Hurricanes Harvey and Irma — Disaster Planning: It’s Back to Basics for Your Firm and Clients

“The best situation is to be proactive by planning before a natural disaster ever takes place,” he says. “Try to scan receipts and documentation for important purchases, and other documents such as wills and trusts, to store on the cloud, particularly if you have the only original copy that can be destroyed or lost. Take photos and videos of your home, and personal belongings such as furniture, jewelry and other expensive items that would provide losses for tax purposes.”

With technology in today’s environment, we all know it’s easier to prepare and plan for a natural disaster than it was more than a decade ago when Hurricane Rita hit, for example. Poulos says the biggest challenge is to be proactive and plan for a disaster, even though no one wants to experience something catastrophic.

“One of the first and most important things someone should do once they are able to access their home is to take photos of the property, vehicle and personal belongings before they start cleaning up or file an insurance claim,” he says. “Having proof of the damaged property and belongings can be crucial for providing proof of casualty losses in the event a client gets audited.”

Many practitioners feel they are immune to being involved in crisis and disaster planning, but think again. Tax and accounting professionals have the right mix of competencies and skills that would be very helpful in case a disaster occurs – from the way they analyze numbers and plan for the future to their extensive knowledge of the company’s history, goals, technology and systems.

When clients are going through a crisis, they should turn to their accountant for help. In fact, I have found that many accountants readily offer their clients proactive business continuity and disaster planning services, which, of course, is much more useful than having to put the pieces together after disaster has struck.

A crisis can occur anytime, anywhere, and it can strike in a variety of ways. This involves natural disasters, including hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and earthquakes, and man-made disasters such as arson. Intentional disasters, such as terrorism, also wreak havoc, but the cause and effect of terrorism is probably the subject for another article.

Based on my discussions with firms, here are two primary areas you can review to help yourself and your clients with disaster planning. The goal, of course, is to avoid business disruptions.

1. Backup, backup, backup.

While this may seem obvious for some firms, I know there are firm partners and employees reading this who are scratching their heads wondering whether they are actually backed up. With today’s technology, there is no reason a firm can’t have its data backed up, redundantly, in more than once place. Include an offsite backup, along with a cloud backup.

There are quite a few cloud-based programs for backup; I use Carbonite and love it. It’s affordable and completely scalable. In addition, designate someone at your firm to be the point person to keep up with backups to ensure the firm is always up to date.

While many firms are paperless, or surely deal with less paper, the firm should identify hard copy documents that cannot currently be re-created electronically. While just about everything can be electronic or paperless, we all must live with some paper. In a firm, this may include files, contracts and financial data. You can also develop corrective procedures to eliminate potential loss of documents, and, of course, consider paperless solutions, including scanning and cloud-based storage.

2. Create a crisis plan.

Regardless of size, scope or location, every business ought to have a crisis plan. And, make time to update the plan regularly. I’ve seen a lot of firm crisis plans and all of them are a bit different; here’s a good resource from Ready.gov.

Firm crisis plans will want to have the following components in their plan:

• Contact information for employees, along with a phone tree with “captains” designated to call their group in order to see if everyone is safe, while also providing notifications and updates for office closure and reopening.
• A written procedure and messaging examples to contact clients by email, for many of the same reasons as stated above, but also to inform them of any kind of business interruption.

In addition, measure and evaluate by testing the plan. My clients probably get tired of hearing me talk about this, but you must measure and evaluate what you’re doing in order to improve. If a disaster were to occur, you should create an evaluation checklist, asking, “How did we do?” You can even stage a mock disaster and evaluate how the firm did.

The Bottom Line: Survival

If you think you’re too busy to actually backup systems, create a crisis plan or even think this won’t happen to you, then you’re doing yourself a real injustice. Not only will you not be prepared should something happen; you are also short changing yourself and affecting the fate of everyone at the firm.

You can make this task a little easier on yourself by delegating some of the responsibility or actions, and even doing a bit at a time. If something happens, let’s hope you’re prepared for the worst scenario possible. Good luck!

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Scott H. Cytron is president of Cytron and Company, known for helping companies and organizations improve their bottom line through strategic public relations, communications, marketing programs and top-notch client service. An accredited consultant, Scott works with companies in professional services (medical, legal, accounting, engineering), high-tech and B2B/B2C product/service sales.