Question

Project Manager Role/Job Description?

  • 22 February 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 35 views

Userlevel 1

Hey All -- hoping to solicit some feedback from the group from folks who have someone at their firm in a “project management” type role.

In an ideal world, I would want someone to be the owner of all things Karbon and fill a project management / account management role to augment our client services team. 

For those of you who have someone in that role in a dedicated capacity, how do you define their day to day responsibilities?  I have a general sense of what it might look like (see below) but for awhile now I have struggled with how to properly articulate the job description.  A sample list of the representative responsibilities would be things like:

  1. Assigning workload / capacity management of team members’ work
  2. Monitoring and ensuring delivery of client deadlines
  3. Scheduling / planning new client work
  4. Oversight of Karbon hygiene (making sure due dates are set appropriately, statuses are being used appropriately, etc.)

We are a team of 20+ and have used Karbon for a few years now.  Up until this point, the “project management” responsibilities have been handled by partner level and manager level resources.  However, it seems like that is sucking up too much valuable time that could otherwise be spent elsewhere.

If anyone here has someone that handles this at their firm, what are the representative list of responsibilities? How do you define the role?  What aspects of it have gone well?  What has not gone well?

Thanks in advance!


2 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Hi @Curt Mastio, we are about half your size and the managers handle this. I’m curious to learn how other firms handle it.

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Hi @Curt Mastio 

We have a client services team that looks after the initial assignment to a bookkeeping or accounting team, they will do as much of the set up as they can with the information that they have. 

From there each team has a Workflow Manager whose responsibilities include the project management - the responsibilities you listed and general team leadership.  Typically, our Workflow Managers are responsible for a team of 5-9 accountants and bookkeepers.  

To ensure projects start on the right foot we have a couple of Onboarding templates that cover the set up and ensure the team understands the engagement.  These templates start with onboarding the client into our processes and finishes with the team getting to work.

We started this when we were about 30 people, we are at 80ish now, it’s key that the Client Services Team gets the projects into the hands of the Production Team as quickly as possible. 

We also conduct random ‘audits’ of the process to see what is working and what is not, ideally Workflow managers will audit their peers - it’s a great way to learn from each other.

We review, revisit and revise on the regular!

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