Collaboration techniques for the modern accounting firm
Streamlined and efficient internal processes rely on a collaborative team—and the cornerstone of this is communication. Poor communication, both internal and external, is a major source of inefficiency.
The way your team communicates should be through deliberate processes, with consistency, brevity, and visibility at its core. To help your practice work better together, here is a list of techniques modern accounting firms use to collaborate.
Embrace team discussions
Encourage your team to spend more time communicating together, whether that is in person, via chat, or some other medium. Even if some, or all of your staff work remotely, if you have the right tools, they can still communicate easily.
This will help to build relationships, which will encourage your staff to develop an appreciation for everyone else's work. It's also vital if you want to help your team grow and develop into better accountants.
Abolish internal email
Email is a huge consumer of time for accountants and provides no transparency. Instead, internal discussions should be available to everyone, searchable, and sorted into relevant channels or categories that give context for any given situation. We recommend Slack for general team communication and Karbon for discussions about your clients or jobs.
These tools eliminate communication silos, which is perhaps the most important step you can take to foster collaboration.
When everyone has the ability to see and participate in internal discussions, a culture of contribution and shared purpose will be built organically.
Document everything
Standardizing your processes is a vital part of collaboration in any accounting firm. And with any of these processes—documentation is key. If you can share these in templates that can be accessed by your entire team, everyone will know who is responsible for what, and when.
You should also make it possible for these templates to be customized when appropriate—any further adjustments should be documented in your proper channels.
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