Managing day to day tasks and deadlines - how?

Hello Manchester-man,

I am in a very similar position to yours. Close to 100 clients and trying to implement strategies that will help me face my heavy worload more efficiently. If I want to grow I can't carry on as I am otherwise it will become physically impossible to meet both the deadlines and my professional obligations.

I have started asking for assistance. I have one person helping with extremely simple but time consuming tasks. And I will most likely need asssistance from someone experienced soon to help with the more complex tasks. I am hoping as soon as possible but it's not easy to find the right person.

In terms of client management, the system I have in place is very simple. It's all in an excel spreadsheet. I just need to take one look at it and all I need to know is there. Just need to make sure it's always updated and it works brilliantly. I feel this method saves time as it's so easy to work with and all in one place. That said I have not tried client management softwares so I can't really compare.

Let's wish each others luck with our futures moves. It ought to be easier to manage than it is now. Others do it, so can we.

PS: that's not a good advice I know but there is no way I would go away for two weeks and not take work with me. I would immediately regret such a decision. I need to stay on top of my workload otherwise I'll quickly drown.

Consider tracking the bigger stuff with a Kanban style board.

Trello is usually cited for this, but you may prefer Microsoft Planner as it integrates with Office.

You can create different shared boards, if necessary. The main advantage is the ease with which you can drag around and organise tasks.

Just remember to test a robust back-up strategy for whatever you choose!

I'm old fashioned, I use paper and pen. A4 Diary with one side for personal tax, one side for company tax then 1/2 page for in progress and other tasks. Tick off as complete and add new ones throughout the month. Update with new lists on 1st of every month. Stays open everyday on my desk, easy to view, easy to add tasks and tick off when done. I have around 150 clients (no employees) and works great for me.

I have no clients so likely far fewer tasks etc but likely far more varied in subject. (Utilities/leases/repairs/rates/insurance/EICRs, EPCs,Asbestos Reports, Fire Risks etc)

I purchase Office Depot hard cover books, they get lined with a narrow date column (when matter arises), a wide matter column describing what needs doing then two narrower date columns, one when task started one when finished.( I also use Office Depot books (different ones) for meeting notes as I do not lose them whereas single sheets of paper are readily mislaid (get put within the wrong file by accident))

Any line not complete (all boxes filled) needs attention and I regularly check sheets.

I appreciate somewhat old fashioned but it works.

Re e mails they generally get responded to in morning but if for some reason more is needed to be done/something prepared first, they get printed, stuck in clear plastic wallet with white label description, and placed upright in magazine files to be dealt with later.

Accounts etc get slotted in when some spare time.

Although I only have relatively few clients I found there were a number of tasks that took a fair amount of time to do. These range from payroll expenses, payroll data processing, to needing to convert whole year bank csv files and others. Much of it was repetitive but nevertheless time consuming.

I found a developer who claimed you could do anything in Excel and the ability to back that claim up.

Payroll expense journals that could take several hours to prepare are now ready in a couple of minutes. Payroll tasks that took my client an extended three day period to complete using SAGE is now done by me using Superpay in less than an hour. Converting csv files into fully analysed cash books based on user defined rules in a few seconds is mind-blowing. But sometimes it is the simple things like importing a file by selecting a ribbon icon and not having to worry about locating and selecting a file. It is just done and you can concentrate on the more important things.

My management accounting reporting by project or organisation in Excel just falls out from the detailed ledger. My developer has just received my specification to create my monthly columnar report Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet directly from the detailed ledger and with drill down behind any value from any chart of accounts. He did say he could do anything and my days of inserting and deleting rows or columns will be behind me.

For some clients I do their purchase ledger payments so email correspondence and collection of invoices on this can be tedious. I’ve got to acceptable levels but am looking at encouraging (or even offering) one of those online purchase ordering systems.

I use IRIS now, converted from Taxfiler, but despite its bad press here am considering using its Practice Management System primarily for its emailing configurations and also its Proposal Manager which comes with configurable letters of engagements and pricing schedules. Although I currently use Adobe and Adobe Sign for this it can still be tedious and am really assessing “my time” versus its cost.

Whilst automation gives me more time for admin; admin is not my thing and no real desire or enthusiasm to automate it hence the above approach.

