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:Assigning workload / capacity management of team members’ work Monitoring and ensuring delivery of client deadlines Scheduling / planning new client work 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!

Question

Project Manager Role/Job Description?

7 months ago
22 February 2023
3 replies
58 views

Userlevel 1

Curt Mastio
Beginner
0 replies

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:

Assigning workload / capacity management of team members’ work
Monitoring and ensuring delivery of client deadlines
Scheduling / planning new client work
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!

3 replies

N

Hi @Curt Mastio,

I am a project manager with an accounting firm and the position can be a big challenge. I have found much of the accounting world is laser focused on the idea all work needs to be in a work item. This is not always the case for all staff members, we often have roles that perform non-client focused tasks and developing the understanding was important for our company to utilize this position appropriately. That being said, the accounting industry does not define workflow models used in numerous other fields. So my first goal was to establish and determine how to implement a workflow model. I have been a Project Manager within the technology sector for a fair number of years with certification in many of these styles. I chose to use what I believe is the best for dynamic environments, Agile. With having a work flow framework I got to work developing, teaching, and implementing this process. our partner team no longer has to worry about workflow and assigning work as it is my role and I know at any given moment where my teams are and what they need help with.

Our time utilization ends up looking as such:

Client team 90%+ client time

Admin 50-70% client time

Project Manager <10% client time

If you want a further explanation please feel free to reach out to me and we can discuss. A lot is behind bringing on a project manager and allowing them to function properly. It can be a large change management process depending on how you are setup. The most critical facet of it all is having a clear and defined workflow process. I would say what is happening now in the accounting industry is what would be called waterfall, it is essentially whatever is next gets assigned. It is messy in comparative but can still work.

Userlevel 7

+10

Victoria Peters
Sr. Community Champion
267 replies
7 months ago
23 February 2023

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!