Worked examples / A month end

Four days of month end. Half a day of bookkeeping.

Hollybush Bakery is a good client: pays on time, answers eventually, nothing complicated. The month end still takes four days, and almost none of that is the accounts.

Hollybush Bakery is invented. So are Sam and Jess. The shape of the month end is real; the names are not.

Where the four days go

Written down honestly, most of it is waiting, and the rest is finding out whether the waiting is over.

Hollybush Bakery month end

Working out what is missing

An hour

Note: This month, at the start

Also: And again whenever somebody asks

Writing the email asking for it

Twenty minutes

Note: Mostly rewriting last month’s email

Waiting

Six to nine days

Note: None of it yours, all of it on your list

Chasing, twice

Half an hour each

Note: Plus ten minutes working out who to chase

Sorting what arrived into what it answers

An hour and a half

Note: The least interesting of the month

Asking about four transactions

Another wait

Note: Nobody can explain them

Also: Another thread

The actual bookkeeping

Half a day

Repeating

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, waiting as a draft until somebody presses send. The hour of working out what is missing does not happen, because the list is the same list it was last month.

Repeats monthly, on the day you choose
Nothing reaches the client until you send it
Last month’s answers stay on the record beside this month’s blanks

Monthly bookkeeping

Ardley Foods · repeats on the 1st

Rolled forward by itself: every request back to awaiting, due dates moved on, the same people kept.

Rolled forward 1 October

Named “September bookkeeping”

Next on 1 November

Will be named “October bookkeeping”

Scheduled

The chasing is not on your list any more

Sam gets a reminder on the day you chose, listing only what Sam still owes. When Sam finishes, it stops. Nobody in your team writes a chasing email, and nobody chases Jess for something Sam owes.

Reminders for Nadia Kelsall

Only what is still outstanding

Every Monday at 09:00 until the list is done, then they stop on their own.

Bank statements, September

Outstanding · 3 days over

Receipts for the card payments

Outstanding · 3 of 8 left

The hour and a half of sorting

It does not exist, because a file arrives attached to the request that asked for it. There is nothing to sort. 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 client’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 client’s month end off your list.

Free for 14 days, no card. Pick the one who is always last.

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