Sometimes boring is magnificent
Have you ever wandered into an accounting office and there is paper flying everywhere, computer keys furiously punched, phone lines tied up, a cat hissing and even a faint hint of crying? Most of us have probably witnessed such a scene a time or two. Some accounting departments exist where every day there is an administrative fire or critical deadline to meet. Well what if we told you it in most cases, it does not have to be that way? There is a beauty to an admin department where the paper flows like buffalo in a Midwest plain, all moving in the same direction and pivoting only when needed. A structured accounting department is one that works on a routine and everybody works towards the same goals. A business can achieve administrative routine by implementing objectives, maintaining organization and clear responsibilities, and re-evaluating current processes to eliminate inefficient operations.
Sometimes when an admin department struggles to keep their heads above water it is because there are no clear objectives. Everybody knows billing has to be done, but what is the goal date to have it done by? Vendors have to be paid, but what’s the goal to have bills entered, reviewed, and check run approved? Payroll is routinely submitted but when do employees submit time cards? When do supervisors approve the time cards? If there are no set objectives and these objectives are not routinely enforced and supported by upper management, accounting will always be chasing documentation, approvals, and missing deadlines. With clear objectives set it takes less effort to set processes that clearly defines responsibilities.
Unfortunately for operations and sales, not all admin and support work can be done by accounting. Sometimes they will need receipts, approvals, purchase orders, job costing and other information from the very people responsible for pounding the pavement and generating the revenue. While us bean counters love a good reconciliation, without the information and back up documentation prior to end of month (not three months later) the work piles up undone and snowballs into an accounting catastrophe. It is important for senior management to set admin goals for their respective departments as well (and yes, we are talking to you also owners). It is essential for an organization to clearly define who is responsible for submitting what and when to accounting. One fraudulent charge towards a corporate credit card can spiral into 100 fraudulent charges if receipts are not submitted timely and reconciliations are not done routinely.
The final advice we have to eliminate accounting chaos is to evaluate the workflow of the admin departments. Is there a separate spreadsheet for everything? Is information readily available or is it stored across 10 different laptops, five different rooms, and twenty piles of paper? A good example of how easily it can be to waste two hours looking for one document is when I sent my CPA letter of intent to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy. Below is the saga:
I mailed my package a week or two before Thanksgiving. I waited anxiously next to my email for the next month and never heard anything. Finally during the week between Christmas and New Years I called their office. I heard the devastating news they couldn’t locate my application and they had never received it. I pleaded with the kind woman who took my call to please look everywhere. The cost of the official college transcripts I had mailed was over $75 alone!
After I begged her to check every way my name could possibly be spelled and asked her to check my SSN with some numbers purposely transposed she told me she was sorry but the post office must have lost it.
Well I had mailed the package via priority mail but unfortunately I used the USPS kiosk that day and it did not spit out a receipt for the tracking number. So after I hung the phone up with the TSBPA I searched relentlessly on the internet on how to track down a tracking number from the USPS if you bought the postage from a kiosk. Alas, I entered rabbit hole after rabbit hole of forums with poor souls with lost packages without the ability to obtain a tracking number.
After my forty five minutes of researching an impossible quest, I called the TSBPA back again with hopes I would get a different agent. The same woman answered and this time around she sounded a bit more irritated. She told me they processed all letter of intents within 5-7 days of receipt and there was no way they had received mine.
I then said “Well maybe because it’s the holidays, someone went on vacation and my application was in line to be processed but when they left other applications found their way on top of mine and it was on the bottom of some long lost forgotten pile of applications.” I was told that was impossible.
I agreed but also knew it was possible so the following conversation went like this:
Me: “Hmmm..where do the applications go when they get delivered by the mail?”
Her: The Mail Room.
Me: Where did they go after that?
Her: “Accounting for payment processing.”
Me: Aha! Well my fee was waived because I’m a veteran, where would it go then?
Her: The agent who does veteran application processing
Me: I see, I see. Have they been on vacation?
Her: Maam, I’m going to put you on a hold.
I waited for 20 minutes on hold and when she got back on the line I heard:
Her: Maam, I really did not think I would find your application and I said it was lost…. But I found it. You were right, someone took an extended vacation and they haven’t caught up with their work. Yours was on the bottom of the pile.
Me: What?! I didn’t think that was actually gonna work!
Long story short, the search for my lost application took over two hours to be resolved and my package rescued from the depths of piled up paperwork despair. I had to evaluate their workflow myself to track down my own application. In some admin departments this pursuit of lost documents happens on a daily basis. “Where’s the service agreement to the printer lease?” “What happened to the file on the XYZ project?” If your accounting department wastes time and their workflow is continuously interrupted by tracking down documentation, that’s an easy obstacle to eliminate by implementing a better document storage and control system. Other workflow issues can also be corrected by eliminating redundant processes, removing data touch points, and streamlining processes.
In conclusion a boring accounting department is a magnificent sight to see. I would prefer walking into an accounting department and seeing accountants happily scanning receipts, rhythmically typing, perhaps occasionally chuckling and work gliding along than witnessing a frenzied match of accounting musical chairs. A sport where one by one, the accounting department gives up, work gets dropped, and even the last one standing loses in the long run.
Boring can be blissful.
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