Illustrative scenario: a semi-retired Victoria CPA winding down to a core book
A semi-retired solo CPA in Victoria winding a practice down keeps a few dozen long-standing clients and lets the rest go. The wind-down risk is memory: the practice ran for decades on what one person knew, and the retained clients' filing deadlines keep arriving whether or not anyone is at the desk that week.
The firm in this scenario
An archetype, not a client. The figures below describe the shape of the practice being modelled — they are inputs to the scenario, never results.
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Archetype | Semi-retired solo CPA reducing a practice to a core book |
| Location | Victoria, British Columbia |
| Firm size | One CPA, no staff, deliberately part-time |
| Client profile | A long-standing book being wound down to a few dozen retained clients — mostly personal returns, a handful of corporations and annual GST/HST filers |
- Client CRM
- Engagement Letters
- Services catalogue
- Reminders
- Client portal
The problem
A wind-down is a re-scoping exercise that rarely gets written down. Which clients stay, at what scope and at what price is settled in conversations — and until it is recorded, the practitioner is still mentally carrying the whole book. Departing clients need their records handed over cleanly; retained ones need to know, in writing, exactly what continues.
The second problem is that the calendar has always lived in one head. Decades of recall about each corporation's year-end and each annual GST/HST filer's cadence worked at five days a week; it fails quietly at three. The retained corporations' returns still fall due six months after year-end, and the personal files still crest every April, whether or not that week was a working one.
The workflow, step by step
- 1
Import only the retained book
The core clients come in by CSV with year-ends and contacts. Export produces a clean record package for each departing client's next accountant.
Client CRM with CSV/XLSX import
- 2
Re-scope every retained client in writing
Each continuing engagement is issued as a letter with services-based pricing, signed by the firm and e-signed by the client on a no-login portal page.
Engagement Letters
- 3
Assign only the services that continue
Retained obligations are typed services with a frequency, and the cadence generates each next-due date. Anything not assigned is genuinely out of scope.
Services catalogue
- 4
Let the reminder feed carry the calendar
Personal tax surfaces every January, year-end statements a month before each fiscal year-end, GST/HST on each client's cadence — grouped by urgency, not recalled from memory.
Reminders
- 5
Give the core clients a portal
Retained clients sign in and see their own services, deadlines, documents and letters, so routine questions stop depending on office hours.
Client portal
What this changes
Practitioners in this position typically find the wind-down holds its shape: the retained book stays a defined list with signed scopes rather than a slowly re-expanding set of favours, and the deadlines that continue are carried by the reminder feed instead of by the habit of being in the office five days a week.
About this scenario
Related reading
Where this applies
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