Using Checklists And Supercharging Them
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?
Engagements
Onboarding
Re-engagement
Dis-engagement
Weekly bookkeeping
Monthly bookkeeping
Quarterly bookkeeping
AP, AR
Payroll
File review
Year End review and close
Clients’ employee onboarding
To summarize - cause I know some of you just want the short version :-}
Start with the end in mind
The key to killer checklists is defining the desired outcomes
Don’t complicate the process
Getting started with loose checklists is ten-fold more important than waiting to create perfect ones
Make a list of the lists you need to create :-}
Then prioritize them
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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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:
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Simply yours, Kellie :-}
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