Multi-tasking and the phone

Carol McLachlan puts a great post on Accounting Web about focusing on one task at a time.

I agree 100% that trying to do too many things at once is a recipe for making mistakes.

Carol mentions setting aside "batches of time" to deal with e-mails, texts and phone calls, and otherwise switching those devices off.

As far as e-mails and texts go, I agree. With phone calls, it's a little bit trickier. Accountants have a bad name for hiding in little ivory towers and being inaccessible to their clients.

But I can remember days at work when I'd be right in the middle of working something out, or writing a report, or doing some research, ring ring would go the phone and a cheerful receptionist would say "It's xxx for you, Emily".

And while I talked to xxx, my train of thought was interrupted, and I'd have to go back and start again once I'd got off the phone.

But that same receptionist's voice would, as if by magic, drop 10 degrees if I said "Could you take a message please, I'm in the middle of something".

So I think that one system a practice should have is that all staff, not just the partners, should be able to ask the receptionist not to put any calls through.

BUT - and this is very important - any messages taken should be followed up promptly as soon as possible. Otherwise the clients feel ignored and unvalued which is very bad news.

Mark Lee on timesheets

Mark Lee's latest blog post talks about how accountants often do more networking with new and potential new clients than with existing clients - because time spent with existing clients has to go down on the timesheet and therefore has to go down on the bill. Networking meetings, on the other hand, can't be billed.

I've encountered that accountant mentality before now. I knew one accountant who billed his client for time spent at a social lunch. Yuk (that's the accountant's attitude, not the food).

David Winch comments to Mark's post;

What else could you do to reduce the downsides of your timesheet procedures?

Bin them!

I agree with David! My new practice has no timesheets (though when I do subcontract work for other accountants, I do a mixture of hourly rates and fixed fees).

If I were a client, I wouldn't want to wait a whole year before I knew what my accountant was going to charge me, and have no option to say "No thank you, that's too expensive" before (s)he did the work.

When you take your car in to be serviced, don't you like the garage owner to tell you upfront how much a standard service will cost?

If you send your children to private school (OK, I know that's a red rag issue for some people), how would you like it if the school charged more the longer it took to explain a problem to your child?

Filling in a timesheet is a job I always hated, and now I get to choose, I do as little of it as I can!

To quote Hugh Williams:

When accountants and solicitors charge by the hour
Clients moan about fees and relationships sour
So throw away timesheets - Fix Price all you do
Bill 'em upfront and clients will love you!

Fast expenses on FreeAgent

One area where traditional desktop-based accounting software scores over online accounting software is the speed of data entry.

Accountants and bookkeepers are used to batch input screens, like this one (Sage's purchase invoice entry screen) where all the entries for a year can be made on one screen at one go.

Online accounting solutions often can't provide that, so each entry has to be made one by one, which can slow the process down.

I've been looking at FreeAgent recently, and was impressed with how fast I was able to post out-of-pocket expenses into that system.

For starters, out-of-pocket expenses are set up as standard. No need to enter a bank account or supplier account for the director.

Secondly, FreeAgent remembers the detail of the last entry (account name, date and amount), which is handy if you're recording repeated expenses like train tickets. What's even more handy for that is the recurring expenses feature.

And right at the bottom, you can choose to "Create and add another" expense. No need to go out of the expenses area and back in again.

So although this may not be as quick as a batch entry screen, I would say it's fast enough to at least start counterbalancing that advantage of desktop software, when you consider the myriad other advantages of online software.

A new blog for M

My new accountancy practice is very nearly there.

But I've decided, because the blog content for clients and potential new clients would be so different from what I write here (this blog is either about videos or in accountantese), to set up a new blog to run beside this one.

The new blog is here and is for home business owners who are worried about the money and tax sides of their business.

My vision is to take that worry away by helping them.

The best things in life are free... but what about business?

I've just watched the slideshow below, of a presentation given by Roan Lavery of FreeAgent.

FOWA Tour- Roan Lavery

View more Microsoft Word documents from Carsonified Team.

Even though there's no audio, the message does come across clearly - don't be afraid to charge your customers for your product.

Or as Paddi Lund puts it, "When you ask your customers for money, don't be modest, and don't be embarrassed."

I've heard the phrase somewhere, "reassuringly expensive". And I think it's a good one.

If you know your product, and the service that comes with it, are good, then what are you doing charging EasyJet prices for it?

EasyJet is a no-frills airline. Passengers expect to pay a low price for tickets because there's no reserved seating (get to the front of the queue if you want an emergency exit seat and pray they don't shuttle you out to the plane in a bus and mess up the queue order completely - no kidding), no free drinks and no free food.

So it follows that if you charge a low price, your customers will expect a low-quality product.

Mercedes cars are expensive because the brand has a strong image of quality, reliability and elegance.

Are you a Mercedes or an EasyJet?

MindBites = MegaBrilliant

Just recently I started publishing my for-sale videos through MindBites.

Then one of the MindBites team asked me if I'd like a purpose-built site to host my videos, as there are now quite a lot of them there. They're trialling customer specific sites so the cost would be £nil.

I figured "it's worth a try" and said yes please.

Within seconds this had appeared.

Wow.

Without any input from me, they had read my main website and used the same colour scheme, banners, even my logo. And put relevant text on the site.

I'm very seriously impressed with the speed, quality and responsiveness of their customer service.

Thanks MindBites.

New videos available: Really Simple Bookkeeping

Many really small businesses slip under the radar of accounting and bookkeeping systems.

Sage and QuickBooks are far too big for a business that's only got a few transactions a month at most.

And while there are excellent solutions out there like FreeAgent and KashFlow, for some very small businesses (I'm thinking along the lines of up to 10 transactions a month) even they would be overkill - and some business owners are worried about putting accounting information on the Internet, despite the level of security that SaaS products operate.

So I've decided to build a short video course on "Really Simple Bookkeeping" which shows owners of really small businesses how to keep their records easily on a basic Excel spreadsheet.

And I've also included .pdf instructions and downloadable copies of the spreadsheet in Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 formats in the price of the course.

To preview any or all of the videos, or to buy your own copy, please click here.