“I have managers that are making sure we’re not working crazy hours,” Molly Kowal said. “As a way to maintain people staying, they’re aware of trying to keep a more realistic goal.”

“We’re getting the work done, but not burning people out,” Grace Kowal said. “Nobody wants to go to a firm that’s going to run you into the ground.”

To make that possible, firms are looking to technology and staffing as ways to ensure their accountants can use time more efficiently.

For years, Cryder said, big accounting firms have been investing in tools that eliminate some of the workload during busy season, and that’s starting to trickle down to midsize accounting firms in Philadelphia. She recalls her early years as an intern and junior accountant two decades ago, noting that “all of that has been replaced by technology for most firms these days.”

They are also increasingly bringing on non-accountants to handle administrative work and other non-accounting tasks, Endres said. She’s noticed more hiring for those support roles in recent years.

Still, some firms must turn down potential client work at times.

That often leaves smaller and highly regulated organizations, like nonprofits and community banks, without a public accounting firm to help with their audits, Cryder said. One of the ways PICPA is looking to address this is by pushing for state legislation that would raise the revenue threshold at which these organizations must be audited.

“On the surface that might sound counterproductive,” Cryder said. “But we feel like the threshold is too low, and it’s requiring a lot of these really tiny organizations to get audits that just don’t need it. The risk is just not there.”

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