Whether you’re an accountant or bookkeeper, creative or suit-and-tie business, you need workflows to manage both your client work and the back-end of your business. Without them, you’re likely to inadvertently drop the ball on a project–putting your client behind and setting yourself up to look bad.
When you’re working with someone else’s money as an accountant or bookkeeper, those workflows are even more important. A bounced payment or forgetting to pay contractors is a sure way to get yourself let go.
If you don’t have written and automated workflows in place yet, now’s the time to start. Sure, it takes time but once you have each step written out and in your project management system, you’ll be surprised at the amount of time you get back in your day because you’re not backtracking to figure out where you are on a project.
Here are the top workflows you need now, before another week goes by:
Client Onboarding
I’ll talk about this in-depth next week, but you want your new clients to be “wowed” from the first time you speak to them. Gather all information up-front so you don’t have to come back to them again and again for more information. With a solid workflow in place, you’ll be able to move forward with their work more quickly, saving you both time and money.
Anything Repeatable
Think about the kind of work you do for your clients on a regular basis. Balancing books, running payroll, paying taxes, paying routine bills, prepping for tax season, etc. All of these tasks are done again and again–either for one client for many clients. And if it’s repeatable, it’s worth putting together a workflow so you can save time by mirroring the process each time. You’re less likely to forget a step and you can easily forward these tasks to a team member, if appropriate.
Internal Weekly Tasks
Each week, you do the same tasks within your own business. Tasks like interacting with your clients to request information, posting to social media, sending to-do items to your team and checking in with your own financials. These regular weekly tasks likely don’t change much from week to week and would be well served with a workflow in place. Often it’s our own business that suffers when we’re busy with clients, but a weekly workflow can help you stay on track so you don’t forget to take care of yourself too. (You can grab a sample weekly workflow below!)
It takes time and dedication to put workflows in place, but you won’t regret doing it. If you struggle with where to start, I have you covered! In the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing a series of workflow templates that are made just for bookkeepers and accountants. Workflows that will help you take your business to the next level, no matter where you are right now.
Have I piqued your interest? Grab my Bookkeeping Routine Checklist below.
