You need data you can trust and use for better business outcomes, and you need AI Data Quality Automation to handle the ever increasing volume and complexity of data that needs to be trusted.
Are you just checking a 5% sample of your firms’ financial data to estimate what state it is in? This approach is what used to be acceptable for a firm without AI Data Quality Automation– because that’s all that was realistically possible.
The better way is to implement XBert AI Data QualityAutomation at your firm to cover 100% of your financial data, boost your firm’s productivity and make it possible to scale and do more with the same resources.
Make this your mission. Follow the steps in this playbook to achieve it.
Efficiently and effectively winning a client should be a priority for your firm and using data to support the process means this becomes easier and more likely to be achieved. When you engage a potential client and communicate to them the reasons and their supporting data for all proposed fees, it helps to establish credibility and trust with them.
After all, while you are busy trying to win a new client, the client is looking for information that will help them make an informed decision. They are evaluating you and your firm, and your timely provision of useful and clear supporting information makes their evaluation easier and quicker. That can only be a good thing.
It also helps to demonstrate that your firm has a thorough understanding of their needs, has considered the factors that go into their determination and that your fees are reasonable and fair.
Post win, onboarding a client successfully will benefit your firm and your new client both immediately and over a longer term.
If nothing else, by following a few simple onboarding steps, your new client will become part of your firm in an organised way, set up and ready to use the services of your firm.
Longer term, successful onboarding contributes to increased client satisfaction and therefore retention. A client that has a positive and professional experience in becoming a customer of your firm is a win for them as well as you.
Profitable winning and onboarding means your new client, for the next year (and ideally longer), will earn your firm more revenue than the cost of the services and products provided to the client. How much more – i.e.how profitable you want this client to be – is your call and usually based on many factors including those that apply after onboarding. However, your approach to winning and onboarding a client, and the decisions made during this period, will definitely help determine how profitable they are for your firm. If nothing else, suitable fees must be decided and agreed. It literally pays to get it right from the start.
This means you have a trial or paid subscription to XBert and that you have successfully added1 your prospective clients’ accounting system2 file to XBert. You will be able to see the client in the Clients screen with a big tick next to their name. This step must be complete before going any further.
A key pre-requisite to this step is that you have been given permission by your prospective client to access their accounting system file (and you have proven you can actually access it). The job of doing this is outside the scope of this playbook.
2. XBert supports Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks
The client file added in Step 1 will usually take 10 mins or less to sync with XBert. In rare cases (very large client files) it can take up to 1 hour.
This first sync of data includes XBerts’ AI scanning of the 1,000 most recent documents, i.e. receipts and other attachments on bills/invoices. After the first sync, the AI scanning happens across every other attachment from the last 12 months. Sometimes there are 10,000 or more additional attachments, which will be scanned over the next 1-2 days. The accuracy of some aspects of XBerts’ AI data quality automation will increase with each attachment scanned.
After the first sync, you can immediately start understanding what you are taking on – that is, what services and products this client needs from your firm.
Start with the Client Summary Metrics report. Find your new client in the list and review the count of various financial data activities. If you have other clients integrated with XBert, compare them to the new client – knowing what you know about your existing clients (that are integrated with XBert), you’ll be able to get a feel for what sort of client this new one is.
In most reports you need to consider the period you are looking at. Sometimes it makes sense to review a full financial year, while other times the current financial year to date is more relevant. Any other period may be most relevant to you depending on what you want to know. Each report has a default period selected (or none at all) so you may need to change it.
Open the Banking Summary Metrics report. This report is about bank statements (as opposed to bank transactions which are where statement lines can be reconciled to).
Look at all the metrics but particularly the number and percentage of unreconciled transactions. How much are the books out by because the bank recs aren’t done?
Note these and other metrics you think are important, for later use and communication to the client. Note how much cash is going in and out of the client’s bank accounts and compare this to other clients to see which are similar. Use similarity to other clients to help understand the new client.
Open the Activity Count report. This builds on the prior, by providing finer detail to help understand the size of the client.
