Planning14 October 20266 min read
Lead time is the number of days between a file getting under way and the file being completed. Monitoring it is not about working out an average afterwards, but about agreeing a maximum per activity — three months for annual accounts, for instance — and seeing which files are past that maximum while they are still open.
It is November and the partners are meeting. "The annual accounts are taking long this year," someone says, and everyone nods. Nobody knows whether it is three files or thirty, or whether they are stuck with the client, at review or nowhere in particular. The feeling is often right. But a feeling is not a list.
Lead time is not working time. Annual accounts that took six hours of work can stay open for nine weeks: two weeks waiting for documents, one week of work, three weeks on the pile for review, three more weeks with the client for approval. The hours in time tracking say what the file cost; the lead time says how long the client waited for the result.
Two choices determine the number:
Follow a few long files and the pattern is usually the same: most of the lead time is waiting, not work. Three waiting points come back in almost every firm.
Waiting for the client. The records are incomplete, a bank statement or a valuation report is missing. The file is open, but nothing can be done with it.
Waiting for review. The work is done, the reviewing accountant or the colleague who checks it has not picked it up yet. This is where the pile grows fastest in the autumn, because one person reviews for several preparers.
Waiting for approval. The draft is with the client. It is external, but it counts: the annual accounts are only done once they are adopted.
A status per step makes that difference visible. A file that has been on "awaiting client approval" for six weeks calls for a phone call from the account manager, not for an extra preparer.
Monitoring lead time starts with agreeing what is normal. That differs per activity: for a VAT return two weeks is long, for annual accounts three months can be reasonable. The point is not that the maximum is strict, but that it exists — without a limit there is no moment at which a file stands out.
A good first value is whatever the firm already feels is "too long". After one season there is enough history to adjust it.
In Offsoo the dashboard has a block for this, Lead time monitoring. A maximum lead time can be set per activity, in days, weeks or months. The block then lists every file that:
Each row shows the client, the activity, the number of days and the current status, with the oldest file at the top. A click opens it in the planning, where the timeline shows who set which status and when. A file without a status is not listed: it has not started yet, and what has not started yet is what the planning itself shows.
The block is added to the dashboard through Change dashboard, where it is listed as Planning: lead time monitoring. Every employee sets the maximums themselves: an office manager who follows all annual accounts and a preparer who mostly keeps an eye on VAT each choose their own activities. The list itself shows the files of the whole firm, not only those of the employee looking at it.
The list on the dashboard is meant for stepping in. Looking back — how long annual accounts took on average last year, and whether that differs per preparer or per month — takes a different question.
That question can be put to an AI assistant through the MCP connection. The assistant works out the lead time of completed files: average, shortest and longest, per activity, per preparer or per period. The starting point can be chosen. "From records received to completed" takes out the weeks spent waiting for the client, and shows how long the firm itself takes over a file.
The connection only reads and follows the permissions in Offsoo: whoever has no access to colleagues' planning only gets their own figures from the assistant as well.
An average lead time per preparer is tempting to line up side by side, and misleading without context. Whoever handles the complex holding structures will naturally have longer lead times than whoever handles the sole traders. The number says where files stall, not who is slow.
The most useful questions are therefore about the step, not the person: which status lasts longest, and is that down to the client, to review or to the planning? It is often the last one when year-end work piles up in a few months — a pattern worked out further in spreading annual accounts across the year.
Lead time counts calendar days, not working days; a Christmas week counts. Offsoo sends no reminders to clients and does not pass a file on to a colleague. And the number is only as good as the statuses behind it: a team that only sets a file to completed weeks after it went out the door is measuring something other than it thinks.
At the first status a file gets, not at the month it is planned in. Annual accounts planned in March but only picked up in May have no lead time yet in April.
No, in calendar days. Public holidays and leave count.
Yes. The settings of the lead time monitoring block apply per employee, so everyone follows the activities that matter to them.
No. The block shows the files of every client that are past their maximum, whoever the preparer is. Each row shows the status, and a click opens the file with its timeline.
Not on the dashboard; that shows the open files past their maximum. The average across completed files can be requested through an AI assistant with the MCP connection.
Start a free 14-day trial or book a demo.
Start today in a pre-filled trial environment, or plan a demo with the team.
