Why We Built Collaborative Scheduling

Written by Dave Mundy, Founder & CEO

Hundreds of conversations with firm leaders about resourcing, scheduling, and client readiness led us to build Collaborative Scheduling. Great team and client experiences rely on great planning, so we expanded our workflow to help leaders deliver a more consistent experience across all engagements.

Every firm can tell you when fieldwork is supposed to start because they invest a great deal of time and energy forecasting capacity and outlining a timeline of good intentions. But who communicates expectations with the client, and what do they actually say?
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Partners tell us their managers take care of this. And managers tell us their seniors have done it, but no one can prove that the right communication occurred for every engagement or that explicit confirmation was received: “Yes, I’ll be ready.” - the Client.
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This is a key part of the expectation gap we built Collaborative Scheduling to resolve.
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When it comes to resourcing and scheduling, the definition of done includes explicit confirmation that clients will be ready, a calendar invite to reserve fieldwork dates, and automated email updates that drive engagements forward.

Client files are the raw materials

Think about your engagements the way a manufacturing specialist would optimize a production line. Client files are the raw materials, and nothing can be started or produced until they arrive: not the audit procedures, not the tax return, not the deliverable the client is waiting on.
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Engagement fieldwork can’t begin effectively until client files arrive, so standardizing the communication and expectations that help ensure clients deliver on time maximizes your chances that they will.

Standardizing the ask relieves a lot of the work

The fix has less to do with juggling calendars than with ensuring the conversation happens consistently every time. That does three things.
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It sets a standard expectation. Every client receives the same reservation request, built around the three dates the firm has already planned: the fieldwork start date, the fieldwork end date, and the deliverable due date. The request also spells out what accepting the reservation means for the client. For example, by accepting this reservation, you agree to provide 80% of the information before fieldwork begins. We will do our best to review the information provided within the allotted time and aim to issue your deliverable by the due date.
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It creates accountability that runs in both directions. The client who accepts has agreed to something specific. The firm that sent it has also put its commitment in writing. A client who knows they won't be ready proposes an alternative start date with a required reason, and the firm either accepts it or proposes new dates with a reason of its own. Every one of those exchanges is logged in the engagement's audit trail.
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It produces one answer, regardless of who asks. Whether the reservation request is sent by the engagement manager or centrally by an operations specialist, the outcome remains the same. Everyone at the firm gets an explicit answer to the question of who has agreed to be ready and who hasn't.

Visibility empowers resource managers to be operation integrators

Resource managers have a difficult job. They are responsible for ensuring staff are fully utilized on the right client engagements, but don’t interact with clients or have visibility to see when clients provide information.
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To maximize the effectiveness of the resource management function, resource managers need answers to the questions they keep asking without the go-between. What did the client say about why those fieldwork dates won’t work? What alternative did they propose? How much information has the client provided compared to expectations, and is the engagement at risk of not starting on time?

Improve the firm’s client experience

The part most firms don’t expect is that AuditDashboard measures the quality of the firm’s client experience, and Collaborative Scheduling helps improve it.
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For example, “lead time” measures the amount of time a client is given before information is due by comparing the date the client is given access to the engagement and the first due date inside a request list. Collaborative Scheduling creates reliable bookends that ensure clients are automatically given sufficient time to provide the required information.
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Another metric we track is the date on which the client actually delivered 80% of the information. If fieldwork was planned to start on the first of the month, and 80% of the information is submitted on the fifteenth, the engagement started two weeks earlier than is most efficient and effective. That date is the most useful input you have for next year's schedule, and it's rarely available in a form you can sort.

Collaborative Scheduling doesn't replace your tools – it completes them

We didn’t build collaborative scheduling to replace existing resourcing and scheduling tools. We built collaborative scheduling to complete the process - to make it more reliable, more accurate, and more informed.
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Collaborative Scheduling is an optional add-on built to sit alongside the resourcing tool, the practice management system, or the spreadsheet you already use. It runs on the engagements already in AuditDashboard, so there's nothing to import and no schedule to recreate. Your schedule is already built.
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Everything we build on the Client Experience Platform comes back to the same idea. Clients belong in the loop, and the right information has to arrive at the right time, because every hour the firm works afterward depends on it. Fieldwork scheduling has always been a firm-side process, which is why the client-facing layer is the one nobody built. That layer is exactly what Collaborative Scheduling delivers.

‍→ See how Collaborative Scheduling works

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