Review activity trends and the breakdown of data by business function. Note some key metrics for later use such as the total counts for payables, receivables, bank transactions, employees and pay runs. If the client has payroll, is your firm proposing to take it on?
If your new client is on Xero, open the User Activity report and review the Xero User Activity report page. This tells you who has been doing what in the client’s Xero file. This could include the business owner, their staff (e.g. an internal payroll person) or previous bookkeepers and accountants.
See what they’ve been up to – how many actions have previously been taken? How much work would this be for someone at your firm? What type of actions are predominant – billing, contact management, invoicing etc.?
Open the Data Quality report. Go to the Data Quality Detail by Client page. Clear all report filters, except for Issue Status – onlyUnresolved (Incomplete) should be ticked to see all outstanding data quality work that needs to be done.
Find your new client in the list and expand it. Note for future client communication where data quality issues are being found, how many there are and how much potential risk value is involved. Issues found in prior/closed financial years are of concern, however, may never be fixed.
For more detailed explanation of the client’s data quality, expand each business function to reveal which data quality issues have been found and (in for some issues) which contact it was found for.
Remember, XBert provide automatic resolution for many of the data quality issues found, so don’t be overly concerned at this point on how you are going to fix them.
Now go to the Data Quality Score page. Look for your new client’s XBert Data Quality Score. 85% or better is the target – that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to fix, but it’s an ok result. Obviously 100% is what should be strived for. Be particularly interested in your new client if they have a low score AND a relatively large number of transactions. A lot of issues across a lot of transactions is a bigger job to manage and fix than the opposite. Again, take note of these things for later communication to your client.
Similar to when reviewing other reports, look for similar clients, although keep in mind they may have been integrated with XBert for some time and their data quality might be pretty good already.
Note that the Data Quality report will be most accurate once all attachments have been reviewed by XBerts’ algorithms.
Consider some of your existing clients that are profitable. If not already, add several of them to XBert, then use XBert to compare your prospective client to them, in terms of the size and complexity of the work that you started to understand, during the previous step.
Ask yourself should you be charging this prospective client more or less, to do the level of work needed – i.e. what you are taking on (Step 2) – compared to these other profitable clients.
Keep in mind that if you have been using XBert for a while already, for these existing profitable clients, then their data quality will likely be higher than a client that has not had the benefit of XBert. Their data quality score will likely be better. However, you can look all most other metrics you noted from Step 2, for the prospective client, and compare these to existing profitable clients to get a good idea as to the fee range you should be quoting (assuming the provided services for the prospective client will be relatively similar).
XBert charges a relatively small fee to provide automated AI data quality across all financial data, for every client, every day. It is a cost and costs incurred for your prospective client need to be considered to determine client profitability. Review what the XBert fee is and decide if you will absorb this cost or pass it on to your client.
If you do pass it on to your client, especially if it will be a separate fee item on your quote, the key benefits of XBert, from a client perspective, should be communicated. These are:
1. Automated data quality
2. Improved or
3. Optional client console and reporting for the client to access.
Communicate the work effort. In previous steps you noted various metrics that help you understand what your new client needs from your firm. Now it is time to use them, and this should be done in such a way that it makes sense to you, your firm AND to your new client. Do not just copy/paste metrics from XBert and send them to the client with no context.
Take the time to explain what each number means mean in terms of the associated services and products you believe the client will need and at what level.
For example, a client with significantly more billing activity compared to your other clients, (a metric you would have noted in a previous step), will likely necessitate a higher services charge – at least for the accounts payable side of things. You could communicate this to your client in many ways, for example …
What has worked well for our firm’s other clients is 60 hours of bookkeeping services per quarter, for clients with around 300 bills per year. Your business had 380 bills last year and the trend is growth, at around 8 additional bills a month. In the next year we can reasonably expect 450 to 500 bills, necessitating 90 hours of bookkeeping services per month to maintain our firms’ high quality service level.
