CPA Trendlines

25 Managing Partners List Best Profitability Ideas in 7 Key Areas

by Marc Rosenberg
Author of What Really Makes CPA Firms Profitable?

Marketing for Small Firms

[CLICK TO PLAY]

Jennifer Warawa, Vice President, Partner Programs & Channel Sales at Sage, says marketing isn’t just for larger firms. It’s just for firms that want to be successful.

Busy Season Survey Shows Four Key Findings

Updated with responses from May 2013.

The latest update to the topline results for the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer shows additional confirmation of four key findings, beginning with the across-the-board problems of a late-starting season and buggy software.

How did your season compare? We’d love to hear. Send your comments, rants raves, ideas, or questions to me here. – Rick Telberg

Key Finding #1: Most practitioners, across all size firms, report a tougher 2013 than 2012. (See chart below for comparisons by size of firm.) READ MORE →

Seven Signs You’re Working in a Firm Where the Partners Don’t Trust Each Other

Especially in these trying times, partners must show leadership by accepting the consequences of their actions – or their inaction.

Aquila

Accountability is the essence of your success, according to management consultant August Aquila, author of “Leadership At Its Strongest: What Successful Managing Partners Do.”

“I don’t think that the average partner takes accountability seriously,” Aquila says. “If they did, they would take their individual goals more seriously and not let their fellow partners down.” READ MORE →

Questions and Answers on Selling a Practice to Staff Members

By Ed Mendlowitz
Author of “Implementing Fee Increases“

I received two related questions, which I’ll answer together.

First Question: I am nearing retirement and want to sell my practice to two longtime staff people, but they don’t get along, and I’m afraid to sell to them. What should I do?

Second Question: I have a large individual tax practice, but also have an audit practice that is handled by different staff in my firm. How do I sell this practice? None of the larger buyers want the tax clients and none of the smaller buyers want the audit clients. READ MORE →

Two CPA Firm Committees that Need Explaining: Management and Executive

What to do when democracy no longer works.

When firms are still small or just starting out, the partners often share a culture of democracy, shared burdens, personal freedom, and the opportunity for high earnings. But all that changes if the firm becomes successful.

In this article, Marc Rosenberg, author of “CPA Firm Management and Governance:”

• Identifies four key factors of a start-up firm’s culture.
• How those factors change with success and growth.
• The development of management and leadership committees.
• The functions and roles of a management committee.
• The functions and roles of an executive committee.
• How they differ.
• Where a compensation committee fits in.
• 11 key duties for the executive committee.
• 5 major decisions reserved for the full partner group.

READ MORE →

10 Ways to Add a “Money Maker” Hour to Your Day

Simple easy activities to boost your business.

By Sandi Smith, CPA
Accountant’s Accelerator

Every working day, we’re all slammed with hundreds of things to do. We might need to occasionally slow down and ask ourselves whether we are working on the most profitable things we could for our business. Are we constantly fighting fires, dealing with urgent but not important client matters and neglecting the things that could grow our business?

Here’s how to move off this treadmill to create a “money maker hour” in your business: READ MORE →

Eight Client Retention Strategies for the New Competitive Environment

Driving the client-driven practice.

By Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

Bruce W. Marcus

The conventional wisdom is that it costs more to get a new client than to keep an old one. And for once, the conventional wisdom is correct.

Yet, many professionals too readily take clients for granted. Or don’t look for opportunities to increase revenues from perfectly satisfied clients.

Then there’s the classic story of the client who went to another firm for a particular service. “Why didn’t you come to me for that service?”

“Because I didn’t know you did it.” It happens too often. READ MORE →

What to Think about Before You Start Thinking about Merging Your Practice

Plus: Key considerations in evaluating a practice continuation agreement

By Ed Mendlowitz

Question: What I should do about merging? I need a specific answer.

Answer: I can’t give you an easy answer. I can give you a process to follow that should provide an answer. Actually, this works pretty well and I’ve gotten good feedback from many colleagues. I’ve also rethought it many times, and still think this is the way to go about it.

READ MORE →

11 Sources of Wealth We Can Celebrate

By Sandi Smith, CPA
Accountant’s Accelerator

We all have far more sources of wealth available to us in addition to the assets we normally count as financial wealth. A great skill to add to our tool box is that of resourcefulness. Learning and practicing being resourceful has always come in handy for me while traveling, working, and making changes in my life.

As you go through the list, take an inventory and make a list of all of the resources you have available to you in one form or fashion. By the end of the article, you might be amazed at how wealthy you really are.

1. Your financial wealth is measured in currency. This includes cash, all bank accounts, retirement accounts, annuities, stocks, bonds, commodities, and other market investments.
2. Your property wealth includes real estate and personal property such as furniture, dishes, clothes, jewelry, and a car.
3. Your wealth of abilities, experience, education, and skills provides you with a livelihood and is what you can trade others for other categories of wealth. READ MORE →

Long-Term Trend Analysis of Busy Season Activity

A new CPA Trendlines analysis of long-term tax season activity shows how tax professionals may be working harder and enjoying it less. We’ll let two charts speak for themselves.

