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How Meyer Only Spends Four Hours per Week on Her CPA Firm

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 27, 2023 | 6 minutes

Podcast

Summary

  • Knowing When to Step Back
  • Preparing Your Firm For Less of Your Time
  • Mastering Time Blocking 

Jackie’s Resources

Meet Our Three-peat Guest: Jackie Meyer

Jackie Meyer is the CEO and founder of Meyer Tax, she’s won Forbes 40 under 40, is the founder of a new software app TaxPlanIQ, and an official member of Forbes finance council. On top of all of that,  she is also working on her PhD. After meeting with us once to discuss how to run a successful remote accounting firm, she then met with us to explain how she niched down to tax planning which sparked new growth and profitability. Today, Jackie will join us for the third time to walk us through her process of transitioning to a four-hour workweek.

After 10 years of hard work, 100 high net worth execs as clients, and a dozen staff members, Jackie has successfully transitioned to running her firm working just four hours a week. In this podcast, Jackie gives insight into knowing when it’s time to step back, how to prepare your firm for fewer hours on your end, and the art of mastering time blocking. The basis of all of these changes came from mentorship and coaching, so she now runs the program Certified Concierge Accountant for others to accelerate their own firms’ path.

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About two years ago, Jackie was faced with a family crisis that sparked her desire to cut down to a four-hour workweek. She knew her long hours and busy weeks were beginning to be too much so after reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris, she restructured her firm to be more conducive to her schedule. She also found passion and purpose in helping other accountants find balance and wanted to spend more time developing tools TaxPlanIQ and her Certified Concierge Accountant mastermind.

By niching down to focus on tax planning for high net worth execs, Jackie was able to triple her income and lower her client base by roughly 60%. Once she successfully made her firm more valuable and profitable, she was able to shift her focus to finding people to replace her. Just cutting back, or just converting to value pricing, won’t cut it to stay profitable. There’s a unique combination that needs to be done to stay in the top 1% of net income for accounting firms.

She also noted that when her firm was at a point where they were no longer looking to grow, and just aiming to stabilize revenue, she could start looking for more ways to step back.

Preparing Your Firm For Less of Your Time

If there’s one thing Jackie made clear, it was that there’s always an app or coaching program to help your firm run more smoothly and efficiently. She realized this firsthand through hours of research and trying to solve problems she was continuously running into. She would implement and experiment with multiple apps and programs to find what works best for her firm, and more importantly, saves her and her team the most time.

From there, Jackie emphasized creating and using training videos as aids for her team members. These videos came through in a big way when she transitioned out of her sales role. By recording all of her pitches via Zoom, she was able to teach her tax manager how to make a sale in a way that aligned with Jackie’s approach. After shadowing just a few pitches, the transition was made, and she could check sales off her to-do list, meaning working fewer hours a week.

Jackie acknowledged there were hiccups in getting her firm to where it is now. There were a few bad hires, however, she sees these as a learning opportunity because they showed her what she didn’t want in an employee. She also mentioned the importance of finding your core values early on. You may think the entire staff is on the same page as you when it comes to values but in reality, you don’t know if you don’t make an effort to discuss and implement them. You can then test potential new hires by asking interview questions that require answers parallel to your values, cutting down the number of bad hires.

Mastering Time Blocking

Trimming down a full-time schedule into a four-hour workweek requires excellent time management skills. Jackie credits time blocking to Chuck Bauer and the Certified Concierge Accountant program for a large portion of her success in this area. Her three keys to time blocking are:

  1. Set Time Limits. Setting time limits gives you a general idea of how long it should take to accomplish a task.
  2. Say No. Learn to say no to people and tasks that don’t fit into your plan or will consume too much of your time. Finding a mentor/coach is imperative for this confidence.
  3. Work Backward. Schedule your most important tasks first in the time frames you have available and then see if you have time to complete the minor tasks.

She also mentions that if there is something you are doing that can be delegated or done by an outsourced company, make the hire. For example, Jackie no longer checks her email regularly. Instead, she has a professional organize and sift through emails so she doesn’t have to spend more than 30 minutes a day replying to emails.