Communicate the value of automation. In addition to providing the metrics to support your fees for the products and services you believe are needed, you can be confident with your prospective client about the fact your firm uses XBert – that there are 70+ data quality checks being done across all financial data, multiple time a day, every day of the year. Also consider the fact that XBerts’ auto resolve capability1 will help ensure any issues found are actioned quickly and easily.
Share all this with your client – it provides another layer of value to the services you provide, and boosts client confidence in the provision of these services.
Communicate XBert extra value, i.e. client console client reports. Regardless of whether you choose to absorb or pass on XBert client file fees to your prospective client, you have the option of providing all clients with various levels of the XBert product offering. Specifically, the Client Console2, which also includes client reporting.
You can choose to hide what XBert finds, in terms of data quality issues, and only share specific instances of an issue – for example, when you need your client to do something you can’t, like provide supporting evidence, such as a receipt for spending, in order to help resolve a data quality issue.
Your existing clients may or may not like or want3 new technology to help with their bookkeeping and accounting, however, for prospective clients it is usually a good idea to offer these XBert features to them.
3. Clients can be set in their ways, and this can be a barrier to the adoption of new ideas and technology. For clients on XBert, your firm has the advantage of being able to prove, using data, the benefits of working together in new and better ways with tangible outcomes. For example, XBert may find a data quality issue that a client thinks does not exist, but one you have fixed that would other wise have cost the client money.
Congratulations, you have won a new client! You are excited and your new client is excited too. They have evaluated you, your firm and what was proposed, in conjunction with useful metrics and other information as detailed in the previous steps, and now they have the satisfaction that they make a good choice.
Onboarding your new client could include several important actions between your firm and your new client. For example introducing them to people, organising contracts, providing training, setting up communication channels and taking various other actions to ensure your new client will become part of your firm in an organised way, set up and ready to use the services and products of your firm.There are now, also, a few simple steps to onboard in XBert too.
Note: As part of Step 1, you integrated the client with XBert, which means their accounting system file is now syncing with XBert.
Go to the Clients screen and find your new client. Set a client tag1. This step is optional, but as your client base grows, it makes sense to organise clients into groups. Client tags, also called client groups, often show up in XBert screens as a way of batch processing or filtering many similar things at once, so tags become more and more useful as your client base grows. Analytics, (also known as reporting) is another place where you will see tags, with most practice level reports using them in some way.
Next, set the who the manager is for the client2. Even if the client does not have a bookkeeper assigned to them yet, there will still be someone who is ultimately responsible for the client. Set that personas the manager. If there is a bookkeeper, also set them. You can also set which role will automatically be assigned new work, for this client. Again, this is optional, but good practice. Particularly if you have someone in the bookkeeper role, it makes sense to have all new work for the client go to the bookkeeper role. Note that if people move in and out of this role, for a client, then nothing has to change with the XBert setup, so long as someone is in the role, XBert will know which person to send new work.
Take a moment now to review the No. of XBerts and Potential Risk, for your new client. You would have done so in earlier steps of this playbook, but perhaps this was days/weeks ago, and things have changed. How does this client look now? How does it compare to others?
Sometimes your firm does not provide certain services to a client. For example, a client may manage payroll or accounts payable themselves. In this case you might not have quoted for your firm to provide services for these business functions, and you do not want the ‘noise’ of managing the quality of the associated financial data.
In this case, you have the option of customising each XBert1, (each AI data quality automation check), such that that issues relating to these business functions are automatically completed, i.e. they will never appear as work to be done by someone. There are often other XBert automation settings that can be applied, in addition to auto completion, such as autocompleting if the XBert is of a certain value or lower. The way each XBert is customised can differ, since each will have different inputs or conditions to how it is detected.
Note, it is often better practice to see what XBert finds over the course of (say) a month, across all business functions, and then make decisions about how XBert Automation should be customised. It is important not to miss something which is potentially very important for the client to fix, for example an issue with employee leave settings being incorrect. Even though you might not be managing payroll for a client, you still might want to let them know when they get it badly wrong. This can also open up the potential for your firm to win new services from existing clients.
