When you are providing services but certain things in the relationship aren’t working, what may be lacking is alignment.
Consider whether there is misalignment between:
* the client’s perception of the potential value of the work and what potential value you could be delivering
* that value of the work you are delivering and the value of the work that you’d like to deliver
* the client’s expectations and your expectations
* the way that the clients are operating and the way that your ideal client operates
* the way that your services are functioning and the way that they need to function in order to be available at the current cost
And what about communication? When those you serve don’t communicate as frequently as you would like, it’s because they don’t get value from communicating more frequently.
Possible paths forward:
- Realign your expectations to match the clients’ current perceived needs. Arrange for monthly or quarterly live meetings to create deliverables on the spot. Use tech tools to turn the calls into working sessions, not just reviews or status updates.
- Realign the clients’ expectations of what’s possible with more frequent communications. Show them what’s possible with more frequent communications and put them in a position to reach their goals by using your services.
- Please note the potential huge opportunity for operational / process coaching here if you serve business clients. If they only want basic services, it may be an indicator that they wouldn’t pay for a premium service because they can’t get an ROI from it. This may indicate that their team doesn’t have their processes together, because assuming that there’s demand for what they do and assuming that they’re good at doing it, process excellence is pretty much the only thing keeping an organization from scaling. Process excellence arises from people (including company culture), processes, and technology. If you/your team have skills in this, you can help turn either of these companies from a day-to-day grind into a scaling joy. If that’s what the owner wants, that is.
Sometimes the most exciting path forward is mindset coaching. Dig into how the owner perceives business, leadership, processes, relationships, time, and money. What stories are running the owner’s decision-making process? What visions guide his or her life? What are the owner’s core values? Which of those stories are out of alignment with that vision and those values and are really old stories?
If you can cause a transformation in that, it will cause a transformation in all aspects of the leader’s life and business and you & your team will ultimately have a proactive client instead of a fire-drill client.
The processes that you want to focus on are not creating uniform processes for each client. Instead, create uniform processes for how you train and equip your team. Create engagement workflow templates and you be the one to customize them when you bring in a new client. Create a knowledge base for internal purposes. Create forums for your team members to communicate with each other – not about engagements, that’s in your workflow management tool – but about higher-level things, broader-impact things, like software and excellence and gratitude.
I know firsthand that client engagements that aren’t working bear the highest cost of all – not having the time to cultivate new business + having to handle too much yourself because of the craziness.
Nourish your team and get those engagements aligned.
Controller Consultant | Tier One Services, LLC
Many of us seem to think that a total disaster is something that happens to others, but not us.
Unfortunately, disasters can happen to any organization at any time, and we need to be prepared.
Disasters can also come in more forms than you might think. Many might think of a fire, flood or some sort of natural disaster, but they can be more subtle and unassuming. I have witnessed several “data loss” disasters over the last six months that could have been prevented with the proper planning.
Here are a few things to consider:
1. Do you back up your data on a regular daily basis?
2. Have you considered the types of data that need to be backed up?
3. Do you store your backups off-site?
4. Do you test your backup restore process?
5. Do you have an agreement with a third-party to restore your data in the case of an emergency?
This is not a comprehensive list by any means.
I do want to point out, however, that 4 and 5 are often overlooked. I have seen organizations that thought they were backing up every night, only to find that it wasn’t working. When disaster struck, they were 6 months behind on backups. I have seen organizations whose entire network was taken down by a virus. One of them was out of business for over a week.
Consider regular tests and off-site recovery as part of your plan so you can substantially reduce your downtime if your facilities or equipment are unusable.
Having the proper backup procedures in place and taking the next step to a full-fledged disaster recovery plan could save your organization someday.
If you have questions or want to dig deeper, feel free to schedule a 15-minute troubleshooting session with me at http://bit.ly/Scheduling_Troubleshooting or connect with me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/bobswetzonline.
Hell no. They snap a picture of them with an app like Entryless or Expensify, where they get automatically classified and synced with the accounting system. [2] How do you have staff code and authorize expenditures and keep that info with the digital receipt?
Staff don’t need to classify transactions. That’s the job of the Finance team. What the Finance team needs is a description of the expenditure and the grant it was for, if that applies.
Staff don’t authorize expenditures, either. That’s up to the ED, who sets policy and then reviews expenditures in the accounting system or an app. Some apps (like Bill.com) and some accounting systems (like Xero) have an Authorize button for bills.
[3] How do you store all these digital bits?In the app and/or attached to the transaction itself in the accounting system. [4] How do you pass on the receipt, coding, and authorization to the person signing checks?
In the app & accounting system. In Xero, for example, there is an in-program authorization button for payables. [5] If there’s fancy software that does this all, what is it and how much does it cost?
It’s not fancy software. It’s cheap and zillions of people are using it. Times have changed. Thank goodness.
