This course is designed to help owners or admins quickly set up their account
Course Outline
Optional: Before setting things up, create a fake client and follow the "Test Drive FC Features" project on your workflow dashboard to learn our core features and experience Financial Cents from both a Firm and Client perspective.
1) Adjust Your Settings
Company settings
2) Import Your Clients
First, you need to import your clients and their information to set everything up. This should only take a few minutes.
There are two ways to import your clients quickly:
Import with QuickBooks Online Accountant
This will import the client, keep their information in sync with QuickBooks Online, and allow for advanced features like syncing time tracking with QuickBooks Online and Uncategorized transactions.
Import with a CSV File
You will learn how to import your clients and their information with this CSV Template.
Important Tip: If you want to import additional information, check out the articles below. (Highly recommended)
3) Invite Your Team
Next, we recommend inviting your team to Financial Cents because they can help review and set up the templates in the next step.
User Permissions
This will control what your team can see and do inside Financial Cents.
Invite Your Team
It is common to invite your team members to review or help with the template creation process to ensure the processes are set up correctly.
4) Set Up Your Workflow Templates
Important Note: Before you can set up your workflow templates, you need to have your firm processes documented. If you haven't documented them yet, you can use our workflow templates, our AI checklist creation tool, or document your own processes with our 10-minute process documentation course.
If you decide to use our templates, they will have the features below already applied, making it easier to set up. Our templates can be customized to fit your processes.
The Process
Decide how to structure your processes in Financial Cents
Before you start creating your templates, you need to understand how they work and the best practices for setting them up.
What is a project, task, and template?
Project
A recurring or one-time work item for a specific client
Ex: weekly bookkeeping, monthly bookkeeping, Payroll, tax return
Tasks
An individual step in a project's checklist
Template
A generic outline of the process that will be used to create all the projects for all your clients
How to structure your processes in Financial Cents
This is a recommended best practice for setting up your process in Financial Cent, but it is not required. You should structure the work in a format that works best for your firm.
Set up your Workflow Templates
This will help you create simple but powerful templates to streamline your processes.
Recommended naming conventions for templates
Best practice naming conventions for templates
Add the work type to the template title. Ex: Bookkeeping, Tax, Payroll
Don't include a time period in the template title. Instead, use accounting periods
Don't add a client name to the template title
Create your task checklist
A checklist documents the steps your team needs to follow to complete work. There are several ways you can create a checklist.
Copy your existing Excel, Word, OneNote, etc. checklists into a template
Customize our existing workflow templates and their checklists
Use our AI tool to create checklists
Or create your own templates from scratch
Add placeholders roles to the tasks
Placeholder roles will make it easier to delegate projects (work) and assign team members when you create the projects (work).
Add task automators
There are two types of automations you can set up to happen when a task is completed:
Change the status of the work/project
Send a templated email to the client
Add resources to the template
Add important resources to the template so your team can easily access everything they need to get their work done within the project (work) itself.
Some common resources added are:
Links to apps used to complete the work
Links to SOP documentation in OneDrive, Google Docs, or other online documents
Links to videos with information on how to complete the work or related to the work
Links to your firm's Google Drive, One Drive, or other online document storage systems
Add client tasks/requests
If you typically request information from your client for a work item, then add client tasks/request items to the template.
If you want to notify your clients in advance about how you will use this feature to request information, we have tips for notifying them in this article.
Default template settings
Default template settings are not required but recommended. They will streamline work creation and allow you to automate work creation to reduce admin time.
Below is a short overview of how template settings work. You can learn more about how default template settings work in this article.
5) Create Your Work
Important Note: Once you create your work from a template, you can customize each project to each individual client's needs. These changes will stay on the project and future recurrences of the project but not affect the template.
Other advanced features: