All posts in Trash the Timesheet

Dear Abbycus

by cfarmand on June 10, 2010 in Technology, Trash the Timesheet with 10 Comments
Dear Abbycus,
Now I understand why certain people act the way they do in the workplace — it’s a generational thing. In my unsuccessful struggle to change others’ thinking to the way I think, the idea of generational differences has popped up a number of times. Me being at the tender age of 31, I can not tell you how many times I have been compared to the 47 year old tax manager or the 56 year audit manager. I am a self-proclaimed Generation Y junkie.  If you have a chance please distribute my following DOs and DON’Ts list to all the late Boomers/early X’er partners out there.
DON’Ts

  1. Money — Try again partner; not really interested. As long as my Corolla has gas in it and there is food on the table, don’t really care about it.
  2. Rigid Billiable Hours — Not for me either. My mind runs a million miles a minute. And with technology today, I am worthless to you in a billable world.
  3. Slow Technology Adoption — See #2. There is an easier way to do things, friend.
  4. Threats — Yeah, see, about threats … If you treat me like a human, I may be loyal to you.

DOs

  1. Challenge me — I am smarter than your 65-year-old pencil pusher in the back office. How do you think I successfully remove half my lunch lodged in the keyboard each day?
  2. Educate me — Teach me what you know. You have years and years of experience, so share it.  I love to learn.
  3. Listen to me — That blue and white screen I stare at periodically throughout may appear epileptic to you, but it gets me in touch with like-minded pioneers of the industry.
  4. Technology — Text, tweet, e-mail, Facebook, link, cloud, Google doc, iPhone, Android, Blackberry with me. It’s fun, I promise.
  5. Validate me — If I do something you like, let me know.
  6. Change with me — The QBox has replaced the shoe box, old timer.
  7. Trust me — My comment regarding the threats may make you weary of this action, but if I gain your trust and we can collaborate together, the sky is the limit.

Respectfully,

Chris Farmand
Generation Y ’79
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Trashing the Timesheet: Part 3 of 3 (what it is like now)

by cfarmand on April 30, 2010 in Trash the Timesheet with 3 Comments

In my experience, for a process to change there needs to be three parts to the process; what it was like, how it changed, and what it is like now. For starters, the Monday morning meetings I spoke of in my first post no longer happen. The dreaded fear of filing out the timesheet at the end of the day or throughout the day is no longer there. I am working smarter, faster, and more accurate because I can devote all my energy to the engagement without worrying about time. The buzz phrase work/live seems appropriate for post. The phrase has been around for the past five years, and I really did not know what it meant until I began this new process. When I came into the profession, I questioned the rigid time requirements and was immediately told, “This is the way we have been doing it for years.”

Collections
If you think the last three posts on this topic have been BS, you may want to read this carefully. Our A/R has never been cleaner in my six years of working. Hey rookie, six years? Get a life! Ok, my dad’s A/R has never been cleaner in the past 35 years of working. Where do you go and request products or services and not know the price until after the product or service is complete? Once I communicate the price to a client, they know what they are going to pay, so pay me now….or half now and half at delivery. It is easier for everyone. In accounting we stress transparency. This process opens up a new transparency I never believed could happen.

In our FPAs, one of the services we include is unlimited access to me and my team, all the way up to the parter. Why not? We are not keeping time — how am I supposed to track a phone call without a timesheet? I can see it now …”FFF is running a special on phone calls for the month of March, only $9.99 per call, so act fast.” Look folks, we have not, in any way, jeopardized the level of service we give our clients. If anything, the level of service has been elevated with this new process.

A small bit on client reaction to the change, which we had 98% overall participation. Our business clients busted out the champagne when we made the change. Do they abuse the unlimited access? Not yet. Some may, most won’t. You show me a client who wants to talk to his CPA five days a week and I will tell you exactly how to remedy the situation. Our individual clients are on the fence. The relationship we have with most our individual clients is transactional. With this new process, we’re hoping to replace the transactional approach with a center of financial influence approach.

In closing, I will not be returning to timesheet environment anytime soon. The firm of the future does not need the timesheet as a metric to motivate team members. There are far better metrics to gauge work performance. This has been a brief overview of the process I have taken to trash the timesheet. Please contact me through email if you would like to discuss the details further.

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Trashing the Timesheet: How I did it (part 2)

by cfarmand on April 23, 2010 in FPA, Trash the Timesheet with No comments
I would like to start this post with a thanks to the following individuals: Mark Bailey, Vic Christopher, and Chris York.

