Experience with Roles and Goals:

I am now in my 46th year of running a financial planning business and consulting with large numbers of successful business owners/managers. When working with all types of for-profit and non-profit businesses, I see that the successful organizations set God-honoring goals and encourage accountability through clear roles, goals, controls, workflows, and cash flows. In particular, the board and/or key managers often use web-based task management to confirm that people are working within their roles and achieving their goals according to clear workflows. See, e.g., www.RolesGoals.info. Effective boards and managers also have web-based accounting dashboards to confirm that revenues and expenses are consistent with budgetary goals and cash flow projections.

Audits of Roles and Goals:

1. Confirm that there are clear roles and goals for the Chief Compliance Officer.
2. Confirm that there are clear workflows* and controls so that the CCO can make sure that all documents are properly named, organized, and accessible.
3. Confirm that there are complete cash flow statements* so that auditor can confirm that all is done well
4. Confirm that the compliance consultant is doing the compliance projects.

Web-based Project Management for Tracking Fulfillment of Roles and Goals:

Voorhees Family Office Services, Inc. ("VFOS) has customized a web-based project management system to create a "virtual taskmaster." Our vTasker program is used to track all actions that need to be completed on every client engagement. This system was developed by Voorhees Family Office Services, Inc. (www.vfos.com) in the late 1990s and early 2000s to end the "blame game" that so often disrupts planning when advisers are not clear about next actions assigned to each team member. Now advisers on a team can "virtually look over the shoulder" of one another to confirm that next actions are all completed in a timely manner. Weak or broken links in the next action timeline can be spotted and addressed quickly.

The vTasker program has been programmed in Microsoft SharePoint with a SQL server backend. All staff members of VFOS and its affiliated firms (at www.vfos.com/6firms and www.vfos.com/RubikRotate) have appropriate access to cloud-based access to next actions and client documents. Great care is taken to preserve the attorney client privilege and preserve the highest level of web-based security.

Within the vTasker system, staff members can set up individual websites for certain clients who can access their personal information in a "Vault." The vault contains important documents and other relevant information specific to their case. Clients appreciate how all important documents are kept in one place. See http://vfos.com/Box.

Permissions can be assigned for 4 levels of access to data. At level 1, advisers know about upcoming meetings. Advisers given level 2 access, are authorized to upload client documents. At level 3, advisers can see all next actions on the web or in Excel files. Only people authorized to see attorney-client documents have level 4 access. More information about these reports is available at www.vfos.com/RolesGoals

The vTasker program lets advisers enter all actions necessary to complete the work for which the client has retained VFOS or an affiliated firm. We have developed specific templates with next actions for each of the 76+ transactions handled most frequently. (These transactions are summarized in the book at www.BestToolsManual.info.) The templates can be exported as Excel spreadsheets. The vTasker system allows the adviser to import the Excel next action templates directly into the program. The templates are then modified in Vtasker to suit each specific case and updated based on additional work assigned.

The Vtasker fields include primarily the following: Client Name, Type of Case, Who assigned to, Description of Task, Start Date, Due Date and Status. The three main Status fields are Not Started, In Progress and Completed. A Case Manager is also assigned for each client matter in a specific field. All vTasker next actions are exported several times a week into Excel and sent to each staff member. Each staff member must update his/her next actions and forward the updates in the Excel spreadsheet to our Operations Director who then updates Vtasker and makes sure that actions are being completed correctly and timely. Keeping the program up-to-date and tracking all client matters takes a substantial amount of time, but is essential to the fulfillment of our responsibilities to our clients and our internal work processing.

The Microsoft SharePoint templates permit the program to be designed for numerous additional purposes that best suit your practice. Additional useful fields are also included to track revenues and possible new engagements. For more information about vTasker.com, please contact Tim Voorhees.