Ensuring Consistency in Client Services: A Systematic Approach
This podcast episode elucidates the critical importance of establishing robust processes, policies, and procedures within accounting and bookkeeping firms. We delve into the nuances of Client Advisory Services (CAS) and emphasize that the success of such services is fundamentally rooted in effective bookkeeping practices. Through our discussions, we highlight the myriad challenges firms face when they lack standardized methodologies, illustrating the detrimental impact on client service and operational efficiency.
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes that effective client advisory services rely heavily on well-structured processes, policies, and procedures.
- Listeners are encouraged to conduct internal assessments of their firm's policies to ensure alignment with current practices and technologies.
- The hosts highlight that outdated procedures can lead to inefficiencies and errors, especially during critical busy seasons.
- Implementing technology to streamline workflow and task management is essential for enhancing productivity and client satisfaction.
- The discussion reveals that many firms underutilize their technology, employing only a fraction of its intended capabilities, which hampers overall performance.
- Lastly, the importance of having team members articulate and understand procedures is underscored to avoid miscommunication and errors in execution.
Transcript
Welcome back to the latest episode of It's Not Just the Numbers.
Speaker A:It's Not Just the Numbers is a podcast designed for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners who want to take their advisory services practice to the next level.
Speaker A:When it comes to client advisory service, we know that it's not just the numbers, but we also know that it starts with client accounting, also known as bookkeeping.
Speaker A:This podcast dives deep into the world of cares, the good, the bad and the ugly, and what we've learned from, from working with hundreds of firms around the world.
Speaker A:Plus, we'll talk to practitioners who share their insights as they work towards building a much more intentional firm that moves away from that traditional tax based accounting practice.
Speaker A:Who am I?
Speaker A:My name is Damian Greathead and my podcast host is Penny Breslin.
Speaker A:I'm sitting in a very sunny Sydney, Australia as we come into spring.
Speaker A:And Penny, where are you joining us from today?
Speaker B:Wyoming, where we're coming into fall, which will happen very quickly and it is an amazing day with only small amounts of wind.
Speaker B:And so I went out and did four miles on the river and, and it was just a great day because you gotta take them when you can get them here.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:So Penny, the podcast so far has followed pretty closely our book It's Not Just the Numbers listeners can get at CPA Trendlines.
Speaker A:And we've really focused on looking internally about what we want to build as a firm owner, what we want to build as a, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur.
Speaker A:We've looked at the team, we've looked at clients.
Speaker A:Today we're going to, we're going to get into the nuts and bolts and get into the very sexy world of processes, policies and procedures.
Speaker A:And just in case any listeners have already fallen asleep as a result of such a wonderful introduction and such a lively topic as, as policies and procedures.
Speaker A:Fear not, because it actually is, I think it's quite interesting and I'll sort of relate my first example.
Speaker A:I worked very briefly in a U.S. accounting firm in, in Northern California and two partner firm and really interestingly, two partners prepared tax returns differently.
Speaker A:The end result was the same.
Speaker A:The inputs for all intents and purposes were the same.
Speaker A:But the way in which the return process prepared, reviewed, et cetera, et ceter completely different.
Speaker A:And as I said, it was a very brief stint at, in the, in the tax world.
Speaker A:But what I saw after that and then going into this process of working with firms and helping them implement technology is this was not an isolated incident.
Speaker A:Whether it's a two partner firm, a ten partner firm.
Speaker A:In that tax preparation process, I saw huge variances within the same firm of how a tax return was actually prepared.
Speaker A:And that, and actually that might have been okay when, when there wasn't fee pressure, when there wasn't efficiency and productivity pressures.
Speaker A:But now in today's world, we can't get away with preparing a tax return four and five different ways based on the partner that's going to get the work and what we know with cas, there's no way that CAS can be successful without proper process.
Speaker A:So, Penny, that was my experience working in a firm, then going to see, working with firms, helping them implement technology.
Speaker A:What do you see or what have you seen when you step into firms to help them build their CAS practices?
Speaker B:Well, there is a story in the book which I was going to tell you about because there is a hidden cost to doing it the way you described it.
Speaker B:And it was a firm in Ohio that had hired us to go out and check their, their whole company, the policy, the procedure.
Speaker B:I was working for another outsourcing company and they wanted to outsource and they, they probably didn't want to send me out to any more of those afterwards because, hell, if they weren't ready to outsource, I didn't want to deal with them just because I.