An optional step, however, as described in Step 5, there is often value for your client (and your firm) through inviting1 your client into XBert so they have access to their own XBert Client Console. You can brand the client console with your firm’s logo.
The client console provides a work board where XBerts (and Tasks, if XBert workflow is in use) that are relevant to the client are organised and able to be actioned. Also provided are snapshots2, reporting and client/firm communication3.
The volume and complexity of data that needs to be trusted by your firm is huge –and you need to understand the state of data quality across clients, time and other factors so that you and your team’s work effort has the right focus and therefore provides the best outcomes for your business.
It is a daunting task, but automation makes it easier, faster and with better results. The key here is automation that enables you and your team to quickly understand the state of financial data quality across all clients and then identify those clients that need both immediate and longer term action – which ultimately results in their financial data quality improving over time.
XBerts’ AI data quality automation generates new, important and useful data quality information and summarises this across various reports to make it even easier to understand.
Open the Data Quality report. It will display with the Data Quality Summary page selected which presents a consolidated view of data quality for your firm. By default, this page it is filtered to the current financial year and showing only data quality issues of medium to high risk that are unresolved11. This slice2 of data quality is an excellent starting point to understand the state of financial data quality across all clients of your firm.
Several key metrics appear on this page, including the total number and value of unresolved data quality issues, the number of clients affected, and the breakdown of each issue found.
Unresolved Tax Risk has its own metric – this is important because the XBerts that are categorised as Tax Risk are ones that will potentially affect how much GST/VAT a client pays or receives and, by extension, affects a lot of the work that will be happening for this client, in their accounting system.
Other things to note on this report page are the top 5 clients by risk amount and the chart which visualises the data quality trend for your firm. It is important to remember that the default slice of data, for this report page, shows unresolved data quality issues – so you would expect to see more data quality issues in more recent months – older issues should, in theory, have been resolved.
To understand the trend more accurately, remove the Issue Status filter so all issues are included. Also, consider how your firm might have changed over the same period as the trend, for example, your firm may have seen the addition of new clients, some with an accounting file that needed a lot of data quality fixes. This scenario would of course increase the count and value of data quality issues. However, if you’ve had a fairly steady set of clients and it has been mainly business as usual – but there are big spikes in data quality issues in some months – then this is something to take note of for further investigation. Is it all part of a business cycle, or is it a break down in process or some other significant event driving the otherwise unexpected swings in data quality? Is it one client causing the spike, or many?
1. The issue exists in the accounting system, and it has not been completed in XBert. Note that an issue can remain in a client’s accounting system but be completed in XBert. This can happen when the issue has been reviewed and deemed unnecessary to fix or when XBert automation rules are set such that the issue is automatically completed – issue has met criteria that means a person does not have to take any action to complete it.
2. A slice of data, in this context, is a combination of selections and/or filters that limit a large dataset to a smaller, more relevant one. A slice can also mean the structure of the displayed data, for example sales showing by month across the page and by clients down the page.
Open the Quadrant report. There is just the one page in this report, with a default data slice for medium to high risk, unresolved data quality issues. This slice of the data allows you to quickly and visually see clients that might need attention, by looking for a circle on the chart1 in the top left quadrant2. Clients appearing in this quadrant have a relatively high number of unresolved data quality issues when compared to the number of transactions they have. Take note of these clients – they need further investigation.
Remove the Issue Status filter so all issues are included. Review the chart again – now you are looking at all medium to high risk data quality issues. Again, take note of which clients are in the top left quadrant. They might need further investigation also.
Conversely, clients that appear in the bottom right quadrant have relatively fewer data quality issues from the transactions that generated them.
1. Each circle denotes a client. The size and colour of the circle represents the value of data quality issues for the client.
2. The chart is not square, so the 4 quadrants are actually 4 rectangular shapes, defined by the midpoint of each axis.
Go back to the Data Quality report. The previous 2 steps help you look across your firm and identify the clients that need more detailed analysis of their data quality issues. You may have found several clients for this purpose.
