In my last article on humans, The People Puzzle, we discussed utilizing contractors as temporary busy season workers to fill in gaps or support growth. What we did not discuss was how to find them. Here are some common and little-known places to find help:
- Facebook/LinkedIn groups. I see a constant stream of posts requesting busy season help or offering it on these groups. It is easy to search both social media platforms for groups of tax accountants. Pick the groups with descriptions that resonate with you to find the people that you would work best with.
- Freelance websites like Fiverr or Upwork (if these two are not enough, here is an article listing 15 sources for finding freelancers: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/best-freelance-websites). People do indeed freelance for bookkeeping and tax preparation work. Many of them are EA’s, CPA’s or can prepare returns for you to review.
- If you are proficient at reviewing and signing returns and are a little brave, you can use TaxFyle to help connect you with a “qualified” tax preparer. I put that in quotes because each return you submit will be completed by a random person and they do not provide consistency. There is no room for training. However, you can get some overly qualified people on this site to prepare returns for you. It’s in the luck of the draw. A word of advice here, do not do this with returns you need a very quick turnaround on.
Happy human hunting!