By following these tips, Jackie can use her four hours for things like tweaking efficiency tools, analyzing the scorecard sheet, talking with customers, and joining team meetings. She makes sure she is available on instant messenger should her team need her outside of her shortened schedule however, they each have someone to report to if there is a problem, so she is rarely needed. 

Jackie has taken all of the right steps to get to the coveted four-hour workweek. By knowing when to step back, preparing the firm for fewer hours, and mastering time blocking, she’s been able to keep the transition smooth while maintaining the same level of revenue and success.

To learn more about Jackie and how she has gotten her firm to where it is, be sure to listen to the full podcast above! 

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Choose the Best Collaboration Software for Your Accounting Firm

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 27, 2023 | 6 minutes

If you’re going to use a tool to manage how the team works together, you want the best collaboration software, right? After all, collaboration is an important member of the healthy accounting firm’s trifecta. The entire triangle of team delight includes:

  • Processes: Every dotted “i” and crossed “t” for every service and function of your business.
  • Workflow design: How all of those processes actually flow to your business and the team.
  • Team collaboration: How your team works together along the path of that workflow to accomplish each process. (Things like communication, handoffs, doc sharing; the list goes on.) 

A collaboration software is a tool that enables your team to share critical items (tasks, docs, notes), client data, and anything else that’s mission critical. These tools also allow teammates to um… collaborate throughout the workflow.

To put it simply, collaboration tools bind together what you do (processes/deliverables) with the how (workflow, communication, teamwork).

It’s important to note that all teamwork tech is not created equal. There are a number of things to consider when finding the best collab tool, for you and your team. 

Why Collaboration Software Is Important

Most firms have some sort of project management or client management system. How the team communicates and handles the work, on the other hand, is often a bit more Wild West-ish. The workflow often includes a hodgepodge of email strings, messaging apps, text, and even handwritten notes!

Key Point: Collaboration software (used properly) enhances the overall project process in your firm. Which leads us to our first reason why having one is important.

Efficiency, Productivity, and Culture

Everything your firm does requires planning, assigning, leading, and quality control. What part of that doesn’t involve collaboration? 

Many of the toughest challenges in firms we speak with often deal with a few collaborative issues.

  • Client information is spread across several tools or different systems that don’t inherently work well together
  • Tasks are getting lost when shuffling from one teammate to another
  • You’re growing, hiring, and finding it difficult to set clear expectations and get new staff up to speed quickly

Now, imagine a single place for all client data/docs, team notes/emails, and a hub of every process/service completed by your firm. Efficiency leads to productivity, productivity leads to improved culture, and improved culture leads to a healthy accounting firm.

Great Teamwork Is Vital For Customer Success

You’re not the only one benefiting from collaboration. The businesses you serve get better service. No cracks for things to slip through. The right person is actually following up with them (when they’re supposed to, even). Reports and deliverables are on time. 

Proper teamwork allows you (as the owner) to: 

Point is: it’s a win-win. Now, onto the things you want in the type of software of which we’re speaking.

What to Look For In a Collaboration Software

Know How You Collaborate (Right Now)

This one isn’t always the most fun. Tougher still if you’re a firm who has a little data over here, some numbers over in that thing, and docs spread across a couple of sharing platforms.

But in order to fix the root of those issues we mentioned earlier, you’ve got to know two things:

  1. Exactly how you do each thing you do (all of the tasks associated with each service, process, and administrative duty in your firm)
  2. How these things move from beginning to end, A to Z, from “gotta do” all the way to “done” 

Particularly in the “how,” it’s important to note a few things:

  • Who specifically does certain things/tasks within a particular process
  • Multiple teammates? How do they communicate? Is there a transition(s)? How does it get to “done”?
  • What other processes are connected to the particular process in question? (e.g. The marketing/sales/discovery process is connected to the new client write up, which is connected to each service that new clients signed on to get)

Pretty soon, you’ll string every aspect of your firm together, piece by piece. Again, not the funnest thing in the world, but oh when you’re done… Such a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment will wash over you.

