Question

Managing Work Items for Client Groups

S
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Userlevel 1

Hi all,

So, we've been using Karbon for a couple of months now and we're hitting a bit of a snag. We're hoping some of you Karbon pros out there might have some tips for us.

Here's the deal: we're struggling to manage our workflow when it comes to client groups with multiple entities. Right now, we're assigning one work item per entity per tax return, which helps us keep our documents and emails organized.

But here's the kicker: it's a bit of a headache to update each individual work item, especially for groups with 10 or more entities. And because of this, it's getting tricky to get a clear picture of our workload and plan ahead. So, we're wondering if there's a way to view work items by group under My Week in Karbon? Or maybe some of you have come up with some clever workarounds? We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Thank you!

11 replies

SamG
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Hi @Sarah Chang,

God question 🙂

No way in My Week unfortunately..

On Work, two options are:

  1. Kanban - columns = Related Client Group
  2. List - sort by Related Client Group

Neither way gives you a way to update status in bulk 😢

I hope that helps!

max
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We don't do a good job of managing work by group, but it's something that I would like to get better at so I'm curious what advice others here have to offer.

respect humans | continually improve
Rebecca Williams
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Here’s the very loose rule I follow:

  • If the work for each entity has to be completed/delivered independently of the other entities, create the work for the entity
  • If all entities get completed/delivered together, create the work item for the group

A couple things to note when it comes to work items and groups:

  • A contact/entity can belong to many groups
  • A work item can only be associated with one group, or no groups - it doesn’t automatically get connected to any/all groups that contact/entity belongs to

The related work items in Work View, or even going to the Work tab of a group profile are only as reliable as how you create your work items - if a group isn’t added to a work item, or the wrong group is added, it won’t give an accurate picture.

 

See this related feature request I made for some more details about the issue with work items and groups.

 

Continuous Improvement
max
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A couple things to note when it comes to work items and groups:

  • A contact/entity can belong to many groups
  • A work item can only be associated with one group, or no groups - it doesn’t automatically get connected to any/all groups that contact/entity belongs to

One other thing to note is that groups are not billable entities in Karbon billing, so if you are billing through Karbon, you’ll have to choose a billing entity for each client group.

respect humans | continually improve
drich208
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We also don’t do a fantastic job of utilizing our client groups but this inspires me to tackle it better so we can help answer that question!

Danny Richards
SamG
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Here’s the very loose rule I follow:

  • If the work for each entity has to be completed/delivered independently of the other entities, create the work for the entity
  • If all entities get completed/delivered together, create the work item for the group

That’s super interesting…

We always create work for each entity, even though we complete the whole group at a time.

I am curious to know (particularly for annual compliance: financial statements and tax return):

  • how do you use the statuses if one entity is ready for first review and another entity still has queries with the client and another is waiting on one of the first entities to be completed before it can be finalised?
  • how do you know that you have all your Work in Karbon (compared to say a client list from the tax office or a list from your tax software of unlodged returns)?
Rebecca Williams
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@SamG that’s fairly simple - we don’t do taxes 🤣 except for GST, but they are all independent and therefore would get their own work item (for each entity, but also each sales tax type, cuz Canada has too many).

For monthly financial statements we would have a prep/review work item for each entity, but then we might have one delivery work item at the group level so we can track the status of each entity separately, but then not spam the client with lots of client tasks to deliver statements.

I think we also have like a “file hygiene review” work item for like client check-ins etc., and those would probably be at the group level.

We also have some clients that have their Accounts Payable work at the group level, because we make payments for all their entities at the same time.

 

Also I think it’s nice that you think Canada is advanced enough that we can get a list of unfiled returns! Maybe that’s possible with specific year-end software, but we definitely can’t do it directly from the CRA!

Continuous Improvement
SamG
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Ahh okay I see, that makes more sense 🙂

I don’t think any revenue authority is advanced as the people relying on it would like 😅 last week I found the one type of return the ATO refuses to receive electronically and I must mail in… but at least we can download a list of unlodged returns!

drich208
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Just wanna say, it’s inspiring to see how much the Karbon community does to help fellow members solve problems and improve.  You all are awesome!

Danny Richards
max
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Userlevel 7
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Well, @SamG and @Rebecca Williams are two of the best. 😁

respect humans | continually improve
S
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Userlevel 1

Thanks for the feedback everyone! We’re going to trial Rebecca’s suggestions and see how we go. 🤞

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