Select the Data Quality by Client page. Set filters so that the report page shows the slice of data that is relevant for the client(s) you want to investigate, noting that multiple sets of filter selections might be necessary depending on how you found the clients in question.
Look for one of the clients in the pivot table and expand it. Understand where the data quality issues are coming from, and when. Look for which issue is causing the largest count or value of data quality issues. There could be many relatively small issues or several large ones. Note these facts and decide if they need you or your team to action them immediately or not. Keep in mind your selection(s) of Issue Status. If you are looking at unresolved issues only, this points to more immediate action to be taken. Looking at completed issues prompts action to address concerns of the past, for example system or process changes to help minimise a repeat of the same data quality issues.
Next, select the Data Quality Score page. Check the same clients from earlier in this step to see their scores and how they compare to others but note that data quality scores are calculated from incomplete issues only – if you identified a client from Step 1 or 2, based on completed data quality issues, their score is not a reflection of this. Nevertheless, the data quality score is a useful metric for current data quality both on its own and for use as a comparison tool between clients.
This step is for those firms that have used XBert for 1+months across multiple clients and who have a team of people working on these clients. Open the User Activity report and select the XBert UserActivity | Actions report page.
By default, no filtering is applied to this page1. Review the charts for top 5 most active users and most active users who are fixing data quality issues. In particular the latter – these team members are the ones who see data quality issues through to completion. They are your rockstars!
Get more information about the types of data quality actions people are doing by reviewing the About Data Quality Actions page.
1. Whilst no filters are applicable to this page, there are still limits to the data the page contains. In most cases, the period of data is the prior 12 months and this month. You will see the actual date range of data is use noted underneath the Fiscal Date Range filter.
XBert will automatically find data quality issues that need to be reviewed and actioned, based on the AI and logic of 76+ automated checks, running across all the financial data of all client files you have integrated with XBert.
Some of these data quality issues, when resolved, represent real money back into the pockets of your clients. Others ensure your clients pay (or receive) the correct amount of GST/VAT to the tax office.
Many of them have Auto Resolve1 capability, which means not only will a issue be found, but the suggested fix will also be displayed and, following your confirmation, that fix can be automatically pushed through to the client's accounting system. If needed, you can automatically undo Auto Resolve fixes.
You can also adjust how all these findings are organised and indeed if they require action at all, based on criteria you set. This is important to ensure that you and your teams’ focus is on important data quality work and better business outcomes.
This step is generally set up once with only minor changes over time.
XBert has a default set of processes to organise the data quality issues found into common groups. These can be used as is or changed to match the processes your firm generally follows.
Use the Menu > Settings > Processes option to add, edit or delete processes, and the order in which they appear.
Similarly, there is a set of statuses that can be configured to your needs. A data quality issue generally starts with a default to do status of Not Started and might move through various in progress status before finally moving to a completed status. Use the Menu > Settings > Statuses option to add, editor delete statuses, and the order in which they appear.
Go to the Work screen and familiarise yourself with its use1.
Switch the Work screen to Team Overview. Note that this screen can be useful to help understand who has the most work allocated – and who might have spare capacity, for example if a team member is on leave and their work needs to be allocated to someone else.
Explore the use of filters2 and save3 at least one view that you also set as your default view – what you see by default when you log into XBert.
You can also share4 views with team members. If your view is something that others might find useful, share it so they can also benefit from your organising of data quality work.
There are two checks for duplicate bills, one for raised bills the other for paid bills. It is obviously important to remove duplicate bills before they get paid, but if any have made it through to being paid, they should be investigated as a matter of urgency.
Use the Work screen to search1 for duplicate bills that have been paid and take the necessary action to confirm them and if needed initiate a refund of money from the suppliers in question. This is real money that has been paid twice and should be in your clients’ bank account.
You may need to contact affected clients for them to contact their suppliers, for example if you do not manage the accounts payable for the affected clients. Resolving all duplicate paid bills should be a priority2 for you and your team.
