VIRTUAL CFO

You Have to Manage Three Kinds of Procedures

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Smiling woman using smartphone

Need help with internal procedures? Here are three apps for organizing them.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

There is a symbiotic relationship between your technology and your processes. You have to consider both, or you won’t get the full benefit.

MORE: Federated Search: What It Is, Why It Matters | Creating a Back Office Support Playbook | Strengthen Client Ties with Workflow Tools | Understand Your Online Marketing Options | Narrow Your Prospects by Choosing a Vertical | Build Your Team, Then Choose Your Clients | How Back Office Support Adds Value
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McKinsey Global has been researching the impact of automation around the world, and (no surprise) found that when companies try to retrofit technology to fit into existing processes, “companies end up with a patchwork of incongruous technology tools that automate separate and distinct parts of the process. This approach is fine for capturing the first 5 percent or so of automation’s impact. But unlocking the full potential requires a fundamentally different way of thinking. To capture that potential, managers must be willing to re-engineer their processes completely.”
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Federated Search: What It Is, Why It Matters

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computer screen littered with icons
Take a look at your team’s desktops.

 

Imagine a world without subfolders.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Much has been done to help people deal with information overload. Desktop search tools have made it easier to find a piece of data hidden among all the other data stored on your system. But what about all the data available on portals, stored in shared drives, and trapped in business applications, let alone the valuable information stored in various employees’ heads?

MORE: Creating a Back Office Support Playbook | Tech Tips for Back Office Support | Decoding Accounting Tech (and All Those Acronyms) | Digital Marketing Strategies Level the Playing Field | Eight Tasks to Delegate Today | Advisory Services Done Your Way | AI Is Not Your Enemy
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This information is vital to your firm. Employees need this data to do their jobs, and they need it quickly.
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Creating a Back Office Support Playbook

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Process Touch Screen Showing Workflow Design

How to develop procedures every client can follow.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

As back office support, you assist your clients in making timely and accurate business decisions. In the past, you worked on hourly billing doing compliance management. Everything was about time.

MORE: Tech Tips for Back Office Support | Accounting Tech Tools to Minimize Your Pain | Do Your Apps Play Well with Others? | It’s OK to Have Favorite Clients | Ten Questions for Teamwork | Yes, You Can Be an Outsourcer | How Back Office Support Adds Value
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When you did work for a client, you may have billed out an $18-per-hour employee at a rate of $60 per hour. When your employee took the time to call the client for the documents, walked down the hall to ask someone how they had previously handled a transaction, then waited for a document to show up with nothing to do until it showed up – all of this time was billed hourly.
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James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More

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Firm poised to double in size with CFO services.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

James Graham’s firm, Richtr Financial Studio, gave up the billable hour 10 or 15 years ago, and Graham points to that choice as making the biggest difference in his firm.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow | Jody Padar: Build a Practice that Works for You, Not Vice-Versa | Ira Rosenbloom: With M&A, Nobody Wants a Fixer-Upper | Peter Margaritis: The Power Skills Every Accountant Needs | Joe Montgomery: Find the Sweet Spot of the Right Clients, Right Services and Right Prices | Marie Green: Your Bad Apples Are Ruining You | Megan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than Compliance | Clayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for Life |

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He said it’s because “it really changes the nature of your relationship with the client” when the client is no longer looking at the clock with “that dollar per hour in the moment, always hanging over any interaction.” By removing the focus on time, “it allows everyone to move forward better because the focus is on running the business.”

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Workflow Tools Only as Good as Their Users

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Software is just the beginning. Consistency is the key.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Workflow. Tasking. These two words are thrown around quite a bit and sometimes they are used interchangeably. So, let’s get this part defined a bit more.

MORE: Tech Tips for Back Office Support | Accounting Tech Tools to Minimize Your Pain | Do Your Apps Play Well with Others? | It’s OK to Have Favorite Clients | Ten Questions for Teamwork | Yes, You Can Be an Outsourcer
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Workflow definition: noun, the sequence of industrial, administrative or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion

Tasking definition: noun, a piece of work to be done or undertaken

verb, assign a piece of work to

Workflow is always a noun and tasking can be either a noun or a verb. No wonder people get this confused.
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Tech Tips for Back Office Support

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BONUS: A case study with LOTS of specifics.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

I love the question I get when I set up someone on back office support systems. “What do I need to have to get this started?”

