If you’re an accountant in the process of expanding your practice, you’ll know how busy life can get. When moving forward it can be complicated to lose sight of the bigger picture and keep track of the flow of your business. If you find things are going amiss, or you or your staff are feeling overwhelmed, it might be time to start looking into your workflow.
What is workflow?
Workflow is a sequence of steps that are required to complete an activity. Workflows are critical components of any business, as they help ensure that important tasks are completed and don’t fall through the cracks. If you’ve ever had to submit receipts for reimbursement or write off an expense, then you’ve experienced a workflow first-hand. The ideal workflow should be efficient, effective, and flexible enough to allow a user to easily adjust their processes as needed. It should also be easy to use—if your employees have trouble navigating it, they’ll likely give up on using the tool altogether and revert to old habits like emailing documents around instead of sending them straight into accounting software for processing. The workflow in an accounting practice is important for both employees and customers, which is why it’s vital to nail the process.
Make notes and reflect on your current process
To create a successful workflow, you need to first evaluate the current workflows in your accounting practice. This will give you an accurate picture of what is and isn’t working in your business. Once you have this information, it’s time to start designing the new workflow.
- The first step in creating a new workflow is taking notes on your current processes and reflecting on them so that you can see where there are gaps or inconsistencies between employees’ responsibilities.
- Next, consider how employees currently feel about their jobs and whether their roles align with what they want out of life—even if that means changing things around at work for the sake of employee happiness (and therefore company productivity).
- Finally, take into account what each employee brings to the table; this means taking into consideration not just skill level but also personality type when assigning tasks within each process step (e.g., someone who is detail-oriented would do better completing certain steps than another who is more creative).
Look at your resources
A successful workflow means that you are able to provide a high level of service to your clients, while also maintaining a healthy level of profitability for your practice. To create a successful workflow, it’s important to look at all of the resources available in your practice and determine what will help you achieve these goals. Look at Your resources first and foremost and consider how strong each individual is in an area. What are their strengths? How can they contribute most effectively? What areas do they struggle with and how can they improve on their weaknesses? Thinking about this will help give you an idea of what types of tasks each person could handle on their own as well as which ones would require help from another employee or vendor. Next, ask yourself what are some goals that need to be achieved by certain deadlines so that everyone knows exactly where they stand within the organisation now and how close or far away you are from achieving those benchmarks for success down the road. Now think about who your customers are individually: what does each customer need from us? Let’s say you have a client who needs bookkeeping services; ask yourself do I have enough people working specifically on bookkeeping projects so that when one finishes another picks up where she left off without falling behind schedule etc.
If you’re struggling to meet these demands, you can use a flexible co-sourcing module that will help you pick and choose the hours of service for bookkeeping and payroll staff.
Take employee’s thoughts into consideration
It’s important to consider the needs and priorities of your employees when creating a workflow because they’re the backbone of your business. You need them to be happy and productive in order for things to run smoothly. They can also provide valuable input on how to improve your processes for efficiency. After all, you don’t want an unhappy employee quitting just because he or she doesn’t like doing something—it could cost you a lot more than just that person’s salary! When employees feel their opinions are heard, it increases their sense of involvement in the workplace. They’ll also work harder because they feel valued as part of the team and care about what happens with the company.
Design your workflow step by step
The first step to creating an accounting workflow is to start with a blank slate. While it can be tempting to just go ahead and implement your current processes without much thought, this is not the way to create a successful workflow for your practice. Instead, take the time to map out all the steps involved in each task, from client intake through billing and payment.
While doing this you should consider what tools you want or need for each part of the process. For example, if your firm uses QuickBooks desktop software as its financial management system but has been looking at switching over to Xero, then it’s important that all data input into QuickBooks can be exported into Xero format so that clients won’t have trouble accessing their financial information later on down the road when they switch platforms themselves (or if they decide not to).
Make sure whatever tools you find fit well together—for example, if your firm uses TrackVia but also wants access through a web browser then there may be significant difficulty in getting both programs working together smoothly enough, so everyone gets what they need quickly without being slowed down by technical issues like authentication problems or lack thereof.
Put your workflow to the test
Once you’ve created your new workflow and implemented it, it’s time to test it. This is a crucial step. It’s important to test on a small scale first before scaling up because what might work for one person or business may not be right for yours. You’ll want to make sure all the pieces are working together as they should, that they aren’t causing any bottlenecks in the process, and that they’re producing accurate information. You can even set up some metrics or goals based on your testing, so you get an idea of how effective your workflow really is when put into practice!