Speaker B:Who wants to deal with people who ultimately fail?
Speaker B:So they were, There were four partners.
Speaker B:They had nine, I think.
Speaker B:No, there were three partners and they had eight account managers.
Speaker B:And they had a workflow that they spent a lot of money on.
Speaker B:And they were the typical mess and address.
Speaker B:And it was, it was, it was fascinating.
Speaker B:I mean, there were probably, you know, maybe 75, 80 people that worked there.
Speaker B:They had about five admin people.
Speaker B:And that workflow that was very expensive.
Speaker B:Not only did they pay to have the workflow, they paid to have training done on it.
Speaker B:The eight project managers were the only ones in the workflow.
Speaker B:The three partners didn't get in it, the admin didn't get in it.
Speaker B:And of the eight project managers, two of them admitted that they never used it.
Speaker B:And of the six that used it, they all just used it differently because there was no structure.
Speaker B:It was just a place where they put placeholders.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker B:Just look at them going, okay, guys, I'm sorry, who, who the hell was the idiot that did?
Speaker B:And I didn't use the word idiot.
Speaker B:I was a little bit tougher on them with that word and, you know, Penny's word.
Speaker B:And so I was like, you know, you spent all this money and then you spend money on Me coming in here.
Speaker B:Didn't you see this yourself?
Speaker B:If you had bothered to log in to your own workflow that you bought, you would have seen what I saw.
Speaker B:So I think that, that that is a problem right there.
Speaker B:You have to.
Speaker B:If you're going to buy technology to handle policies, procedures, workflow and tasking, because all of those are tied together, then take the time to look at it and honor what you just purchased.
Speaker A:But Penny, it's less about the technology because again, I've seen a lot of firms, to your point, pay a lot of money for these systems, but actually have systems or process written, you know, five, 10 years ago, sitting literally in, in binders or sitting on the server, not being followed.
Speaker B:That's the other problem is the what policies and procedures they did have were outdated and buried deep.
Speaker A:And even if it followed at all.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And even in current practice management workflow, tasking stuff.
Speaker B:And there's a difference between there's workflow and then there's tasking.
Speaker B:So the definitions are different for those.
Speaker B:They're both nouns, but tasking is also a noun and a verb.
Speaker B:But what happens is the information you need at the moment you need it is not always available.
Speaker B:It's buried deep.
Speaker B:And once it gets buried, it gets forgotten in a crisis moment.
Speaker B:And let me tell you something.
Speaker B:Two nights ago, you know, my office is this.
Speaker B:I can just say it.
Speaker B:This is the end.
Speaker B:It's the beginning of October.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So I don't know when this podcast is going to come out.
Speaker B:It's beginning of October, and two nights ago, I got two emails from two different clients about the same problem.
Speaker B:And it was like, whoa, wait a minute.
Speaker B:This was easily could have not been a problem had we followed the procedures correctly.
Speaker B:And part of the.
Speaker B:In both of these cases, the procedures were buried very deep in they.
Speaker B:So because they work on a project basis and in their workflow and so when you're working on a specific task, you have to go back to the whole project and look for that documentation.
Speaker B:Well, I have a policy in my company that you have to take those procedures, redo them so that you understand them.
Speaker B:Because remember, we're the outsourcer and we're on a different time zone, we're in a different culture.
Speaker B:So redo them the way you understand them and then disseminate it across your team.
Speaker B:We use a technology app that, that allows us to suck that data in very quickly, put it into a templated.
Speaker B:So it's a template's the same across everybody template, a procedure, assign the reading and Then assign a quiz that is automatically created from the procedure.
Speaker B:And ordinarily they do that.
Speaker B:And in these two instances, because they were special projects and not what they considered reoccurring work, they didn't bother to do that.
Speaker B:I said, okay.
Speaker B:A total of 38 hours was spent on these two special projects, and both of them had errors in them.
Speaker B:If you had just taken one hour to go dig up that policy and procedure to make sure it matched your ambition on what you had to come up with at the end of this special project, and that everybody was clear because there were four people involved, two on each.
Speaker B:Team members were involved in these two projects.
Speaker B:One hour, one hour of a little extra.
Speaker B:Let's wait and not just jump into it.
Speaker B:Let's think about it.
Speaker B:Would have made all the difference.
Speaker A:Kind of like now, where was the failure.
Speaker A:Where was the failure point there?
Speaker A:So was that.
Speaker B:Oh, definitely.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:The failure point was us.
