Accounting Department Workflow Optimization

Retrieve the latest signed procedures manual from SmartVault or the firm's document portal. Confirm the version date — many firms find theirs is 2-3 years stale, predating the current GL platform or chart-of-accounts cleanup.

Review the past three close calendars and flag steps that consistently slipped: bank rec re-opens, late payroll accruals, AJEs posted after partner sign-off. The recurring slips are where the procedural rewrite earns its keep.

Export the chart of accounts and tag any account that exists because someone wanted a custom report instead of using a class, location, or customer dimension. A COA over 400 accounts in QBO is usually a symptom of this pattern.

Refresh sections covering revenue recognition (ASC 606), lease accounting (ASC 842), and any client-specific industry guidance. Note the effective date and the named partner who reviewed each policy.

Run a 60-minute walkthrough with the close team. Have each staff accountant initial the manual section covering their assigned area. Record attendance for the WISP training log.

Build a scorecard covering multi-entity consolidation, dimension-based reporting, AP automation integration, audit-trail depth, and SOC 1 coverage. QBO Plus tops out at 5 dimensions and one entity; Xero handles tracking categories differently; Sage Intacct and NetSuite are the common upgrade paths past the QBO ceiling.

Schedule scripted demos with each finalist using your own COA and a sample month's transactions. Generic demos hide the platform's real friction — make them post a recurring journal entry and run a bank rec on screen.

Migrating mid-year is expensive and disruptive — historical balances, recurring entries, bank feeds, payroll integrations, and document links all break. The default answer should be "stay" unless the scorecard shows a clear gap. If you migrate, plan for a Jan 1 cutover.

Bring at least three years of trial balances, open A/R and A/P, and the fixed-asset roll-forward. Run a parallel close in both platforms for the first month and tie the trial balances to the penny before cutting bank feeds.

Schedule role-based training: AP clerks on bill entry and approval routing, staff accountants on JE posting and bank rec, the controller on consolidation and reporting. Record sessions for new hires.

Walk last quarter's prepared-by-client list end to end. Where did items get re-requested? Where did files arrive in the wrong format? Suralink, Liscio, and TaxDome each handle the audit-trail portion differently — pick the one your team will actually use.

Standardize folders by entity → year → engagement type → workpaper category. Inconsistent folder naming is the single biggest reason firms can't find prior-year support during an audit.

Configure auto-publish rules so recurring vendor bills route to the correct GL account without manual coding. Train the bookkeeping team to review the "Ask My Accountant" queue weekly rather than letting it accumulate to month-end.

Restrict client folder access to assigned engagement teams. Set retention to seven years for tax workpapers and longer for fixed-asset records. The IRS Pub 4557 WISP requirement and FTC Safeguards Rule both expect documented access reviews.

Run the aging by 30/60/90/120+ buckets. The top 20 past-due accounts usually drive 80% of DSO. Identify which were billed without a PO match, which are in dispute, and which are simple slow-payers.

Set thresholds: bills under $1K route to the AP clerk and controller; $1K–$10K add the department head; over $10K require CFO approval. Document the matrix in the procedures manual so coverage during PTO is unambiguous.

Move all monthly retainer and subscription invoices to recurring templates with embedded payment links. Adding a 2-day reminder before due date and a 5-day reminder after typically pulls DSO down by 4-7 days.

Net-30 to net-45 on the largest payables produces meaningful DPO gains without burning vendor relationships. Track which vendors offer 2/10 net 30 — the early-payment discount math usually favors taking it.

Upload the daily check-issued file to the bank so unauthorized checks bounce automatically. Most banks charge $25-$50/month and it pays for itself the first time it stops a forged check.

Pin the metrics that drive decisions: cash balance, A/R aging by bucket, DSO, gross margin trend, payroll as a percent of revenue. Spotlight Reporting and LivePlan are reasonable alternatives to Fathom; pick one and stop maintaining a parallel Excel pack.

30-minute review per department within five business days of close. Variance memos written by the department, not finance — that's where the operational explanation lives.

Schedule auto-generation of the P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and KPI summary from the GL or Fathom on the 10th of each month. The CFO commentary is the only manual piece; everything else should be a one-click refresh.

For each recurring report, record the owner, the recipients, the cadence, and the source data. Without this, the report "just runs" until the owner leaves and nobody knows where the formulas live.

Direct method, weekly buckets, sourced from A/R aging and confirmed A/P. Float and Dryrun pull from QBO/Xero directly. The 13-week horizon is long enough to flag covenant pressure and short enough to remain accurate.

Replace the static annual budget with a rolling forecast that re-baselines monthly. Tools like Vena, Cube, or Mosaic handle the dimensional roll-up; for SMB, a structured Google Sheet linked to QBO is often enough.

Send each department head a template prefilled with prior-year actuals and current-year run rate. Require a written justification for any line over 10% growth — the discipline is in the explanation, not the number.

Walk the variances by department and tag each as volume, price, mix, or one-time. A budget that's never reconciled to actuals stops being trusted by quarter two.

Map who can initiate, approve, post, and reconcile for each transaction class: AP, AR, payroll, journal entries, bank transfers. The classic SoD failure is one person who can both add a vendor and cut the check.

For each key control — bank rec review, AJE approval, vendor master changes, payroll register sign-off — sit with the owner and confirm the operating procedure matches what's documented. Mismatches are the audit findings waiting to happen.

Pull a recent bank rec and trace each reconciling item to support. Pull five AJEs and confirm each has a memo, supporting workpaper, and a different preparer and approver. Document any exceptions for remediation.

For each exception, assign a named owner and a remediation date. Common findings: AJEs posted by the same person who reviewed them, bank recs with reconciling items aged past 60 days, vendor masters edited without a second approver. Re-test after remediation.

Refresh the Written Information Security Plan per IRS Pub 4557 and the FTC Safeguards Rule. Run annual phishing-awareness and PII-handling training for every staffer with access to client data; log attendance for the state board record.

Controller and managing partner sign off that the procedures, software, document flow, AR/AP, reporting, budgeting, and controls workstreams have all closed. Capture a one-page summary of the changes for the partner-meeting minutes.