How to set Goals for your Bookkeeping Practice in Asana
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Here’s one step in owning your own practice that you don’t want to skip: setting goals. Hopefully, you’ll already know the why behind your practice (if not, that’s a conversation for another day), but now it’s time to take it a step further and decide where you want your practice to go by setting FREAKING goals!
You know the drill - you set goals, you work towards them, yada yada yada. Here’s the difference: we’re going to narrow yours down to the goals that really matter when scaling your bookkeeping practice AND how to add them to your Asana!
Setting FREAKING Goals for Your Practice
That’s right, I said it again, we’re going to be setting FREAKING goals for your bookkeeping practice! The key to setting successful goals is creating a goal that encourages growth within your bookkeeping practice and that can be broken down into manageable pieces. You’re going to do this for both your short-term and long-term goals.
Setting Your Short-Term Goals
When I say short-term, I mean year-long goals. Goals that you can break down between business quarters and months to help you achieve them. The best goals to form for short term are:
Income goals, ex. How much you want to earn this year
Services, ex. What new services will you offer this year
Changes, ex. What you plan to do differently in your practice this year
After setting your goals, adjust how you’re going to achieve them. For example, when setting an income goal, you may want to say you’ll aim to earn more in the beginning of the year, during tax time, than you would at the end of the year.
Note: Make sure you actually write out (or type up) your goals as we will be transferring them to Asana later.
Setting Your Long-Term Goals
After writing out your short-term goals, you’ll want to set and write out your long-term goals, or five-year goals. This will be similar to the goal ‘topics’ from your short-term goals like your goal income, services you want to offer, and changes to/in your practice.
The difference is you’ll be thinking long-term and breaking it down into years rather than months. Each year you’ll want to aim higher and reach further than the last, so if you’re wanting to earn 120k your first year, you’ll want to aim for another 10k the following year for a total of 130k in year 2. After setting your yearly goals, add them together for your five-year goal!
Do the same for your services and changes to your practice! Psst… This is where you think of your ‘bigger picture’ aka the NEW stuff that is going to make a tremendous impact on your practice!
Adding Your Goals into Your Asana
Since you’ve created your goals and have them written down for us to use and transfer to Asana, let’s get into the technical stuff - First, let’s create a brand new project in Asana just for your goals!
Now, as you become more familiar with Asana, you’ll be able to determine how to keep track of your goals in a way that’s easiest for you. For now, here’s how I recommend setting up your goals:
Create seven ‘New Tasks’ within your project, label them:
QUARTER 1 INCOME GOALS
QUARTER 2 INCOME GOALS
QUARTER 3 INCOME GOALS
QUARTER 4 INCOME GOALS
UPCOMING IN *THE YEAR*
CHANGES FOR *THE YEAR*
Start with ‘QUARTER 1 INCOME GOALS’ and add your Q1 goal at the end of the task title.
In your Q1 goal, add subtasks for each month such as ‘JANUARY $XX’ but with your January goal from earlier. Repeat for each month.
Add a due date on each subtask for the end of each month, then add a due date for the main task (Q1 INCOME GOALS) for the end of the quarter. Repeat for each quarterly income goals task.
Next, go into your ‘UPCOMING’ task. In the task description, type out what your service or practice goals are from earlier. Then add four subtasks titled:
QUARTER 1
QUARTER 2
QUARTER 3
QUARTER 4
Add a due date for each subtask for the end of each respective quarter, then add a due date for the main task for the end of the year.
Next, go into your ‘CHANGES’ task. In the task description, type out what changes you want to make in your practice from your goals earlier. Then add the same four subtasks from Step #5 and set due dates as instructed in Step #6.
Once you’re finished setting up your goals, I’ll tell you why we do it! This is how you hold yourself accountable for achieving your goals throughout the year and recording the steps you took (or didn’t take) to achieve those goals.
For instance, when the due dates for your monthly and quarterly goals come around, use those tasks and subtasks to record what you’ve accomplished so far. Record if you hit/miss your income goal and why, or write out what you did this quarter to launch your new service!
TIP: Take it a step further and record ‘actionable steps’ as subtasks in your quarterly tasks to help you achieve your goals!
Why You Need to Keep Track of Your Goals in Asana
Asana is, of course, my go-to for managing my practice because of how easy it is to use and it can manage so many aspects of running your bookkeeping business! One of these is keeping track of your goals!
Think about it. How do you expect to achieve your goals if you don’t plan on keeping track of them? That’s why I put so much emphasis on recording how you did each month or quarter, you’ll do your best when you're present in your goals - your practice will too!
Inside our signature program, Kickoff with Asana for Bookkeepers & Accountants, we provide a done-for-you template that can track and manage your goals, so make sure to sign up to join us!
