Should an accounting department have an incident tracking system?

This from the LinkedIn Group "The Strategic CFO" "IT departments have help ticket systems, and legal departments have case management systems.In order to have visibility of and tracking for issues through to resolution Is there a better way than managing this through outlook e-mails and the inbox? Does anyone know of any software like this that is suitable for departments of sizes bigger than two to three people" Posted by Stephen Nunes Chief Financial Officer at Abrasive Products and Equipment

Answers

Regis Quirin Director of Finance • August 12, 2013

I installed a Help Desk like system, within an Accounting Department, but not to track issues. The purpose was to better manage requests. Clients complained that the Accounting group was unresponsive; they had no idea where to send different requests; and when employees were out, questions were not being answered. The solution - send all requests to a central mailbox that would be managed by the Accounting Manager. Requests were delegated to Accounting staff, based on their availability. The purpose was not to track issues, but the data could also satisfy that purpose.

Paul Benedetto CFO, Director of Finance, Consultant • August 12, 2013

I agree with using such an approach, especially if you have a larger finance team and you treat your finance operation as a service bureau, to external, as well as "internal" customers (e.g. other department managers staff). In one company, as part of a broader company effort to seek out root causes and ISO 9001 compliance, we used the task function within NetSuite to log and follow up on errors, missed deadlines, including finance.

More recently I have been exploring the use of CRM systems to capture and follow up on such items. I good, cost effective solution is insightly.com (free for 3 users, $29/month for up to 6 users I believe). CRM is their main focus, but you can certain configure towards a help desk function, then utilize reporting features to manage the process and team response.

Trello.com is another one, but more like a to do list. Still you can assign tasks to other team members and keep tabs on your issues.

It could be worth testing the waters with one of these solutions, ahead of seeking out a full blown help desk solution.

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Should an accounting department have an incident tracking system?

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