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Administrative Staffing Levels

User Group - 11:15am May 20, 2002 PST (#1 of 12) I'd like to get some feedback from other agencies of like size with regard to adminstrative staffing levels. We are a full service agency, with primarily print production services for B-B and healthcare clients. We do not buy media. We have average annual billings of $3 million and a staff of 20. We manage all of our jobs on Clients and Profits classic. As the business manager, I oversee all administrative functions, office management and have a part-time accounting assistant (12 hours/week) who processes all job cost a/p and billing, while I manage all of the advanced accounting/posting/reporting. I'd like to know how other agencies like ours are staffed in this area. Currently, our receptionist does not get involved in the accounting area, but I would like to be able to have additional resources. Any feed back would be appreciated. While we're on the subject of staffing, if any of you have some insight into staffing for an interactive department, that would be helpful as well. We may begin outsourcing all of our interactive/web development.

Carolyn Lorence
Core Creative, Inc.

If your p/t person does job cost a/p, who does o/h a/p? Seems that would be an easy area to train a receptionist. Then doing cross training for job cost a/p would be a natural next step. A receptionist is a good person to monitor timecard entry too. Our company looked much like yours. When we were $3M billing I had a receptionist do all my a/p and I handled billing. Then when volume allowed (approx $5M), I turned over all billing, a/p, timecard entry, cash disbursements and bank reconciliation to a full time assistant.We wanted to be everything to all people once. We staffed up an interactive department and when the market died, that was the first area we made cuts. But I'll tell you what we learned (caveat "interactive" has many meanings, perhaps some of this advice is meaningful to you):

1) The manager of that department/division should come up from the technical ranks. We made the mistake of allowing a non-technical person (but extremely client savvy) manage that group. "Things" always took longer because we didn't have a technical manager solving strategic programming problems.

2) Plan budget money for equipment upgrades, software upgrades, licensing costs, additional server space for development etc. etc. You must stay on the cutting edge of technology, which costs you. So you must plan volume sales to support the intrinsic growth required to make it a successful business model.

3) Do a mini business plan for the service you are offering. We made the mistake of not knowing how to budget our interactive/database driven one-to-one product properly and then sell it as a template service.

Roxanne Cowan
Rutherford Bolen Group Integrated Marketing

I am also interested in what other agencies are doing in this area. I am also the Business Manager for a full integrated firm, we do about 2.5M, I over see all general administrative operations, accounting and finance, human resource and I work closing with our President in overseeing the information systems. I currently have a full-time administrative assistant and a part-time (15-20) hour accounting assistant. The Admin. Assistant is not involved in accounting except for helping me processing deposits, she also supports our P.R. department as well as serving all general admin needs in the office. We currently have 14 on staff and we are in the process of adding a new media department with 7 additional staff. We are currently using Classic also, however we pre-bill all of our media. Because we do this we have various spreadsheets that we use in Excel to manage what outside costs have been paid by a client and what ones have not. We also have to track projections and cash flow very close, so the majority of my time is spend analyzing numbers, billing and closing for the month. I can't remember the last time I only worked 40 hours M-F. I have some concerns with this new department that we are bringing into the agency and wondering if I will need more accounting help then just part-time. You made a comment that you are using C&P classic, however you have 20 employees, are all of them using C&P. I was had the understanding that if you need to upgrade to pro when you hit 15 license.

Theresa B. Clemons
Business Manager
Publicom Incorporated

t GBL, I (similar to your situation) am responsible for all HR, reporting and overall office management responsibilities. Another woman works as billing supervisor and handles all Production Billing. Another woman handles all Media Billing, and our media department sends over billing info. via a link into Clients and Profits so that the media info. does not require re-input for billing. Robin, who does our media billing, also handles all administrative assistant duties (& covers the phone when the receptionist is out). The key, in my opinion, in keeping your staffing needs to a minimum (especially staffers whose time is not billable) is to use Clients and Profits agency- wide. For example, everyone inputs their timesheets, purchase orders and estimates. We are also going to have our account managers open their own jobs. Our clerical needs have dramatically decreased over the past several years.

Anna Parisi
GBL

We are about 22 people with billings of around $7 million. I have a bookkeeper who looks after all the aspects related to client accounting including time sheets, A/P, job costing, and billing. She gets help from our receptionist in typing invoices, entering courier costs, etc. And it is working very well for us.

Johnson Paul
CML Canada

We also are a full service agency primarily with B-B clients. We do buy media; current staff is 19, all jobs are managed in C&P, and we have similar average annual billings as you. Currently, I handle all aspects of accounting (except the corporate taxes and actual payroll processing which are both done buy an outside accountant) and I also handle all of the HR and office management responsibilities as well as supervising our receptionist. Since February, I have had a friend come in 8 hours a week to input a/p invoices and some other miscellaneous tasks. We use the media link function of C&P for Strata and our receptionist is responsible for importing all orders each day; aside from that, she has no other permanent accounting responsibility but I am able to hand her miscellaneous projects on occasion. We also have a full time traffic/production manager who oversees every job from start to finish on the production side. We have decided to split my job in to two positions and are currently interviewing for the new HR/Office manager position (I'll be retaining all the accounting) and we will probably not have the 8 hour temporary employee once the new employee comes on board.

Sarah Jones
Accounting/Office Manager
Walz Tetrick Advertising

We are a $12 million agency with 14 employees and have no administrative staff. About 8 years ago, we decided that we would eliminate all admin staff and ask each staffer to handle his/her own administrative tasks. You would be amazed how well it was received and it works very well for us. We learned quickly that a lot of things that were falling through the cracks due to poor communication were eliminated. We have an automated attendant that quickly announces to press 0 for a live person and then goes on to give other directions to reach your party and we all share the responsibility of answering those all-calls. We all complete all our own admin tasks as well.

