Project Management Solutions

Given the nature of the work CPAs and other financial professionals perform, project management solutions are a near necessity. Whether it’s working on a tax return, conducting an audit, closing the books at month’s end, or any other task that involves multiple team members or extends over more than a few days, effectively using a project management solution can help to keep the project moving forward, while simultaneously ensuring that team members perform all necessary steps in their prescribed order. This article examines the need for project management solutions and identifies some of today’s leading options.

What Are Project Management Solutions

Project management solutions help team members plan, execute, monitor, and control projects of various sizes and complexities. Sometimes, a project management tool could be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet, with tasks, due dates, responsible parties, and completion status recorded in separate columns. Although this simple solution may work for simple projects, larger and more complex projects will likely demand a more sophisticated solution.

How Can Project Management Solutions Help?

The following is a partial list of issues an effective project management solution can help your organization manage.

1. Scheduling and planning. An effective project management solution should help you create a realistic plan for completing a project on time and budget.
2. Task assignment and tracking. When using a project management solution, team members should have visibility into assigned tasks, including their completion status.
3. Project team communications. Thoughtfully designed project management solutions should have built-in communication capabilities or should be able to integrate with other communication platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
4. Time and budget tracking. Ensuring that a project or engagement is completed timely and on budget is undoubtedly a desired outcome for all project managers. Therefore, time and budget tracking capabilities are undoubtedly necessary for today’s tools.

Five Desired Characteristics In Project Management Solutions

Project management solutions should possess some or all of the following characteristics to be effective in helping with the four issues outlined above. Otherwise, the platform may become a hindrance and not help achieve the desired outcomes.

First, the solution must be intuitive and easy to use. For instance, simply assigning tasks to other team members through Microsoft Outlook can be a very effective form of project management, particularly in smaller organizations or when working on smaller projects involving only a few team members. In this case, team members would work with a tool they are likely quite familiar with – Microsoft Outlook. Indeed, more significant projects would likely demand more sophisticated and capable solutions. But that doesn’t mean the solutions must be challenging for team members to use. Intuitively, we know if the solution is difficult to use or unintuitive, team members will likely resist using the application.

Second, the solution must be flexible and adaptable to the needs of the firm, individual users, and the projects where it will be used. For example, configuring a project management solution to assist with a due diligence engagement on a proposed business acquisition would be somewhat different than configuring the solution to help a firm open a new office. Both jobs involve project management, but the issue centers on whether the solution is flexible enough to manage two vastly different projects.  

A third critical characteristic for successfully using project management solutions is user-friendliness. Team members will resist solutions that are inflexible and difficult to use. And that’s only natural – no one wants their job to be more demanding than it already is! Therefore, ensure that the solutions you might consider put users first. To illustrate, for those who work in public accounting, consulting, legal, and other professional services environments where tracking and billing time is an integral part of daily activities, where possible, integrating the project management solution with the time-and-billing/practice management solution could be an enormous “value-add.” In this case, as team members enter their time-tracking information into one solution, it posts to the other. The advantage of this integration is that team members do not need to waste time on redundant data entry.  

Security is the fourth vital component of any project management solution. Specifically, the solution should protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the project data and assets. This trait is essential for accounting professionals, considering the volume of sensitive and private data that might be used in the project. Thus, the solution must have modern and robust security and privacy features and protocols to help ensure that data is visible only to those authorized to see the data. Specifically, protocols such as encryption, multi-factor authentication, appropriate backup schedules, and disaster recovery and business continuity plans should be a part of the project management solution.

The fifth and final characteristic of successfully implementing a project management solution is its return on investment (ROI). Like all other technology solutions, a project management solution should positively impact the organization and stakeholders. It can do this by improving project processes, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality. It can also help managers achieve this objective by managing project risks, costs, and delays.

Project Management Solutions For Accounting And Financial Professionals

Many terrific project management solutions are available today to service the accounting and financial communities. As indicated previously, you will want to do your due diligence to ensure you choose a solution that suits your team's needs. However, the following are some examples of project management solutions that you may find helpful as you seek to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Planner is a simplified cloud-based solution that allows users to create projects and then assign tasks within the project to team members. Planner is highly customizable and contains a moderate degree of detail surrounding task assignments, due dates, and priorities. Planner is well suited for smaller projects that involve a relatively small number of team members. However, it is an excellent “introduction” to project management.

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is Microsoft’s flagship project management solution. You can license Project as a Cloud-based solution starting at $10 per user per month or run it as an on-premise solution.  Among Project’s strengths are coauthoring documents, project planning, scheduling, and communication through Microsoft Teams.

Zoho Project

Zoho Project is a compelling, cloud-based project management solution that provides many features and utility. When creating a project with the Zoho solution, you can customize the project to meet detailed needs using features unavailable in many other solutions. For instance, you can incorporate budgets (including choice of currencies), billing methods, roll-up tasks and subtasks into projects and milestones, restrict unauthorized users from accessing project details, store and share project-related documents, and have project data flow-through to Zoho’s Invoice service for billing.

Asana

Asana is another “general” solution that can work well in accounting and other professional services environments. Among Asana’s features is the ability to create tasks and subtasks within a project and assign them to team members. Asana also supports attachments and forms, allowing managers to establish and monitor due dates. Additionally, you can create templates that you can use for multiple projects; for example, you could establish an “audit” template that contains standard tasks typically performed in an audit and copy that template as many times as necessary.

Tax-Related Project Management Solutions

Most leading income tax preparation solutions include at least a minimum level of project management capabilities. For instance, most solutions include a checklist of procedures that staff can mark as staff work on the returns.

CCH ProSystem fx Practice Management

Although named “Practice Management,” CCH ProSystem fx Practice Management includes some project management features. For example, you can track due dates, budgets, milestones, and other critical data using Practice Management to help you manage your projects more effectively.  Of course, this solution works best when an accounting firm implements it as part of its overall CCH-focused strategy.

Onvio Firm Management

For firms that use the Onvio (Thomson Reuters) platform, it is worth noting that the Firm Management solution contains several valuable project management features. For example, you can assign team members to a project and, in turn, assign tasks to these team members. After that, you can track due dates, monitor budgets, and generate reports to help ensure the project is completed on time and profitably.

The six solutions above represent only a tiny subset of all the project management solutions available today. We encourage you to carefully consider all the relevant options available before deciding which to implement.

Summary

Project management solutions have gained new life recently as more companies and firms seek to manage projects from the cradle to the grave. When organizations select appropriate solutions for the task, implement them appropriately, and train team members on how – and why – they should use them, the results can be outstanding.

This article was provided by K2 Enterprises, written by Thomas G. Stephens, Jr., CPA, CITP, CGMA, and republished with approval. 

Tommy is one of the shareholders of K2 Enterprises. At K2, Tommy focuses on creating and delivering content and is responsible for many Firm management and marketing functions. You may reach him at tommy@k2e.com, and you may learn more about K2 Enterprises online.