Top 5 Productivity Hacks Every Accountant Needs to Know

If you are drowning in work and can’t sleep at night being worried about the next day, these productivity hacks for accountants will save you.

Set up checklists and templates for repetitive tasks

When we implemented checklists and templates in our accounting practice, it was life-changing. Our productivity improved significantly. Accounting and bookkeeping tasks are very often repetitive. And even if there are differences from client to client, the principles are the same and sometimes you need to tweak your checklists slightly. Also, when you do regular tasks for the same client once you adjust a checklist for them, you can reuse them each time saving you time. They can be also used by all your accountants and bookkeepers to keep consistency in the team. But not only accounting or bookkeeping tasks can have checklists and templates. Other tasks in your accounting practice can benefit from them too, for example, social media management tasks, client onboarding, asking for referrals or reviews. You can build accounting and bookkeeping checklists from scratch or you can use ours as a base to save you even more time from the start.  

Leverage automations

Think about all the processes in your accounting and bookkeeping practice, whether it’s client tasks or task related to running your business. How do they influence each other? Which are the ones that consume lots of time and energy? Talk to you accountants and bookkeepers to understand what they do on a daily basis. For example, a potential client asks about an initial consultation. Can they book this via a calendar available on your website or via a link shared quickly in an email? Once they book, is this added to your calendar automatically or do you need to make a note to not forget? Is there an automated reminder sent to them to remind them about a consultation or do you do it manually?

When your bookkeeper finishes their tasks, do they have to tell your accountant about this by emailing them or messaging them in a team chat? Can this be shown in the task management software, for example, Asana, so there is no need to type any messages? These are some small examples but there is lots of possibilities. You may even already have the tools for automating certain tasks, you’ve just never explored them fully or set them up. If not, consider doing some research and implementing those that will make certain processes quicker and more efficient.

Use keyboard shortcuts

Using a mouse constantly isn’t only tiring and puts a strain on your muscles, but it’s also more time consuming. Get into a habit of using keyboard shortcuts. Whether it is working in a spreadsheet, changing tabs or windows or using shortcuts in your accounting system, mastering these shortcuts will help you work quicker. If you’re not used to working a lot with shortcuts, it may feel overwhelming to start using all of them at the same time. Instead choose only one or two to start with until you create a habit and keep adding more until using the keyboard shortcuts becomes more natural than using a mouse.

Turn off notification

Forget about email popping up on your screen, social media notifications, alerts on your phone. They are one of the worst distractors. And distractions are dangerous for accountants and bookkeepers due to the sensitive nature of what we do. The world isn’t going to end if you turn off your notifications and focus on a task in front of you. This is especially important if you are working on tasks that are your top priority for the day and must be finished. If you believe you will be able to resist opening these notifications, you are lying to yourself. The temptation to see what is going on even if you know it’s nothing important is usually too strong. Out of sight out of mind is what they say. If you can’t see the notifications, they can’t occupy your mind.

Prioritise, prioritise and again prioritise

There will always be million tasks you would love to finish today, this week, next month. But what you would want to finish doesn’t necessarily mean that all these tasks are priorities. Yes, it’s great to have lots of things done, but you will never be in a position where there is absolutely nothing to do. Especially if you are the boss in your accounting and bookkeeping practice; there will always be something to add to the list. One task done, three new appear.

Each morning before you start working on anything, or each afternoon, whatever your preference is, look at the tasks you are thinking to undertake and group them according to their priority: those that must be finished today due to maybe some consequences if they’re not, those that are important but can be postponed if necessary and those on the if-time-allows-list. And be prepared that your priorities can change. Don’t be scared to rearrange tasks if necessary. Encourage your accountants and bookkeepers to do them same and make sure they don’t feel that they will be criticised or punished if they move their tasks around.