Page 25 - Accounting Best Practices

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How to Use Best Practices
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• Lack of testing. A major problem for the implementation of especially large
and complex projects, especially those involving programming, is that they
are rushed into production without a thorough testing process to discover
and correct all bugs that might interfere with or freeze the orderly conduct
of work in the areas they are designed to improve. There is nothing more
dangerous than to install a wonderful new system in a critical area of the
company, only to see that critical function fail completely due to a problem
that could have been discovered in a proper testing program. It is always
worthwhile to build some extra time into a project budget for an adequate
amount of testing.
• Lack of top management support. If a project requires a large amount of
funding or the cooperation of multiple departments, it is critical to have the
complete support of the top management team. If not, any required funding
may not be allocated, while there is also a strong possibility that any object-
ing departments will be able to sidetrack it easily. This is an especially com-
mon problem when the project has no clear project sponsor at all—without a
senior-level manager to drive it, a project will sputter along and eventually
fade away without coming anywhere near completion.
• Relying on other departments. As soon as another department’s cooperation
becomes a necessary component of a best practice installation, the chances
of success drop markedly. The odds become even smaller if multiple depart-
ments are involved. The main reason is that there is now an extra manager
involved, who may not have the commitment of the accounting manager to
make the implementation a success. In addition, the staff of the other depart-
ment may influence their manager not to help out, while there may also be a
problem with the other department not having a sufficient amount of funding
to complete its share of the work. For example, an accounting department
can benefit greatly at period-end if the warehouse is using cycle-counting to
keep inventory accuracy levels high, since there is no need for a physical
inventory count. However, if the warehouse does not have the extra staff
available to count inventory, the work will not be done, no matter how badly
the accounting staff wants to implement this best practice.
• Too many changes in a short time. An organization will rebel against too
much change if it is clustered into a short time frame. The reason is that
change is unsettling, especially when it involves a large part of people’s job
descriptions, so that nearly everything they do is altered. This can result in
direct employee resistance to further change, sabotaging new projects, a work
slowdown, or (quite likely) the departure of the most disgruntled workers.
This problem is best solved by planning for lapses between implementation
projects to let the employees settle down. The best way to accomplish this
lag between changes without really slowing down the overall schedule of
implementation is to shift projects around in the accounting department, so
that no functional area is on the receiving end of two consecutive projects.