In our last piece (“Taking The "Pain" Out of Onboarding Workflow”), we uncovered some great resources and apps to help get you started in creating your firm's onboarding workflow. We covered organizational tasks diagramming, intake proposal options, meeting scheduling options and platforms that help with client experience.
For this article, I want to talk about the elephant in the room—workflow management. We all need it. And while we all have some form of it, is it productive? Onboarding clients is great. Growth is great, but how you manage that work once they are onboard is the key.
Part of the onboarding process is understanding what that client wants and how you can achieve that goal will be the workflow. A great way to do that is to initiate it once a proposal is signed. We have our workflow for each client generated based on what type of proposal/engagement letter is signed.
For example, if a client just wants clean up services, we would send a clean-up proposal and, once signed, their tasks will auto-populate based on a clean-up template we use. In these workflow tools, there are several accounting and bookkeeping templates to help get you started.
Examples of Workflow Tools:
- Karbon
- Monday.com
- ClickUp
- Zapier
- AirSlate (PDFfiller)
Once you have a solid workflow in place, it is great to begin documenting each process/task. It is so nice to take a day off and in order to do so, good process documentation must be in place. This will help for anyone to see certain ways of doing things and how to step in while you are away.
These tools also help with teaching your clients how to perform certain tasks as well. Examples of process documenting:
Scribe Example
This is the best how-to method out there that lets you skip those long emails of trying to explain how to perform a task. With Scribe you are able to just click a button in your browser and document any process instantly. It is a real “Game Changer” for cross training.
Workflow management and process documenting sounds extremely intimidating, but with the right tools, it will all come together seamlessly. Stay tuned. In the next article, we will touch on one of our industry’s largest threats.
Liz Scott is a multi-business entrepreneur working to bring together technology and accountants through her business, Liz Scott Consulting. A member of Intuit Trainer/Writer Network, she authored and taught Master level courses, including Advisory Guides and Consulting Tools for Accountants. In addition to Liz Scott Consulting, she also owns Accounting Lifeline, a firm to serve small businesses with their financial needs. Liz is a co-host of the "Appy Hour," which helps other accountants learn about the different tools and apps for small business needs. Holding a high passion for real estate investment, she owns properties throughout Oklahoma.
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