Speaker A:Because they didn't go.
Speaker A:Because they didn't go into.
Speaker A:They didn't go into the system to read the process, to read the procedures.
Speaker A:Well, they make sure they understood those before.
Speaker B:Yeah, they have to go and pull that out.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Here's something I.
Speaker B:This is something I learned in high school from my high school science teacher, Mr. Gordon there.
Speaker B:And it was.
Speaker B:If you read something and you write something and you say something, you remember.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so I make my team rewrite the procedures, the way they interpret them.
Speaker B:We did this.
Speaker B:And here's the other.
Speaker B:And the other thing about procedures we've talked a lot about, you have to go back and revisit them.
Speaker B:And so we have this really good client, and they're in a very awesome project management workflow tasking application, of which I know the people who developed it, and they're really good people.
Speaker B:And this is a really good client.
Speaker B:And he said it's one of his toughest clients because she's very demanding.
Speaker B:And I've known her for a while, but she just started working with us.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:My team did what they told me, what I told them to do.
Speaker B:This is our policy.
Speaker B:They went through all of the procedures she gave them.
Speaker B:And she had procedures.
Speaker B:She has procedures for everything.
Speaker B:It's great.
Speaker B:I was wonderful.
Speaker B:I was excited to be able to work with her.
Speaker B:And they sent back.
Speaker B:This is what we understand that you told us to do, because we do.
Speaker B:We'll do that.
Speaker B:You know, this is what we believe we're supposed to be doing.
Speaker B:And this is the way we interpreted what you gave us.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And she called Me.
Speaker B:She goes, whoops, I guess I haven't checked my procedures for a while because some things have changed.
Speaker B:And I said, really?
Speaker B:She goes, yeah, we're using a different technology app for that.
Speaker A:We're using something completely different.
Speaker A:Geez, that would have been a bit of a shock.
Speaker B:But here's the thing is this happens to all of us, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I mean you kind of, you have to, when you get to a certain level, you have to have somebody watching that constantly.
Speaker B:Now we're handling 298 apps and everybody does everything differently.
Speaker B:So, but, so we have each team leader on team, that's their job.
Speaker B:In fact, we give them time every week to go in and look at that.
Speaker B:So the failure two nights ago, right before they did their big Pooja day off didn't go over well with me.
Speaker B:But you know, we started off as pleasant, got into the dirtiness and then I told them how gorgeous they looked in their beautiful sarees.
Speaker B:Now get off with your pooja and when you come back on Friday, get this done correctly, get this fixed.
Speaker A:But I think it's sort of an interesting part of the process in terms of, because as you said, you're working in, in your outsourcing capacity, you are working in an accounting firm, systems accounting firm processes, procedures, clients and that's going to differ for each client.
Speaker A:But I liked what you said there, that what we do is we, we get the team to receive the information, interpret it and, and explain it back to us and explain it back to the client that this is what we understand the project to be, the tools to be, etc, etc.
Speaker A:I think that's a really interesting process and I think even regardless if you're outsourcing or not, I, I would encourage firm owners to, to be thinking about that as a part of your onboarding process.
Speaker A:When you do bring new team members in, have them actually look at the policies and procedures and, and explain back to, to you, to, to their manager, to whoever what it is, the actual process is, the expectation, their understanding of it.
Speaker A:And I think that would be first and foremost a really great experience for the team coming on board just to make sure that there is clarity on what their role is and what's expected of them, but also I think just helps you ensure that.
Speaker A:Oh, hang on, no, we've changed, we've updated the tool, we've done something differently.
Speaker A:We've, we've, we've now skipped that because just as an example, because a 2x now does xyz, so we've now, we can now skip Those steps.
Speaker A:So let's get in an update.
Speaker A:And I think that would be just a really interesting part of the onboarding experience.
Speaker A:You know, even, even my receipt Bank Days and QuickBooks Days always had to present the product back to the team.
Speaker A:And the team always played the role of the accountant because they knew the questions that the accountant and bookkeepers were going to ask.
Speaker A:But regardless of your role in the company, we always had to present the product back and present the workflow back and the process back.
Speaker A:And so first and foremost, a training exercise for the new hire.
Speaker A:But secondly for the team to actually hear what the training manual says and then what needs to be updated, etc.
Speaker A:Etc.
Speaker A:So I mean, I think that's a really good example.
Speaker A:Penny, you said you use a system.
Speaker A:I don't think there's anything wrong with just sharing what's the system that you use.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's whale.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:So whale.
