Create Great Templates

Templates are easy to set up, and we create them all the time to make routine analysis or activities easier and faster.  But what makes a good template?  In my opinion, the TurboxTax software is a perfect illustration of the power of a great template.  IRS forms, when I download them electronically from the IRS website, are just awful.  I have to make a bunch of choices based on instructions that I’m not sure if I really understand, and then go through line after line of addition, subtraction, and multiplication.  My numbers have to be double- and triple- checked by hand to verify accuracy. 

Then there is TurboTax.  It lets me do the same thing—file my taxes—in a way that is easy, fast, and accurate by doing these things differently than the IRS:

• Good Instructions – TurboTax rewords confusing IRS language into plain English that is easy to understand.  Then it guides you step-by-step through each decision so you don’t get lost.  From experience, TurboTax also knows the areas where people are most likely to make a mistake, and tells you so when you’re about to get into risky areas.
• Only Allow Inputs – It is easy to make calculation mistakes, so TurboTax won’t let you do any.  Instead, it asks for inputs, and cranks through all the calculation behind the scenes.
• Checks and Controls — TurboTax has built-in reasonable checks to throw up red flags if something does not look quite right.

Your templates will be an instant hit if it is easy to use and hard to screw up.  So here are a few ideas to designing great templates:

• Provide detailed and helpful instructions.  Use normal everyday words.
• Try as much as possible to lock down calculations so the user population cannot access them.
• Build in one or two checks to detect obvious errors (a variance analysis, comparison to the average, batch total match, etc.).

Good candidates for templates include account reconciliations, journal entries, time and expense reporting, and other regularly occurring work.  Absent the ability to automate, the next best thing is to manage them through great templates.

The Back Office Mechanics Blog by Nancy Wu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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