Open the Data Quality report and select the Data Quality(Tax Risk) report page. By default, this page shows data quality issues of a Tax Risk type, for the current fiscal year, that are unresolved and medium to high risk.
There is also a XBert Match Accuracy filter which is set to High by default. XBert uses a multi-layer AI and algorithm based approach to determine who a business really is. For example, a bill with an incorrect supplier name and with no associated ABN/tax number can still be determined as a real business with accurate information if there is an attachment on the bill that provides enough additional information (such as a valid ABN) – XBert can read attachments. Each layer to business matching has different confidence levels, i.e. some layers produce more accurate matches than others.
Review the high value items in the pivot table. Expand to see which clients have them. Take a mental note of something to investigate fora client, for example, a “Payment to Supplier Not Registered for GST” issue, worth $3,650 for client “Bob’s Burgers”. You will notice that the report opened in a new browser tab – go back to the tab with XBert, go to the Work screen, and search for this issue. Investigate it to confirm what XBert found matches up with your understanding of the issue and then use XBert’s auto resolve capability to quickly and easily fixing the issue.
Repeat this step for other Tax Risk issues and across several clients.
After you have auto resolved a number of issues, switch the Work screen to show Completed items, and the timeframe to Completed Date. Then choose the Day period to see all the things you achieved today1. If any of those resulted in a significant change to the GST/VAT a client can receive back from the tax office, you know have the option of letting your clients know that you are saving them some tax.
1. Use other time frames like this week or last month to consolidate what your firm has completed before reporting back to your clients.
Now that you (and/or your team) have used XBert to organise and resolve various data quality issues, it may be apparent that some of what XBert finds can be tweaked to make what is found more specific to your needs. XBert automation provides options for this.
Go to the Automation page and select the XBert Automation icon. Where necessary, make changes to automation. Every XBert can be configured1, and custom conditions and actions2 can also be applied.
Configuration includes mapping to your processes, setting a specific starting status and auto assigning to someone at your firm or at your client. The latter is helpful to enhance the relationship with your client when discovering issues outside of you agreed scope of work.
Conditions and rules can be set for each XBert and per client. For example, you may only want to be alerted to a specific XBert when it appears for a client above a certain value, in which case you also want the status automatically changed and the work to resolve the issue automatically assigned to specific person at your firm.
All this level of customisation is optional – you can just let XBert default settings work their magic.
The above steps are a starting point. Your firm now has:
It is now important that data quality becomes part of normal process at your firm. Ideally, it is a daily or weekly job for those concerned to go into XBert and review the Work screen, for the saved views that matter most, and take appropriate actions. XBert is scanning millions of transactions across your clients, multiple times a day, every day.Your firm is now well placed to find and fix data quality issues for your clients and to do so significantly quicker and with more rigour than ever before.
Recurring work in the context of this playbook is any work that your firm consistently does, across multiple clients and timeframes.
Although real people still need to complete the actual work, using automation to support them at various stages of completion will help get it done better, easier and faster. Automation is also useful in the management of recurring work.
There are many benefits to this approach, including:
Combined, the above benefits ultimately lead to better outcomes for your clients.
XBert provides the capability to keep the definition of recurring work (what has to be done), separate from who it needs to be done for(which clients) and when the work needs to be done (the recurring schedules).
This separation of concerns means that you or the people managing the recurring work effort across your firm have less to manage. For example, if there is a change in the instructions for how your firm processes accounts receivable, this is done independently of the clients you do this work for and when each client needs it done. The definition of the work is the only things changed – everything else remains automated.
Using XBert, the days of creating tasks specific to month ends or clients are no longer.
Before you go any further with this part of the playbook, remember there are 76+ automated AI data quality checks1 that XBert runs multiple times a day, every day, across every client.
There will be a number of tasks you used to do that now you don’t have to.
For example, your firm no longer needs a task to open every client’s accounting system file and check for things like draft invoices, or to check for employees that have the wrong annual leave setting, or to ensure the supplier details for a large payment are correct – XBert does this for you, automatically.
