A GST and tax filing service prepares returns for many small clients on fixed monthly and yearly dates. The team repeats similar tasks under tight deadlines, and a client's late data becomes the team's late night.
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Share your requirementsA filing service prepares and files periodic returns, reconciliations and notices for many small and medium clients, such as traders, shops and service businesses. The team includes a principal or partner, reviewers, filing executives who prepare returns on the portal, data-entry staff who convert bills and statements into records, and client coordinators who collect data. The same dates return every month, with a big peak at the due date and a heavier peak at year end. Most clients send data late, in odd formats, or in WhatsApp photos. Portal changes and notices add work. The fee per client is small, so the model depends on volume, and executives who learn the work are hired by companies and bigger practices. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in GST and tax filing services. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Bills and statements reach the office on the due date itself, and the team files under pressure that the client caused.
Staff know the peak days by heart, yet no plan spreads the load, so tiredness and errors recur with the calendar.
Low fees per client leave no time for checks, and one mistake can wipe out the profit from many clients.
The partner or one senior reads every return, so filing waits for their diary and they cannot take leave.
Which step fails at which hour is known to a few, and a change on the portal catches the rest unprepared.
A client receives a notice and rings in panic, and whoever answers has no guide to who handles it.
After a year of filing, executives take roles in companies' tax teams or bigger firms.
They do the same task for years with no step upward, and the careful ones leave.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Performance Management; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a GST and tax filing services business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A written date earlier than the due date, shared with each client, with a policy on what happens when it is missed.
A written date earlier than the due date, shared with each client, with a policy on what happens when it is missed.
Stagger client groups, split preparation and filing days and plan leave away from peaks.
Stagger client groups, split preparation and filing days and plan leave away from peaks. Use the attendance, shift and leave process to hold the rules.
A checklist per return type so seniors can review in place of the partner, with the partner sampling.
A checklist per return type so seniors can review in place of the partner, with the partner sampling.
Known problems, workarounds and recent changes, updated by whoever finds one, and used in the learning and development process.
Known problems, workarounds and recent changes, updated by whoever finds one, and used in the learning and development process.
A named person and a simple log for every notice, with who is working on it and by when.
A named person and a simple log for every notice, with who is working on it and by when.
Stages with skills and pay at each.
Stages with skills and pay at each. See compensation benchmarking.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Rotas and leave planning around monthly and yearly peaks.
A shared portal notebook and training that move juniors to reviewers.
Pay steps that follow skill from data entry to review.
Measures of accuracy and on-time filing, not only count.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
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A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
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Set a cut-off before the due date, explain why in writing and apply a fee or a later slot for late data. Repeat the message every month.
Write checklists, train two or three seniors as reviewers and have the partner sample. The checklist matters more than the person.
Stagger client groups, set earlier internal dates and plan help for known peak days. Surprises cause the worst nights.
Show the next stage, give review responsibility and revisit pay when skill grows. People leave when pay stays still after learning.
A named person with a log, a standard reply process and a senior to escalate to. Do not leave it to whoever answers the phone.
Cut-off dates, load spreading, review structure and a data-entry ladder are common starting points. We begin by hearing how last month's due date went. Scope, timing and fees are agreed in writing.
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