Best for:
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Firm owners and managers struggling to meet client deliverables consistently.
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Accounting and bookkeeping firms struggling to hold their employees accountable for time spent on projects.
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Accountants and bookkeepers who are spending more time (than necessary) on over-budget work, leading to work stress.
The only thing worse than going over budget for a project is going over budget and not knowing it.
It is all the effects of over-budget work raised to infinity:
- Workflow bottlenecks that result in employee stress.
- Greater cost of service delivery than revenue.
- Unrealistic deadlines that drive client disappointment.
Accounting firm owners use the Financial Cents Time Tracking feature to set time budgets and track over-budget work to make informed decisions that improve their workflows and maximize profits.
Financial Cents provides us with the data that we need to set budgets for our team, hold everyone accountable to those budgets, and make sure deadlines are met.”
Here’s how firms like Badger CPA do it:
Step-by-Step Guide:
Step 1: Track Work Progress and Budgets in Financial Cents
The workflow dashboard shows you your over-budget work at a glance using the Actual/Budget feature.
Here’s how:
Step 2: Set Budget Limits
You need to allocate time to your projects before you can track your over-budget work.
This short video shows you how:
Step 3: Analyze Profitability and Identify Trends
With time budgets set, start tracking and analyzing all projects going over budgets in one view.
See how👇
Step 4: Adjust Workflows and Resources
Any over-budget work can be Addressed by making one of three adjustments:
- Reassign Tasks or Adjust Workloads:
Reallocate complex tasks to more experienced team members. They are likely to complete them more quickly.
You should also look at your capacity management report to ensure no team member is taking on too much load that can slow them down. - Optimize Pricing and Service Packages:
Projects are only over their budgets when scope exceeds revenue (which determines the resources budgeted).
Increasing the rate for an over-budget project enables you to reallocate more resources (including hiring more hands) to get it done and remain profitable. - Clarify Client Expectations:
Carrying your clients along as you execute their projects reduces client dissatisfaction significantly. This gets even better with our client-facing work status, which makes your workflow tags visible to clients.
When your clients see the projects taking you longer time (and resources) to complete, it’s easier to adjust their expectations. Plus, it makes your price increase more acceptable.
Our major benefit from Financial Cents has been organization. We have full insight into what our team is working on. We can assign projects, create filters, and see what is assigned to each team member to help capacity management.”
Step 5: Continuously Monitor and Improve Firm Operations
Accounting needs and technologies are not stagnant. Your workflows shouldn’t be either. That is why Financial Cents’ real-time reports let you access the data you need to adjust your workflows, rates, and workload at every turn.
But what good is this feature if you don’t review the data frequently enough to inform your decisions?
Why The Ability to Track Over-Budget Work Is a Game Changer
- Ability to Set Realistic Deadlines and Pricing Expectations: it’s easy to think your team can finish a type of work in five hours, but you can’t prove it until you start to see how much time they spent on that work versus the budgeted hours.
Tracking over-budget work helps you to understand how much time projects take (on an annoying basis). This insight enables you to:- Give your team sufficient time to complete all projects.
- Prevent time wastage on projects that take less time to complete.
This gives us the ability to look back to see if we did it in four hours (which is great) or if we did it in six hours (which will require us to find out what went wrong and how we can make it better next time).”
Get Real-Time Insights That Make Your Firm More Profitable
Financial Cents’ practice management software enables you to access your workflow, client, employee workload, and time-tracking data in one place.
This eliminates the need to go into different apps for the insights you need to make timely decisions, keep your team productive, and ensure all clients and projects are profitable.
You need to try it for FREE. Start your 14-day Free Trial.
Many of the other tools are poor at managing updates and bugs. Some use subcontracted developers, providing real client data samples. Others have suffered breaches without proper notifications.
Of the pre-built systems out there, I do think Financial Cents has a solid offering.
One of my top goals is to make the process easier for clients. Glad I made the switch!
Many of the other tools are poor at managing updates and bugs. Some use subcontracted developers, providing real client data samples. Others have suffered breaches without proper notifications.
Of the pre-built systems out there, I do think Financial Cents has a solid offering.
One of my top goals is to make the process easier for clients. Glad I made the switch!
If you’re not using this feature, I highly recommend it! Remembering to follow up with clients can be a serious bottleneck and I love how this solved that problem!
If you’re not using this feature, I highly recommend it! Remembering to follow up with clients can be a serious bottleneck and I love how this solved that problem!