Increase Productivity
Previous Post
The Importance of Marketing For Your Accounting Firm
Next Post
Why Your Firm Needs A Reliable Senior Production Manager

How To Increase Productivity in Your Firm

To run your team structure more efficiently so it produces the greatest productivity with the minimum effort required, here are some of the most important things that you have to work on:

Team Capacity

The first thing is to work out your team capacity. Otherwise, you will run the risk of putting on another person whenever one of your staff says they are extremely busy.

However, being busy is not the same as being productive.

Have you ever been flat out all day but produced nothing useful by the end of the day? Well, your staff can easily confuse being busy with being productive also.

Accountants enjoy being busy and can find things to do to keep themselves busy but they may not be productive activities.

As the Manager your job is to keep them focussed on productive activities and not get distracted.

Develop your capacity plan by calculating the available hours of each team member (52 weeks – 8 weeks annual/sick/training leave = 44 weeks) x the appropriate chargeable time for their role (60% for minders, 85% for grinders) x the hourly charge out rate for their time. This will allow you to calculate the current capacity of your full team and determine whether you are over / under.

 

Avoid A Flat Team Structure

You should avoid running a “flat” team structure where you have a very experienced person doing all levels of work such as admin, bookkeeping, accounting, tax planning, and strategy work.

 

Inform Your Client

Send out a letter now to your clients outlining which months you would like them to bring their work in over the next 12 months, with a monthly follow up letter 3 months prior to when the month is due.

Not all will comply but a vast majority will and all you need is 60% to 80% to comply and you have effectively smoothed out the peaks and troughs of your workflow for the year.

 

Prepare Your Team

Make sure that everyone in your team has 2 week’s worth of work planned into their calendars and educate them that if their calendars drop below 2 weeks they are to ask for work. This gives the managers time to get work in.

 

Provide A Scope Of Works

Provide a scope of works for each client’s job prior to starting the job. This provides a budget of time allowed for each client’s job so your staff knows how much time they can spend on each job and they can then populate out their calendars with the time allocated for each job for 2 weeks or more.

It also provides an indicative upfront fixed price for the client.

This manages the clients’ expectations and avoids fee complaints and helps you manage the team also.

I hope these suggestions help you leverage your teams and grow your firm in 2020.

 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways we can help you grow your Accounting or Bookkeeping business:

1. Grab a free copy of our book – Accountants 20-Hour Workweek

It’s the blueprint to structure, staff and scale your firm whilst dramatically reducing your work hours. — Click Here

2. Join the Wize WaterCooler and connect with other Accountants who are scaling too

It’s our new Facebook community where business-minded Accountants and Bookkeepers learn to build a firm that runs without them. — Click Here

3. Join our new WizePulse Implementation Program

We’re putting together a new mentoring case study group this month. If you’d like to get the plan, tools and advice from the Wize Mentors to scale your firm… just send us a message with the word “Pulse” – Click Here

4. Work with the Wize Guys privately

If you’d like to work directly with the Wize Mentor team to take you from stuck to scale…just send us a message with the word “Growth”… tell us a little about your firm and what you’d like help with, and we’ll get you all the details! – Click Here