In the summer of 2017, an accounts payable employee at MacEwan University received an email that, at first glance, appeared innocent enough. The Edmonton-based institution was in the midst of a massive construction project, and one of its vendors requested a change in their banking information. What made this email particularly convincing was the fact that it bore the vendor’s official logo. But appearances can be deceiving. This seemingly harmless email led to a devastating discovery, highlighting the alarming prevalence of fraud in today’s business landscape.

It wasn’t long before the truth came to light. A few months after making the requested change, MacEwan University discovered that it had fallen victim to a phishing scam, resulting in a staggering loss of $11.8 million. This incident served as a stark reminder that email fraud cases, especially those involving Business Email Compromise (BEC), have become distressingly commonplace in recent years.

Guest Blogger:   Our special guest contributor in a 2 part  improving work-life balance series is Jag Barpagga with Welcome Networks, a leading cloud provider with virtual desktop and managed IT services.

Want some more free time this busy season? You could stop taking showers or ban TV at home but there are more effective and less offensive options out there for you. During a webinar hosted by Accounting Today and Wolters Kluwer (CCH) a couple of months ago, improvement in processes and workflow ranked as one of the top concerns for most accounting firms. This is an area that can bring a huge improvement in your efficiency and productivity in the practice because you will be able to do more in the same or maybe in even less time.

The Role of Better Task Management

Harvard Business Review conducted a three years long study with 15 executives and 45 knowledge workers at different companies with the goal to find ways on how to be more productive. The study revealed that an average of 41% of the respondent’s time is spent on activities that do not offer a lot of value and can be done by others or can be removed from their daily tasks. The main takeaway was:

“Eliminate or delegate unimportant tasks and replace them with value-added ones.”

There are three ways to categorize your tasks

• Tasks that can be stopped now with no consequences

• Tasks that can be delegated with minimal effort

• Tasks that need to be refined to run more efficiently

The best results found were from delegating desk-based work – this saved an average of four hours per week. Completely dropping unnecessary tasks resulted in about two hours of time saved per week. Maybe these extra six hours can be used to refine your operations or going home early. Lotta Laitinen, one of the respondents in the HBR study, spent her freed up time supporting her sales team and found a 5% increase in sales. Think consciously about what a specific task is doing for yourself and your business.

“I use myself to build the brand, to build the sort of three or four hundred companies around the world, but I learned the art of delegation.”

–Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group

You most likely have a strong team working with you so think positively when giving them the freedom to complete certain tasks and support the business like their own. Look for solutions that eliminate process time and allocate that time to something else. We at Welcome Networks monitor the type of programs and applications being used by firms and find that most progressive firms use programs and applications that drive efficiency and save time. This is being reflected in the yearly growth of their firms.  For example, one popular application being used is Telpay, a solution that allows you to pay suppliers electronically and securely. This can potentially eliminate an hour of your day and minimize the chances of cash flow planning being compromised. On top of the savings on postage, envelopes and cheque costs, the most important thing that you save is time, which ultimately reflects in your bottom line during the crazy, busy tax season. All this ultimately ends with happy clients who will positively impact your business.

You’re The Eliminator or The Delegator

Pause, reflect, and execute. Be a great delegator to distribute the workload or eliminate tasks to free up time. Being humble and open can allow you to find someone that is better than you in a specific task so you can focus on the bigger picture. Managing a multitude of tasks isn’t easy – eliminating them or finding someone else to do them isn’t either. It’s up to you to weigh out what is most important to you, your company, and your lifestyle.

If you wish to read HBR’s report visit: https://hbr.org/2013/09/make-time-for-the-work-that-matters

Guest Blogger:   Our special guest contributor in a 2 part  improving work-life balance series is Jag Barpagga with Welcome Networks, a leading cloud provider with virtual desktop and managed IT services.

When it comes to getting things done, results boil down to 2 things – How fast can you get it done and how well can you do it? Accountants and bookkeepers need to perform on both of these with precision during the busy tax time. Accountants know numbers and one thing is for sure, we only have 8760 or 8784 hours in a (leap) year. If you go by the average life expectancy of a Canadian, you have 711662.4 hours to spend time with your family, friends, at work, and for those moments you need to yourself. No, we can’t force our days to have more than 24 hours so we need to force ourselves to free up our time and allocate it to the more important areas of our lives.

Back to the Basics

Start with understanding what needs to be done throughout the day – every hour. Scheduling every hour of your day may seem like a waste of time but physically setting a plan will give a higher chance of following it. This goes to what happens inside and outside of the office. Whether it’s in your notebook or in your calendar app, enter your tasks and objectives in. Have you ever heard of a business prospering without a business plan? Allow your days to follow the same concept. Business plans and your daily schedules don’t have to be perfect but setting checkpoints, guidelines and anticipating bumps in the road will only benefit you. Dedicating you and your team’s time to specific tasks throughout the day will keep everyone engaged and motivated to meet those deadlines. You also need to plan those breaks in your day to give yourself a sense of reward at the end of a busy work session. But how can taking breaks during the busy tax season benefit you?

More Free Time Reduces Burning Out

If you read our previous post about task management, you will understand how to find some more time in the day. Maybe those extra hours you free up should just go to relaxing and following stress-free activities.  Although tax season is when you are most overworked, efficiency can increase if you take those breaks. Some call it “The Refueling Principle” – taking a step back and relaxing your mind. When your mind is bogged down with constant work, your efficiency decreases overtime. Yes, you continuously get things done if you don’t take a break but not at a more accelerated rate when following the refueling principle. Entrepreneur.com explains it quite nicely:

“You get more done quicker when you step back and recharge the brain and body.”

It’s as simple as that. Studies show that we have a limited amount of cognitive resources. So whether you find time for you and your team to take a break, remember that it will only be beneficial once you get back to work in the tax season rush.

Maybe you don’t have time to leave your desk and take a vacation. Solutions today ensure that you don’t need to be chained to a desk in order to reach your full potential. Many accounting firms allow employees to work from home or even from a beach with seamless access to all accounting and bookkeeping applications.

A multi-location firm like SunRonkai LLP Chartered Accountants found huge improvements from the day they moved to virtual desktops in cloud. Now both offices work seamlessly with better security and that was always a top concern for their partners. Nothing replaces the peace of mind and better productivity achieved due to strategic vision of the firm. Keep in mind you may find it fulfilling to resolve a client’s concern from a cruise ship, vacations have been shown to lead to significantly higher performances when returning to the workplace, so enjoy.

Time to Obtain Efficiency

Try it out for a week or two – planning out your day and following the refueling principle. Come with a strategy that will allow you to work at maximum efficiency. At the end of the day and when done right, the results will improve employee engagement and happiness. Nobody wants to come into and leaving work at a low level of satisfaction. Stay on track, don’t burn out and stay motivated.