This article is a follow-up to the 03/31/2015 episode of QB Power Hour on “Product, Price, and Process of a QuickBooks Advisor” The PROCESS portion was covered by Laura Redmond with a demo of Aero Workflow. If you did not attend the live webinar, here is the recording:
Enhance your Workflow with Aero by Laura Redmond
Many businesses find success by improving their 3 P’s: product, price and process. Here we’ll dive into ways to optimize your accounting firm’s process by managing workflow with Aero. Aero is a web-based app that staff access from their computer or smart phone browser. Staff work from a prioritized list of assignments. Each assignment provides a checklist of steps and resources. This makes for effective workflow.
Workflow can be defined as a sequence of steps that make up a process for performing work. We hear the word “workflow” often in today’s business environment. In this article, we are referring specifically to an accounting firm’s workflow for service delivery. Once you close a sale, the next part – the service delivery – is critical. Not only does the firm want to deliver the superior services promised, but they want to make a profit on them. Aero organizes workflow for the purpose of increasing productivity in your firm. It is important that firms recognize the benefits of defining their services and identify what can make the delivery of these services more efficient.
The first step in enhancing your workflow is to take advantage of your firm’s knowledge capital. This is the single biggest factor in making service-delivery efficient. It is the responsibility of the firm to define their services – what they are selling and exactly how they will perform this work. This is their knowledge capital, their secret sauce. The firm will use this knowledge capital to create revenue.
Once services are defined, Aero helps firms organize the setup, performance, and tracking of the workflow in such a way as to transform their knowledge capital, staff, computers and apps…into profitable services. It organizes the assignment of work to staff and clients at the proper interval to clearly inform every person in the firm exactly what they need to do and when they need to do it.
Aero gives staff everything they need to perform their work efficiently, effectively, and consistently. When staff log in, they see a list of tasks expected of them, ranked by priority, so that they know what they need to do, even when managers are unavailable. Each task provides resources at their fingertips, such as a step-by-step checklist and web links to apps and procedure guides for full explanations and print-screens. Client information needed to perform work, such as a list of contacts, usernames and passwords, tax ID#, capitalization threshold, internal comments, and list of other scheduled work for the client is easily available in a secure, central location. Email is a big part of our daily workflow, so if you use gmail, then you can also pull your client’s emails into Aero. Imagine reading your email, having client resources at your fingertips, and recording time associated against it.
As staff perform their work, Aero’s timer is tracked automatically. If paying hourly staff, they don’t have to punch a time clock in and out, their time is automatically recorded as they work. If billing your clients hourly, Aero captures all time associated to work performed. If using QBO, these time tracking entries are pushed to QBO, so you can pull them onto an invoice. If value pricing, this helps you watch for scope creep and analyze the work effort against the income to determine whether this is a successful engagement
When work is not well-defined, staff may waste time trying to find their way or performing work that is out of scope of the agreement. When necessary resources are not provided, staff may need to stop work to contact you or another, to find out a password, or some other information. When staff can not access the central log of communication and activity between your firm and the client, staff may replicate already-performed work or spin their wheels trying to provide a team effort from a silo.
Staff is one of a firm’s greatest assets. Firms need to manage staff availability and labor costs, but must also acknowledge that it is the responsibility of the firm to provide staff with clear work assignments. Staff are trained, intelligent people that want to do great work. They are often certified or experienced in the type of work you hired them for. Staff don’t want to be micro-managed. Constant supervision is difficult when you have staff working remotely; you can’t always look over at their desk and watch them. You don’t want to interrupt them all day, because that will slow them down. Aero Workflow gives staff the information they need to work autonomously. This is a powerful effect that allows staff to take ownership of their work and makes for a happier workforce.
When the knowledge capital is defined and organized in a workflow management app like Aero, you can watch your firm at work. With Aero workflow, you can proactively manage the firm and make adjustments and improvements, as needed. Aero tracks all workflow across all staff and clients, client information, employee time, outstanding projects…so that you can analyze the information.
- See what work is being performed at this minute
- See if your staff deferred any work and determine whether you need to help solve a roadblock
- See how much work is scheduled for staff or for clients
- Bulk re-assign work to other staff when someone goes on vacation
- Watch for bottlenecks and scope creep on value-pricing engagements
- Know when you can take on more client work or when you need to hire more staff
- Track the average time it takes to perform a particular service
- Analyze work performed to determine whether it is profitable or not
- See current and future work, making it easy to allocate firm resources ahead of time
Freeing yourself as a bottleneck and empowering your staff to do their work without interference allows you to focus on the bigger picture and position your firm for the future.
About Laura Redmond
Laura Redmond is founder of Redmond Accounting Inc, a boutique cloud accounting firm in Silicon Valley awarded Intuit’s 2015 Top 20 Firm of the Future and a top 10 ProAdvisor for “Leading QuickBooks Online Practice”. Redmond Accounting’s workflow is based around QuickBooks Online and its ecosystem of apps.
Laura co-authors Intuit’s QuickBooks Online training and certification programs for accounting professionals. She is a regular speaker at national accounting technology conferences and member of Intuit’s esteemed Trainer / Writer Network. She joined forces with industry colleagues to co-create Aero Workflow app for accounting firms to manage multiple recurring activities, clients and staff.