How do you do month-end close with no authority over coworkers?
Carrying full accountability for month-end close while relying on uncooperative coworkers who treat requests as voluntary makes it impossible to do the job. When other departments ignore corrections and delay sending information, the accountant is left taking the blame for delays they have no power to fix.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1handing off overlapping tasks to other support positions
- 2begging coworkers or the boss for documentation from various systems
- 3bringing up the same issues repeatedly
- 4Trying to pitch initiatives and squeeze work into other delivery teams' roadmaps
- 5Constantly bursting delivery team bubbles and dancing around egos
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“So the ability to do parts of my job is basically dictated by someone else deciding when they feel like sending stuff to me.”source ↗
“Not to mention I have all the responsibility of month-end close. Since I'm the only accountant besides my boss. Yet I have no authority so others within my department seem to view requests / corrections / question etc from me as basically voluntary.”source ↗
“Is it even viable to perform in such role when you dont have delivery team or authority or even clear scope for that matter but carry so much accountability?”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2What happens when you go months without a manager?
- 3How to delegate tasks without micromanaging
- 4Is it normal to have no work to do at a new job?
- 9Why do coworkers always bypass their supervisors to come straight to me?
- 3How to advance a technical career without going into management
- 4Why do administrators reward misbehaving students?