Hiring Help & Scope Creep

There were a couple great follow up questions coming out of last week’s email that were worth answering here for the group.

As always, thanks for the questions and all questions are shared with permission.

Matt C asked…

“Out of curiosity, what level of involvement (hours) will you have since it's books only? How much time does it take your employee?

As an idea for a future issue, it'd be interesting to know how much capacity your employee frees up (how many clients they can handle, what they do for each client, etc.).

I'm still a little ways away from hiring, but still don't fully understand how much extra capacity a hire can create.”

For the $400 “Just Books” package of no-frills bookkeeping, I anticipate it taking my contract bookkeeper 1 - 2 hours per month and me about 45 minutes for review.

For context, the client is <$200K in revenue and in the consulting / coaching / community space (read: there are not 100+ transactions per month). We’ll fully utilize QBO bank rules for categorization and Zapier + a shared drive for automatically requesting and collecting bank statements that we can’t get directly from the QBO connection.

In regards to my contractor freeing up time…

When I originally looked to hire support, I considered hiring a VA (virtual assistant), because “everybody” claimed that was what I needed. When I actually started tracking how I spent my time, it became clear that I would get much more efficiency and time back from hiring bookkeeping support, not a VA.

Today, my bookkeeper saves me about 25 hours per month (compared to my 60 hours per month). She has other firm-owner clients as well, so she usually spends 2-10 hrs/wk working with me, but I pay her a flat rate monthly regardless of how much she works.

I think you have to dig deep into how you spend your own time to know how to best hire.

**Special Note - there is actually a course module in Aligned Accountants that will walk you through the process of tracking your time like I did/do to figure this out. Once you see the data, it becomes much clearer where your hiring efficiencies will be. The course is called “Time Tracking for Higher Profit”, when we get in there in May.

Cory E asked…

“How do you manage scope creep with this? Like if you’re going back and forth with them about bookkeeping stuff and they casually begin asking other questions here and there. It becomes more than just the books.

That’s been a challenge for us anyway. People say they only want the basics but what they really mean is they don’t want to pay for the extras. Not necessarily that they don’t want them.”

Ah, my “No” muscles are HUGE! ::flex::

But seriously, I have no problem with kind push back and redirection. My response would sound something like this:

“Thanks for the question! Based on your current service level of “Just Books”, I’m not able to answer questions like this over email. I’d be happy to upgrade you to “Concierge Bookkeeping” (which includes unlimited email questions like this one) or you can schedule a 50-minute Strategy Session so we can figure this out live. Let me know if you’d prefer one of those options and I’d be happy to provide a quote or scheduling link.”

And then I don’t feel bad about it, because I was kind, we both stuck to our original agreement, and they get to decide what happens next.

Guilt be gone. Scope creep no more.

Hope this helps,

Erica