MORE: Accounting Tech Tools to Minimize Your Pain | Strengthen Client Ties with Workflow Tools | Understand Your Online Marketing Options | Narrow Your Prospects by Choosing a Vertical | Build Your Team, Then Choose Your Clients | How Back Office Support Adds Value
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I tell them I need to know your name, address, phone number, EIN/SSN and your passwords. Except for the guy who closed his bank account and had to have the old statements mailed to him, I run with a Chromebook and make sure there is accessible Wi-Fi when I go onsite. If I need to collect documents that have never been digitized, I just have them download Dext and start snapping pics. No paper, no pen, no mess and typically a stunned prospect who wants to become a client. See, I can’t sell, so I let the technology do the selling for me.
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Accounting Tech Tools to Minimize Your Pain

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a businessman with some jigsaw puzzle pieces in his hand

Concrete ways that small to midsized firms can build their back office support.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Obtaining the source documents is the most difficult aspect of being a virtual back office support (BOS). Waiting for documents is the death knell for this type of work.

MORE: Strengthen Client Ties with Workflow Tools | Decoding Accounting Tech (and All Those Acronyms) | Digital Marketing Strategies Level the Playing Field | Eight Tasks to Delegate Today | Advisory Services Done Your Way | AI Is Not Your Enemy
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Luckily, technology has provided tools to take away this pain.

Here are just five of the tools we use currently to collect information from our clients:
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Strengthen Client Ties with Workflow Tools

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BONUS: A solution for authentication code headaches.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Managing tasks and workflow through email, handwritten notes, telephone messages or walking down the hall is a recipe for disaster. A web-based tasking app, preferably linked to your document management system, allows the back office support to inspect what they expect:

  • Recurring tasks done on time and accurate load leveling of resources
  • Audit trail of work
  • Set up, review, make notes, share information and complete tasks while maintaining the relationship with the client

MORE: Decoding Accounting Tech (and All Those Acronyms) | Do Your Apps Play Well with Others? | It’s OK to Have Favorite Clients | Ten Questions for Teamwork | Yes, You Can Be an Outsourcer
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Tasking applications come on the market regularly and there are a few that are specific to the accounting industry. They can run the gamut in price ranges and capabilities. From Advance Flow to 17 Hats, a firm large to small can find one that will work and fulfill 80 percent of their needs. Below are some we work with and that get high reviews with our staff:
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Decoding Accounting Tech (and All Those Acronyms)

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How to choose what’s best for your team and clients.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

With accounting software and add-ons, from the standpoint of the person maintaining the “books,” the accounting program is the focal point. However, consider the focus of your business-owning client.

MORE: Do Your Apps Play Well with Others? | Understand Your Online Marketing Options | Digital Marketing Strategies Level the Playing Field | It’s OK to Have Favorite Clients | Narrow Your Prospects by Choosing a Vertical | Eight Tasks to Delegate Today | Ten Questions for Teamwork | Build Your Team, Then Choose Your Clients | Advisory Services Done Your Way | Yes, You Can Be an Outsourcer | How Back Office Support Adds Value
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Their focus is operational. So, consider that for the business owner, the add-on is the accounting program. Having the correct package of cloud-based programs turns the accounting program into a basic general journal that you, in your accounting hat, use to find any inconsistencies.
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Do Your Apps Play Well with Others?

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Be careful as you gather your ideal technology.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Software is always changing, and new products come to market quicker than ever before. Twenty-five years ago, software such as QuickBooks, Peachtree, ACCPAC and MAS changed how we did accounting. Ledger books became a thing of the past as we could now review ledgers on a computer screen. In the last nine years, cloud-based systems have radically changed accounting once again.

MORE: Understand Your Online Marketing Options | Digital Marketing Strategies Level the Playing Field | Eight Tasks to Delegate Today | Advisory Services Done Your Way | How Back Office Support Adds Value | AI Is Not Your Enemy
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

The technology landscape can be confusing, but that will always be the case. Your goal is to find what works for you and train your team and clients on a limited number of products that can become the base of your work. We call this our Little Black Dress.
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