Speaker A:So we'll put the, the link to that in, in the show notes.
Speaker B:But again, but you know, and the other thing too is don't just like I've had people, they've, they'll had like two clients who are really tough with.
Speaker B:I wrote pages and pages and pages of information.
Speaker B:That's a lot to go through when you're trying to like do one simple task within a whole project to have to search through pages and pages of information.
Speaker B:So that was another thing that I often say is break the task down.
Speaker B:So you've got workflow, right.
Speaker B:And the workflow is the actual noun of we have this thing that we have to do.
Speaker B:And here are the steps that's right.
Speaker A:To produce this outcome.
Speaker A:We have a series of steps.
Speaker B:But here are the individual tasks within those steps.
Speaker B:And that's where the procedure should be for that particular task.
Speaker B:Because you don't want somebody having to go search through written information if you can give it to them through video.
Speaker B:We love it.
Speaker B:We have clients that give us little five minute loom videos and it's like, yes, thank you.
Speaker B:I mean that's just brilliant.
Speaker B:Because now I've got an audit.
Speaker B:Audit.
Speaker B:I've got an auditory way of listening to it.
Speaker B:I've got a visual way of listening to it and I'm actually seeing the clicks on the screen.
Speaker B:So that's covering almost all the modalities you need to get the information into any given human being.
Speaker B:Because you don't know.
Speaker B:I think we had this conversation before where my son had, you know, when he was little, teaching him how to learn his letters, using letters on a board that he rubbed on his face because he's very kinesthetic in his dyslexia didn't allow him to read it correctly, but he could get the letters a different way.
Speaker B:So everybody learns differently and you can't just assume that everybody's going to learn your way.
Speaker B:And, and the thing that got me on that one was years ago with a really good client who's been client for like 15 years now.
Speaker B:And they gave us something to do and we kept on telling them we can't do it, we can't do, we can't do it.
Speaker B:And so I said, okay, let's get on.
Speaker B:And at that time, Zoom didn't even exist.
Speaker B:I think I was using WebEx or something.
Speaker B:GoToMeeting.
Speaker B:GoToMeeting and had to get everybody on a meeting.
Speaker B:And we opened the software on their view and they went, oh, you don't have the button that you need to do that?
Speaker B:And we go, well, that's what we've been trying to tell you.
Speaker B:And they kept on saying that, that we did have it.
Speaker B:And until we actually showed them, no, we don't.
Speaker B:Well, their IT department didn't get the down low on, you know, we needed access to that button.
Speaker A:Didn't give you the right access, you.
Speaker B:Know, but, but think about the time that it takes, Think about the time that you waste when if you don't have these procedures updated and you're bringing in somebody new and they have to constantly ask you questions or they have to take time to learn it and they have to learn it through osmosis sometimes because.
Speaker A:Same as last year.
Speaker A:Yeah, follow the notes.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And fall.
Speaker B:And the notes don't really follow what they're actually the outcome needs to be.
Speaker B:So it's like you're, you just, you're, you're slowing the price down.
Speaker B:And if you're going in with value added or flat pricing, flat rate pricing, especially at the low end of cas, when you're doing that, that work that allows the numbers to be correct, think of what you think of the waste of time.
Speaker B:You don't, you can't afford, you can't afford to do it that way.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Back in the day when the tax return was, was paid for by the hour and charged by the hour, and obviously many firms are still doing it, but when you're charging by the hour, it doesn't really matter about your efficiency of productivity unless the client kicks up a stink.
Speaker B:You know what I have to say to that?
Speaker B:You know?
Speaker A:Yeah, well, no, have a mouth, have a Drink then rather than.
Speaker A:Because you will get, we'll, we'll get the explicit rating on CPA trend lines.
Speaker A:But, but I, but, but I think you're right though.
Speaker A:As you as, as you change to this fixed price and where you're bringing, you know, pricing certainty to your clients, you can't have any, any room for sort of people going off piste and doing it their own way, having no uniformity.
Speaker A:No, no consistency.
Speaker A:I think as well, when you think about cas, what's most important, it's consistency.
Speaker A:The, the outcome is, is consistency in the outcome monthly.
Speaker A:And so if we're, if we're sort of, if, if we've got four accountants or four.
Speaker A:Yeah, four accountants doing the work and they're doing it slightly different ways, the, the consistency of your output is going to be very different, which is going to make everything beyond the monthly close a challenge.
