The Wize Way

Episode 129: Why You Should Start Scheduling your Workflow for your Accounting Firm

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 129

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In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, hosts Brenton Ward, Jamie Johns, and Ed Chan dive into the importance of proactive workflow scheduling for accounting firms. 

They explore why it’s essential to start planning your workflow for the coming months, focusing on how this strategy can prevent last-minute chaos, reduce staff stress, and improve client satisfaction. By understanding your team’s capacity and aligning it with client expectations, you can avoid the overwhelming rush that often comes with unplanned workloads.

They also discuss the impact of efficient scheduling on work productivity and how balancing client demands with your firm’s capacity can streamline operations. By strategically managing when clients submit their work and planning based on your team's availability, you’ll create smoother processes, better time management, and an overall more efficient practice. This episode provides practical insights into building a firm that runs like clockwork, helping you focus on long-term growth and sustainability.

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Brenton Ward:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wise Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. So, guys, let's talk about workflow scheduling. Scheduling where do we start with workflow scheduling and looking at planning work for the next 12 months where do you want to start on that topic?

Ed Chan:

Okay, I can probably attack it from a big, a big- picture point of view, and then Jamie can come in with a detail, please. I use this analogy. You know, you can jump in the sailboat and let the wind take you, or you can jump in a motorboat and turn the engine on and direct where you want to go. And if you choose to sailboat right and just wait for the work to come in, then often you'll get it all coming in at the same time and you might think, well, that's okay, I'll just take longer to do it.

Ed Chan:

There's a domino effect, there's a knock-on effect from that. It stresses your staff out all right and it frustrates your clients, because often they think they're your only client and they drop it off today and expect it done tomorrow, and they don't understand that you've got other clients. So you have a choice of just sitting there and waiting for the work to come in and do it as it comes in, or you take control of it and lead, and what we suggest you do is that you lead. So what we do is that we plan out the next 12 months based on the capacity planner of your team, on the capacity planner of your team. So you've worked out your capacity for your staff, as to what capacity you have to do the work, and then you've got to turn your attention to the clients and to work out. You know, if you've got a you know making this up sixty thousand dollars worth of work coming in in October and you've only got twenty20,000 in capacity, then you're going to disappoint the clients because it's going to take longer to do the work. So what we do is that once we've worked out the staff capacity, then we start to look at our clients and to work out when they should bring their work in.

Ed Chan:

Now, if the clients always bring their work in in February, for example, then in your scheduling you schedule them in for February and most clients generally bring it in in a particular period of time. So if they always bring it in in August, then you put them in for August. And if they always bring it in May, you put them in in May, and sometimes they always bring it in May, but you then, in May, and sometimes they always bring it in May, but you'd like them to bring it in, you know, in April or February. Then you start to manage their expectations. Now what we do is we send our letter to all the clients and we ask them to bring it in at a particular month of the year, and we work firstly with when do they normally bring it in? So if they bring it in in August, we suggest they do it in August. So what happens there, therefore, is that not everybody follows it, obviously, but as long as you can get you know the old 80 20 rule as long as you get 80 percent of people following it, then you can manage the last 20.

Ed Chan:

It's just when you're trying to manage 100 that it gets chaotic. So we do all that planning in June and July, and we start sending their letters out and asking them to bring their work in. And we send out a letter to say we'd like you to bring your work in in February. And as we get closer to February, someone follows them up. So in around December they're going well, it's coming up to February, now have you got your work together yet, and so forth.

Ed Chan:

So we're very proactive in that way, and often clients say you know, I'd like my accountant to be more proactive.

Ed Chan:

They're the kind of stuff that they're talking about, you know, like not just proactive in terms of tax and wealth creation and all that.

Ed Chan:

It's also proactive in terms of managing them because they're very busy and they'd like someone to manage them for them. And if you could do that, that differentiates you from the guy down the road or the girl down the road. So it's not that hard to do, but it does start with your staff reviews to look at when they're away on holidays and then from there extrapolates out and so we get each team to do it, each of the client managers to do it, and they schedule out their whole year and you know the partner works with them to help them, but they work as a team to schedule the workout. And then, you know, by May of the following year you should be, you know, right on top of your lodgements and you should be doing tax planning. You know you should have time there to do the tax planning, the AGMs, all that kind of stuff. You know, if you turn the engine on and don't let the wind blow the sails, so to speak, I like the analogy.

Brenton Ward:

It makes a lot of sense. Talk to us, Jamie, about your speedboat.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, well, look, basically when we started doing this, we took it to a whole other level with the guys, the senior client managers, and we've put in the wise vault like a template to fill out because ultimately you've only got so much time and capacity in a year. Then we're just using the template. We can break that down Brenton into per month. So basically what you look at is you do this for each team, the senior client manager leads it and you do it for each month. So once you start getting yourself organized and sending out the letters, there's a series of letters to send out and with the letters that you send out, it's obviously the first round of letters. Is you know, like ed said, that the month that you'd like to do the work, so the month you'd like to do the work, and then, as the months roll by, then you know it's a reminder, but then it's also like a checklist of exactly what you need. So there's a couple of ways to do that. There's a great video in the vault in step six around how carbon as a system will go out and ask the client for all the information that you need, because, depending on what you're doing, whether you're time billing or whether you're fixed pricing. To be efficient, you want to collect all the information up front. So part of all that scheduling is scheduling the work, of course, and then educating the client. Once you've educated the client, so, look, you know, this is what I need in order to do the work. So certainly that spreadsheet that we've got in the vault and I know some of the members have started filling it out, yeah, and then you're scheduling your work each month. So you know you're scheduling along with your monthly capacity, and so at at the end of the day, it's sort of quad to work. It's not urgent but it's important. But, by geez, if you do it, your practice will run very smooth.

Jamie Johns:

And, as Ed said, you always get the 20% of people who want to reschedule it. So we had guys here recently did it and I just overheard, you know, Jess, the practice manager, saying that, um, oh, there are quite a few clients who want their work done early this year. So then you know so straight away, that opens up communication lines around. Can we fit it into July and August? You know, traditionally they might have wanted in November, and then other clients, brenton, you know, can we push it back a couple of months to fit them in.

Jamie Johns:

So it's a very proactive step and an efficiency step because if you follow the process and just stress to everyone, it will take time the first year I was talking to some members the other day, and does take time the first year to you know, get the letters organized, get all the templates done, but you'll find the second year that you go to do it it'll just be like follow the process again because when you collect the information up front, you know the senior client manager or the assistant client manager has got to put the letter together to know exactly what they need.

Jamie Johns:

But once you've done it and invested in the first year in that quad two activity, you won't have to do it the next year. It'll take you, you know, like 90% less of the time doing it the second year and then you just get into a routine to do it. But your whole business will run so much better because the clients will just systematically drop their work in and you'll get it done and the turnaround time will be good. So that and it comes back to what we said earlier the whole system manages client's expectations and I've even seen clients now where they don't get their scheduling letter. They missed it, thought are in there. They ring up and say oh, you haven't told me when you want me to do your work, you know, so they they love, but yeah, they like love us too thanks for tuning in.

Brenton Ward:

if you like this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five-star review for more practical Wize tips on how to build a business that runs without you, head over to wizementoring. com/ podcast to download a free copy of the Accountant's 20-Hour Workweek Playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you on the next episode.