Look At All of the Features

A collaboration software is more than a messaging app or a way for your team to chat with one another. Some tools go beyond the basics to provide a number of useful features accountants need.

Since there is a wide variety of tech available, it’s important to look over the features of these solutions. 

A few things to keep in mind:

  • How well does the tool merge processes with collaboration? Are there features that would enhance both what you do and how you do it?
  • What comes with the price of admission? Most of these tools are a monthly subscription. Some limit the number of users (your team), or clients you can add, or resources (e.g. documents) it’ll hold. Be sure to go to the pricing page and look at the features “line-by-line” for each plan.
  • How’s Their Support? Training? Reviews? Everything you do inside of an app sounds great…so long as you trust the company hosting it. Take a look at their support (phone, chat, email). Do they have tutorials and helpful resources? Check out their reviews, case studies, and testimonials.
  • Does the Collaboration Tool Collaborate? It sounds weird to ask if a piece of tech works well with other tech, but it’s really important to your success. These are called integrations. And while you can’t cut out all other software (like QBO, Gusto, etc.) they should work together with other aspects of your workflow setup.

Team Collaboration Made Easier with a Workflow Software

Ok, you got us. Jetpack Workflow is a workflow software that includes the inherent ability for teams to flawlessly collaborate. Share notes, connect email, and message the team inside the place that holds every single task, process, and procedure in your firm. 
Plus, many of the other things mentioned like capacity planning, unlimited docs/clients, and even process templates specifically for accounting firms. Ready to see for yourself? Try Jetpack Workflow for free for 14 days.

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How this Highly Lucrative Accounting Advisory Service Helped Teresa Scale Her Firm

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 27, 2023 | 4 minutes

Podcast

Summary

  • The Importance of Choosing a Niche
  • Creating a Product for the Customer
  • Appealing to the Right Clients

Ways to Connect 

Millennial Bookkeeping and Advisory Services

Teresa Oliver is the firm owner of Millennial Bookkeeping and Advisory Services. They are a remote firm that focuses on building business systems with an accounting foundation. Teresa works to ensure all of her clients can increase their bottom line. She does this through connecting to clients within her niche, creating specialized products for her clients, and appealing to business owners who will find the most value in her services. 

The Importance of Choosing a Niche

When starting out, Teresa was told by plenty of advisors the importance of choosing a niche. Because of her familiarity with the specialization, she chose to focus on the construction/trade industry. While she considered this her niche, she also offered services for other small businesses as well. However, clients within her niche receive more specialized programs to help their business succeed.

Teresa chose this niche because there are so many moving pieces. She started to realize how easy it is for business owners in this field to drop the ball in certain areas. She wanted to be there to help them put and keep all of the pieces together. Teresa then realized she could create programs that work well for her client’s specific needs. From there, she created the “fleet dashboard.”

Creating a Product for the Customer

When Teresa started in her niche, she realized nearly 75% of the time, money was being lost because it was mismanaged. To combat this, she created the fleet dashboard, which is essentially a financial dashboard for each vehicle a business owns. 

With fleets being essential for the majority of businesses within her niche, she realized the importance of tracking them properly. The fleet dashboard will show how much a vehicle is costing the business, how much it is making, and even the cost of the employee operating it. It can be thought of as an income statement for each vehicle. 

Teresa found that breaking these statements down to an individual level tells whether the vehicle is a “money maker or a bottom line breaker.” The fleet dashboard includes the integrity of the vehicle, the net profit, and what you could lose if it goes out of operation. Buying and maintaining a vehicle is a huge investment, so business owners need to be sure it’s going to produce for many years to come. 

With the help of Teresa’s fleet dashboards, procedures can be set up so that each vehicle is producing at its maximum value. Along with her attention to detail and eye for spotting where businesses are wasting money, the fleet dashboard pays attention to areas of the business owners tend to let fall through the cracks.

Appealing to the Right Clients

Teresa wasted no time in explaining that she doesn’t work to get a customer. For her business, she strongly believes that simply pitching her services should be enough convincing. From there, if a client chooses to move in a different direction, she believes it is for the best. Her services are incredibly detailed and the initial process actually requires a lot of work from business owners. If they are not all in with her services, they won’t be helpful anyway.  