The full list can be viewed in the Automation screen, by selecting the XBertAutomation icon. Note that the number of checks (i.e. XBerts) available is dependent on the country your clients operate in. An Australian client will not get South African specific XBerts and vice versa. 70+ XBerts are available to Australian clients with less being available for other countries.
Your firm likely has a set of processes and tasks that live somewhere – be it in documents, spreadsheets, apps or a combination of sources.
It is a challenging exercise, however, the first step to workflow automation is knowing what work is out there and deciding, of this, what would be good to automate. Remember, the work that is now covered by XBerts’ automated AI data quality checks is work you no longer need to do.
A good starting point is to list the work that absolutely must be done and what schedule it runs on. For example:
Rather than spend a lot of time on this step, note a few recurring processes/tasks and move on to Step 2 as the pre-built templates might help you understand what recurring work is best suited to automation.
XBert has 14 default processes which are set up by default in your firm’s XBert Connect portal. Note they can be changed, deleted and reordered – and new processes added – so what you see as your set of processes today may differ from the default set.
XBert also has ~28 default task templates1. They are not deployed by default, however, you can add them within the Automation > Templates screen if you are yet to add any templates of your own. (If you have already added your own templates, but want the XBert default set, get in touch with the XBert team and we will get this done for you).
If you are a Pure Bookkeeping or First Class Accounts member, contact the XBert team about getting pre-built templates specific to their processes and tasks.
Still not sure what you need? Contact the XBert team and ask about our Fast Track2 programme which includes setting up pre-built and custom templates to your needs.
Go to the Automation screen. By default, the Templates option will be selected. (But if not, select it).
(Optionally) add the default templates from XBert or create your own custom templates. If you are Pure Bookkeeping or First Class Accounts member, or have started a Fast-Track program the XBert team will have already added the relevant templates for you.
With a template open click on the Schedules icon to create Automation. By default, the Templates info option will be selected.
Ensure each template has at least 1 active schedule. If it doesn’t the template will never create any tasks for people to work on. Create schedules for groups of clients to suit your staff capacity.
Go to the Work screen and select View Tasks Only, if not already selected. Note, the Task icon should be highlighted (Clicking it when already selected will de-select it).
Review the work created (the tasks) by scheduling the templates – including which clients the work is for, when it starts and is due, and who is allocated to do the work. Be sure to select a relevant Reporting Period to see, for example, all work to start this month, or this quarter. If your schedules were set up to create tasks into the future, review these too.
Switch to the Team Overview view of the Work screen. Take note of who looks like they might be over capacity – for example by having too many tasks or too many (estimated) hours of work to do in a certain timeframe.
This step is for those firms that have used XBert for 2+months across multiple clients and who have been actively using XBert to action tasks.
Revisit Step 5 and this time, when in the Team Overview view of the Work screen, check who has overdue tasks. Does the team look like they are handling their workload or not? It is a good idea to return to this screen on a regular basis to check overdue work, is recommended.
Next, open the Tasks and Processes report. Gain a deeper understanding of the work your team does via the analysis of task completion. There are 7 task completion related report pages starting with an overall summary for your firm in the Task Completion Summary report page. The other 6 pages provide more specific insights, such as task completion by manager, by client and by how you have organised the recurring work of the firm. Be sure to drill into the data, especially the month on month data, to see how completion is changing over time. Is the team, (or are some individuals) getting better or worse at completing work on time? Are certain processes always overdue, or more overdue than others?
You can also use this report to understand the overall task footprint you have. For a high level client based view of this, use the ClientsTasks Volume and Hours report page. Further detail about your task footprint is found in theTask Volume, Task Hours, and Processes Tasks Volume and Hours report pages.
This step is for those firms that have used XBert for 2+months across multiple clients and who have been actively using XBert to action tasks.
During Step 5 and Step 6, you may have found some people in your firm are over capacity, or particular client work tends to have due dates shifted, or some team members appear to be less productive compared to others.
