01
Accounts payable
Invoices, vendors, the lag
Invoices in. Vendor questions. The three-day lag that becomes a week. Someone’s “I’ll get to it Monday.” The pile is the job. Put it down.
The seats
Loads you can put down.
You know them by the weight they leave on one person — in a lending shop, a professional-services firm, an operator-led company that still runs on a spreadsheet. Not a catalog. The work that made you post.
02
Accounts receivable
Cash that should already be in
Collections dressed as courtesy. Follow-ups you postpone because the relationship is the business. Cash that should already be in. The seat is not a personality. It is a sequence.
03
Billing
Work waiting to become an invoice
Work you already did, waiting to become an invoice. Rate cards, exceptions, the Friday scramble. It should leave your hands the same day the work does.
04
Payroll
Cannot be late. Should not be interesting
It cannot be late. It cannot be interesting. It should not live in one person’s head, or in a file named final_final. The calendar is the standard. Meet it.
05
Bookkeeping
Close as a season, not a date
The spreadsheet that became the books. Close is a season, not a date. You want it boring — reconciling, filing, ready when someone asks. Boring is a high standard.
06
Executive support
The inbox that is the company
The inbox that is really the company. Scheduling, chasing, the quiet triage that makes a firm look like a firm. Volume in the middle. Judgment at the edges. The volume can move.
07
Recruiting coordination
The work of hiring
Scheduling, tracking, the courtesy emails. You posted a role and then inherited the work of hiring. That seat, too, can be put down. You keep the decisions.
08
Data entry
Accurate. Finished. Out of the way
The work nobody builds a career on and everybody depends on. Accurate. Finished. Out of the way. Not a person to manage. A pile that should already be gone.
If the seat is on a posting this week, that is enough.