Check out Entryless ($22.49/mo), Xero ($30/mo for unlimited users), Bill.com ($19.95/mo). [6] How much server space does 7 years of “paperwork” eat up?
Servers have evolved. First of all, in most cases you’re not using your own server but that of your cloud-based app, and (a) you don’t care how much space these documents take up, and (b) they’ve got such economies of scale that the space is dirt cheap. See pricing above.
But secondly, server space is cheaper now than it has ever been. So if you run out of space, you buy more. It’s not a big deal. Certainly cheaper than renting a bigger building to store more paper files, and because no one actually does that since that idea is ridiculous, I’ll mention that it’s still cheaper than renting a storage unit for your older paper files, which plenty of people do. And it’s less risky. Paper file can be so easily damaged. Flooding, fire, mold…stuff happens.
Two final points on questions that you didn’t ask:
[7] The risks are higher when everything is on paper:
[a] The savvy cloud-based providers have redundant servers in geographic locations with different natural disaster profiles (“we here at San Andreas Cloud Services store all of your data securely in a nearby warehouse!”)
[b] Paper is easily stolen, lost, or otherwise messed with. When everything is electronic, all you have to do is revoke access when an employee leaves, for example.
[c] You’re stuck with local auditors, whether or not they’re any good, whether or not they charge competitively, plus you have to pay more for all of the shlepping they have to do for the field work. Plus the audit takes longer. Which the Board really loves. Whee! Last year for a new client we cut the timeline from “year-end” to “board presentation of the financials” from 8 months to 4 months. So having everything available paperlessly gives you more leverage to shop around, and if you live in a major metropolitan area you can get an auditor in a lower COL area and pay less but without sacrificing the level of service.
Consider:
- the extent to which those records are organized and accessible outside of the accounting system
- how much is at stake if a deduction is challenged
- how easy it is to get the organization into an app like Entryless or Expensify or any one of a ton of others in which the spender snaps a photo of a receipt and sends it in for OCR and classification
- the volume of transactions that could be material that could potentially be challenged, individually or taken as a whole
- whether anyone is doing quality control on the data entry and needs quick access to the backup for classification
- the likelihood of the organization to convert to a different accounting system
- whether the organization has an annual independent audit
Our clients in the $1M-$10M range get us backup documentation for pretty much every transaction. And it comes in handy a LOT.
By Bob Swetz
Controller Consultant | Tier One Services, LLC
“Every business needs to be protected in order to survive and thrive.”
Part 2 of 3
What is segregation of duties and why is it important?
In Part 1 of my series on segregation of duties we explored why it is so important to have adequate segregation of duties in your organization’s accounting department. You can read about that in my article Why is Segregation of Duties Important in Your Accounting Department?
In today’s article, I provide an example of how you can achieve segregation of duties even if your accounting department has only one accountant.
How to make segregation of duties work with only one accountant
If your organization has only one accountant who does everything it may be time for the owner, manager or director to step up and pitch in to split some of the duties with the accountant or bookkeeper.
Let’s look at the bill payment function and assume that there is one accountant and an executive director as the next level of management. To start, don’t let the accountant open the mail. The director should open the mail and give the vendor bills to the accountant to enter. Once the bills are entered, the director can review them and approve which ones to print. It would be ok for the accountant to print the checks, then have the secretary match the checks up with invoices and seal the envelopes.
Next, the director can review which bills are ready to go out before returning them to the secretary for mailing. Ideally, borrow and train a staff member from another department to do the bank reconciliations. If your staff is too busy for an arrangement like this, consider outsourcing some of these duties to an outside accountant or bookkeeper. It’s just that important.
In Part 3 of my series on segregation of duties, How to Segregate Duties with Two or More Accountants, I will explore another example of how to make this vital control feature work for your organization.
Part 1 of 3
By Bob Swetz
Controller Consultant | Tier One Services, LLC
“Every business needs to be protected in order to survive and thrive.”
What is segregation of duties?
Segregation of duties is the concept of splitting key duties within the same accounting function among multiple personnel. For example, printing, checks and signing checks are in the same accounting function. Ideally, these duties should be performed by separate staff members.
Why is it important?
Allowing the same staff member to perform all or most of the duties in the same function creates an opportunity for that person to cover up improprieties. Let’s take the case referred to above and say that one staff accountant enters vendor bills, writes the checks for those bills, mails them and then to top it off does the bank reconciliation. That staff member could easily write checks to themselves, cash the checks and mark them as cleared in the bank reconciliation without anyone ever knowing about it.
It’s important to remember that controls such as adequate segregation of duties are not intended to point fingers or suggest someone is doing something wrong, they are just good business practice to safeguard the organization’s assets.
I have a small accounting department, so what can I do?
Creating and maintaining adequate segregation of duties is probably the most difficult control challenge a small organization faces. Check out how to face this challenge with a one-person accounting department in Part 2 of my series, How to Segregate Duties with Only One Accountant.