Thread by @joshuamschultz

Checklists are a crucial part to remembering everything you need to do.

Systematize your business
Document those systems
Use checklists to ensure its done the right way, every time.

Creating checklists is one of the first things I usually do.

It gives me abase to iterate on.

So here is a checklist for monthly accounting.

Last week I shared how I automated a few of the bills we have.

https://twitter.com/joshuamschultz/status/1353400634440093696?s=20

Some of them require small tweaks each month based on amortization.

So to prevent forgetting, I created a checklist to include them in.

When I create a checklist, I always consider it a type of delegation document.

What needs to be here so that I can give this to someone inside or outside the company, and they can do it for me!

I may not be ready for this yet, but write it now so that when I am, its much easier

For this checklist, I am using @processstreet and @SlackHQ

They have checklists that
- can have notes and documents embedded
- be scheduled
- integrate with many other tools
- a host of other useful features.

Step 1: create the basic checklist

I added the monthly accounting tasks that I need to do. I'm sure I'll be adding more over time, but for now this should get me started.

Step 2: add details on how to carry each step out

I use delegation-type structures here.

1. What do you need to do
2. What tools do you need
3. What does it look like completed
4. Explanations

@processstreet is a great tool since they give you a great editor for different steps including
1. subtasks
2. photos
3. text boxes, etc

You can also set different assignees and due dates for various tasks, which I use a lot.

Step 3: Set your Settings and polish your instructions

Once you have everything explained, go through make sure someone who doesn't work for you, could follow it fairly easily.

This will do wonders when you want to delegate later! (or you hire later)

Step 4: Schedule Your checklist

In @processstreet you get some fairly robust scheduling features.

My first monthly task is setting the correct principle and amort amounts in my automated payment, before its auto paid on the 16th.

So I start my checklist on the 10th.

I then have each step trigger with different due dates (payroll on the 20th, reconcile on 5 of the following month, etc).

This allows a continual check of what needs to be done, without constantly showing "things due" and having that "backlog headache"

Step 5: Plug into the pull communication system

I have developed a communication system that I believe works best, is non-instrusive, and promotes scalability.

For this, we will need
1. a trigger to hit our "hub", in this case @SlackHQ
2. an audit log for monitoring

Step 6: Activate Reminder

I setup a bot to hit the slack once its time to start a new checklist.

It includes a link to make navigating there effortless.

I did this using @zapier and connecting @processstreet and @SlackHQ

Be sure to separate notification channels from communication channels.

Notification channels
* alert you of something
* serve as an audit log to monitor the past

We also set up alerts for completed steps.

In our first step, we automated some bills.

This week we created a checklist to cover some of the manual requirements of those bills, as well as to serve as a core document to catch other monthly needs that may arise, and will soon be outsourced.