4 reasons accounting leaders use My Week in Karbon to manage their workflow
Work, email, tasks, notes. Without clear systems in place to keep everything organized, your workload can quickly spiral out of control, obscuring your priorities, making it impossible to plan ahead, and leaving you feeling overwhelmed.
In a world of changing priorities, busy schedules, and constant distractions, taking control of your workload has never been more important. But, there’s a catch–it’s harder to do this now than ever before.
Chances are, as an accountant, you know this all too well. But what can you actually do about it?
Enter: My Week in Karbon. My Week is an individual's planning tool, designed to help you plan what to do today, tomorrow, next week and in the future.
Gone are the days of endless mental checklists and paper to-do lists—by consolidating work, tasks, and email into a manageable action plan, My Week enables you and your team to better-prioritize, collaborate, and ensure that work gets done exactly when it needs to.
Here are 4 ways accounting leaders are using My Week to take control of their to do lists and better-manage their workflow.
My Week has been one of our favorite Karbon feature releases to-date. My Week unifies our systems, and serves as a second brain. It has taken work scheduling to the next level.
1. Effectively prioritize time
When asked to describe My Week in one word, Victoria Peters, Chief Operating Officer at Envolta, uses “Prioritization”.
“I love being able to organize the ‘Working on Now’ section with emails, work, and notes in the order that I am going to work on them, regardless of the status or even the assignee,” says Victoria. “I set my priorities at the beginning of the week, taking my calendar and due dates into consideration, and find it very satisfying moving them to ‘Done’ as I get through the list.”
“The one click summary of the work item then helps me to understand, at a high level, where the work is at.”
This is saving Victoria “an hour or so per week”, and gone are the days of “shuffling paper to-do lists.”
“With My Week, being able to prioritize emails and notes alongside work items using the drag and drop feature gives me a complete and chronological picture of what we are working on, all in one place.”
2. Strengthen team collaboration
For Lauren Thiel, Founder at The Real Thiel, My Week provides a “birds’ eye view” that has taken team management and collaboration to the next level.
“I like that it gives me the ability to plan ahead for the week, and to manage my team’s work allocations easily,” explains Lauren. “It gives me a quick view of what is coming up, what I should be working on now, and how to share the load better within the team.”
My Week has provided confidence and clarity, and ultimately strengthened internal collaboration at The Real Thiel.
“It’s saving my mental health. No longer do I open up a list of a million things to do, get overwhelmed, and then procrastinate.”
My Week gives me clear objectives for the day and week, and the ability to plan ahead and shift work forward or back as needed. It also enables us to work better as a team by helping each other with assigned work or task items.
3. Increase visibility and control (and hybrid work)
The increasing shift to hybrid and remote work means that visibility across the whole team is critical to keeping everything running smoothly. The team at JVCA knows this well.
“The main benefit of My Week for us and the team is to enable flexible working,” says Coral Tolley-Fletcher, Partner and Practice Manager at JVCA.
“We’re working in a hybrid situation and I can go days before I touch base with some team members. Where My Week has really helped is being able to see who’s working on what. Rather than having to dive into a work item and follow up, I can just see everything in one place.”
My Week has been instrumental in breaking down silos—work that needs to be done is no longer confined to individual team members’ notes or knowledge banks. This helps keep everyone in the loop, no matter what. “If I’ve missed a team meeting, and I don’t know what’s going on, I can look at My Week,” explains Coral.
“I’ve got that visibility. And it’s not just what I’m doing. I love the fact that I can also see my colleagues’ workloads in Colleague’s Week.”
This is saving time, allowing the JVCA team to focus on what really matters, rather than chasing updates on work. “It’s definitely saving between half an hour to an hour a day [at the moment], and I think that’s going to increase dramatically.”
“It just gets better and better.”
4. Gain peace of mind
Sean Birdsell, Partner/ Owner at Birdsell Consulting, used to rely on mental notes and paper to-do lists to keep track of upcoming work.
“I would always fall back on using my brain to try and remember what was coming up, and on writing paper to-do lists,” says Sean.
My Week in Karbon has changed that.
“My Week takes all the guesswork out of trying to remember what’s happening as I switch between tasks,” says Sean. “It lets me concentrate on just the work at hand—what’s happening today and this week. Sometimes, that’s really all I need to know.”
Using My Week requires “a shift in thinking,” explains Sean. “The big light bulb for me was when I… spent some time moving work from the ‘To Plan’ section into a specific week ‘bucket’ in My Week. That’s when all of a sudden, the My Week view started to look like the work I had floating in my head!”
For Sean, My Week has brought a newfound peace of mind. “I’m always thinking about work deadlines and the detailed steps of recurring work. Karbon helps me be confident that the procedures are repeatable and consistent, and My Week gives me the confidence for ensuring the work happens at the right time.”
The value of My Week isn’t in what it saves me in working time, the benefit is how much it saves me in worrying time.
The power of My Week
Unparalleled visibility, clarity, prioritization, team management, collaboration, and peace of mind that nothing will fall through the cracks—that’s the power of My Week.
With My Week, your accounting firm can take control of workloads and plan ahead with confidence that every work item, email, task, and note will be actioned at exactly the right time, by the right person.
Ultimately, your clients will reap the benefits, as you deliver the service that you promise—on time, every time.
And, as Stephen Edwards from Cheltenham Tax Accountants notes, My Week continues to receive improvements and updates to best-support accounting professionals globally:
I think it's brilliant. It bridges the gap between the work planner and the individual team members’ own to-do list. It gives me more clarity as the practice owner and we are excited by what the future holds for My Week.