The Wize Way

Episode 163: How to Build a Solid Referral Program for Your Business

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 163

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In this episode of The Wize Way Podcast, Brenton Ward is joined by Jamie Johns and Ed Chan to unpack how structured scheduling transforms firm performance. 

From booking client work in advance to using calendars as strategic tools, the trio explores practical systems used in both tax and bookkeeping divisions. You’ll learn why the most successful firm owners plan weeks ahead, how workflows link to sales pipelines and capacity, and how tools like WizeGPS help create growth plans that actually work. 

If your firm’s still reacting instead of planning, this one’s for you.

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4. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

Brenton Ward:

Welcome to The Wize Way Podcast, the show for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners who want more time, profit, and freedom, and a business that can run without them. I'm Bren Ward, your host, and each week, we deep dive into the real stories, proven strategies, and battle-tested tools from successful firm owners. Just like you, our wise mentors want to share their journey of how they've scaled and systemized their way to freedom, so you can, too. If you're stuck in the grind or you're ready to scale smarter, this is your blueprint. Let's get into the episode.

Brenton Ward:

In terms of a bookkeeping business. Jamie, just on that. Do you guys use the workflow scheduling tool for your bookkeeping business? Jamie, just on that, do you? You guys use the workflow scheduling tool for your bookkeeping clients as well?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, with bookkeeping clients it is different because you'll normally have the you know it's the monthly or the weekly, the monthly, the quarterly, bookkeeping requirements, and a lot of the business activity statements. You know, they're either monthly or they're, you know, they're quarterly.

Jamie Johns:

So, it's almost. You know it's just self-driven, and we all know what those deadlines are, whereas with a tax practice, you know, we all know that. You know the final date for lodgement is around the 15th of May. Now, obviously, you can't do all your work in one day in May, so hence why we schedule it, yeah, so just in terms of that.

Brenton Ward:

I mean, obviously bookkeeping is different. It's more self-driven in terms of the deadlines. I was even listening to a lady who's got quite a large bookkeeping business in the States, and she says, you know, based on when they engage their clients, they say you know, your senior, your client manager, will be focused on your books on a Tuesday. You know a particular time, and if you have any questions, we will answer them during that time. If you need us outside that time, we have a specific process. Now I'm not saying that's the right or wrong process, but there still is, you know, communication or structure there around. Workflow scheduling is that. Do you guys do anything particular with your bookkeeping clients?

Jamie Johns:

We've got quite a large bookkeeping division so in that sense of the communication don't like if there's queries around the questions, if it's in Xero, often that's in real time because you can post queries in Xero against the transactions in real time and that sort of just for us just gets solved as part of the package as going along.

Jamie Johns:

You know, doing their bookkeeping, bookkeeping. However, if you're a bookkeeper and you're someone who likes doing, say, a cash flow forecast for the client, then I would certainly lock them in to either a six-monthly update of their cash flow forecast or this time of year. As Ed said earlier, it's a great time to budget for the year ahead, and so it depends on your angle, depends on your specialisation, and can depend on what sort of industry the client is in at times. But you know this time is a great time to forecast ahead, whether that's just a normal budget and you know Xero, for example, that platform, or QBO, they all have, you know, pretty good budgeting facilities. So you can encourage your clients and make it part of your fee proposal to do the budget for the year ahead and articulate the value in that for the client, because part of the budget is, well, when's all my tax due? If I'm paying tax, when is it due? When do I have to pay it?

Brenton Ward:

The whole streamline of all the payments, and that makes me think of your Skyhub, Jamie, in terms of you know how your weekly tacticals, you focus on your sales pipeline and then feed into your fees, one and lost, and that feeds into your capacity plan. So you know, there are a lot of cogs in the system, it's all linked.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, it's all linked together, you know, because, as you know, you mentioned it's the marketing, knowing what you know leads, you've got what you can take on and it's that weekly tactical that I always say is the glue that holds it all together yeah, I think it comes back to the old what you measure, you can manage that's exactly right.

Brenton Ward:

You don't have surprises coming down the line. Yeah, just a quick one. We found that firm owners who have a documented, clear, written business plan grow 60% faster than those who don't. We've just launched Wize GPS. Wize GPS gives you that plan. In just eight weeks, with expert guidance and zero fluff, you walk away with a proven, results-driven growth plan for your firm. It's how hundreds of wise firms have broken through and scaled to build a business that runs without them. If you'd like to see how that plan could be applied to your firm and what those eight weeks look like in a little bit more detail, head over to the show notes and click on the links to find out more. All right, let's get back into the episode.

Ed Chan:

I've just got one last bit that I need to cover off, because it goes glove in hand with working out your scheduling.

Brenton Ward:

I'll just prompt everyone, if you've got questions, to start typing them in there, and then we can feed them off straight after Ed's finished, but send it away. Ed.

Ed Chan:

Okay. So once you've planned out your capacity and you've sent letters out to you know your clients as to when to bring their work in and so forth, then you should start scoping the work. So when the work comes in, if it's a $5,000 client, you should scope out that work as to you know it might be. You know four hours for bookkeeping, you know an hour for accounting, and half an hour for tax planning, and each person with that scope will then go into their own calendars and put the time into their own calendar. So, if I were the accountant and I had, you know, I had 20 jobs here and I'm going to work on, you know, on each of those 20 jobs, but in my area, then I would block off my calendar for two weeks for the kind of work. So you know, brown might take two hours of today, and that goes on to Smith, and Smith might take three hours of my day, and then I've got four hours left, and that's allocated to, you know, Morrison. So my calendar is all planned out as to who I'm going to work on for two weeks. So everybody has to have that planned out for whom I'm going to work on for two weeks. So everybody has to have that planned out for two weeks.

Ed Chan:

You don't want the situation where someone runs out of work and says, Oh, I haven't got any work on today, and then it creates a domino effect all the way up to the partner. So everyone has to stop, drop their work to go looking for work, and bring the clients up, trying to chase work to bring them in. It's just so inefficient and so clunky. So everybody understands that from two weeks' worth of work populated into their calendars, and you know, allow, you know, and again, it's not an exact science, and as long as you can, that's 20%. It's just when you've got the wind and the wind's just blowing into your sail and taking you wherever, and that's 100% of it, just coming in with no control. That's when people get into trouble. So, just so I finish off on that.

Brenton Ward:

Someone who followed in the marketing world, and he said, show me a calendar and I'll tell you how much money you're making. And it's kind of an interesting point in terms of how you know it's the simplest tool. We've all got one, but how we use, it is a different question. So, again, linking those systems back to the basics is a really important point.