Workflows are what make a firm run — smoothly or not. A poor workflow will impede growth and make an otherwise efficient person or group less effective at their jobs.
Simply put, an accounting workflow is how you keep track of projects. It enables everyone within a firm to know what tasks are in progress, who is working on them, and the timelines associated. An efficient workflow allows accountants to:
- Gain clarity on projects: Quickly know who is assigned to a specific task, what has been finished, and what is still in progress.
- Improve efficiency: Create templates, assign tasks in bulk, and build out automation to free up time previously spent on repetitive administrative work
- Reduce errors: Workflow automation drastically lowers human error rates
How do you know if you are optimizing your firm’s workflow? There are clear symptoms of a firm operating without an optimized workflow, which can be detrimental to productivity. Like we saw in a recent study by Canopy, 69% of accountants lose time gathering documents from clients, while 79% spend too much time tracking down files within their own firms. Other symptoms include:
- Spreadsheets and sticky notes dominate how you manage work.
- You can’t respond to clients on time because emails get lost in your inbox and client communications are disparate.
- Things get forgotten because you carry a large mental load of what needs to be done.
- Your firm invoices manually.
- You are losing clients faster than you can find them.
- Making improvements to your firm is hard because you don’t even know where to start.
- No one knows what anyone is working on because tasks are decentralized and client management is not transparent or consistent across the accounting firm.
There are many workflow solutions available that solve these issues, but piecing together a variety of software solutions for each of these issues often makes things less efficient rather than really helping. A great option for optimizing your workflow — and your firm’s overall efficiency — is a holistic practice management solution that eliminates the need for multiple pieces of software focusing on individual pain points.
Some tangible benefits of using practice management software to improve your workflow are:
Transparency
Having a dashboard that outlines everyone’s tasks drastically reduces the time spent toggling between tools looking for the right information and can help eliminate errors. Having access to detailed task insights can also help accountants accurately share information with clients about the status of their account, which in turn builds higher levels of trust. It also helps eliminate frustration, errors and burnout among staff members.
Accounting workflow software also keeps track of operational data, providing the information necessary to make more informed business decisions on workflow, bandwidth and team capacity.
Templates
Repetitive tasks and processes within an accounting firm can take up a big part of an accountant’s time, but templates can be a game changer for improving efficiency by removing the need to fill out the same information repeatedly.
In addition to significantly improving productivity, templates make it easier and quicker to train new employees. You can do the work one time to set up the template and then repeat that same process over and over. Also, If someone leaves the firm, the standard operating procedure isn’t lost with them. This can be particularly helpful during employee transitions or when the firm hires seasonal employees.
The consistency templates typically bring typically leads to happier employees and clients.
Automation
In the same vein as templates, automating every process that can be automated has become paramount. Work can quickly be difficult to manage when your day is bogged down keeping up manually with tasks, staying on top of client work, managing project status, and knowing what everyone is working on.
Client organizers
A client tax organizer helps accountants get the answers they need from clients to facilitate their workflow and is a crucial part of any accounting firm. With a workflow software solution, client organizers can be sent proactively, in bulk via email, and then the responses can be recorded, stored, and attached to client folders — making the lives of both the accountant and client easier.
Client satisfaction
Better workflow leads to more informed and efficient employees. This translates into better information being shared with clients, faster turnaround times and happier clients. The final takeaway is that by investing the time to find the right workflow solution for your firm, you will find greater efficiency within your firm and your clients will be more satisfied
