Using Checklists And Supercharging Them

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I love making a grocery list and leaving it on the counter. Good times.

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I bet you are thinking, “Why are we discussing checklists? That seems like a pretty rudimentary topic?”

Yeah, um…no… 

Checklists are the basis for all our work: 

• What needs to get done

• Who is going to do it

• How it should be done

• In what order is it going to get done

• When it needs to be done

Folks like to get all lingo-y and talk about workflows. But in the end, workflows are really just checklists - supercharged. By breaking down our thinking on “workflows” to a more simple concept - checklists - you may find it less overwhelming to get started. Getting started is often the hardest part of building out the workflows and processes we need to manage our businesses effectively, so thinking about lists with attributes rather than as fancy workflows may help get you moving.

My number one rule on checklists (processes of any kind, actually): Build your checklists based on outcomes.

• What is the end run you are looking to accomplish?

When I was in the marketing biz we had checklists for every printed piece we created. We called them “Workbacks” because everything we did started with the end result, the outcome. My client base was 90% Securities Commission driven corporations such as banks and insurance and mutual funds companies, so there was no leeway on the numbers represented in the communications we produced or when the communications had to be delivered (sound familiar?).

Key outcome: 

Compliant* Annual Reports delivered to shareholders by DD/MM/YYYY

This list would then be reversed. We didn’t have ChatGPT then (which I used to reverse the list above - fun, amirite?), but we could reverse it in the spreadsheets we used to manage our “Workbacks”. So, we started with the outcome and then simply reversed the order to give us an actionable checklist (except the very important “Milestone - which has to be moved manually).

The Workbacks - checklists - were way more detailed, of course, but every one of them started off as above. A simple list to get us all on the same page with the important milestones, the base tasks, the due dates and who would be involved. You don’t really need to go through listing everything in reverse order of course, but try it a few times to get the hang of starting with the outcome.

Thoughts to take from above, other than beginning with the end.

• Don’t complicate your checklists with an app

  • Spreadsheets are great for thinking in - and you can often upload or copy/paste into an app

  • Implementing them in apps can follow, but in the spirit of getting started, let’s go to where we already think as accounting professionals

• Start with the milestones to achieve your outcomes

  • Post transactions

  • Clear bank feeds

  • Reconcile

  • Review

  • Report

  • Close

Now add them to the apps

• Add granular tasks - you can do some of this in the spreadsheet and some once you are in the apps, based on what would make it easier to set-up initially and to transfer to a program

• Tasks

• Details

• Best practices

• Notes

• Videos

• Links

• Next Leveling

• Add the communications 

• Client communications

• Discovery forms

• Information gathering forms

• Contracts and engagements

• Educational videos

• And utilize the app-efficiency features

• Dependencies

• Tags

• Recurring schedules

• Task assignments

• Automations

A word on automation!

• Test the heck out of everything

• Weigh the automation win vs automation fail

How do you decide what checklists to create? 

Here are some thoughts to get you started deciding what to create lists for:

• Biggest missteps

• Inconsistent work

• Missed deadlines

• Least often done work (you can forget how to do it well!)

• Complicated processes

• Processes with many steps

• Multiple communications

• Several stakeholders

What are some key checklists? 

1. Engagements

2. Onboarding

3. Re-engagement

4. Dis-engagement

5. Weekly bookkeeping

6. Monthly bookkeeping

7. Quarterly bookkeeping

8. AP, AR

9. Payroll

10. File review

11. Year End review and close

12. Clients’ employee onboarding

To summarize - cause I know some of you just want the short version :-}

1. Start with the end in mind

   • The key to killer checklists is defining the desired outcomes

2. Don’t complicate the process

   • Getting started with loose checklists is ten-fold more important than waiting to create perfect ones

3. Make a list of the lists you need to create :-}

   • Then prioritize them

4. Listing and systematizing the work you need to do - creating checklists - is more important than automation

   • Automation comes only after extensive testing 

     • Automation built on lousy systems causes lousy outcomes

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- Realize Meetup - Crafting Client Communications

• Tuesday, December 12, 2023

• 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

A mastermind session, in Jason Staats’s Realize Community, on building client communications to set clear guidelines on collaborating together.

In this masterclass, we will cover:

• How to craft client communications to set the stage for harmonious relationships.

• Create confidence and understanding for your clients in how to work alongside your firm.

• Build content that will set the stage for truly collaborative relations - that empower them to understand the technology you work in, how to share, and communicate with, what your scope of work is and when they are stepping out of your boundaries.

Together, we will noodle through both the content to build and the technology and applications to use to build them.

This is a monthly series on client engagements I’ve developed just for the Realize Community event series. You must be a member to participate.

I highly recommend you join Jason Staats's amazing group - you will love it there!

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Simply yours, Kellie :-}

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