It’s easy when you know how.  The same principles apply here as anywhere else – know the rules and work with it.

In a nutshell, 99.9% of accountants (and solicitors) charge on a time basis. Their working day is broken down into 6 minute intervals (Yes … you got that right … 6 minutes!) and time is allocated to clients whenever any work is done. So when you call your accountant, they “clock” you in and when they finish talking to you, you get “clocked out”. Then at the end of the week, a practice manager or partner will review that to check that the staff member has somehow miraculously managed to charge out the predetermined required number of hours to chargeable work ie to you, the client. The whip comes out at this point if the staff member has not managed to meet their required productivity.

Needless to say, this method of charging clients for work done can be abused (as with any other system) and can lead to you, the client, being charged for inefficiencies by the relevant staff member – which may or may not sometimes include the partner too!

This eBook Your Accountants Secrets Revealed will tell you how you can keep your accounting fees down and also give you suggestions as to what you should be looking for when you get your bill. To download your copy of the free eBook, just follow the link to TheCharteredAccountants.com

In order to assure the highest levels of quality work and productivity from employees, we recommend that you introduce a policy to keep all employees well trained through a program of Special High Intensity Training (S.H.I.T.)

You should try and give your employees more S.H.I.T. than any other company. If you feel that your employees do not receive their share of S.H.I.T. on their jobs, we recommend that you advise your employees that they will be placed at the top of the S.H.I.T. list; and your managers who are especially skilled at overseeing this can ensure that those employees get all the S.H.I.T. they can handle.

Employees who don’t take their S.H.I.T. can be placed in Departmental Employee Evaluation Programs (D.E.E.P.S.H.I.T.). Those who then fail to take D.E.E.P.S.H.I.T. seriously can be required to go to Employee Attitude Training (E.A.T.S.H.I.T.). We would recommend that all managers are suitably trained in S.H.I.T. before they are promoted. That way they won’t have to do S.H.I.T. anymore as they will be full of S.H.I.T. already.

You can also create a new position in your company whereby those who are full of S.H.I.T. can train others in the same. Their names can then be added to a Basic Understanding Lecture List (B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T). Then those who are full of B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. will get the S.H.I.T. jobs, and can apply for promotion to a newly created position Director of Intensity Programming (D.I.P.S.H.I.T.).

And don’t forget to assign yourself a new title as Head of Training, Special High Intensity Training (H.O.T.S.H.I.T.)