that resource planning gives you also helps shift hiring decisions from reactive to strategic. Instead of suddenly realising you need three more accountants next month, you can identify capacity gaps. This allows you to recruit quality candidates ahead of time, rather than accepting substandard staff when pressure hits.
Staff retention rises: Perhaps most importantly for practice sustainability, resource planning reduces the burnout that drives talented staff away during peak periods. When workloads are distributed more evenly throughout the year and people work on tasks suited to their skills, job satisfaction increases and retention improves.
Putting planning into practice
Experts advise that resource planning begins with a forward-looking map of who will do what work, and when.
List compliance deadlines, regular client requests, and known commitments for the next six to twelve months. Then, assess your team’s current skills and capacity. This means looking beyond who is available to who can handle complex restructuring work versus basic compliance and identifying any capability gaps. With an understanding of known demand and a realistic capacity assessment, you can start allocating team members to specific tasks.
Megan Goodwin, partner, specialist medical services at accounting and financial services firm Cutcher & Neale, says her firm’s partners hold dedicated planning sessions throughout the year. The high-level guidance they provide then cascades through the firm’s leadership group she says, reinforcing alignment and clarifying priorities across every division. These systematic planning sessions help determine realistic capacity targets rather than optimistic projections.
David Smith, director at Smithink, recommends aiming for 80% capacity. He says this will leave room for clients who submit information late, for jobs that take longer than expected, and for those urgent requests that can’t wait.
But even with this buffer built in, client cooperation remains essential for the system to function effectively. If you’ve allocated your senior tax specialist to Client A’s work in March, but Client A submits information in April, your plan collapses.
To prevent this, the experts recommend building timeline agreements into a firm’s onboarding process. Smith advocates for an in-person meeting to explain how the firm operates and the impact of unscheduled work. “This should also be part of the engagement letter in which the client agrees the month’s work will be done and that they will respond to queries on a timely basis,” he says.
The key to success: partner commitment
If you’re new to resource planning, Smith offers a final piece of advice: ensure all partners are committed. “Unless all the leaders are on board with adopting resource planning it will fail. Everyone must commit and understand that it takes a while to iron out the kinks,” he says.
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