Issue #16 - All hail the mighty spreadsheet
+ why you shouldn't skip lunch breaks + how Acuity Accounting optimizes their workflow
Welcome to "Get Work Done," where we discuss the complexities of running accounting and bookkeeping firms efficiently. Brought to you by Financial Cents and delivered to your inbox every 2 weeks.
Small change, big difference
All hail The Mighty Spreadsheet.
A loyal tool through many years and seasons — from your days in college as an accounting student, to analyzing your first paying client’s financial statements, to tracking your plethora of tasks when your clientele grew.
The Mighty Spreadsheet is arguably a G.O.A.T.
But now you’ve realized that it might be time to move on, or at least reduce your dependency on it. It probably started with one incidence, then another, and you desperately want to prevent another one from happening.
Maybe you’ve experienced version control issues that compromised important data? Privacy & security concerns? Missed deadlines that led to hefty fines? Or, it simply has become too burdensome to manage now that you have more clients and employees?
The biggest issue we’ve heard from firm owners, however, when it comes to tracking work with spreadsheets is they never know where they’re at with their tasks, leading to things falling through the cracks. And, they have to manually update the status of work.
If any of these have been your experience, here’s a small change you can make to see a big difference:
Gradually transition away from using spreadsheets.
How? Get an accounting workflow software and use your spreadsheets along with it. Here’s how to do it.
Firm spotl💡ght
Acuity Accounting provides online bookkeeping, accounting, tax, and CFO services for entrepreneurs. The firm boasts 150+ employees and 2,400+ entrepreneurs served. Founded in 2004 by Kenji Kuramoto, Matthew May joined the firm as President in 2013.
In this episode of the Accounting Flow Podcast, host Roman Villard sits down with Matthew May for a deep dive into optimizing your firm’s processes for peak performance in 2024.
Take a listen below:
Excerpts below:
Matthew:
So what we found with if you do a checkbox, what happens is they do their normal stuff, and then they come back and check off the boxes, like a good employee. But what we’ve tried to move through and personally, my goal is to eliminate to where nobody’s checking a box unless it does something for them. So that could be a team notification and a Slack channel that that task is done, that could be a some kind of zap that triggers something down the road, like that could be a spreadsheet that gets created. It could be an update in Salesforce, like the that the financials are delivered, things like that. So we have more of a kind of a hybrid, and sort of a workflow tool, we have a hybrid training / automation enabler going on. So it’s a little bit different way to think of workflow management.
H🔥t topics
Discovering ADHD After 30 Years: Blake Oliver’s Journey and How It Has Shaped His Career
Picture this: you’re sitting down with your family for a relaxed dinner when, out of nowhere, your mother casually reveals a piece of your history that changes everything—”Oh, by the way, you’ve had ADHD since you were 10.” That’s exactly what happened to Blake Oliver.
After 30 years, the founder of Earmark and a successful CPA discovered that the key to many of his life’s challenges and victories had been hidden in plain sight.
Diagnosed with ADHD as a child but unaware of it until adulthood, Blake’s journey is one of resilience, creativity, and adapting to a neurodivergent way of thinking that has shaped both his personal life and his career in public accounting.
Financial Cents recently spoke with him about how living with ADHD fuels his creativity and ability to see things differently.
Outsourcing? Here are some professional liability risks you should know
Outsourcing can take various forms, whether collaborating with a solo subcontractor or a larger team, and can occur both domestically and offshore. Regardless of the model chosen, CPA firms retain ultimate responsibility for the services provided to their clients; this responsibility cannot be transferred.
Before diving into any outsourcing arrangement, it’s crucial for CPAs to recognize the professional liability risks involved and explore strategies to mitigate those risks effectively. You need to stay informed to protect your firm and your clients. In an article for the Journal of Accountancy, Deborah K. Rood CPA broke down everything you need to know.
Did you hear?
Financial Cents has launched a $9/month solo plan with all the features you need to manage your workload, clients, and documents. Check it out.
Swipe this workflow template
Get this Clean-up Project Plan & Timeline Guide by Justine Lackey, so you have a proven framework to help you complete your clean-up projects on time, every time.
Editorial correction: There was a typo in the template creator’s name in the last issue. It has now been corrected. The creator is Justine Lackey, not Justin Lackey.
Meme
FOMO events
October 22 & 23
WorkflowCon 2024 is back in October! 🎉
WorkflowCon is the only event focused on helping accounting firms get their workflow right. It's 100% virtual and free to attend. Last year, 800+ accounting, bookkeeping, and tax professionals joined us.
This year's theme is FREEDOM TO SCALE. Some of our speakers include Brandon Hall, Logan Graf, Kelly Rohrs, Dawn Brolin, Erica Goode, Keila-Hill Trawick, Kellie Parks, Zane Stevens, Chad Davis, and Nancy McClelland.
September 22 - 26
[Ai]ppy Hour Camp 2024
An Intentional Accounting Educator Retreat to propel the accounting industry forward. This is a life-changing event you don’t want to miss!
Oct 8 - 10
AI Unchained by BotKeeper
Bringing together automation and artificial intelligence technology with networking and education in a high-energy event packed with surprises, AI Unchained goes to Santa Rosa, California in beautiful Sonoma County for 2024.
Noteworthy
How to systemize your solo accounting firm and get work done
For solo accountants, the challenges are unique. Without a team to delegate tasks to, the burden of managing every aspect of the business falls squarely on your shoulders.
This can lead to burnout, missed deadlines, and a decline in the quality of work. Systemization offers a solution by streamlining processes, reducing manual work, and freeing up time to focus on higher-value tasks.
In this article, we guide you through the steps to systemize your solo accounting firm, allowing you to get work done more efficiently and scale (whatever that means for your solo firm) with ease.
More organizations are turning to AI in the finance function
The financial sector has long been recognized for its data-driven approach and its adoption of emerging technologies to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, detect fraud, and streamline operations. It’s no surprise, then, that AI is becoming a pivotal tool for innovation in this space.
Financial firms are leveraging AI in numerous ways to improve operations, elevate the customer experience, and strengthen risk and fraud detection. As AI technology continues to evolve, we’re witnessing new levels of efficiency, personalization, and monitoring capabilities emerge. Stay tuned as this trend reshapes the industry landscape!
Skipping your lunch break while working from home? Workplace experts say it could harm your longevity and drain your social battery.
The shift towards flexible work arrangements has largely been embraced by both employees and employers, with many acknowledging the benefits for morale, productivity, and collaboration.
However, working from home presents some challenges, particularly when it comes to lunch breaks.
In a recent discussion, Isabel Berwick of the Financial Times interviewed Professor Nick Bloom from Stanford University. He noted that office workers tend to take regular lunch breaks, while their remote counterparts often experience little to no decline in activity during that time. This highlights a potential downside of remote work that could affect work-life balance.
Until next time,
