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.