– Rick Telberg

Even as tax professionals have been increasing the number of e-filed tax returns…

READ MORE →

Why “Niche Marketing” Should Be Superseded by “Total Context Marketing”

A real-world approach for the smaller firm.

By Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

There is much ado, these days, about niche marketing and target marketing and using mailing lists and knowledge management.

How does it all come together to make sense for the smaller accounting firm, particularly when there’s a limited marketing budget, and a limited opportunity to reach out to the marketplace?

Bruce W. Marcus

More for CPA Trendlines PRO members: Who’s Better at Marketing? • Lawyers or CPAs? • Even a Random Disaster Can Be Controlled with Risk Management • Managing Risk in Client Relations • Your Clients Love You? What If You’re Wrong? • The Three Degrees of Risk • Four Essential Habits for Building Client Trust • The Nine Hallmarks of a Marketing Culture • The Four Cornerstones to Building A Marketing Culture • Getting the Client is Only Half the Battle • Practice Development: It’s Not Rocket Science • Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm •

In this report:

• The limited value of “niche” marketing.
• Six key variables to evaluate.
• The role of target marketing.
• The role of sales.
• The fusion that creates Total Context Marketing.
• 15 steps to success in integrating and balancing marketing strategies.

READ MORE →

Seven Tactics to Stand Out from the Crowd

August J. Aquila

Standing out among the crowd of other CPA firms isn’t easy. But it may be necessary for long-lived success.

In this article, August J. Aquila, author of “Leadership At Its Strongest,” provides seven tactics used by high-performing firms to beat the competition.

READ MORE →

Ten-Point Job Description for the Firm Administrator or COO

Rosenberg

The position of firm administrator or COO is quickly gaining in importance, and just as quickly evolving.

According to Marc Rosenberg, author of “CPA Firm Management and Governance: The Managing Partner’s Guide to Running a CPA Firm Like a Business,” there are at least ten duties that are both critically important to the firm and that define the job of the COO.

They are:

READ MORE →

Tax Season 2013: Hard-Hit Soloists Voice Their Biggest Problems

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer

Tax and accounting professionals of all shapes and sizes, ranging in size from the soloist to the regional leader, are reporting a filing season markedly more problematic than the year before, according to the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer. The data for April, still coming in, shows majorities of firms in all class sizes reporting “somewhat worse” or “much worse” performance and results this year.

Busy Season Barometer

The CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer, now in it’s tenth year, is a real-time tracking poll of tax and accounting professionals’ sentiment, performance and results. As a reward for joining the survey panel, participants get early previews of top-line results and notifications.

Click here to join the survey; get the results

In this report, we present the first wave of in-depth details, starting with a chart that shows the number of respondents reporting on busy season conditions.

Those reporting a “worse” season include:

• 66% of solo practitioners
• 60% of firms with 2 to 10 professionals
• 70% of firms with 11 to 50 professionals
• 72% of firms with 50 to 100 professionals
• 53% of firms with more than 100 professionals

And:

• We gather verbatim comments from the solo practitioners who reported a season “much worse” explaining their rating, and
• We present their comments assembled into a word-cloud infographic that reveals at a glance the most oft-repeated issues and concerns.

For complete busy season coverage, click here. And stay tuned to CPA Trendlines as we report on new developments in the data and analysis.

READ MORE →

Ten Strategies for the Smaller Firm Facing Competition from Larger Firms

When David meets Goliath.

By Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

Great turbulence in the accounting profession, as well as in the business world itself, make these difficult and unusual times.

Public outcry against the misdeeds of a few accounting firms, corporations, investment bankers and others in government and the business community is tarring the innocent as well as the guilty. In the meantime, mergers and acquisitions are altering the competitive landscape for firms of every size.

It’s likely that the major CPA firms will accelerate a long-standing practice of reaching into the low end of the market – the very market of the smaller CPA firms. For the smaller firm, competition is coming from unaccustomed quarters.

Can the smaller firm successfully compete against the bigger firm?

History says yes, if the firm follows at least some of the following 10 points: READ MORE →

Worst Tax Season Ever? “It’s Supposed to Get Better!”

Hoisted from Comments.

In this article, Ed Mendlowitz takes issue with Worst Tax Season Ever and suggests five strategies for continuous improvement year after year.

Barry Melancon, CEO of the AICPA, and Tom Hood, CEO of the Maryland Society of CPAs, both said that they heard this was the worst tax season ever.

I don’t know if it was or wasn’t.  For us it wasn’t that bad.  This raises a thought.  It’s supposed to get better – if not, then why do it, or why not make a serious effort to change what you are doing so it gets better?  I am reminded by a remark by Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets.”  He said, “Maybe this is as good as it gets!”  I don’t buy that.

Here are five things that should be done to make tax season (and the rest of your practice or any business) better. READ MORE →