Promotion

[berniceq123]

Hi Everyone

I've just been promoted to manager of the tax department, my role just really involves managing staff and work flow etc as there is still the senior consultant who does the high profile tax consultancy.

Can anyone give me any tips/advice on how to manage? The senior is really a results driven person and likes to see facts and figures etc. Any ideas?

Any help much appreciated.

Bernice

[Zeno]

To be honest, I am slightly confused by your post. I understand you to be a newly qualified CA who recently started work in the tax department for a medium sized practice.

Forgive me for asking, but why promote you to the managers position ahead of the senior consultant?

[accountancyextra]

Hi Everyone

I've just been promoted to manager of the tax department, my role just really involves managing staff and work flow etc as there is still the senior consultant who does the high profile tax consultancy.

Can anyone give me any tips/advice on how to manage? The senior is really a results driven person and likes to see facts and figures etc. Any ideas?

Any help much appreciated.

Bernice

Bernice,

What management experience do you currently have?

When I got my first management position, I considered all the good and bad points from previous managers I'd had and tried to adopt the good points into my own "style"

As for results, what are the KPI's of the departement?

[berniceq123]

Well she is still the head person when it comes to the tax department, I'm merely supposed to be taking over the running i.e supervising staff, making sure we meet our compliance deadlines, allocating work etc so that she can concentrate on bringing new business etc. If it came down to it, she definately still has the final say but the idea of this appointment was that it would free up her time.

There are only 5 of us in total in the tax department so its not huge but still the first time I've been given this type of responsibility which I take very seriously, and I'd like some tips/advice. How do other people manage their responsibilities? I.e practice management software? etc etc?

The only control we currently have is an old database on Microsoft Access which I feel is a little outdated but still does the job.

Any advice welcome.

[Zeno]

There are various practice management systems available off the shelf however they would seem to be directed at the practice as a whole. I do not know how much success you would have using it for just the tax department.

The ludite in me suggests that if the current database is doing to job why change it? If it ain't broke etc etc.

[berniceq123]

No management experience of other staff at all I'm afraid, more a supervisory role. At present we use Iris accounts prod and are bringing that practice management software linked to that. The only demo we have had related to the accounts production end of things, I'd like an idea of how to manage the tax dept.

[berniceq123]

Also, KPI's, what projects we have? how many we can complete in the next month? How much we've invoiced per month?

The senior partner has come up with a spreadsheet that deals with the above which we discuss at a weekly meeting but then usuallly it is filed away never to be referred to again.

[Census_Pro]

Create a task in MS Outlook and then e-mail that task to the employee you want to allocate the work to. They'll get a reminder when the deadline is due and you'll get an update of when the job is done.

Hold a team meeting every week with the list of tasks that were allocated and go through each task and the person responsible. If you ask somebody to do a task and they know that your going to ask them about it in next weeks meeting, I guarantee they'll have it done.