An accounting firm must invest in an accounting workflow process. Why? Because workflows increase productivity by powering entire processes across your business.
These are the five workflows that every accounting firm should focus on to deliver a better client experience:
Although they appear similar, they are different. So let’s dive in.
A workflow for accounts is primarily designed to boost efficiency and productivity and are centered on a task or activity. Here’s how Wikipedia defines it;
“A workflow comprises an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence of operations, the work of a person or group, the work of an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms.”
So a workflow is:
An example of an accounting firm's workflow would be a recurring job such as how a client is billed and invoiced.
What Is a Process?
Made up of several workflows, Wikipedia defines it as:
“A business process, business method or business function that is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks”
An example of an accounting firm process would be a new client onboarding. Here, several workflows are put together to create a master process that may include workflows that:
So, as you can see an accounting workflow and an accounting process are two sides of the same productivity coin.
Accounting Workflows: How To Design Them
Although this is a big subject and beyond the scope of this article, it’s important to get an overview of the method. However, this will change depending on what technique you use for workflow design.
For example, if you are using a system such as Agile for your project management process, your design will look different from another accounting firm that uses SCRUM or LEAN methods.
Fundamental Elements of an Accounting Workflow Process
In every business, the accounting workflow process is the backbone that ensures financial health and compliance. Three fundamental elements—data collection, document management, and account reconciliation—are vital in laying the groundwork for accurate and efficient accounting practices. Understanding these elements can significantly enhance the way a business manages its finances, leading to better decision-making and strategic planning.
Some General Principles For Designing An Accounting Workflow Process
Whatever method you use, here are some things to remember. These may include improving your new product development, client onboarding, payroll, tax planning, or sales.
As W. Edwards Deming rightly said, “94% of problems in business are systems driven and only 6% are people driven.”
Workflow has gained a lot of traction since its early days, and for many accounting firms, it is gradually becoming the norm, and for good reasons.
One of the biggest challenges of an accounting firm is to manage huge volumes of data, not to mention the number of ongoing projects and the detailed requirements for every client.
It is very easy to lose track of these moving components.
Using a accounting workflow system makes it easy to manage all the tasks efficiently. You can break the components of any project into smaller pieces and assign each task to different members of the team.
With the help of the central dashboard, it is easy to keep a tab on the progress of each assignment without losing track of them.
How often does this happen at your workplace where miscommunication leads to a task getting delayed?
It is a very common scenario in accounting firms where the teammates assume that the completion of a certain task was someone’s responsibility.
Believe it or not, 68% of employees waste an average of 3.5 hours per week waiting for data or information from a colleague.
With the use of accounting workflow software, it is easy to trace back the delegated tasks along with the names of those responsible.
This is a great way to ensure productivity between the teammates and make them accountable for their work.
There is no denying the frustration that accountants feel while hiring new employees. At the same time, they also need to ensure that the new hires feel welcomed.
With an accounting workflow system, all the business processes are standardized and well-documented. You can easily onboard new hires into your system and make them productive quickly as well as enable them to work on client engagements with elevated responsibilities.
Using the dashboard feature in the workflow management software enables you to keep track of all the projects or tasks going on at the same time.
While this may not be necessary at all times, it helps you know the status of all ongoing projects at the same time.
Even if some of the projects are of a lesser priority, you can use this information to recount the tasks assigned for a specific client and keep a tab of all the teammates that were involved in the projects by any specific client.
It also helps you to review the overall performance of your team now and then. This ensures fewer redundancies and more accurate casework and frees up your space for other cases.
An efficient accounting workflow process allows every member of the team to have complete information on the status of any ongoing project at all times.
You don’t need to harass your co-workers with a chain of emails asking for any updates or feel left in the dark regarding the status of work.
The team lead or any of the teammates can easily find about the approaching deadline or extract any relevant information using the project-level view.
Increased transparency in managing projects can be extremely beneficial by limiting unnecessary communication and saving work hours.
A lot of time is wasted emailing back and forth between the teammates or with the clients asking for missing files or any relevant information.
A survey states that 40% of the workweek is lost due to inefficient communication.
Using the tools in workflow accounting software, it is easy to retrieve data and communicate internally. It also allows to effectively communicate with the client and exchange data with them swiftly.
Including goal-setting for every member is very important for the success of any project. As your company grows, you will need to assign different tasks to the different members of your team.
Assigning a task isn’t always straightforward because if there isn’t a defined process to follow, you will need to intervene every time.
With precisely defined workflows and processes in place, assigning tasks becomes easier. A clear step-by-step process will ensure consistency of work within your team.
Explaining your collective goals to your teammates is also necessary to ensure that everyone is working together toward achieving them.
71% of co-workers believe that their leads don’t dedicate enough time explaining the goals which in turn affects productivity.
First, It’s important to start small.
It’s worth mentioning that there are some things often overlooked in the design stage, but are important. This is particularly so around the workflow technology you are going to use.
Some things to check, when selecting an accounting workflow process platform, include ensuring:
Simply put, the workflow and processes have to make it easier for you to focus on the customer and for your client to have as much of a seamless experience as possible.
Your clients expect the work they do with you to be secure and consistent and as an accountant, you need to be productive and time-efficient.
That means having a dedicated cloud-based accounting workflow process to manage your activities is essential. Some of the key components that will make this a great process include having:
As an accounting firm, your day-to-day activities contain lots of repetitive tasks. From compliance considerations and preparing financial statements to the client’s payroll and reconciliations.
To complete each step, you can automate the setting up of repeatable task lists. You can attach “how-to guides” showing the steps to carry out each element of the workflow. A great resource for new staff or for tasks that are not done regularly.
Automatic task pipeline elements include:
Creating automation is essential to take the stress out of your task pipelines.
Gone are the days of putting files in shared Dropbox folders. Secure file sharing is an essential part of any communication workflow.
Keeping them protected and organized will help with productivity and help you as an accounting firm be more responsive to client demands.
From a risk and compliance view, files must be hackproof. Therefore, using a secure client portal gives you the security you need.
When designing a file-sharing workflow, it’s important to remember that clients are on the go and teams are working more remotely.
This means the process needs to enable the exchange of files via mobile helping you to organize client-facing and internal folders.
Below, you can find a simple accounting workflow template for a financial report that occurs monthly.
To generate and review monthly financial reports for internal assessment and strategic planning.
This summarized how to streamline accounting workflows which will improve efficiency and productivity of your firm.
We covered:
Something worth mentioning is just how implementing a cloud based accounting workflow process will help increase your firm’s profits by:
This is why in a recent SAGE report, they found that:
“57% of accountants find technology literacy to be the most critical additional skill for future employees in the field.” Sage Practice of Now.
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An example of an accounting firm's workflow would be a recurring job such as how a client is billed and invoiced.
They comprise a number of smaller workflows that are put together to create solutions for more sophisticated and longer processes.
An example of an accounting firm process would be new client onboarding. Here, several workflows are put together to create a master process that may include workflows that:
There are 8 parts to an accounting flow:
They can be small step workflows such as invoicing a client, or multiple large-scale processes that incorporate a number of smaller workflows such as client onboarding.