I serve as the financial officer and the office manager and handle all A/R, A/P, Collections, financial planning, systems management, as well as handling office needs. I am the only unbillable staffer we have.

I work with a great company in the area of HR and payroll and outsource these services to them. They are called Adams Keegan and are based in Memphis Tennessee and are very reasonably priced for the service you get. They handle all HR issues, generate payroll, and serve as liaison between the insurance companies, 401K administrator, and other outside services. It is very comforting to have that third party there to keep us in compliance with all laws. I highly recommend all small businesses pursue this type of relationship.

Lane Newsome - B U R R I S
www.burris.com

We are a $12 million agency with 14 employees and have no administrative staff. About 8 years ago, we decided that we would eliminate all admin staff and ask each staffer to handle his/her own administrative tasks. You would be amazed how well it was received and it works very well for us. We learned quickly that a lot of things that were falling through the cracks due to poor communication were eliminated. We have an automated attendant that quickly announces to press 0 for a live person and then goes on to give other directions to reach your party and we all share the responsibility of answering those all-calls. We all complete all our own admin tasks as well. I serve as the financial officer and the office manager and handle all A/R, A/P, Collections, financial planning, systems management, as well as handling office needs. I am the only unbillable staffer we have. I work with a great company in the area of HR and payroll and outsource these services to them. They are called Adams Keegan and are based in Memphis Tennessee and are very reasonably priced for the service you get. They handle all HR issues, generate payroll, and serve as liaison between the insurance companies, 401K administrator, and other outside services. It is very comforting to have that third party there to keep us in compliance with all laws. I highly recommend all small businesses pursue this type of relationship.

Lane Newsome
B U R R I S

Thanks for the information. With all due respect, however, you do have at least one administrative staffer - yourself. I'm curious to know the makeup of your accounts and billings, since you manage all data entry, A/P and A/R without any data entry assistance, and you have such high billings. Perhaps our jobs are set up differently? We also outsource our payroll/tax service to Paychex, so I don't have that additional responsibility - just a brief call semi-monthly and reporting and changes. And we have a SIMPLE IRA which our provider administers. I just need to make the journal entries With respect to PEO's, we also made an extensive review of a specific provider and found that they would cost our agency an additional $20,000 per year just to take incidental services off of my plate. I handle the occasional HR needs (orientation/training/COBRA), etc., business/professional/health insurance reviews which take nominal time on an annual basis, and didn't feel that paying an additional $20,000 to do those minor things was worth the money. We've been advised by other firms to hire a professional HR firm on a retainer basis to review legal issues, etc. but, we are too small to require any more than that at this point. So, I'm also curious to know what your annual cost is with Adams Keegan for the services they provide, if I may be so bold to ask.

I agree that in some agencies, an automated attendant can pay for itself in a year or so, given the equipment costs, but we need to have a face at the door and a live voice for our clients to speak with. That person just needs to be able to contribute significantly in other areas, typically accounting and data entry.

Carolyn Lorence
Core Creative

I am curious to how your office is set up. I am traffic manager/ accountant and handle all aspects of the accounting with the exception of payroll in our office. We have an outside firm process the payroll for us. We are very similar in size and volume to your firm. I am in the dark. Exactly what type of administrative functions do your staffers handle? My duties seem to be the same as yours with the exception of traffic and our creative staff does not handle administrative work. Over the years, I have found that creative staff are just that, creative, and they do not have the eye for detail or organization that administrative works takes. We are always open to change and suggestions so you can see why I am interested in your system. We also have an automated attendant for our phone system, but we try to answer all calls. We believe that a first contact or client needs to deal with a "real" person. Automated phone attendants are cold and impersonal and creates an attitude of "we don't have time to answer your call".

Sharon Walker
The Wallace Agency

We are a full service agency of similar size. We have 15 people on staff. I am the only non-billable person. My duties as office manager include all data entry, A/P, A/R, HR, Benefits, 401(k) coordination, 125 Plan coordination, etc. -- just to name a few! We do have a payroll service that runs our payroll and taxes each month. We have two other people that serve as account support. They are both billable and handle all of the opening/closing of jobs, estimates, traffic, etc. Tasks that we don't feel can be billed out at the higher rate of our account management staff. We find it to be more cost effective for our clients, and the fact that the salaries for the support staff are significantly less than that of the account management staff helps. It keeps the account management staff free to handle strategic client work, and not bog them down with the smaller details such as coordinating press mailings, logistics of press tours or tradeshows, etc. All of that is handled through our two support people. They also handle the front desk responsibilities. We have to have someone at the lobby of our building to greet clients/vendors. Everyone has the ability to access their desk computer from the front desk so you can still get a lot of your normal work done and not be "at your desk". Also, because each person has a direct dial phone line, a lot of the calls go directly to each individual, so the main number into the front desk is not horribly busy. I also agree with Sharon Walker in that our creative staff is just that, creative. Loading the dishwasher with their dirty coffee cups is about all I ask of them. Not because they couldn't do more, but because getting everyone to be consistent on how jobs are set up, pricing, estimates/hours, etc. would be all over the map if each individual did their own. By the way, do any of you have offices in other states? We are opening a San Francisco office next month and I'd love to know what changes took place in your C&P accounting functions to keep separate records from one office to another.

Jody Breiland
McClenahan Bruer Communications Inc.

We are a small company in San Francisco who recently purchased Clients & Profits and just lost the one person on our staff who was versed in the program. We are looking for an admin/booker who knows the program and can help to set it up and maintain it, both the project management and bookkeeping aspects of the program, as well as perform the basic functions of an admin person in general.

Lisa Gemmiti