Does anyone use Trello to manage their workflow in an accountancy practice ?

[David Cramp]

I am new to Trello and my gut is telling me it is a great tool, particularly with all the power ups. I wondered if anyone had experience of using Trello manage workflow in an accountancy practice. If so, how do you structure your boards - are your boards based on work type eg accounts, tax returns, VAT etc or do you have a board per client, for example, or anything else ?

Thanks in advance

[Robin Warren _Blue Cat Reports_]

On the off chance someone finds this and is interested in how another accountancy practice solved this I have written up one experience here https://www.bluecatreports.com/blog/how-pillow-may-manage-100-accounts-with-trello-and-blue-cat/

[Iain Dooley]

@David Cramp I did some work with an accountant a couple of years ago. My ideal set up for him was to have a "board of boards" which is something I use frequently for clients who have consulting or project based businesses:

https://blog.trello.com/related-cards-related-boards

however this approach requires some automation to make it really functional for a business as complicated as an accounting practise without lots of manual clicks.

So for example I created automations for him so that when we added a new card, it would create the linked board, then certain tasks would recur on given time periods. You can see a typical sales/production workflow that demonstrates this type of thing in the intro video for the Trellinator integration I created:

https://trello.com/integrations/#trellinator

Other options would be to have repeating cards for each client that recurred using Butler or the Card Repeater power up, where each new card created would have a checklist for each of the tasks to perform for that client. The lists would then represent the "stages" (for example "Documentation Requested", "Documentation Received", "In Progress", "Out for Signature", "Filed with Tax Office" and that kind of thing) and you would move cards through stages as you went. You could use Butler to set due dates on cards based on the types of work being done.

The advantage of having a board per client is that you can add your client to their board. If you're not doing that, what I would recommend at a strategic level is to keep things on one board as much as possible, and use labels to quickly and easily create "views" of cards using filtering:

https://help.trello.com/article/787-filtering-cards-on-a-board

A common complaint in Trello is that people create lots of boards and then want a way to "see it all in one place" -- generally when I see that, it's an indication that they should have had fewer boards to begin with.

[David Cramp]

Thanks for prompt and detailed response and suggestions Iain. I will look at your suggestions with interest. Thanks again

[David Cramp]

@Iain Dooley   Thanks for the quick and detailed response Iain. So, just so I understand it correctly, looking at your blog about "boards of boards" was it structured such that you had one board with lists of clients, perhaps with separate lists for different client types, each client would have their own card under the appropriate list and the card would link to a work flow board, for example, accounts and another linked board for, for example, VAT returns. each of these linked boards would then have lists representing the workflow stage eg "Documents requested" - is that how it was organised ? Or am I misunderstanding ?

Apologies for the newbie questions, but much appreciate your assistance.

If it came to it, do you consult on implementations such as this, and if so, what are your charges ?

Thanks in advance

[Iain Dooley]

@David Cramp Yes that's correct. One board with one card per client, linked to a board for each client. The lists on that board can be used in a variety of ways, but yes they could be type of client, billing category, location, or you could move clients through stages to indicate their journey with the company (for example this client is in their 4th year with us so we're going to recommend some type of special review, this client has just completed their first tax return with us so we want to send them a gift basket etc. etc.)

The way you structure your client board again is pretty flexible, but don't forget you can also have "nested boards", for example I have a client that runs an HR consultancy with this "board of boards" approach, and then within each client board there are some tasks that necessitate a whole other board, so we just create a board linked to a card in that client board.

And yes, workflow automation with Trello is what I do :) You can see a link in my profile or email team@benkoboard.com if you're keen to discuss further.