These and other discoveries might necessitate changes to your schedules so that work expectations are more realistic and likely to be done to schedule, team members are happier, and clients get things done when they need them.
What will you do with the time and money saved? The savings that automation brings to data quality are typically time savings – automation means your firm has less work to do. This translates to reduced expenses for your firm, for example, less hours for a bookkeeper to work. Alternatively, bookkeepers work the same hours but generate increased revenue for your firm because they can get more done.In either case, time is money. Data quality time savings (enabled by XBert) can be broken down into 3 main areas.
XBert calculates this as a forecast for the next 12 months – because time savings pre-XBert are not real savings. The most obvious example of this would be if your firm has just started with XBert and XBert has found 350 data quality issues across 25 clients within the prior 2 years of financial data. Whilst it is true that XBert has saved you or your team from finding these issues, in the real world XBert cannot possible have saved you (say) 30 hours of issue finding, 4 months ago. That date has passed.
XBert uses what transactions occurred in the prior 12 months to estimate how long it would take a real person to scan them and look for the 70+ data quality issues that XBert checks for and apply this to the next 12 months.
If a real person found 350 data quality issues, they would need to organise them to prepare for future action towards resolution. At the very least, the list of issues would need to be written in a notebook or on a whiteboard.
More likely, they would be documented with at least some organisational rigour, such as in a document or spreadsheet, with additional notes and what they relate to, who should action them, when they need actioning, which client they are for and any other useful bits of information.
As each issue progresses toward completion, other things need to be managed, such as who is currently assigned to work on the issue, what the current status is and if what new questions or comments about the issue need addressing.
XBert does not provide any specific estimate of the time saved for this type of data quality organisation, however, a saving of 1 minute per issue found could provide a simple but realistic, on average, time saving. Similar to savings from finding, this would be a forecast number.
Resolving a data quality issue can involve various actions of differing complexities.
XBert tracks the interactions each person has with each data quality issue found, and each action is assigned a time saving in seconds (vs. not having XBert to help you perform this action). Together these add up to the time saved resolving data quality issues.
This is an as of now metric. It is the hours saved, by real people at your firm, by using XBert to resolve the data quality issues that it has found.
Time savings are also realised through the automation of recurring work, and these savings can be significant. The calculation of time savings from workflow automation is currently outside the scope of this playbook, however, you may like to estimate what this would be for your firm and consider it as part of the overall return on investment that XBert provides. To make this estimation easier, you could estimate time saved foreach of the 6 benefits listed in the introduction to Part 4 : Automate and optimise recurring work.
Some of the calculations noted in the steps below require use of XBert over a period of time long enough to generate enough data to use in the calculation of savings.
It is recommended that you complete the below steps to calculate savings and ROI for your firm, however, if you are new to XBert, the following examples provide realistic estimates of what two different firms/scenarios could expect to save over a 12 month period, using XBert.
Open the Savings and ROI report. Select the Finding Data Quality Issues page. Set your audit level and bookkeeping hourly rate. Review what XBert has forecast you will save over the next 12 months on finding data quality issues.
This step is for those firms that have used XBert for 1+months across multiple clients and who have been actively using XBert to investigate and resolve data quality issues. Specifically, this means that many (250+) data quality actions have taken place in XBert, from the initial open of an issue through to completion.
Within the Savings and ROI report, select the Resolving Data Quality Issues page. Review what XBert has captured to date for time savings on resolving data quality issues.
Within the Savings and ROI report, select the ROI page. The is your firm’s summary of time and money savings, enabled by XBert, and what ROI this represents. ROI requires your accounting system client files to be integrated with XBert.
The ROI cannot be calculated without knowing how large your clients are, and therefore, which activity based fee scale applies to them. Likewise, client files need to be integrated to estimate the revenue that they earn for your firm. If your firm is yet to integrate with XBert, you can review the below example of key metrics the ROI report page provides, to help you understand how XBert quantifies the savings and ROI it promotes.
