One page for the whole team: the firm's vision, the current sprint, every seat's responsibilities through the year, and the training to grow into them. If you have a question about the firm, start here.
The firm runs in sprints. This block changes every sprint retro — everything else on this page is stable. From the 2026 Sprint 3 OKR plan; one objective per owner, key results beneath it.
"We are a high-trust, content-led tax and accounting firm. We deliver on time, every time, respond promptly to every client inquiry, and move steadily away from hands-on grind toward strategic advisory and content-driven growth."
1040, 1120S, 1065, 1120, 706, 990-PF, K-1s, state franchise, notices, audit support.
Estimated tax & strategy, CFO support, entity selection, cost seg, executive financial management.
In a 1-on-1, every individual goal should map upward to a theme. If it doesn't map, question whether to do it at all.
| Day | Meeting | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Starting Lineup · 10:00–10:45 | The whole team sets the week: priorities per seat, blockers surfaced, sprint check-in. The week's game plan comes out of this room. |
| Tue & Wed | Daily Stand-up · 10:00–10:15 | Fifteen minutes, "one thing" focus. Stand-ups don't get hijacked — one thing means one thing. |
| Thursday | Weekly 1-on-1s | AZ meets each team member individually — goals, roadblocks, growth path. |
| Friday | No meetings | Protected for deep work and self-paced training. No client calls, no internal meetings. |
| Daily | The Daily Dunk | Teresa checks the help desk and mail every day, no exceptions. Every client request captured and routed to its owner in Canopy. |
| Per sprint | OKR Sprint Retro | Score the sprint, log CPE credits, plan the next one. This page gets refreshed here. |
Every seat has a manager, a set of critical accountabilities, and the playbooks it owns. Headshots land in round 2 — assets/photos/team/.
A CPA firm doesn't run on an org chart — it runs on a calendar. Below: the twelve-month pressure map, then each seat's season-by-season reality. Use it to plan capacity, EA study, sprints, and vacations.
Capacity rule of thumb: OKR sprints land best Jun–Aug · EA exam parts in Jun/Jul/Aug · new services launch in Sep · content campaigns ship Oct–Dec so they're working when leads search in Jan.
The year opens at full throttle: 1099s and W-2s due in 31 days, the new onboarding cohort arriving, and the tax-season email machine turning on.
Pipeline season. New-year leads, renewals, and kickoff emails all fire at once — mornings on sales calls, afternoons on escalations and keeping the firm calendar honest.
Q4 estimates out by the 15th, then the prep queue starts filling. January is when the K-1 trackers get set up right — or reviewed painfully in March.
Year-end close for every retainer plus the 1099 data hand-off to Teresa — the two January jobs that everything downstream depends on. The tax-season email sequence he built in December starts shipping.
The heaviest compliance month of her year: W-2s, 1099s, 940, and 941-Q4 all due 1/31 while the new client cohort onboards. Daily Dunk never skips.
Pre-season setup: review checklists finalized, whale client files staged, early complex work started before the queue floods in February.
Heads-down season. The firm's on-time guarantee is won or lost here. Two walls: entities on 3/15, individuals on 4/15.
Sales keeps moving even in season — plus review escalations and retainer meetings. The discipline: protect the pipeline while everyone else is underwater.
The prep queue is the job: PTO all day, client questions routed through tickets, notices triaged fast. EA study pauses; the season is the education.
While the tax side sprints, the books engine cannot slip — month-end close on schedule, prep data pulled for the tax team, marketing on minimum viable cadence.
Peak routing season: every "where's my return?" lands in her queue first. S-corp elections beat the 3/15 cutoff, DE franchise by 3/1, billing never pauses.
The review queue is life: returns flagged by Branson, whale work-in-progress, and the judgment calls nobody else can make. Highest-leverage seat in the building right now.
Exhale, then rebuild. The retro happens here, franchise season lands, and the firm's best thinking window opens.
Post-season retro, pricing review ("do quotes still reflect actual scope?"), and the sprint plan for summer. Advisory delivery picks back up for quarterly clients.
TX franchise by 5/15, Q2 estimates by 6/15 — then the EA study window officially opens. June/July/August is when exam parts get scheduled and passed.
Books get a cleanup pass, campaigns restart for real, and the QBO recertification window (4/28–6/30) cannot be missed. Marketing shifts from maintenance to build.
941-Q1 by 4/30 and TX franchise mid-cycle work, then the operational projects that season buried — document system rollout, HubSpot hygiene, engagement letter audits.
Post-season cleanup on complex returns, then the seat's real growth season: playbook authoring, research deep-dives, and the quarterly team training session.
Two seasons in one: July–August is build season (we are here now); September–October is the second tax season. What gets built in July decides how October feels.
The system-building window: AI workflows into production, playbook library shipped, Box decision made. Sales continues; escalations spike as extensions come due.
Extension queue triaged early, whale depreciation templates finished before September, then the 9/15 and 10/15 walls. Q3 estimates ship mid-wave.
His biggest build season: website v2, editorial calendar, segmented email — the content engine the firm's growth thesis depends on. Books stay on rails underneath.
941-Q2 by 7/31, then extension-season routing: document chasing, client nudges, billing on everything shipping. Gusto certifications fit in the July lull.
The extension review queue is smaller than spring's but heavier per return — the hardest files got extended. Whale WIP and the toughest judgment calls of the year.
The quiet-looking quarter that decides next year: tax planning for clients, OKRs and pricing for the firm, and the January machine built in advance.
Annual OKRs, every retainer renewal and price adjustment, year-end planning meetings, and the strategic offsite. January is scheduled before December ends.
Year-end planning support — S-corp comp checks, estimated tax true-ups — plus the annual tax law update brief and a final EA push before season resets the clock.
The year-end content campaign (charitable, retirement, RMDs) ships while YE prep checklists start for every retainer. December builds the January email sequence.
W-9 collection from every contractor before the January crunch, 941-Q3, state account renewals, and YE payroll prep. The smoothness of her January is decided in November.
Final reviews on 706 and 990-PF work, the year-end tax law presentation to the team, and the review playbook updated with everything the year taught.
Time allocations are directional (share of a typical week), drafted from the responsibility grids — review with each seat at the next 1-on-1.
"We help people handle difficult, stressful financial situations with grace — while not allowing their urgent matters to become our emergencies."
We're building the AZDT Company Brain in Claude: it knows our playbooks, SOPs, service offerings, pricing, and this page. Before you ping AZ or dig through folders, ask the Brain. If it doesn't know, that's a gap we fix — tell AZ so the answer gets added.
The complete resource library — every platform, every certification, every link, ordered per seat — lives in the AZDT Team Training Library. Video and course links are being refreshed for the new learning tracks — AZ is dropping in live links this round.
This page is the map, not the territory. Deep detail lives in the source documents — links go live in round 2 once we pick their permanent home (Box).