Speaker B:The other thing that happens is if you've got four accountants doing things four different ways in your office, you no longer own the client.
Speaker A:Yeah, true, they do.
Speaker A:I think the other thing as well is with today's technology and to your point about creating a loom video for processes, the number of times I've sat staring at a computer screen trying to write step one, like running payroll or something like that, or doing whatever.
Speaker B:Whereas actually once we don't even ourselves, we use co creator on the whale because while we're doing the work, we just click the button in whale and it records all our steps and it recreates the video and then it creates the document that drops, that makes all the steps.
Speaker A:And that's what I mean, that like if you.
Speaker A:Well, what I was going to say is if you, you create the loom video, create the zoom video, whatever it is, you then throw that into chat GPT, that'll take the transcript and, and transcribe it all for you and then you just go and fine tune it.
Speaker A:But obviously Whale is a great tool primarily focused on policies, procedures and standardization.
Speaker B:It's very focused on just that.
Speaker B:Whereas some workflows have that built into it, this one is just strictly for that because we're in everybody else's workflows.
Speaker A:But I will give one shout out to Whale, one feature which I think is pretty neat, that you upload a new policy procedure, a new sort of, you know, we, we uploaded some HubSpot procedures into there and, and you actually can make sure, you can assign reading to the marketing team to make sure that they've read the HubSpot procedures, then it's on them to to mark it as read so that there's a log of that.
Speaker A:But then.
Speaker B:Oh yeah.
Speaker B:And I can also tell Whale to say, create a quiz with 20 questions, making it difficult with at least four optional answers.
Speaker B:And they, as soon as they mark, they read it.
Speaker B:The next thing that comes up on their board is you have to take this quiz.
Speaker B:And I can set what I consider.
Speaker A:A passing grade, but it puts accountability back on the individual, which I think, again, I don't think people are concerned about.
Speaker A:Hang on.
Speaker A:Why is this person assigning me this quiz?
Speaker A:Because the.
Speaker A:This is part of your job.
Speaker A:This is part of your role.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's about making sure you're up to date with the latest changes and trends and, and whatever it is or changes.
Speaker B:To policies and procedures logged into anything lately.
Speaker B:Like, I very, you know, I will log in maybe once a month to a lot of the GL apps that we use.
Speaker B:And it's like, you know, things are changing drastically.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And, and, and it, and they, and in some of them, I must say, it changes.
Speaker B:And then the next day it's back.
Speaker B:And it all depends on what your server you're on, I guess.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:But it's very difficult for the average person to keep up with all of the changes in technology.
Speaker B:And it's not just you, it's not just accountants.
Speaker B:I mean, every small business owner, every human who has any kind of connectivity to the Internet and uses any kind of technological app or device like, you know, this, they're having to learn new stuff all the time.
Speaker B:But the, but the process is the same.
Speaker B:It's how we're getting to the end goal that is changing.
Speaker B:It's like the out.
Speaker B:The outcome we want is always the same.
Speaker B:But how we're getting there, the steps we take, those can change very quickly.
Speaker B:And there are more.
Speaker B:You, you don't notice that, that maybe there are a better efficiencies that have been put out.
Speaker B:Maybe somebody told you about them a month ago, but you haven't used them.
Speaker B:And now you've got to re.
Speaker B:Educate yourself.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, it's not easy.
Speaker B:And then also these people, these folks that are working for you, they're not only having to deal with doing the work.
Speaker B:They have to understand my team, they have different issues.
Speaker B:But within an office here in the United States or Canada that we work with, the people within that company also have to navigate not just the technology and not just the accounting, but the relationships.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of things that are going on.
Speaker B:So why make them.
Speaker B:In fact, reading through the chapter before we had this podcast, I came up with an idea and I posted it into Slack and I told my team, I said, okay, maybe I'm just getting out of line here, but I think we should add this to procedures for each client firm.
Speaker B:What do you think?
Speaker B:And please, if you don't think it's a good idea, let me know.
Speaker B:But maybe I'm, you know, but like you have to understand the human that you're dealing with, the human that you're doing the work for or the company, let's just put the word company or human interchangeably because we deal with individuals as well as dealing with businesses.
Speaker B:We have to understand them when we're working on their books too.
Speaker B:And I think having, you know, having to navigate that, having to navigate the changes in technology, having to navigate the chaos of, you know, of that happens on a day to day basis, have, using workflow and the tasking within the workflow and having the policies and procedures there is really helpful to the person who's actually doing the work.
