Are you the bottleneck in your business?

So many times when I first talk to bookkeepers it is clear that they are the bottleneck in their business. 

If work piles up around you because you don't have the capacity to get everything done in the time that you've got, then perhaps this resonates with you. Are you the bottleneck in your business?

Just so we're clear what I'm referring to, a bottleneck is a point of congestion in a process. Just like an actual bottle where the flow of liquid is restricted by how quickly it can pass through the neck of the bottle, process bottlenecks can also restrict the flow of work in a bookkeeping business, and thus hold up the completion and timeliness of a job.

In the early days of my bookkeeping business, I was often the bottleneck. My team had their own workload handled, but as the owner of the business, and on top of the client work that I was responsible for, I was also the salesperson, the marketing person, the accounts person, the IT person... you get my drift.  

What it boiled down to was me having unrealistic expectations about how much work was landing on my shoulders, and ultimately, not having enough resource in the form of others to take the load off.  

"Others" turned out to be more bookkeepers, but it also turned out to be outsourcing some of the work that I realised was not the best use of my time, such as some marketing and IT activities, to people who were experts in that field.

Have a look at your processes and your workload. Where are your bottlenecks? What needs to happen for those bottlenecks to clear so that work can get completed promptly and you can free up your time? Is it more people? Better systems? 

There are really only 3 ways to free up your time, as I write about here. What needs to happen in your business?

If bringing on a team is in your future, there are practical steps that you can take now. If you're stretched too thin and finding that you are the bottleneck, then you need to get in touch.