Written by Tara Morgan Schinkel, CPA – Accounting Systems Lead & CFO, Stewart Technologies
Ok – with my email in a better place, now it was back to focusing my efforts on optimizing and automating my Sage 100 accounting work at Stewart Tech.
Next project to tackle through optimization and automation – sales commission reporting. Every month, for about 90 minutes at a time, I would spend my time doing the following:
- Running out the four reports in Sage 100 that involved commissions reporting.
- Manually exporting the reports from the network to Excel.
- Copying and pasting pieces of the reports from one place into a master spreadsheet to better organize the process.
Because of the sensitive nature of commissions, I can’t delegate this task to anyone in my office, and, at this point in my journey, outsourcing wasn’t something we had started doing yet. The other frustrating part of this outdated process was that I was often doing this task very early in the morning or late at night because whenever I tried to do it during business hours, the interruptions from the office or my home-life would make this process take three times as long.
How could I change this flow and make it better?
Since I couldn’t eliminate the reports altogether, I automated them. Instead of manually running and exporting all of the reports to Excel, I opted to use Sage Alerts and Workflow with Sage 100 instead. In doing so, I had our Applications Consultant Specialist, Jhiam Marasigan, set up the reports to be emailed to me in Excel format on the 16th of each month. Doing so eliminated the first two steps of the process completely. These emails also served as great reminders that I needed to complete commissions. I retooled the report format so that they came preformatted for how I needed them. An efficient improvement to my process!
Just by eliminating these two steps from the flow, I got another 15 minutes back in my month; and by having it come to me via email, I no longer had to keep a reminder on my calendar that commissions needed to be done. Now the emails come in at 6:00 am on the 16th of every month, which is typically my personally scheduled admin time for Stewart Tech. By streamlining this process, I also took the steps toward potentially outsourcing this task in the future.
Automating our sales commission reporting process was another small but important win for me and, more importantly, for my bigger picture work-in-progress look at EVERYTHING I did with the “Less Doing, More Living” lens. This personal journey was forcing me to really think about what I was doing, why I was doing it, and if it could be done by someone else? While at this phase of the journey I may not have been ready to completely outsource this process, I was succeeding in automating key pieces and recovering more time in my day.
Stay tuned to find out what I automated next…
Stewart Tech CFO and Accounting Systems Lead Tara Schinkel shares her journey of “Less Doing, More Living,” and how optimization and automation continue to transform her business and her life. This is the fourth blog in the series. Follow along with her optimization and automation journey here.
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If you’re looking to automate, optimize, or streamline your accounting and ERP processes, visit the Demos and Overviews section of our website to see how Sage can better serve your accounting needs. Looking for more information? Consider scheduling a Sage consultation call with one of Stewart Tech’s Sage certified consultants.
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