CAS

Four steps to asserting control.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Permissions are key. In our company only three people have a connection to their local C drive from our managed server. Also, we can track who is logged in, from where, how long and what they accessed.

MORE: Sixteen Guidelines for Naming Conventions | Revisit Your Back Office Support Procedures | Federated Search: What It Is, Why It Matters | Accounting Tech Tools to Minimize Your Pain | Do Your Apps Play Well with Others? | It’s OK to Have Favorite Clients
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If documents are in our cloud storage, the permissions to download them can be turned off. Viewing is done from within the document storage app. Nothing is perfect. They can still take a screenshot but we attempt to keep things as closed as possible while still allowing for work and efficiency.
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Why they matter so much.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

One of the most time-consuming parts of reconciliation is attempting to discover why or where to allocate expenses. You want to find and pay the correct vendor. You also want to be sure that you have the vendor’s correct name and tax ID number when 1099 reporting time rolls around, yet it won’t be easy to do so if you do not have a consistent vendor naming convention.

MORE: Revisit Your Back Office Support Procedures | Every Back Office Support Client Needs a Playbook | 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
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Consistent naming conventions are a critical component of good file management. The same is true if customer names are in the accounting program. Any list really needs to have consistency of entry. Duplicates and linking to the wrong record are common mistakes that take time to find and fix.
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Remember it’s not just your team on board, it’s also your clients.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Once you have your procedures, you can assign tasks to your team members. Because we perform back office work for many accounting firms, we often adapt to other firms’ workflows. We are often on their workflows for our tasking but internally we also needed a simple means of tasking. Another easily integrated app with Slack provided this, Teamline. With Teamline we just type /teamline into any channel and:

• Create a new task on the fly or use a premade template
• Assign it to a team member
• Set a due date
• Attach a file
• Add a checklist of items

MORE: Every Back Office Support Client Needs a Playbook | You Have to Manage Three Kinds of Procedures | 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

Teamline notifies both the assignee and the creator as to the progress of the task automatically. Integration to our Google calendar puts the Teamline task into the calendar. We never leave Slack while doing this as the integration between Slack, Teamline and Google calendar is seamless.
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Here’s the specific information that should be included.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

We use OneNote to create a firm playbook for each client we work with. This program allows you to record voice and video and save it to a page or implant videos directly into the relevant OneNote page.

MORE: You Have to Manage Three Kinds of Procedures | Federated Search: What It Is, Why It Matters | 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
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

We get lots of Zoom recordings on procedures from firms. In our world, the OneNote template has a specific page for all videos as a subpage for each client. This OneNote book resides on the shared server so that all the team members can access it at any time to verify, review or update procedures.
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