Speaker A:And I'd say for people that are listening now thinking, shit, we've got to get a workflow tasking.
Speaker A:We've, let's go and see what's available.
Speaker A:Let's go and see what, what tools are out there to help us do that before you go and, and, and look for another tool to add into the, the, the tech stack.
Speaker A:Actually take a step back, bit of a tech stack audit if you will, look at the tools you currently have.
Speaker A:Because I would, I, I would strongly.
Speaker A:Oh, what do you got there?
Speaker A:You got a notebook there?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean this is one time I'm going to say use paper and pen.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And, and map it out and map out with the tools, the whiteboard, post it notes, that type of stuff, Map out that process, map out the technology that you've got in the different pieces.
Speaker B:And how does that technology interact with the next step.
Speaker B:So one of the things is you want to have is the anticipatory set, understanding what the end goal is and what the whole, you know, give me the story of what it is we're trying to accomplish here.
Speaker B:And then how does each technology and each person interact and connect?
Speaker B:And is that technology doing what you expect it to do?
Speaker B:And yeah, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to figure that part out before you sit down and write the workflow out.
Speaker B:Because all the workflows that we have, that we work with, they're all good, but they're only as good as the people that use them.
Speaker B:And they're only as good as the way they're set up.
Speaker B:And each of them can be set.
Speaker B:A lot of times we get them, and it's just like looking at a brick wall.
Speaker B:It's like there's a ton of information in here, but it's just.
Speaker B:It's flat.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:You.
Speaker B:You got.
Speaker B:You got to kind of dig in and find out what it is you need to get out of it.
Speaker B:It should be apparent.
Speaker B:It should be.
Speaker B:Knowledge is easy to accumulate.
Speaker B:Wisdom is knowing when to use that knowledge.
Speaker B:And that's the part you need to make easy.
Speaker B:Make it easy for your people to be wise.
Speaker A:I read an article, I think it might have been a white paper, And I think CPA.com and Bill did it.
Speaker A:So it's obviously quite a promotional piece.
Speaker A:But I thought one stat that came out of it, which was really interesting was for the most part, firms are utilizing only about.
Speaker A:Certainly less than 20%, but somewhere between 15 and 20% of what the technology is actually intended for.
Speaker A:And I think that's.
Speaker A:Again, that's.
Speaker A:I go into a lot of firms and you see them, they've got all of this technology, but they're really only scratching the surface of it, and they're using a piece of technology for one particular function, another piece of technology for another particular function, and there's just.
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:There's a lot of probably.
Speaker A:I don't know how to describe it, but.
Speaker A:But basically that they're not utilizing the tools that they're paying for as effectively and as efficiently as they could be.
Speaker A:And they're quite often paying for multiple applications that do the same thing, or alternatively, they're paying for separate.
Speaker A:Separate applications to do separate functions that can be taken care of within the one app.
Speaker A:And so I think that's something that we see a lot.
Speaker A:Something that I know you've done a lot, Penny, where you actually.
Speaker A:Before someone comes and works with you at Moneypenny, you actually look at their tech stack and say, what are you using that for?
Speaker A:Show me how you use that.
Speaker A:Why are you using it so this way?
Speaker A:And nine times out of 10, we're finding ways in which we can help them either eliminate some technology or alternatively make sure that they're getting more bang for their buck out of the applications that they're using.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's.
Speaker B:That's kind of.
Speaker B:That's kind of a.
Speaker B:A problem that we do have at the beginning with some of our clients, not all of them, some of them.
Speaker B:You know, we, sometimes we're very lucky and we get people that already have their, all this shit together and it's great.
Speaker B:Sometimes we get people like oh one, they had a good workflow and they, we were working with them for quite a few years in this workflow and everything was running smoothly and they got bought out.
Speaker B:They sold everybody.
Speaker B:And the new, the new owners were nice and they continued to work with us, but they decided they didn't want to pay for the workflow for the application.
Speaker B:And slowly over about a four month period, everything started to deteriorate to the point where we missed in a series of monthly reoccurring tasks of which there were 20 of them that we did in a specific, for a specific task for specific type of work.
Speaker B:And we missed one because there was no workflow to, to remind us and we had to kind of, kind of make our own checklists and somebody missed one and then they missed it because they didn't see it.
Speaker B:And three months later they called us and said why didn't you do this?
Speaker B:And you know, we took the hit.
