Desperately wanted features - new work setup from template

  • 6 October 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 93 views
Mike Liang
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I am not sure how peer firm use work template to set up works in Karbon. I noted that it can be disaster if there is no clear requirement and stricter supervision/check on this. We suppose to use Karbon to save time, but it ended up we need to spend more time on check and set up workflow/requirements to setup work. This is awkward situation. I hope to see other’s experience.  Why I am saying this? Because:

  • Though there are a lot work templates there, but each of them need a lot of effort to tailor to suit the firm’s own situation. Most of time, it is not worth using the template as it will be more easier to setup our own.  We have 50 type of works, don’t ask my why, as if you want to standardise work flow, you have to identify and breakdown the work types, take tax compliance work as an example, we need separate work template for individual income tax return, return not necessary, Company tax return, Trust tax return, BAS, IAS, FBT returns, Payroll tax returns, TPAR return, annual accounts for tax purpose, etc, etc. There are so many works, and each one of them need a lot of manual effort to set up. 
  • Even we setup our own work template, we are still not able to standardise the workflow and tasks easily. Why? because you still have spent time to specify the conversion of name of work, manuly put fees and budget (team member may forget to do that), manually put in recuring setup, I can see the concept below the work template and those automators are for expert of Karbon with both knowledge of Karbon and Professional work steps it is not for normal user of accounting professionals. Our professional team is busy with client service, to understand those setups create extra work load and pressure on us.
  • Suggestion: Karbon need to change the way and interface of work setup, now it is like for an IT specialist,  rather than for accounting staff.  I suggest to adopt a Q&A based interface, when you click create work, there will be a full setup of questions to cover the setup all aspects of the work, especially for the budget, fee, and recuring settings. Setup of those should be part of the Q&A before a work is activated in the system. It will save a lot of time in make the work really useful and consistent /standardised.

Look foward to sharing of experience and view points from others.

3 replies

Craig Budgen
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Hi Mike

I know what you mean in terms of having many different types of work.  We do too.

It’s certainly worth setting up the standard work template for each of the different type of work because it absolutely saves time in the long run.

Having said that, we have one work type for Individual Returns and one work type for Financial Statements and Associated Tax Returns and that is working just fine for us.  

We certainly don’t see the need to differentiate between a company year end job and a trust year end job as, to our way of thinking, they have essentially the same work process.

The other issue I’d raise is that we have administration staff creating the templates (i.e. with input from the accountants and other team members) and we have our admin team creating jobs rather than our accountants who, as you mentioned, we want to be doing chargeable accounting work.

 

Hope that helps mate

Mike Liang
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@Craig Budgen  Thank you Craig for sharing. To centralise the work setup work with one admin, it is an option. Only if the admin is well trained and good at Karbon, it will make the work setup consistent and to the firm standard. However, if the admin setup the work, there are a lot of detailed communication about the specific work, like tasks to keep, to delete from template, starting date, due date, client prepared documents, fee, budgeted hours, staff work taking different role on the work, etc, etc. How you standardise the communication in terms of below?

  • How you trigger the setup the work? Do you need a partner/senior people’s approval to set up work?
  • What communication tool you use to setup work and faciliate the communication between admin and accountants? email? form?
  •  

Mike

Craig Budgen
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Hey Mike

Yeah, good questions.

We have a fantastic admin team member who, among other things, is in charge of our workflow and she is also our Karbon champion so she knows the system better than anyone in the office.

In terms of your two points, we have a meeting rhythm which allows for the workflow to be managed by her with little input from partners (i.e. although there is always adhoc input as adhoc jobs come in).

Because we have weekly workflow meetings and daily huddles in which we discuss workflow jobs, issues and deadlines, she is usually across it.

In terms of communication, if something needs to be done or a job unexpectedly needs to be bumped up the pipeline, we will @message her in the job and she will take it from there.

Hope that helps.

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