When pitching to clients, she is sure to include prices. Her four-tier system usually requires a few thousand dollars a month in the beginning. Once the majority of the planning is complete, and automation has been put into place, the price may drop a bit, depending on the client’s needs. 

Because she demands a lot of client cooperation in the beginning and charges premium prices for her services, she stated the importance of appealing to clients that best fit her business. For Millennial Bookkeeping and Advisory Services, small construction/trade businesses making over one million in a year are her ideal clients. Her roots, however, will not allow her to just focus on the more advanced clients. She still offers resources for smaller businesses to help them grow. Once they’ve reached a point where Teresa will be useful, she then offers them her services. 

Overall, Teresa is proud of where Millennial Bookkeeping and Advisory Services has positioned themselves. She’s happy they are able to provide specialized services to her clients and that her services are valuable enough that she gets to choose which clients will be best to work with. 
To learn more about Teresa and Millennial Bookkeeping and Advisory Services be sure to listen to the full podcast above!

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Simplify Your Accounting Firm Work: How to Plan a Project

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 27, 2023 | 7 minutes

How to plan a project? Really?

Like there aren’t dozens of methods, hundreds of project types, and an infinite number of variables in project management. Before we begin tackling such massive subject matter, it’s necessary to give it definition. 

First, we’re talking about projects that accountants undertake, particularly accounting firm owners and partners. No life hacks or car maintenance or home improvement projects to cover here. Instead, it’s things like:

  • Adding a new service to your firm’s roster
  • Improving your overall workflow, to better manage tasks
  • Implementing a new software tool
  • Overhauling your onboarding process

The list goes on. 

Now that we have a particular vein, it’s time to tackle the “how to plan a project” problem — from the accounting perspective.

Why Project Planning is Important

Look, everyone knows that goals and objectives are necessary to move forward in our lives and careers. Most of us have ideas of where we’re headed, but it’s subdividing and breaking those overarching goals down into projects that move the needle.

Some are naturally inclined to superbly organize their lofty dreams in a way that turns them into a reality (Elon, we’re looking at you).

For the rest of us, even the planning takes work, the right tools, and a keen eye on capacity. For accounting firms, in particular, planning is the only way to see desired momentum. 

Here’s an example to highlight the importance of project planning:

Goal: 

  • Growth (both external and internal). Most firms we talk to want to increase the number of clients and the size of their team in a sustainable way.

Potential projects:

  • Evaluate internal processes to reduce bottlenecks, better utilize resources/staff, and standardize your workflow
  • Develop marketing and sales strategies for finding and closing qualified leads
  • Improve relationships with current clients in a way that adds value (for them) and increases revenue (for your firm)

This is a precise moment — after you’ve identified the goal and projects needed to achieve it, yet before you’ve begun work on the first Tesla. No. Rocket? No. Underground train system? Nope. (The guy has one serious to-do list.)

Accounting firm project. That’s the one.

Unfortunately, this moment is where many of us get stuck. For practice owners, project derailment isn’t caused by a lack of want, but a few common opportunities.

3 Things that Derail Projects

  • Ideas, but no plan: Ok. Think beyond what you want (the goal) and even your knowledge of how to get there (the projects). Self-reflect and ask yourself — what am I actively, right now doing to achieve those things?
  • Not using a PM tool: Project management tools help the planning phase and track progress on the way to your goal.  
  • Lack of team availability: You have a plan and a tool, but do you have the people to achieve it? It’s the ultimate chicken/egg scenario, for firms. The answer comes down to managing and tracking capacity, which we cover here, in detail.

How to Plan a Project (5 Accounting Specific Steps)

Step One: Estimate Capacity

“Sometimes you gotta go back to actually move forward, and I don’t mean going back to reminisce, or chase ghosts. I mean going back to see where you came from, where you’ve been, how you got here and see where you’re going.” — Matthew McConaughey, Buick Commercial

The workflow you have now likely won’t work when you get where you’re headed (via goals and projects). A common issue when firms grow is capacity. It rears its head in different ways:

  • Overworked, burned out staff
  • Overworked, burned out owners
  • Deliverables or work falling through the cracks
  • Not enough margin to hire, even though you’re busy

Tracking productivity, managing the workload, and documenting those processes help you determine capacity. The easiest way to estimate how much time is open for projects is to use a tool, like the one we recently added to Jetpack Workflow!

