how timesheets kill teamwork

hourly record-keeping is an individual sport.

by jody padar
from success to significance: the radical cpa guide

capacity gives you and your team incredible opportunities for professional growth. never at any of my old-school firm jobs did i feel like i was part of a team.

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yes, i had co-workers who would help if needed. but it was always at the expense of an hour. that may seem harsh, but if your managers are looking at budget hours and you need coaching to get through your part of the assignment, they might only offer up their help begrudgingly.

there is no team play in a billable hour model.

hours by their inherent nature are an individual sport.

take away the tracking of time and running a firm differently creates a whole new level of learning. you’re constantly learning new tools, learning via new technical cpe and, most importantly, learning from the team around you. you’re learning new tech from the millennial who holds your hand as you figure out a different way to document something. (why is it they know all the drag-and-drop tips?)

you can have the bandwidth now to spend extra time to fully explain why you do a specific task – and not just to more inexperienced team members. or even explain the history of a certain tax code. i love watching the light bulb come on or, even better, hearing team members explain it to a customer. you can now teach across roles so that more team members know different aspects of all the jobs, not just their specific parts.

everybody has to step up their game in teaching and delegating to other team members.

this is the hard part, as we have had little in the way of learning how to manage work and people. managing work is very different than collecting and billing time. it’s a completely new skill set.

new firms really feel like a team sport. they have to, in order to survive. they experience exponential growth, which forces the firms and their members to sink or swim. and oh, how they are swimming!

time tracking eventually will need to go away for new firms because of the above. it has to! but incrementally. if you can

• manage work,
• set realistic expectations that team members can easily understand and accomplish, and
• allow for some leeway if you absolutely must track time as a stepping stone,

you are well on your way to a culture of learning and vast growth.

get in the (work) flow

if you are not already using workflow software you absolutely must start using it now. this is the easiest way to manage work – which is what you should be managing in your firm instead of time.

there are various workflow products out there, and they have different purposes. some may integrate with your tax software, and some may only do accounting or other project management. i’m even aware of firms using workflow software not specific to the accounting industry. if you can manage your work it should help you manage your people. also, you need to look at and appropriately allocate capacity. i have yet to find the perfect tool for capacity management.

try it out and start here:

• find/create a group or service area within a larger firm that does mostly fixed pricing.
• manage work, not time.
• utilize workflow software to measure delivery dates, time in house, turnaround time, etc.
• see how it works.
• roll out across firm.
• have party.

posted on october 29, 2018