Know Your Numbers

One of the most important aspects of running any successful business is to know your numbers. If you have ever watched an episode of Shark Tank or The Profit, it is all about the numbers. One of the challenges in determining the significance of your numbers is the ability to benchmark them against something. For those of you who are not familiar with the term benchmarking – Benchmarking is the practice of evaluating or checking (something) by comparison with a standard.

The purpose of this email is to provide you some current and relevant data by which to benchmark the performance of your business. Additionally, to gain a better understanding of the industry as a whole.

RightWay’s single best benchmarking tool is our annual customer survey, which was recently sent out. We will share the results with you shortly. The RightWay customer survey responses literally help shape our company and drive all of our initiatives for the next year. They also tell us what we are doing great at and the areas that could stand some improvement.

With that said, there are some things you need to know about the data we are going to present.

1. We are only referencing RightWay users. We think it’s important for you to know that this is not representative of the entire Tax Preparation industry.

2. RightWay users are typically higher in bank product production.

3. It is also important to note that these numbers are for returns processed from January 10 – April 27 of 2017.

With those disclaimers out of the way, let’s look at the numbers.

Averages

Returns Per Efin 238
Prepares Per Efin 2.18
Returns Per Preparer 109.17
Prep Fees Per Return $279
E-File Fees Per Return $16
Average Taxpayer Refund $3,548.39
Bank Product Funding % 88%
Returns With Bank Products 62%
Returns Without Bank Products 38%

Note: This is the first time in RightWay history that the percentage of bank product returns has been greater than non-bank.

AVERAGES BY RETURN TYPE

 Percentage of all returns by type – Both Bank and Non-Bank

Note: W/Advance does not mean that the Advance was funded but only that an advance was applied for.

So? What does it mean?

Unfortunately, the categorization, organization and formatting of the data is the easy part. The hard part is the interpretation. Answering the all-important….What’s it all mean? Once we know the meaning, we can generally get to the next step….What do I need to do about it?

Five Major Questions You Need to Answer

  1. Am I charging to much or not enough?
  2. Do I have too many or too few Preparers?
  3. Am I doing enough of the right kind of returns…AKA (Am I attracting my desired demographic)?
  4. Is my staff performing above Avg.? (Return and Revenue Totals?)
  5. Is my business outperforming the Avg?

There are a million additional questions that can be asked but it really boils down to….Do I have the right people, doing the right things and are they doing enough of it?

We sincerely hope this information is valuable. It is our intent during the Summer/Off season to focus our communications towards general business strategy, best practices and how to leverage the available RightWay resources for maximum benefit.

Happy Friday and hope you have an excellent weekend!