Dealing with Emergencies
So, you’ve received some bad news and its starting to look like you’ll need to be away from your firm for an extended period. You’re starting to panic because you do everything for your firm. You keep the books, answer the phones, service the clients, and file documents. And that’s just the first part of your Tuesday. How is your firm going to handle things while you’re away?
Unfortunately, emergencies happen to us all. Read on below to find out how best to handle them.
Preparation
The key to dealing with any emergency (and the readers who are already facing an imminent emergency will hate me for this bit of advice) is to prepare for one before it hits. Those folks who have contingency plans in place well before disaster strikes are in a much better position than those who wait until after they get that unexpected phone call to make a plan.
Preparing for an emergency isn’t exactly a single task, or even a single set of tasks. It should inform everything about how you run your practice. Ideally, you should run your practice in such a way that someone else can step in and run it without missing a bit. Now, this is the ideal, and its unlikely anyone can actually reach that place. But the principle is simple. The means to run your firm shouldn’t exist solely between your ears.
We talked last week about the importance of organization and automation with respect to Time Management, but those concepts are just as important for emergency prep as they are for managing your time effectively. Firms that are appropriately automated and organized are much easier for someone other than the founder to run.
Trust
In addition to keeping your firm organized and automated on a regular basis, you’ll need people close to you who can trust. These are your crucial staff who can step in in case something goes wrong and you need to take an extended absence from work.
Above all, you need effective, competent, and reliable people who can take your place when the stuff hits the fan. Do you have a personnel plan for when things go awry? Who would you put in charge if you had to leave for a while? If the answer is, “no one,” you will want to give serious thought to lining up someone who can take your place during your absence.
Very often, it is the support people who can really step up and shine during times of crisis. People like your admin staff and your bookkeeper can provide tremendous utility in keeping the firm running during times of crisis. Your bookkeeper, especially, can keep the firm’s finances organized and running smoothly until your return.
Contact Us!
Are you looking for a trusted bookkeeper who can serve your firm reliably and competently through good times and bad? Give us a shout in the contact form below. We’d love to get to know you and how we can help!