Overcoming Collaboration Overwhelm With Liscio - Client Experience 2.0
Are you overwhelmed right now?
Most folks we know are, right?!
Together, we are all coming off a couple of tough years, and collaborating in an entirely - or mostly - virtual model requires us all to work differently. The old ways don't work anymore - we can't just pop our heads over the cubicle walls and ask co-workers “what’s up"?”. Instead, we have to peck things out in an email/Slack/Teams/WhatsApp… or schedule* a Zoom/call them to ask questions. It’s complicated, and confusion can often reign supreme.
For firms that primarily communicate with clients using emails, it's even worse. The only way to keep everyone in the loop about client communications over email is to BCC and CC everyone on the team. Gah!
This explodes the number of emails that each person has to read and absorb every day, and then somehow make the "key bits" actionable. Everyone's exhaustion increases tenfold when massive inboxes are involved. It’s hard for a firm owner to stay on top of all these communications.
Balls can drop
The firm can be embarrassed
Deadlines can be overlooked
And then - oh my word - then there are documents... it's the same fustercluck.
Too many things coming at you, in too many ways
Because clients generally won’t adopt portals without a lot of prodding and poking, they send documents to the firm using so many creative (and insecure) ways forcing us to look in so many places that it is exhausting.
It is disorganized and stressful
How frickin’ embarrassing if the firm can't find a document the client sent - if they have to ask the client to re-send something they already sent to a different team member. Or worse if they lose the document entirely and then miss an important deadline ‘cause of it.
I have a slick, but app-and-Zap-heavy, client communication/share set-up. I built it before some of the cool apps of today came along, and I have a unique business model and I don’t offer tax services.. My communications with clients don’t need to track across teams or be scaleable. But, if I were implementing something today, I would take a good hard look at Liscio
- actually, I have vetted Liscio mightily, and I recommend it highly to most of you. Because you do need “an app for that”.
With Liscio, all client communications, messages, tasks and documents are brought into one place for the team to use collaboratively. Clients adopt the mobile app well, so they send documents quickly. And now that Liscio is in beta for embedded email inside Liscio (for firm use only), previously-unactionable emails can now be easily associated with the Client/Account in Liscio. This allows the team to see and act on part of the communication history for that client. You can simply add the email to the client account, and then from there on, use Liscio to communicate with the client - making it more secure, and most importantly - visible and actionable for the team to use. Imagine, you don't have to snort between email and Liscio - just open up Liscio and hang about there all day!
Now is the time to set the wheels in motion to take back your day, wrangle email into submission, and bring all client and team communication into a single source of truth. A single, quiet, secure, collaborative place.
QBO Tech Tip
- All of my template workflows include details like this, and my Standard Operating Process Guides are start to finish standards for apps and internal processes
Clear Un Deposited Funds and have A/R and A/P reports open at all times when clearing the bank feeds.
Reconciliations are, for the most part, done before you get there if you manage the bank feeds properly. But only if you check/clear UDFs and run & review these 2 key reports before you begin clearing the feeds.
Undeposited Funds
There should be nothing in UDFs that doesn’t line up with the feed date you are currently clearing
Quickbooks payments don’t always clear properly - be conscious of this - and the open transactions are “hiding” in a middle dropdown menu
Make sure you open that dropdown and investigate the “why” if there are uncleared ones in there - I have personally seen these a lot in clean-up files, sometimes going back years
Accounts Receivable
Run this report to make sure that all payments have been recorded
This goes hand in hand with UDFs being cleared
Do not use “find a match” to record payments received as a deposit directly in the feeds - the amount of the payment will not be future searchable in the QBO file
Use “find a match” to… well… find the match, but then record the payment as a transaction and then clear in the bank feed
Accounts Payable
Post bills and expenses from Dext/Hubdoc as bills so they show up in the AP report
If you spot ones that should be matching in the bank feeds - but aren’t - you can check for penny rounding or date transposition
If you don’t use the A/P for this, with receipts posting as bills, you may wind up with duplicates and be in a time-sucking circle of deleting-changing-matching rather than having done-for-you automagical reconciliations
If they don’t match in any feeds you will know to check in with the owner or team members for personally paid or petty cash transactions
Featured Template
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Featured Template ~~~
Nothing is more frustrating than finding you are missing W-9’s for one or more of your clients.
Having a good process you can use throughout the year is key.
Download this document, written by Rob Smith, CPA for a step-by-step guide to solve this challenge in your firm.
15% off discount code: BLOG
Join Me Here
I’m at Xerocon, in New Orleans, right now! Eeek, what a lucky duck I am to be with so many amazing peeps IRL.
CPB Ignite is coming up.
Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - Friday, September 23, 2022
In 2014 this conference changed my bookkeeping life! I can’t say enough good about it!
There is a giveaway at the Liscio booth, of my Client Collaboration Guidebook template :-}
I am doing a session on prospecting to final onboarding of clients using all Google apps. Apps that are either free or part of your Google Workspace.
And I am doing a session on Graceful Endings - Disengaging Clients Respectfully. It’s time to say goodbye to a client, and no matter the reason for the goodbye, a graceful ending is always in order.
Sociable
- said in your head in a loud sing-songy voice
Here is a Twitter thread on some of the ins and outs of scheduling meetings
Simply yours, Kellie :-}
::Shameless Call To Action::
I sell bookkeeping templates, standard operating process handbooks and client guides.
15% off discount code: BLOG
*If you haven’t set up an online scheduler - only the most insanely fabulous efficiency implementation you can make - do it right now.
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