Why Every Accountant Needs a Telephone Answering Service Before Self-Assessment Season Hits
Here's a number worth sitting with for a moment: 23 minutes and 15 seconds.
That's how long it takes the average person to fully regain concentration after a single interruption (not a rough guess, but the finding from extensive field research by Professor Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, published in her 2008 study The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress and expanded in her 2023 book Attention Span). For most people, it's an interesting stat about modern working life. For accountants between October and January, it's something closer to awarning.
Self-Assessment Season: Four Months, Millions of Clients, One Phone
Self-assessment season doesn't ease you in gently. From October, clients start making contact. By
December, the pace picks up. In January, it becomes relentless. According to HMRC, over 11.5 million
taxpayers filed their 2022/23 self-assessment returns by the 31 January 2024 deadline. For the 2024/25 tax year, the figure was similar: more than 11.48 million people filed before midnight on 31 January 2026. That's a lot of clients behind those returns, and many of them will call their accountant before they file. In practice, the realistic working window for accounting practices runs from October through to the 31 January deadline. That's four months to process returns for every client who needs them filed, while simultaneously answering queries, chasing missing paperwork, and keeping up with everything else that doesn't stop just because January is hectic. And the phone rings throughout all of it. Some calls matter: a client who genuinely cannot find a document, a new enquiry coming in. But a large proportion are the kind that don't require your direct input right now: "Have you started mine yet?", "What documents do you need from me?", "Can I book a call for next week?" They're not urgent, but they still interrupt you. And each one costs nearly 25 minutes of recovery time.
The Real Cost of Being Interrupted Ten Times in a Day
Let's be concrete about what those 23 minutes actually mean across a working day. If you take ten calls during the day (and in January, ten is conservative), you're potentially losing more than three and a half hours of deep-focus time. Not because the calls themselves take that long, but because of the time it takes your brain to get back to where it was before the phone rang. Professor Mark's research also found that interrupted workers compensate by working faster, but with measurably higher stress levels and a greater tendency to make mistakes. When you're handling tax returns, mistakes aren't just inconvenient. They're the kind of thing clients and HMRC both notice. There's something else worth acknowledging: the accumulative strain. Self-assessment season is already one of the most pressured stretches of the accounting calendar. Layering constant inbound
calls onto a workload that's already stretched is a reliable way to arrive at February exhausted, behind
on invoicing, and quietly dreading next year.
What a Telephone Answering Service Looks Like for an Accounting Practice
This is where I want to be straightforward, because I know "telephone answering service" can sound more hands-off than it actually is. At Virtual Ease VA, we handle calls on behalf of accounting and bookkeeping practices during our standard hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30am–5:30pm, and Saturday 10am–4pm. When a client calls your practice, we answer in your business name, professionally and warmly, and handle the call according to your instructions. Depending on what you need, that might mean:
- Taking a message and letting the caller know when you'll be in touch
- Answering common questions: what documents to have ready, when deadlines fall, appointment
availability - Handling the "has mine been done yet?" calls — for a number of our accountant clients, we're
specifically asked not to take messages for these. Instead, we reassure the caller that everything is
in hand and the practice will be in touch if they need anything. It keeps the inbox clear and stops
clients chasing unnecessarily. - Booking appointments directly into your calendar
Passing genuinely u - rgent calls through to you while holding routine ones
What this means in practice during January is that your phone gets answered consistently, professionally, throughout the day, without you needing to pick it up every time it rings. You stay focused on the work. Your clients still feel looked after. And at the end of the day, you have a clear record of every call and message. For practices that also need admin support during this period, including chasing client paperwork, managing engagement or disengagement letters, data entry into accounting software and inbox management, we can take that on too at £38 per hour, charged only for time actually worked. Our telephone answering service starts from £35 per month plus £1.20 per minute of call time, with no lock-in and no hidden fees. You can scale up during busy season and back down once February arrives.
We Already Work with Accountants. This Isn't Theoretical.
I'll be honest: we already have accountants and bookkeepers as clients, and I know what self- assessment season looks like from the inside. What I hear from practices is usually a version of the same thing: the calls aren't complicated, but they're constant. Having a professional voice answer the phone, take messages, and manage client expectations makes a real difference, not just to workload, but to how clients feel about the service they're getting.
We're based in Ipswich, Suffolk, and we work with clients across the UK, from sole practitioners to small accounting practices and bookkeepers managing a growing client list. If you want call handling that genuinely fits around how you work, not a generic answering service that doesn't know your clients' names from Adam, that's what we do.
Get in Touch Before January Gets Loud
If you know self-assessment season is coming and you'd rather spend January focused on returns
than fielding phone calls, it's worth having a conversation now. Onboarding takes 24 hours and
getting set up is straightforward.
We'd love to hear from you.
Phone: 01473 935600
Email: office@virtualeaseva.com
Website: www.virtualeaseva.com
SOURCES
1. Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith, Ulrich Klocke. The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress. CHI 2008 Conference Proceedings, Florence, Italy, April 2008. Available via: https://researchr.org/publication/MarkGK08 (accessed 13 October 2026).
2. Gloria Mark. Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.
Hanover Square Press, 2023.
3. HMRC. Record 11.5 million taxpayers file tax returns by 31 January deadline (February 2024).
Reported via: https://www.finnies.org.uk/news/business-news/archive/article/2024/February/record-115-million-taxpayers-file-tax-returns-by-31-january-deadline (accessed 13 October 2026).
4. HMRC Press Office (X/Twitter). Statement confirming 11.48 million people filed Self Assessment for
2024/25 tax year by 31 January 2026. https://x.com/HMRCpressoffice/status/2018639273142984781 (accessed 13 October 2026).
5. IHSan Ops. Self Assessment Deadline Automation for UK Accountants. Notes the realistic four-
month working window for accounting practices (October–January). https://ihsanops.ai/blog/self-
assessment-deadline-automation-uk (accessed 13 October 2026).