DELEGATE, DELEGATE, DELEGATE

Do not get bogged down with menial everyday tasks. That is why there is a staff. Everyday stuff should be left to others in the office. The controller’s job is to manage time, teach, provide assistance, verify and analyze what your people are doing. As Pat Pritchard from Pritchard Concepts said in DUH! “He never had anything on his desk. It was all delegated to his staff.”

In my learning years signing deal paperwork, checks, payroll checks, state documents, etc. came with the territory. About halfway through my career in the perfecting years, signatory authority was delegated to the biller (Title Clerk), office manager, sales manager and F&I manager.

Delegating tasks to others frees up time to train staff, develop systems, procedures and meaningful reports such as KISSIT. Analyzing new ways of doing business, training staff, getting involved with other departments and providing tools for management are all by-products of delegating.

Why controllers insist on booking finance reserve payments or reconciling the holdback statement or posting general journal entries should give one pause. That is grunt work and should be a staff function. A classic example of delegating would be purifying schedules. Needless to say all schedules should be reviewed at least once a week. Totality of the job dictates that the person, who is responsible for inputting data that affects a schedule, purifies the schedule.

NOT THE CONTROLLER

The number one reason for dirty schedules is because the controller doesn’t delegate and tries to do it all. Some schedules should have a “two time weekly look.” Two time look schedules would be vehicle receivables, contracts, receivables, vehicle inventories, etc.

The controller should review each schedule and circle in red anything that looks out of line. The schedules then are given to the employee responsible for their schedules with instructions that the schedules must be purified by a certain time, i.e. 1:00PM.

And always set a timeline. If schedules need to be purified by Thursday before noon, tell the employee the job must be done no later than Wednesday at 3:00PM. Give yourself some wiggle room. Always zero in on the credits first. As the credits clear up there will usually be offsetting debits; kills two birds with one stone.

Never wait until the end of the month to clean schedules and never clean schedules yourself. If the person responsible is not purifying the schedules, they will not learn from their mistakes. Don’t get caught up in the simple stupid things that can bog you down. Let the employee clean up their own mess.

Your job is to delegate and verify.