The biggest advantage I found with automation in Excel is that it frees up more time to do more automation or other tasks. Sort of gift that keeps on giving.

I'm very similar to you, Manchester_man, in size of firm and set up. My firm these days is also just me and the Mrs (although she is a qualified accountant too). We even both trained in M/cr!

I suppose if I were growing my firm now, then I too would be looking at all the different software solutions claiming to make our working lives a doddle. However, since I hit where you appear to be 15 or 20 years ago and there was very little PM software around at that time (plus I'm constitutionally incapable of letting go to the extent of actually trusting any bit of 3rd party kit with deadlines), I did what everybody in that position did and built my own solution.

It started out in Excel but soon moved over to an Access database once I had acquired enough know-how. Granted, that was probably easier for me than most because I found that I enjoyed fiddling around with the VBA programming language (much more fun than reading some tax tome although I grant you that's a matter of opinion).

Not everyone will want to do that and there's also the question of the time investment needed to become proficient in VBA and to build your own solution versus the cost of off-the-shelf solutions which are available right now. But, equally, there's also the trade-off between getting exactly what you want and need versus generic solutions which don't tick all your boxes (and which, seemingly to rub it in, give you lots of things you don't want or need).

But to answer your two specific gripes from the top of your OP, my database includes different types of jobs (accounts, tax return etc etc) so I can track deadlines and also include the ability to add notes so I have a better idea of progress when that job from 3 or 4 months ago suddenly rears its ugly head again. I can also (and indeed spend a fair bit of the day actually doing) add / edit / enter narrative / complete what I call "To Do" points which are actually individual records in an Access table. This is where I would track incoming post (when I actually get any) but especially emails which I'm not going to answer straight away, and also random action or memo points I want to carry forward as they occur to me.

So, as you can hopefully see, I am in the happy position of getting what I imagine most accountants of our size want and need. Just not in a very polished fashion. I might be off-beam here in terms of what the market wants but it baffles me why the professional software developers cannot actually talk to accountants and give us something a bit like the above, but better of course.

A point I meant to include:

Both of the features I mentioned above could probably be replicated in Excel. There are pluses and minuses to this and Access is definitely more scaleable but, on the other hand, the learning curve for VBA with Excel is less and it is of course a more familiar environment for accountants.

I use AccountancyManager, like yourself. I also don't use the client portal as in my experience those are never engaged with by clients.

I think it can do a lot more than you're currently getting out of it. I set mine up when I was smaller but it has become more useful as the practice has grown and does a very good job of ensuring nothing gets missed.

A few things you could probably be doing:

- Set up reminders for your management accounts, payrolls, Xero reconciliations etc such that these are generated automatically in AM. Making this easier for yourself encourages you to stay on top of it.

- Try to set up any reminders to yourself for follow ups directly in AM itself, I was able to get a lot more benefit out of it when I used it as my only source of reminders because it meant I wasn't looking in multiple places to see what I needed to do. If I need to return a call I just set up a quick task in AM dated a few days in the future.

- You can set AM to do some of the tedious parts of the job like chasing clients to deliver records to you. Helpful for keeping things flowing smoothly by ensuring you get records in plenty of time and also covers you from any forgetful clients who want to pretend you haven't asked them for their info!

My own advice in general though is that it's better to have one and only one place to check for your reminders and time logging. It makes it far less likely that you'll miss something. I think you're making a mistake by having so many different systems in place which overlap with each other. When it comes to this side of things one imperfect system is better than 4 different systems which could all technically do a better job of their one area of speciality.

We use AM (or BM as it's now known), sounds to me like you are not using it to its full potential.

Clients do not need to sign up to the portal, the way we use it is
1. All new clients automatically sign up because thats the way we on board them
2. We had a campaign over a 12 month period to get all company clients signed up, 99% of them did
3. ST/SATR clients, most are not signed up, yes it would be easier if they did but we have taken a light touch approach to these so far
4. We keep track of all stat deadlines on there as you do
5. We use it for client risk assessments, that way we get a reminder when the next one is due.
6. We have created a number of other bespoke tasks such as monthly accounts, quarterly book-keeping, ATED etc and anything else that is a regular job. We even have some tasks where the individual tasks within the task are listed with checkboxes for progress.

