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13–8 Post the Procedures Manual on the Intranet
13–7 ISSUE ACTIVITY CALENDARS TO ALL 265
ACCOUNTING POSITIONS
The bane of any accounting department is disorganization. This department,
above all others, is responsible for consistently completing the same tasks, day
after day and year after year, with a great deal of reliability. If the employees can-
not organize themselves properly so key tasks are completed on time, the entire
function can fall into disarray, resulting in payments and billings not being com-
pleted on time. Also, financial statements, the most subject to delays if there is
disorganization, will be released much later than expected, possibly containing a
large number of errors. Clearly, some instrument of organization must be found.
An excellent tool for straightening out the timing of accounting work is the cal-
endar. One can create a calendar on the computer, either with a scheduling software
package or an electronic spreadsheet, and load it with all of the tasks that must be
completed each day. An example of such a calendar is shown in Exhibit 13.4.
Though some employees are naturally well-organized and will already have it in
place, many others will be in desperate need of this simple organizational tool. The
best way to distribute these calendar schedules is to keep the schedules for all
employees in a single location, update them at the end of each month, and have a
staff meeting to distribute them so the controller can emphasize all calendar changes.
It is then a simple matter to refer to copies of all employees’ calendars each day and
follow up with them to ensure that they are completing the scheduled tasks.
The calendar is only one way to assist in managing the operations of the
accounting department. Another excellent tool is the policy and procedure man-
ual, which was discussed earlier in this chapter, in the ‘‘Create a Policy and Pro-
cedure Manual” section.
Cost: Installation time:
13–8 POST THE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES MANUAL
ON THE COMPANY INTRANET SITE
When the accounting staff is widely scattered through many locations, it is diffi-
cult to make available to them a current version of the accounting policies and
procedures manual. This can be a real problem, for the accounting department is
much more procedurally driven than any other department, and operating with
antiquated procedures can cause significant differences in operations between
various locations. Traditionally, this problem has been addressed by creating an
internal procedure-writing and publishing department that constantly updates
documents, maintains a list of authorized recipients, and mails the changed docu-
ments to them. This group is expensive, and does not always result in updated
manuals at outlying locations, especially if those outlying personnel take a dim
view of spending their valuable time replacing pages in their procedures manuals.