A number of software products are available to help you with the process of writing and maintaining office policies and procedures. One set of products from CCH/KnowledgePoint (www.knowledgepoint.com) addresses employee job descriptions, policy manuals, people management and performance evaluations at a reasonable cost. Another product, from TemplateZone (www.templatezone.com) offers an office policy manual software package among other business software packages. Even Microsoft can help, offering literally dozens of free templates for policies and procedures on their main Office Web site (www.office.microsoft.com - click on templates).
If you look long and hard enough, you can find thousands of products and written guides to help you write policies and procedures. But, sooner or later, you are going to have to sit down and actually write them. So before beginning this, you may want to ask yourself how this relates to efficiency and profit. The answer lies in understanding how systems can make the flow of business and accomplishment of tasks easier, faster and more effective. By writing procedures, you get a first-hand look at how efficient (or inefficient) those existing procedures are. The exercise of writing the procedures can reveal ways to trim the process, refine your workflow systems and make things work better in your practice. Freeing up your time and that of your employee(s) can save you money. It can allow your practice to handle more clients, process more business, improve client relations and increase employee satisfaction merely by going through the development of written policies and procedures.
David Lawrence has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services profession. He is the current president of the Financial Planning Association of Tampa Bay. He owns David Lawrence and Associates based in Lutz, Fla., a financial practice consulting firm.