Speaker B:But realistically, for five years it worked perfect.
Speaker B:And then you got rid of the workflow and you're expecting not just us, but even their own people to remember you.
Speaker B:You decided that, you decided that the technology wasn't worth it.
Speaker B:Wrong.
Speaker A:So, and, and while we say, while we say we're not putting people on the moon, we're not doing heart surgery or something, we're doing bookkeeping.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:In, in the world of cas, it still is pretty, there's, there's some pretty important functions.
Speaker A:Whether it's payroll, whether it's compliance and, and paying sales tax to different authorities.
Speaker A:There's some pretty important deadlines and, and steps and tasks that have to take place.
Speaker A:And if one does slip through the crack, I mean from a payroll perspective, that means someone going without their paycheck, that's a pretty big issue.
Speaker A:So again, the, the, the number of firms that I've gone into that sort of do payroll as a bit of a part time thing for a few clients and, and haven't standardized that process.
Speaker A:They're using multiple platforms, multiple processes to, to take care of payroll.
Speaker A:It's, it's just a, I don't, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't sleep soundly at night in that type of an operation.
Speaker A:Whereas the, the firms that take payroll seriously, they, they standardize.
Speaker A:It's very process driven.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:There's the playbook, right.
Speaker A:You know what they do by step?
Speaker B:They let an app do it.
Speaker B:They let an app do it.
Speaker B:And they manage the app.
Speaker A:And they manage the app.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker A:Which is, which is essentially what we're, what CAS is all about.
Speaker A:It's, it's putting the, the right technology together to let the app do it.
Speaker A:And, and as we've always said, Penny, the, the role of the accountant bookkeeper in a CAS practice changes from the payroll clerk to the, the, the, the traffic cop to the, the idea of making sure that the data is flowing correctly, etc.
Speaker A:So, and again, we, I don't think we've really talked about that, that, that analogy that much, but they let the app do it.
Speaker B:That's Namila, she calls them.
Speaker B:That's what she calls her.
Speaker B:That's what she told me.
Speaker A:They are in India, her team of accountants and.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely, Penny.
Speaker B:I think that's rocket cops in India.
Speaker B:And they see it.
Speaker A:I haven't been to India, but I'm not sure if I want to get on those roads.
Speaker B:But not bad.
Speaker A:Penny, anything else around task, Task management and workflow that you wanted to sort of touch on?
Speaker A:Because I know that I think they get used interchangeably and I don't think they should be.
Speaker B:No, they shouldn't.
Speaker B:And the workflow is the application that you're using in it and it's also what it is you're going to do to get to the end product.
Speaker B:So that's, that's.
Speaker B:Workflow is a noun.
Speaker B:That's, that's, that's just the, this is the process, the individual tasks within it, what's important.
Speaker B:And that I believe for me, I, this is just something that I believe that if I'm doing a task I.
Speaker B:That's part of a whole workflow, there may be two or three other people in that workflow, there may be multiple apps in that workflow.
Speaker B:And I need to know in order to do, I feel a good job, who's passing the baton over to me to do my part of that task.
Speaker B:And then who am I then passing it?
Speaker B:My part's done and who do I pass it on to, whether it's a human or technology?
Speaker B:And how can I verify that the information is going to come in at the right time with the right aspect and I'm going to send it out at the right time with the right aspect.
Speaker B:And you need to know what those schedules are and you need to know not only what it looks like when it's working, you need to know what it looks like when it's not working.
Speaker B:And so I would consider that's why I say write it down, draw it out on a board.
Speaker B:Okay, we've got this client, we're going to do all this work for them.
Speaker B:Here's the tech stack and here are the people involved and how do they fit into this workflow and where do they hit each task and what is required for them to be able to pick up the baton.
Speaker A:I think that sort of baton analogy is a really good one.
Speaker A:And particularly getting your team in a room and making sure you know, actually pass a baton or pass the, you know, around the office to make sure that you actually can.
Speaker A:Because I think, you know, this episode will, will go live in at the start of fall.
Speaker A:And if we sort of think about what's happening, now is the time to be doing it.
Speaker A: bookkeeping gets into sort of: Speaker B:We get into January, February, nightmare.
Speaker A:And also for those, you can do it.
Speaker B:It's going to be tough for January.
Speaker A:And also for those firms that, that this might be their first year of cas.
Speaker A:If you haven't done CAS and attack season together and you don't have your processes really nailed down, it's going to be one bumpy, one bumpy CAS season over tax season.