Note: Knowing specific amounts of time and the individuals who’ll have it will come in handy starting in step three.

Step Two: List Out Everything

As discussed, you have your goals and a decent idea of the big projects it’ll take to accomplish those objectives. Now, it’s time to really dig into the granular and list out specific steps/tasks in those projects.

One of the projects mentioned above was to “Improve relationships with current clients in a way that adds value (for them) and increases revenue (for your firm).” 

Potential associated tasks with this project include:

  • Identify your best clients (who’s quick to respond and takes your advice)
  • What’s your best-selling service?
  • Choose a service(s) that flows well with that service? (e.g. Tax planning is a great upsell if tax prep is your bread and butter)
  • Develop marketing materials (put together an email sequence, a guide that explains the benefits of tax planning, lots of sub-tasks here)
  • Set a task in your workflow tool for accountants to ask tax clients about tax planning for next year and remind them to offer the marketing materials 
  • Determine team members who’ll handle tax planning sessions
  • Create a “tax planning client” service template, to list all of the individual tasks for the new service

Like we mentioned, there are many projects, methods, and individual tasks. But hopefully, this gets your creative juices flowing.

Step Three: Estimate Time (per task or group of like tasks)

The most arbitrary entry on the list, yet still important. You’re not setting an egg timer here, but a mini goal. Estimate to the best of your ability, work toward completing the task, and see where you land. 

Here are a few examples, using the tasks from step two:

  • Identify your best clients and the most common service they employ — 8 hours
  • Choose a service(s) that flows well with that service — 30 minutes to an hour, including discussing it with some of your team/colleagues
  • Develop marketing materials — 3-6 weeks, after you list all of the sub-tasks involved here and find some writers/marketers to help you out

Note: After individual times are assigned (and capacity is known), you’re able to assign an estimate on the total project. So the “Launch Tax Planning Upsell Initiative” should be up and running in 8-10 weeks. Make sense?

Step Four: Organize Importance

If you’re a logical person, like an accountant, you’ve likely listed your tasks in a time-based order. From the most logical starting point, to the most likely end point. However, if you wait to begin setting up the process until your marketing materials are in, it’ll dramatically slow you down.

Here’s a quick method to use, instead.

Look at each item and ask yourself, “What is needed before we get started on this task on the list?”

Potential answers:

  • Nothing, and no other tasks hinge upon it
  • Nothing, and other tasks on the list DO hinge upon this one being complete
  • Something else needs to be done, first

Those tasks that can begin and affect other tasks should be given top priority. And if you can manage, do some other “nothing” tasks that don’t necessarily have things waiting. Use the time estimates, too. 

This method and some of that logic should create the most timely order for your project.

Step Five: Do It

It’s here you officially step out of the “planning” phase. The plan shows what you can do (capacity), what to do (tasks), and the importance of each item. Now you need the motivation to get moving.

For that, head to a page full of “do it” memes and gifs. Here’s one of our favorites:

Project Planning Made Easier with Workflow Software

Workflow software is a tool that helps you create tasks, figure out timing, manage capacity, and track the progress of all in-progress projects. And not just the things you hope to accomplish, but those things you do each and every day. 

Want to see how it works?

Try Jetpack Workflow for free for 14 days and start seeing your projects go from “planning” to “done.” 

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How This Firm Owner Charges Five Figures per Year For Her “Micro-Niche”

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 27, 2023 | 6 minutes

Anjali Jaiwala is the founder of Fit Advisors, a financial planning firm serving physicians and business owners, virtually, across the United States. With over ten years of corporate and personal accounting expertise, she knows exactly where her clients are coming from and how she can help. 

Her success stems from being intentional while she was creating Fit Advisors. By paying attention to the people she served, she was able to narrow in on a micro-niche, allowing her to charge five figures per year for her services. 

