Essay Example on The monthly invoicing workload of each Accountant

Invoicing and reporting data were collected and analysis was conducted to provide management with an overview of the typical amount of time it takes to complete one invoice beginning when it is picked out of an accountant s monthly stack until it is signed and submitted to the sponsor excluding mail delivery times Invoices due for a month are provided to the accountant during the first week of the month with the expectation that all invoices will be completed and submitted to the sponsor no later than the fifth day of the following month The monthly invoicing workload of each accountant varies as quarter and year end months are peak invoicing times Accountants do not have a mandated number of items to complete on a daily or other basis as long as all invoices are complete by the previously stated deadline however the suggested timeline given by management includes a minimum of ten invoices per day until completion A data sample of twenty three invoices completed over a two day period was collected for analysis in order to assist management with visualizing the length of time to complete an invoice for consideration when reviewing expectations Invoices with interruptions exceeding two minutes were excluded from the dataset as they had to be restarted from the beginning for best accuracy Data Analysis The dataset has been included at the end of the report and below is the summary report including a histogram and basic statistical calculations First analysis covers the location data George Rowlands Price Maxey 2005 As seen by the above histogram there is a rightward skew which happens when the mean is greater than the median Paret 1970 

This means at least one of the data points is outside of the general distribution The histogram shows the mean is less reliable than the median because it is including the invoices that took longer to complete due to abnormal circumstances The majority of the data in the histogram is clustered between five and ten minutes to completion with a very small grouping above ten Based upon the data the mean or average time that it took to complete one invoice was 7 49 minutes If an accountant completed the suggested ten invoices per day they would have invoiced approximately 1 25 hours of their day This may not be a fair representation however because of the outlier data that impacts the average George Rowlands Price Maxey 2005 There were two minor outliers for the dataset the invoices that took 10 66 and 11 99 minutes One of these outliers was the result of an outside interruption during the invoicing process and the other was due to the complex nature of the invoice Because the outliers were minor their influence on the mean was minimal but as George Rowlands Price and Maxey 2005 point out the median is occasionally helpful because it is not affected as much by outliers George Rowlands Price Maxey 2005 The median of 7 30 minutes excludes the outliers from calculation and thereby gives a more accurate picture of the general central length of time it took to complete one invoice Going by this time an accountant would invoice closer to 1 22 hours of their day instead of 1 25 if they completed ten per day 

The next method of data analysis deals with dispersion which Trochim 2006 defined as the spread of values around the central tendency Trochim 2006 Two methods of measuring dispersion are the range and the standard deviation Trochim 2006 In this case the range in times of completing the invoices was 7 49 minutes which is the difference between the highest data point of 11 99 minutes and the lowest at 4 50 minutes Similar to the mean with regards to central location the range does not do a very good job of showing the true dispersion of the invoicing data because of the outlier invoice times The standard deviation for the invoices is 1 88 minute and more accurately depicts the relationship between all of the invoicing times with regards to the mean of 7 49 minutes because it minimizes the outlier effect Trochim 2006 Summary According to the analysis an accountant would complete most invoices at a time around 7 30 minutes each if reducing the influence of outlier data and basing the time on the median At the currently suggested rate of ten invoices per day the accountant would spend approximately 1 22 hours per workday on just the invoicing part of their position There are obvious outliers that can affect the timing of invoice completion and skew the data These outliers likely come in the form of interruptions and the overall complexity of the invoice To gain more accurate insight into invoice times sample data would need to be collected from all of the accountants as workload skill and invoice complexity vary but this is a start to determining if management may want to consider a more set standard moving forward