So you’re wondering how I did it. How I convinced a partner who had been tracking his time for 35 years to never fill out a timesheet again. Or more appropriately, how I freed myself from the bondage of the timesheet. It started with a changed belief system. This was not hard for me, because I did not believe in what I did not understand. Once I convinced myself that I was going to do it, I began searching for early adopters. I came across a gentleman by the name of Mark Bailey out of Reno, Nevada. Mark was mentioned on the verasage site, which happens to be the website of the author of Firm of the Future. I emailed Mark, we scheduled a phone call, and during that call he spent 45 minutes talking about his firm which uses no timesheets. (SIDENOTE: I knew nothing about this man before our call, other than his firm was the two-time winner of “Best firm to work for in the US” in the small firm category (15-24 employees) and he was old enough to be my dad. That is cool). After our call, I had hope that this could possibly work. One of the theories which spun off my talk with Mark was the core purpose of the timesheet. I concluded that the timesheet is nothing more than an illusion of control that partners — in traditional firm vs. firm of the future — think they have over their employees. By illusion, I mean their sole purpose is to keep tabs on making sure the employee stays busy. Partners think they are using them as a metric, when I am 98% confident that the partner knows exactly what they are going to bill for an engagement before they ever start it. I could rant on and on about the level of BS the timesheet is based on, but this post is to talk about “how I did it.”  Contact me if you want the rant.

Next step in the process was to begin collecting data and literature on what is called a Fixed Price Agreement (FPA). Our FPA details what we are going to charge for an engagement. It lists the client’s expectations of the engagement and the corresponding price we will charge for the service. Of course we have a separate engagement letter which accompanies the FPA. I have attached a copy of one of our sample FPA letters to the end of this post. My dad and I took a couple of months to work out the wording we wanted to use.

My biggest fear in the switch was client reaction. “WHAT WAS THE CLIENT GOING TO SAY????????” The fear was mildly valid because most my dad’s clients have been doing it the same way for the past 35 years. My mentors in this process assured me that the clients who ran from this would be doing me a favor. So to ease the shock factor, we issued a written statement to all of our clients explaining what we were going to be doing and attached a sample FPA to the statement. Some clients signed the example and mailed it back, others called to praise the change, and some had no comment.

Lastly, we set the date to be January 1, 2010, as our starting point to CRUISE the timesheet. Come back in a week to read about “what it is like now.”

Disclaimer: This is a overview of what went into the transition from billable hour to FPAs. Please feel free to contact me to discuss my full experience and ask any questions.

Click here to view our sample FPA.

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Trashing the Timesheet: What it was like (part 1)

by cfarmand on April 16, 2010 in FPA, Trash the Timesheet with 1 Comment

After a careful study of Ron Bakers book Firm of the Future, on January 1, 2010, I trashed my timesheet. Well, there was a little more to it than just Ron’s book, but I can say with all honesty, the book was the inspiration. For the past six years, I have been so confused with this idea of keeping every six minutes of my work day accounted for. I did it, I did not understand it, and I despised it.  Billable, Billable, Billable; all we have to sell is our time, I would chant repeatedly over and over in my head in a methodical drill sergeant’s tone. My goal in this three-part submission is to share my expierence on what it was like using timesheets, how I did it, and what it was like without timesheets.

The billable days were filled with Monday morning WIP meetings.  Hmmmmmmmm, a WIP meeting consisted of my dad and I talking (screaming) about what, when, how much and where we were going to bill our clients. It took up most of the morning and always set a cheery tone for the entire week. Then we had to deal with a bill going out late, purposely dodging Monday morning WIP meetings and bitching clients. I began to question professional service work and wondered if I truly had the thick skin to deal with this for the rest of my career. One day, mid-2009, I was reading my Twitter account and there was a post from the JOA citing Ron Baker and the death of the billable hour. I watched the video; it didn’t make sense at the first sitting. The video challenged the billable hour formula versus value pricing. While it did not make sense, I knew I was not going to last in this profession repeating an action I did not understand. I ordered the book and began tearing though it.  DISCLAIMER: “Trashing the timesheet” is only a piece of the big puzzle. I quickly learned that it would take a giant overhaul of attitude, mind and faith for this to work. The more I read, the more it clicked. This led me to interview early adopters of the process and study the theory behind value pricing. All arrows were pointing up. Once I felt comfortable talking about the topic, I approached the partner (my dad) on this idea. To give you a little background on my dad, he and his brothers are celebrating their 35-year anniversary this year as a public accounting firm in Jacksonville, Fla. For the past 35 years, he has accounted for every six minutes of his work (you can imagine how our first conversation about changing this went). The more I approached him with substance, the more he listened. In late October 2009, during one of our conversations, he agreed as of January 1, 2010, we would no longer track our time. There was no turning back now. In my next post I will explain how I transitioned away from the timesheet to Fixed Price Agreements.

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