Speaker A:So that's something to be thinking about as well.
Speaker A:Now is the time to be looking at those policies and procedures.
Speaker B:And then the other thing is the red shirt.
Speaker A:What's the red shirt?
Speaker B:When you're writing that workflow out, make sure that you, you have everything is expendable, that you, that everybody.
Speaker B:The technology.
Speaker B:Given that if they die off like the red shirts.
Speaker A:Do you mean the technology?
Speaker B:Well, the technology can break.
Speaker B:I mean, it can shut down.
Speaker A:I just, I just wanted listeners to be like, are we talking about the, the, the people doing the work or the, the technology who's dying off?
Speaker B:All right, tell me this.
Speaker B:Have you ever heard of somebody leaving in the middle of busy season?
Speaker A:No, I joke, but also, you know, like either leaving during busy season or if they're out sick with their kids or anything along those lines.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's absolutely true.
Speaker B:Yeah, there is a multitude.
Speaker B:I just use the red shirt terminology because within the first five minutes of the show in Star Trek, somebody with the red shirt dies, but the show goes on.
Speaker B:So what do you do in this workflow when you, when you're designing it out, where are you putting in those moments where, you know, oh, if this, you know, the feces hits the ventilator right here, what's our backup plan?
Speaker A:I think so.
Speaker A:I think, I think there's probably two types of listeners to today's episode.
Speaker A:The first is the, yeah, we've got good policies and procedures, we're fine.
Speaker A:And, and so I think if that's what you're saying, I would go through that process of having your team explain them back to you, because I think that would probably bring out some of the, that example that you used of policies and procedures that were outdated, referencing different technology, etc.
Speaker A:So if, if you're sitting there listening to today's episode and you're like, you know what?
Speaker A:We're pretty good on policies and procedures.
Speaker A:Spent a lot of time, time on it.
Speaker A:Take the team off the tools for half a day, go through those critical processes, have them explained back to you, make sure that everyone sitting in that room is aware of where that baton gets handed over and is comfortable with that, knows what it is to your point around making sure that you've got some redundancy built in to your, to your processes.
Speaker A:And then I think the other listener is going to be the someone that sort of said, oh, shit, I don't know where to start.
Speaker A:And so if, if you're sitting there listening to today's episode thinking, yeah, policies and procedures need a lot of work.
Speaker A:I think the best place to start is something like Loom or Zoom or whatever, where you do the screen recording, where you talk it out, what's actually happening.
Speaker A:You, you do the process and you go through the clicks and once you've got that recording, that's an invaluable resource for your team, and then you can sort of throw it into various different tools to transcribe it, to build out proper tools to build out proper processes.
Speaker A:But that's an easy start.
Speaker A:We didn't have those tools 10 years ago.
Speaker A:Now you can just start a screen share, hit record, do the voiceover, go through the process, and then you can come back and build some really powerful processes using tools like Loom or Zoom or some sort of just your video and screen share tools.
Speaker A:Penny, what about your thoughts?
Speaker A:People with good processes, people with no processes.
Speaker B:Think that you hit that all.
Speaker B:And I think I've kind of said it, I've talked enough.
Speaker A:Well, I mean, it seems to be like, that's how we're closing out a few episodes.
Speaker A:They're like, penny, any other thoughts?
Speaker A:Like, no, I've said enough.
Speaker A:So I, I think, I think that's a really good place to end today's episode episode.
Speaker A:Penny, where can people find more information about your outsourcing services.
Speaker B:Moneypennyllc.com get me on LinkedIn.
Speaker A:Or talk to me.
Speaker A:Yeah so you can moneypenny llc.com if you're looking for help in terms of resourcing for anything from from tax and compliance to to monthly bookkeeping to CAS support you for some help to do your own firm's bookkeeping, your own firm's reporting and your own firm's payroll.
Speaker A:So back office support for you tax and and client accounting for your clients.
Speaker A:Hit us up@moneypennyllc.com we can send some more information your way.
Speaker A:But Penny, always a pleasure to see you.
Speaker A:Always a pleasure to chat with you folks.
Speaker A:If you have any questions for us, please don't hesitate to reach out to us on LinkedIn as well.
Speaker A:Send us the questions.
Speaker A:We'll do our best to answer those as well.
Speaker A:Folks, if you've enjoyed today's episode, like it, share it and help us spread the good word about what we're doing here at it's not just the numbers, but Penny, we'll see you next episode.