In today’s podcast, Anjali will go into detail about her success and give us insight into how she stays intentional with her business, sets her prices, and her plan for growth moving forward. 

Podcast

Summary

  • Overview of Fit Advisors Services
  • Being Intentional When Designing Your Business
  • Setting the Right Price
  • What Is Next For Anjali and Fit Advisors
  • Value of Micro-niching

Connect with Anjali

Overview of Fit Advisors Services

Since Fit Advisors’ start in 2015, with a focus on physicians with complex tax needs and small business owners looking to transition out of the start-up phase and into a full-fledged business, Anjali has grown her business into a well-known financial planning firm in her niche. 

She takes pride in knowing she is helping people all over the country bridge the gap between personal and business finances as she helps them prepare for the future. 

Being Intentional When Designing Your Business

Before starting Fit Advisors, Anjali was working a job that required her to pay a lot of detailed attention to one project at a time. This was something she was good at, so when she began to make the transition to a financial planner, a career that requires more of a generalized approach, she wanted to make sure she could narrow her practice to focus on one specialization.

After finding her very specific niche, she began looking for ways to set her prices so that she was getting maximum value out of her time and business. To do this, she made a plan to reassess fees and her value proposition every three months. Anjali would set goals based on how much revenue she wanted to generate in a certain amount of time and base her prices around that. Even now, after proving successful, she reassesses every six months. 

A micro-niche coupled with always evolving price points, allowed her to stay intentional when growing her business. 

Setting the Right Price

During the early stages of Fit Advisors, Anjali used a flat rate price, with a possibility of extra fees, for each customer based on material status. However, once she started gaining traction, she realized physicians made up the majority of her clientele, which led to doing things most advisors don’t have the knowledge to do. Because of this, she raised her minimum. 

Anjali quickly realized a downfall in charging a flat rate; two people who look exactly the same on paper may require significantly different amounts of time and work. To avoid this issue, she came up with a complexity model. Her complexity model is a spreadsheet outlining everything. It includes her base price and additional costs based on complexity and allows clients to see fees for each service she provides. 

Currently, Anjali’s base service package sits at about $15,000 per year. This package includes base planning, a dashboard, ongoing planning, access to her whenever it is needed, insurance reviews, estate planning, home affordability, and large life changes. Anything outside of these areas will be considered as a complexity fee. For example, things like 1099’s, making more than one million each year as a small business owner, and using real estate as a passive income are all services she offers, but charges an additional cost for. 

For Anjali, it is important to charge accurately for the time and services she provides. Her goal is not to have a lot of clients, just the right ones so she can maximize the value she provides. 

What’s Next For Anjali and Fit Advisors

Anjali’s original goal for Fit Advisors was for her, and a partner, to serve roughly 50 clients per year. Currently, they are working with 45 clients with new clients on the horizon. While growing Fit Advisors is not out of the question, she is keeping her options open as she explores other opportunities. She often goes back and forth with her decisions, but knows her business is in a great place for growth, should she decide to take that route. 

The potential for growth is largely reliant on her marketing tactics. Noting that getting her first 10 clients was the hardest, she has had no problem getting clients since because of her marketing strategy. 

Around the third year mark of Fit Advisors, she began creating her own channels of content instead of relying on exposure from other businesses. Anjali launched her blog and her podcast, the Money Checkup Podcast. It took about six months to a year for her content to gain traction, but once it did, it proved to be helpful. 

Not only has her business grown, but so has Anjali’s financial planning toolkit. Since starting Fit Advisors, she has had to teach herself how to do things she was not familiar with. Usually, she starts with researching a topic, talking with professionals in the field, and then begins a process of trial and error until she learns the best way to complete the task. She takes pride in her self-taught skills.

Value of Micro-Niching

Anjali doesn’t consider her move to a micro-niche as much of a choice. At first, she noticed there weren’t many people providing the services she was providing. However, after a while, everyone was doing it. From there, she determined her strengths and used those as tools to set her apart from her competitors. This is what caused her to narrow her niche. She used her marketing efforts to highlight her strengths, which helped clients find her based on her services and their needs. 