Yes you have to keep it up to date, but that would be the case with whatever you use, overall my point is that you are not using it as well as you could be, and from a continuity point of view I am pretty confident that if I unexpectedly shuffled off anyone could instantly see what was required and pick it up.

I am a professional email answerer for at least half the day, every day.....

We used to have AM for personal tax but have switched to cch. For ltd cos my team are still using excel as we have not yet had time to program the software which has took months just for personal tax. Excel works fine along with btc for company secretarial reminders.

I use Excel, and have tried software but came back to Excel. I did add a column for confirmation statements, as opposed to Cylhia66, as it sounds like he would take work with him on leave, and would file the statement on the day the email reminder comes through. I prefer to prepare them or hand them over in advance so I can take leave and LEAVE work behind.

I use Excel, and have tried software but came back to Excel. I did add a column for confirmation statements, as opposed to Cylhia66, as it sounds like he would take work with him on leave, and would file the statement on the day the email reminder comes through. I prefer to prepare them or hand them over in advance so I can take leave and LEAVE work behind.

I have two spreadsheets - one for keeping track of all deadlines, with separate tabs for SA, Companies and VAT.

The second keeps track of dates when jobs come in, get started, and completed; with notes as to what I'm waiting for to get them finished - sounds similar to DJKL's paper approach, but allows me to filter out all the jobs that have been completed, and not lose track of jobs far up the page that still haven't been finalised.

I find that clients phoning me and urgently screaming at me for their tax work before an impending deadline works well in practice.

Hello Manchester Man,

Your question sounded exactly like my situation a couple of years ago. I was a solo practitioner with about 130 clients. I had an Excel spreadsheet listing all the deadlines, etc. Going on holiday without my laptop was impossible.

I hired a small team of two people, one full-time accountant and the other part-time admin/training to be a bookkeeper.

Firstly, I used Accountancy Manager to the fullest, asking and chasing clients to register themselves, and after a couple of months, 98% of my clients were registered on it. Thankfully, AM now sends out the chaser emails and messages, and all the final returns and accounts are uploaded so clients can e-sign and download them instead of requesting to be emailed.

As I have only one user licence for AM. I use Trello to assign tasks to the team on a monthly basis. AM and Trello aren't perfect, but they save much time chasing emailing clients and my team working on the tasks.

Now, I am mostly working on finalisation, reviews, business development, and compliance. I take a few holidays a year. I take my laptop with me, but it stays in my hotel room most of the time and is only used to complete tasks that can't be done on my smartphone.

I would recommend using AM to its full potential and hiring a part-time staff member if you cannot afford full-time staff.

I hope it helps. All the best.

Hello.

We are a husband and wife team with 3 part time staff.

We were on AM but did not like it - too complex, too time consuming, too rigid, too expensive when you have part time staff.

We now use Pixie. Much cheaper, much more adaptable.

We have recurring payroll, VAT, accounts and SA tasks that automatically appear, and we have also set up regular bookkeeping or admin tasks such as POA Self Assessment reminders, calls to touch base with clients etc. Just having templates for emails that you don't have to keep typing out has saved us so much time.

As a fail safe I also have a list of Conf Statement deadlines, accounts deadlines and our VAT clients on the wall / whiteboard that we also tick off so that we can be absolutely sure, belts and braces, that we don't miss anyone. This satisfies my "what if the software misses something?" panics.

I've also set up an additional user - "Still To Do" where tasks for all of our SA clients sit, so that as they come in with their paperwork we can allocate them to a staff member. This works well in keeping tabs on the SAs left to do, sending chasers etc.

Pixie is improving all of the time and although it is not perfect at £99 per month for under 150 clients and unlimited users, we love it :-)

Another vote for Bright/Accountancy Manager. I took advantage of my daughters furlough leave during the penademic and she helped me upload all my clients. I am a sole practitioner with 200+ clients and haven't looked back since. It isn't perfect but it certainly works for me, generating significant cost and time savings. All clients use the portal/e-signing/document storage facilities. I also chose that point to go paperless as B/A Manager greatly helped facilitate that.

Employ someone surely you could delegate most of these tasks?