Table of contents

• Jo: The accountant
• 21: Products & services
• 22: Suppliers & vendors
• 23: Equipment & machines
• 24: Processes & procedures
• 25: Inventory & stock
• 31: Marketing, PR, & communications
• 32: Sales channels
• 33: Customers & clients
• 34: Orders & jobs
• 35: Shipping & fulfillment

Jo

The accountant

This story is based on my accountant, Jo. In 15 years I’ve been to her office twice.

Jo delivers an intangible service that I consume remotely. So she’s at the very bottom right of our quadrant chart.

This is how she might use categories 20-39.

21

Products & services

🟠 Lightly used

Jo’s service is doing my bookkeeping and quarterly/annual tax returns. This is something that she’s defined. And it’s presented to me as a service with an hourly rate.

She might have other services (e.g. company formation). This is where she would track them. But it won’t be as heavily used as Jeff’s 21.

Everyone knows what an accountant does. Once qualified, you can start being an accountant without defining a product. Conversely, Jeff can’t just sell a product without having first designed and manufactured it.

22

Suppliers & vendors

🟠 Lightly used

Jo would note suppliers of specialist accounting software and services here. But she mostly uses Xero and Excel so this isn’t going to be busy. And everything that keeps the office running is up in 10-19.

23

Equipment & machines

🔴 Not used

Jo’s tools are Windows PCs. These aren’t specialised and don’t need maintenance or instructions above what’s stored in 14 Technology.

24

Processes & procedures

🟠 Lightly used

Similar to Gary, Jo wouldn’t have much here. But we said previously that every business should document their processes. That’s why this isn’t marked as unused.

25

Inventory & stock

🔴 Not used

Jo doesn’t produce anything tangible. So she doesn’t need to track stock levels.

31

Marketing, PR, & communications

🟢 Heavily used

I think Jo has a pretty stable customer base. But most businesses do some sort of marketing. She sends me a quarterly newsletter. That’s customer communications, so it lives here.

32

Sales channels

🟠 Lightly used

Every business needs a way to sell their thing. Jo uses an online system that sends me a quote at the start of the tax year. I pay her a monthly fee.

That system is a channel. It’s how I give her my custom. But she probably set it up years ago and doesn’t give it much thought.

33

Customers & clients

🟢🟢 Overloaded!

I imagine Jo has a large (electronic) file with all my details. Previous returns. Billing history. Secret notes about what a bad customer I am.

In fact, this is probably where she does most of her work. If she’s not working on a customer’s file, what is she doing?

So I imagine this category would be overloaded. And she’d need to design some sort of expanded category scheme to accommodate.

34

Orders & jobs

🟠 Lightly used

Most of Jo’s incoming orders are probably pre-configured monthly amounts. Sure, she’ll reconcile them against something. But I doubt she spends much time thinking about who has ‘ordered’ some new service.

35

Shipping & fulfillment

🔴 Not used

Similarly, she isn’t tracking the ‘fulfillment’ of my quarterly tax returns. That’s just part of the job.

Note: she does occasionally send me stuff. But that’s handled at 12.26 Keep us posted.

Next

A programmer produces an intangible thing.