With an abundance of people discovering her platform, she had to lean into her newfound commitment to micro-niching. This meant saying no to clients who didn’t exactly fit within the services she provides. Turning away clients who don’t fit ensures she doesn’t have to learn any new information and she can improve the services she already provides to better fit her clients. 

Overall, Anjali’s insight taught us the importance of intentionally designing your business, provided a look at how she has set her prices to give and receive maximum value, and showed how micro-niching can be extremely successful with the proper marketing and skillset. 

For all of this information and more, be sure to listen to or watch the podcast above!

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Process Sheets for Accountants & CPA Practices

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 27, 2023 | 7 minutes

This article was originally published July 7, 2015. We have updated some of the language and graphics for the newer edition of the article.

—-

This week, we’re throwing it back to 2015 with an oldy-but-goody article, video, and free downloadable for creating your own process sheet for your firm.

The importance of having a process sheet? It gives you control and transparency over all of the recurring work items, jobs, or projects that you have to track inside of your firm. The process sheet is a simple way to see some of the stats, tasks, dates, and labels or statuses inside of a client job.

Want to download your own version of the free process sheet? Click here to make a copy of your own in Google Sheets.

Travel back in time: In this video, David offered an overview of the process sheet recommendation.

Walkthrough of the Process Sheet

The Basics

At the top of the process sheet are foundational elements: the job name, client name, client contact information, and price to client. Note: The “price to client” is the external price. 

Then, there are budgeted hours, which are tracked internally so you can understand your profit margin afterwards. 

Next are the partner review, manager review, and space for any additional team members. David’s suggestion is to ask for initials in these sections.

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These next pieces are critical to helping you track turnaround time, a metric that helps you to optimize your internal efficiency and to evaluate how well your process is doing. The pieces in this section include date in, target date out, actual date out, target turnaround, due date, and extension.

Example: Your turnaround time is 15 days. So in the Target Turnaround space, you’d write “15 days.” The Date In would be the first of the month, then Target Date Out would be the 16th.

The final lines include the Due Date for the project and an optional Extension Date, in case the project involves taxes with an extended deadline.

Status and Urgency

For the Status section, you can define whether the project is Reviewed, Needs Review, In Progress, or Waiting on Client. 

Urgency can be categorized in a 1, 2, 3 scale like red, yellow, green.

Task Management

In this section, you can link out to any other systems you use for tracking relevant documents. If you don’t use a separate task management system, you can also use this space for recording tasks and owners for each task.

Client Address or Billable Information

In this final section, collect the billing information for your client and any notes on specific payment terms for the client. It’s also the place to track billable hours from Budgeted to Actual, the Internal Cost, Client Price, Actual Turn, and the resulting Profit Margin.

How to Choose Your Metrics

There are some important points about how the process sheet was put together. First, whether you’re tracking tax returns, bookkeeping, general accounts, or payroll inside your accounting firm, it’s important to define the metrics that you will optimize for. These metrics are critical for running a successful firm or practice. 

Turnaround Time and Profitability

In the video, we chose to optimize around turnaround time and profitability. As an accountant, these are two critical metrics to keep in mind. Turnaround time helps us determine how well we operate internally via the systems and processes we have in place. 

The profit margin helps us determine if a firm is financially on the right track. 

Possible Third Metric

Some firms also want to add a third metric centered around team and/or client satisfaction. We recommend using a variation of the NPS (Net Promoter Score) inside your firm. Every month or quarter (you can also do it once or twice yearly, depending on how many new clients come in), you can send out a quick 30-second survey on how likely your customers are to recommend others to your accounting firm or practice. 

The Foundation  

When setting up a process sheet, the foundation is an important component for your accounting practice (example of a 1040 process sheet here). You’ll notice David highlights the target turn vs. actual turn, as well as budget hours. This is helpful when determining staff and team schedules. Reviewing the report will help us understand capacity and profitability better. 

Whether you’re looking to create your first process sheet or improve the one you currently have, building out the systems and processes in your accounting firm or practice will help you maintain quality control over your product. Your product, or service delivery, drives referrals, word of mouth growth, and profitability.

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