If your bookkeeper took two weeks off tomorrow, what would stop? The answer is a map, and it's free.
Banks have a habit that most people outside banking find a little odd. Certain employees are expected to take a block of consecutive days off each year, and while they're gone, someone else does the job. Not "checks in from the beach." Does the job.
The official reason is fraud. A scheme that needs daily tending tends to come apart when the person tending it is away for two weeks. But in my experience the practice turned up far more innocent surprises than guilty ones. Someone covers for a colleague and finds a reconciliation that only balances because the regular person remembers to adjust one line by hand. A vendor who will only talk to one name. A password taped inside a desk drawer. I saw versions of this more than once at the bank, and almost none of them were dramatic. They were just things one person had been carrying alone.
This week on Instagram I'm sharing a line from the first Field Note: "Maria handles that" is not a control. It's a dependency. People sometimes hear that as a knock on Maria. I don't mean it as one. Maria is usually the most careful person in the building. The vacation test is simply the kindest way I know to find out how much of the company lives in her head.
Whatever stops when one person is out
is a single point of failure.
You can run the test without sending anyone anywhere. Sit down with your finance person, or whoever your Maria is (quite often it's the owner), and walk through an ordinary month. Payroll. Paying vendors. Depositing what comes in. Closing the books at the end. For each one, ask two questions. If she were unreachable for two weeks, would this still happen on time? And who else could log in and do it?
Write the answers down as you go. Most companies end up with a short list where the honest response is "it would wait" or "nobody." Don't be discouraged by that list. Nearly every business I've looked at has one. You've just drawn the map.
Then pick one item and fix it this month. The fix is usually small. A second person with access to the bank portal, and a reason to use it now and then so the login doesn't go stale. A one-page note on how the payroll run actually works. A call to the vendor who only talks to Maria, letting them know a second name is authorized. Write the note together, and have the backup do the task once while the regular person watches. A procedure nobody has ever followed tends to leave out the one step everybody does without thinking.
And when it's ready, let her take the vacation. A real one, phone off. The first time is a little nervous for everybody. The second time is ordinary. By the third, you have a back office that doesn't rely on one person's memory, and a bookkeeper who has finally been somewhere without checking email.
How do you know your business could run for two weeks without its finance person? If the honest answer is that you've never tried, that's where we'd begin.
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