The firm's nine-person accounting team moved from Trello to Freelo, where they manage dozens of clients in an agile scrum with repetitive tasks, deadlines and clear time tracking.
For Freelo asks Karolína Petrželová
Michal Cvrček is responsible for MC Accounting and Tax
Published:
We process accounting and taxes in the form of outsourcing for our clients, which saves time, worries and especially money.
We are not ordinary accountants to whom you send documents at the end of each month, they will tell you how much VAT you have to pay and that is the end of it. Our work is just beginning here, because processing VAT documents is the basis that every accountant should do. Our goal is for the client to have a monthly overview of how his company works, what his financial results are, to advise him (analyze) the loss areas of his business, etc. In short, to manage your company based on the numbers we supply them. The most important thing for us is for the client to prosper.
We used Trello, but it no longer suited us. It was not so clear, the support was not in Czech, sometimes we got lost in it. We lacked the features that Freelo has.
Our team currently has 9 people and our work is divided into accounting and payroll departments. Each member of the team is in charge of a certain number of clients to whom he is available and knows their company perfectly.
We work from our offices in Ústí nad Labem and 2 team members work from home.
1 externist, who processes Intrastat, works from an office in Prague.
Every morning we have a scrum which is max 10-15 minutes where we say what we are going to do that day. We pass information across clients. The client owner, who is in charge of communicating with the client and knows the client's needs, determines what needs to be done or what the client needs and what, if anything, needs to be added from other team members - such as payroll. I, as Scrum Master, step in where appropriate to determine the priorities for the day. What happens is that the accountant says, today I'm going to do X thing for client Y, but because something is burning somewhere else, we operationally move the forces to where they need to be.🙂
Every day at 9:10, a scrum starts where everyone is ready and their tasks are recorded in Freelo. We'll show it on TV in the boardroom, go through it and let's work.
We have no such problems, all team members are responsible and do their best for the good of the company. The only thing that sometimes hampers productivity is the transition to new technologies before everything sits down and drives off. Otherwise, classic things, in the morning we will say what will be done today, then a phone call come from a client who needs something ASAP, so we will start working on it and in the evening we will find out that nothing has been done from daily tasks. 🙂
But we are accountants and we are here for clients, so we take it as part of our work.
We easily monitor productivity. We take a look at Freelo and immediately know who's on schedule.
The recent pandemic and quarantine made our work a little more pleasant. The government had X number of press conferences every day, where the conditions for helping businesses changed from one day to the next. We had to monitor these changes daily, keep clients informed, solve their problems. It was a lot. Some team members had to work from home, they were connected to the morning scrum via Google Meet, thanks to Freelo the work didn't tie up and there was still a clear overview of who was in charge of what.
Don't forget deadlines, have responsibilities for each task, and don't lose track of individual clients and their needs . Lately, it's been a lot about the technologies that have begun to affect our field. Data digitization, AI and other tools. As soon as we see something where we would save time or costs, we try to implement it immediately. 🙂
We used Trello, but it stopped working . It was not so clear, the support was not in Czech, sometimes we got lost in it. We lacked the features we needed for our work.
The reason was several, a large range of available functionalities, clarity, mainly Czech support, timetracking. As with any new system, the start-up was slower, because we had to set all the things for each project (client) that must be monitored, posted, checked. Set responsibilities, deadlines, repetitive tasks, etc. Just tailor the whole thing to the client. We imported some clients from Trello, but there were a few. For most, we've rebuilt it better and better to get the most out of Freelo's functionality.
We are approaching 50 projects, so it soon looks like a transition to the Business plan. 🙂
As mentioned in the previous question, we have a separate project for each client, this project is further branched into individual To-Do Lists.
Both, from daily tasks, through repeated weekly, monthly tasks, to quarterly and annual tasks. We have already written for a few clients what not to forget in a year in the next income tax return.
We'll open Freelo in the morning and see who's on schedule. 🙂
The success of projects is influenced by team communication and information transfer . I would especially emphasize that we are a TEAM, we are here for each other, we have good relationships, we help each other.
Google Meet, email, skype, whatsapp, Signal, phone. We adapt to clients. Despite the time when everything is online and there are all sorts of tools to connect, personal meetings are simply always the most. You can't replace it with anything.
We also have a recurring task for cleaners to know when to prepare bins for removal.
Through internal training. We plan to customize the template I saw on Freelo's site. 🙂
Every task and process should have a deadline, a responsible person and basic info . Nothing more is needed.
Ability to set repetition of tasks without having to create a new task each time. Use of templates. Time tracking. There is a lot of it.
We make the most use of task repetition without having to create a new task each time, templates and time tracking.
Every client has own new project.
We digitize the documents that the client brings us physically and then return the originals to the clients. The second possibility is that the documents are shared directly by the client, we process them and move them to the processed folder, so that it is clear which documents are already processed and which are not. We do not give documents from clients to Freelo.
Communication over projects, scrum, internal operational matters, training, time tracking and much more. We also have a recurring task for cleaners to prepare bins for removal. 🙂
The accounting firm has to tailor it to their client. From what I've seen some of the comments, every accountant would like to download the template already from you and have as little work as possible. I don't think a universal template can be downloaded. It always has to be tailored to the client. At most, an accounting firm should take inspiration from other templates, but ultimately do it their own way anyway.
We are missing the repeat task feature, which would be created without the original task being completed. Example for a client: task ”Post March Bank", where we are missing to complete the last subtask because we are waiting for the client to deliver the last document. By the time he delivers it, we already need the repeat task ”Post Bank April" to be created and we don't want to delete the March bank when it is not completely done yet. 😉
For now, we have to solve this with templates, where we will add the April bank ourselves.
Organization, overview, security.
You're welcome. 😉
