The Progress Notes are being submitted by the Office Manager and the participating Board members so that the fellowship is apprised of the Staff and Board's ongoing effort to effectively and efficiently discharge their duty to serve the fellowship by carrying the message to the adult child that suffers.
Progress Notes
Weekly Office Meeting
May 30, 2013
Opened with Serenity Prayer at 3pm EST
OLD BUSINESS
Donate the Van. Wheels for Wishes identified. Need OK from Board to donate it to them.
Tri-fold assortment - having them pre-sorted: Staff contacting Ship print for quote. But Staples now says it will do this without charge due to our customer loyalty. Office Manger will send quantity breakdowns to Chair and Treasurer; cost could be as low as 7 cents/copy if we order enough.
UPS Shipping and GoDaddy - Module still not online with GoDaddy. Staff is handling shipping adjustments manually for certain cases. We can't post anything to clue in the customer about possible lower rates because all rates depend on the destination's shipping zone. Chair went online to see UPS account, could not see shipments and was ultimately connected with Acct Rep who is going to send an aging report.
Extra UPS Account - The UPS Mail Innovations new account being setup through Accountant. Treasurer or Accountant will update Office Manger when finished.
Reorder of BRBs - Received estimates from Bang; they need a decision about shipment size by tomorrow, May 31st. Background: in February we ordered 6,000 and left about 1,400 at Bang, so the new order, when shipped, will include those 1,400. Office Manger to provide warehousing space savings estimate and Treasurer to ask Board for their opinion based on rewarehousing estimates
Seeding project letters to UK and Australian Intergroups - Staff started project, but based on Chair's contact with these groups, that they don't wish to participate in this cycle, they will not participate in this print cycle and there is no need to store any books at Bang for the Seeding Project.
Rewarehousing: See "New order of books" above.
Decreasing Work Hours - Office Manger says Warehouse staff have found ways to be more efficient and they are working at bare bones, trying to stay at minimal staffing levels and getting orders out in 3-4 days, except for express shipping requests. This week, the end of month pushes the shipment speed to make sure inventory is properly accounted for at month's end.
Discussion about amount of time spent prepping orders vs. actually filling them and Treasurer said time logs indicate 4 times more time spent prepping and doing warehouse maintenance than filling orders. Office Manger believes this statement is misleading. Office Manger explains: "The 'Prep Time' that they split out on their daily logs - which then get entered into notes in the daily GetMyTime entries- is actually a subset of the "Order Filling" time- "prep" is not a separate set of tasks exclusive of Order Fulfillment.
In other words- as a part of the flow in "Filling Orders" there are multiple components which are part of the process to pull, pack & fill an order- & we've broken these various components out into separate areas for tracking ... yet the tasks are not separate unto themselves- they are part of the whole.
Tracking Spreadsheet attached- for a visual; Office Manger referred to this on our call last week, to forward. The warehouse folks use these through their workday; in recent months, they've used this info to then transfer log entries to time reports.
However, you'll see time for Warehouse maintenance or cleaning listed completely separately from the Order Prep/Fulfillment subsets."
Office Manger feels this is standard, but also pointed out that we have to compare packages shipped, not just orders because there is so much variance in size of orders. The information UPS is sending (see UPS Shipping above) will give us a better picture. Per Office Manger, when Staff leaves (see below,) she doesn't think we can decrease total hours by what she works because we could then be understaffed. Further discussion about decreasing hours and delaying shipments; potential outcome is orders just getting backed up further and further. To be continued.
Staff's departure - This is open ended and we need to have some resolution. While acknowledging that Staff is a valued employee and that we're talking about her entering military service, a noble effort, Chair and Treasurer will ask the Board for their opinion about whether it's appropriate to give Staff an end date in case she does not get an induction date soon.
Bubblewrapping BRBs - Pilot project underway of wrapping only top, middle and bottom layers in cases to see if we have damage reports.
Donated file cabinets - We now have many file cabinets and Chair and Treasurer clarified that we only need one 4-drawer cabinet that locks to store confidential records. Kristina to order keys.
New meeting packets - Staff has written a rough draft instruction sheet that Office Manger will send to Treasurer for review.
Weight Stress Belts - Office Manger to obtain via donations.
UPS Solutions - a report is being generated by UPS of overall shipments and Office Manger will ask that it include a geographic distribution list so that we can target H&I and Outreach efforts to more expensive shipping areas to help bring down their costs.
Volunteers - No volunteer activity yet. Chair got a response to his letter of appreciation to David, the individual who was planning to coordinate some volunteer help. Volunteers are essential to decreasing our processing costs.
Order turn around times - see Decreasing Work Hours above.
Pay stubs - Treasurer to check with Accountant to make sure the glitch is gone.
NEW BUSINESS
Publishing Progress Notes: Discussed redacting the notes from these meetings and publishing them on the website, with a summary to be given by Chair or Treasurer on the Teleconference. Will ask the Board their opinion. Office Manger agrees this is a good idea.
Contact Us: Outreach (Outreach Coordinator) and the Office are both receiving copies of e-mail inquiries and there's potential duplication of effort. Office Manger's prior experience was for whoever responded to notify the other on the relay. Chair suggested that Outreach Coordinator, Staff and Office Manger talk and determine how this will be handled. Regarding Contact Us emails sent to the Treasurer email address, Treasurer agreed that the Office will handle and let her know if she needs to handle anything.
Shredding Project: There are 20 to 30 boxes of old orders, etc. in the warehouse that have been accumulating since 2008. Treasurer will check with Accountant about how long we need to keep them. If any can be disposed of, Office Manger will check into cost of hiring a professional shredding company. Treasurer to see how many years of records we are required to keep.
Office Report: Chair asked if we could get the Office Report at the start of the week before the TC. Per Office Manger, because it's on June 8th, there's no time to prepare much earlier than Monday or Tuesday next week, so she'll then place this on top of her "queue". Other months it will be easier to get it out sooner. Office Manger said her report will now be shorter because of these conference calls since previously her reports were the only way for the Board to know what was going on and that's no longer the case.
Closed with Serenity Prayer at 4:33 pm EST
