Three productivity tips for accountants

There are countless podcasts, articles and blogs about productivity. I’m a listener/reader of some and I don’t think I have ever come across one specifically made or written with accountants in mind.

Allow me to step into that gap with (my first) three productivity tips for accountants.

Use keyboard shortcuts

Navigating documents and spreadsheets is quicker using the arrow keys than using a mouse or trackpad. There are shortcuts for most of the popular actions such as copy (Cmd/Ctrl + C), paste (Cmd/Ctrl + V), save (Cmd/Ctrl + S), and open (Cmd/Ctrl + O). In Word the shift key combined with arrow keys highlights text faster than you can drag a mouse.

You can see the shortcuts next to the items in the menus in apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You could also do a web search for lists of shortcuts

Don’t try to learn every shortcut in one go. Learn one or two and when they become second nature learn another couple.

Use text expansion

There are some phrases, sentences and paragraphs you use over and again. This could be contact info like your email address or a standard reply to email requests or standard disclaimer text for a report. Whenever you notice you are writing something you have written before, or find yourself looking for an existing document to copy the text for re-use, there is a candidate for text expansion.

Text expansion is a service where you link a short trigger phrase to a longer piece of text so that when you type the trigger phrase it is replaced by the text. For example, when I type ‘socf’ it is replaced by ‘statement of cash flows’ and ‘xbs’ is replaced by balance sheet. I also use text expansion for auto-correction of words. For example, when I type ‘cipfa’ it will automatically be capitalised to CIPFA.

There are many text expansion apps available and which suits you depends in part on the devices you have and how much you are willing to pay to save time. TextExpander is the one I use. (If you use Apple devices you can do text expansion for free because it is built into the operating systems. Go to the Keyboard section of settings to set it up.)

Use your voice

I am sure you can speak faster than you can type. Smartphones are getting better and better at voice to text translate. Now, we can all dictate our writing without having a personal assistant and the artificial intelligence means the translation improves the more you use it.

I suggest next time you have a document or long email to write that is a few paragraphs long try dictating the first draft on your phone. I think you could save a stack of time and effort. The more you use dictation the

Let me know your productivity tips and perhaps I could include them in a future post.