My boss left the company while training me. She was the only one who knew how to do the job. What the hell do I do now?
Basically, I was given a mini promotion like two months ago. My boss was in charge of both accounts receivable and accounts payable, so she needed someone to help her out. Even though I had absolutely no experience in this field, she selected me to help out…
Basically, I was given a mini promotion like two months ago. My boss was in charge of both accounts receivable and accounts payable, so she needed someone to help her out. Even though I had absolutely no experience in this field, she selected me to help out with AP. Because of my lack of experience, she trained me little by little, slowly introducing topics/procedures until I was comfortable doing them on my own. This worked fine for a while, but last week she suddenly told us she was leaving the company. She had a talk with me and our training ramped up a bit, but last Friday she simply stopped coming to work. We were still training. On Thursday she literally just introduced a new topic, and only trained me for like 30 mins. I took notes, but tbh I'm sure I forgot something. Also, the company is changing the software I use for invoices. We've had some meetings about this new program but because my role is so limited, my boss was the one who led the meetings. She knew how to answer/ask meaningful questions and properly explain procedures. I know how to do my job, obviously, but I don't have a lot of knowledge when it comes to lingo/vocabulary. Sometimes people ask me stuff and I have no idea what they're talking about because I refer to it as another thing. Now that she's gone, I'll be expected to lead these meetings. I'm genuinely terrified because I'm afraid I'll come across as stupid or incompetent or I'll just freeze and not be able to speak. The worst part is that there's no one else in the AP department. It's literally just me now. I still don't know how to do a lot of the tasks my boss used to be responsible for, no one trained me and there's no one to train me now. I also have no manager or someone can ask for guidance. I can't even really go to HR since I was hired through a temp agency. I'm so stressed 😫 Has anyone else been in this position? I really need some advice.
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I'm assuming one of the higher-ups told you you have a new boss.. I suggest you tell that new boss what's been going on as quickly as possible.
No, I have no boss. No one's been hired yet and the company hasn't even opened up the position. My boss's work was divided between me and two other people, but the AP side of things was left to me. Those two other people have nothing to do with my job.
Then whoever was your boss's boss is now your boss until they hire someone to be your boss. Talk to your boss's boss, there's a very good chance that your old boss did not tell him/her that you are not fully trained yet before they left. The worst thing that can possibly happen is that their expectation is that you know everything that's going on, they throw the normal amount of work at you, you don't know what to do.. then you're up the creek. There's a pretty good chance at someone else within the company knows the systems that you're being trained on and the chances is that person works for your boss's boss.
You'd best have a conversation with whoever is in charge (company president/owner) today. AP/AR mistakes can sink entire companies and if you feel you cannot do these things correctly then whoever needs to do the decision making needs to know sooner than yesterday.
i would put this in writing today, honestly. send whoever your boss reported to a quick list of what you can handle alone, what you were still being trained on, and anything with invoice/payment deadlines. do not frame it like you are failing. frame it like: this is the current coverage gap since X left. for the software meetings, you do not have to fake the lingo. if someone uses a term you do not know, ask what that maps to in the current process and write it down. AP is one of those areas where guessing is worse than sounding new.
This happened to me as a temp. Everyone between me and the VP was fired or left. Always remember that this is a management failure not a you failure. This was preventable through redundancy and SOPs yet here we are. They have a temp running their whole finance department. They are a meme. I straight up said whenever it was relevant that I am doing a great job under the circumstances, but I am going to screw things up regularly because we have understaffed my function so heavily. My super would act like XYZ thing needs to be done perfectly, and I would tell her that it is not going to be. It will be better than if anyone else with my experience level did it, but it will not be perfect. It pissed her off but what was she going to do fire the last person in the department? 😆 no. That is your leverage. What it did do was manage everyone’s expectations especially the VP, and give me some breathing room. Would’ve been a lot worse if I just screwed up over and over again.
I would talk to the owner and provide a list of tasks that you are doing thay you have been trained for, and tell them that your boss hadn't completed your training yet and you wanted them to be aware of what you ARE doing so other gaps can be addressed. Don't apologize, make it matter of fact. Someone with more accounting experience will need to take that data and figure out how to train you to do more things or how else to fill the gaps
Can you lean on the software company at all? If they're in the business... their account manager can probably lend you a hand or guide you with some direction. There's always chatgpt too.
I’m in a really similar situation. I was hired, and then about a month later my trainer was gone. He was really the only person who fully knew what I do, and honestly, the process is different with every new product because of the nature of the job. There aren’t many people I can go to with direct questions, so a lot of it has been figuring things out as I go, which is stressful and kind of crappy. I do have great teams around me, and they all touch different parts of what I do, so I have people I can bounce ideas and questions off of. But ultimately, I’m responsible for figuring out how each product should look on the website and what treatments it needs, which is terrifying when I don’t always know exactly what they want and I’ve only been with the company for two full months, lol. They understand that I’m basically fumbling around in the dark, and it kind of is what it is. Products can take about a year to actually make it onto the site anyway, so maybe in a year I’ll finally feel like I know what I’m doing… woo. I still ask everyone questions, even when they may not know the exact answer. I’m always hoping they can at least point me in the right direction, help me find the right person, or give me enough information to start figuring it out. That has helped me so far. Who knows how much it’ll help with the next group of products, but I’m hopeful that if I keep asking the right questions, we can eventually get there. They also recently made a major platform change to the website, which has changed how I update products and how everything needs to look and function. In a weird way, that makes me feel a little better because now everyone is trying to figure out how to work within the new system. At least we’re all fumbling around together.
Tell flour new boss they need to hire old boss as contractor so she can train you. She dont have to deal with all the craps, you get your training and company dont need to scramble.
Time to step up! Learn everything you can find and own that department!
Hey I can totally relate. I’ve been at my job for 6 months now. Totally love it and I’m very good at it. Well another team needed some help because someone left and they were working on backfilling that role. It’s a different role and at a much higher level than mine. I trained with the other person 2 times and they are now also suddenly gone. And my company thinks I’m qualified to do this other role by myself with no senior to guide me while they now try to backfill both positions. I’m scared shitless and I just want to go back to the job I had (which I am also still doing lol)
HR are there to protect the company. You need to talk to them and let the know the situation. They likely dont know what situation you've been left in. Best to let them know now before something terrible happens that you can't get out of.
my advice is to avoid telling everyone at work that youre a helpless victim with poor training and go figure out how to do the job. try some things out and if they work, call them process, you got a new software comming? perfect, learn that thing inside and out. it sounds like you already know more then everyone else.