Worked examples / A month end
Four days of month end. Half a day of bookkeeping.
Hollybush Bakery is one of the easy ones to do the books for: pays on time, answers eventually, nothing complicated. The month end still takes four days, and almost none of that is the accounts.
Invented exampleHollybush Bakery, Sam and Jess do not exist. The shape of the month end is real; the names are not.
Before
Where the four days go
Written down honestly, most of it is waiting, and the rest is finding out whether the waiting is over.
An illustration. The times are the ones this page describes, not a measurement.
Where the four days go by email: working out what is missing takes about an hour, and again whenever somebody asks; writing the email asking for it takes twenty minutes, mostly rewriting last month’s; waiting takes six to nine days, none of it yours but all of it on your list; chasing twice takes half an hour each; sorting what arrived into what it answers takes an hour and a half; asking about four transactions nobody can explain is another thread and another wait; and the actual bookkeeping takes half a day. In Docsroom the pack raises itself from last month’s list, reminders do the chasing, each file arrives on its request, and the four transactions are questions in the pack. The waiting is still the bakery’s, and the bookkeeping is still half a day.
In Docsroom
The pack raises itself, and the chasing is not yours
September’s month end, played through on one pack.
-
The pack raises itself
Monthly bookkeeping is set to repeat. On the first of the month the next pack exists, addressed to the right people, with last month’s list in it and the dates moved on.
-
Nothing goes until you send it
It waits as a draft until somebody presses send. Then Sam and Jess each get a link to their own requests, and last month’s answers stay on the record.
-
The chasing is not on your list
Sam gets a reminder on the day you chose, listing only what Sam still owes, and it stops when Sam finishes. Nobody chases Jess for something Sam owes.
-
Nothing to sort
Each file arrives on the request that asked for it. When you are ready to work, the whole month downloads as one ZIP organised by request.
The sorting, and the honest claim
The hour and a half of sorting
It does not exist, because a file arrives attached to the request that asked for it. When you are ready to work, the whole month downloads as one ZIP organised by request, and goes into whatever your files live in.
What is left
The waiting, which is the bakery’s, and the half day of bookkeeping, which is the work. That is the honest claim: Docsroom does not make a month end faster to do. It takes the two and a half days of administration off the front of it.
Take one business’s month end off your list.
Free for 14 days, no card. Pick the one who is always last.