Taking time off is essential to mental health, good relationships, and even good job performance. But too many CPAs may be working too hard.
And that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Here are some highlights from our latest study. For more information about crosstab detail and methodology, contact Rick Telberg.
Most CPAs fail to take advantage of all the vacation time they are earning.
… And they wish they had more time off.
The situation hasn’t changed much from last year.
But, for about half all CPAs, more vacation time could be an added benefit worth changing jobs for.
Most CPAs get two to three vweeks off.
And they take it in June and December.
How crazy are CPAS about their work? About 2% filled out this survey while actually on vacation!
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A Lesson in Leadership, or, When Leaders Fail
A Reader Writes (Name Withheld by Request)…
We serve high end family groups. Our focus for the last 20 years has been team work with each other and with the client. We have been very successful.
But now our managing, founding partner has released his compliance responsibilities to his co-owners.
It is amazing how the lead partner can set the tone for the whole office.
READ MORE →
Implementing the right technology at the right time can be as important as selecting the right products.
by Rick Telberg
[www.cpa2biz.com/news/telberg]
If productivity equals profits for CPA firms, then CPAs at this week’s AICPA Tech show in Las Vegas could walk away with a lot of money-making ideas.
Much of the gain in CPAs’ productivity has already come with the help of new technologies ? technologies that will be on display at the Tech 2005 AICPA Information Technology Conference. We already reported on the perspectives of the meeting’s organizers in “CPA Tech: Ya Gotta Deal With It” and how vendors are attacking productivity issues for CPAs in “The Winning Formula.”
This week, we talk to a few more vendors about the trends and issues in technology, starting with what may be the practitioner’s biggest headache ? tax-season workload compression. READ MORE →
QB Add-on Gives eBay Sellers New, Faster Way to Track Sales, Fees and Profits
Intuit Inc. says eBay has used the QuickBooks Software Development Kit to develop the eBay Accounting Assistant. This free application automatically downloads eBay transactions into QuickBooks, enabling eBay sellers to easily track their sales, fees and profits, according to Intuit. With an accurate and complete view of their finances, small business owners can make faster, more informed business decisions, the company says. Accounting Assistant was developed by eBay to allow its sellers, including approximately 430,000 people in the United States who run all or some of their business on eBay, to easily import eBay and PayPal transactions directly into QuickBooks, the company said. Before Accounting Assistant, sellers who wanted to track how they are making and spending money had to either manually enter transactions into QuickBooks or lump a batch of transactions together and track them as a single line item, Intuit said. Manually entering individual transactions can take hours and entering lump sums can lead to mistakes in the books, the company said. With Accounting Assistant, eBay sellers eliminate these problems and have an accurate easy way to manage their business, Intuit said.
Source: Intuit.com READ MORE →
CPAs worry most about privacy and security issues in technology.
Only 15% are concerned with loose password policies. The study doesn’t say how many CPAs are unworried because they already have tough policies in place. But most experts say the biggest security and pivacy threats come from loose policies on password control, or lost laptops or PDAs.
But what are they doing about it? Which issues are they most concerned with? And what are they actually going to be investing in?
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New York and California are considering asking private companies to comply with SarbOx-type regulations, according to businessweek.com. California has began requiring nonprofits with more than $2 million a year in receipts to undergo audits. Colleen Cunningham, CEO of Financial Executives International, says compliance is not a matter of if, but when. “Private companies have the advantage of doing it right now at their own pace,” says Cunningham. However painful that may be.
“Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t apply to nonprofits, but like ink in water it’s changing the way they operate,” says Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, according to WSJ.com. “Suddenly you’ve got accounting firms that audit nonprofits clamoring for the same financial controls now in place at for-profits.” And nonprofit trustees want more transparency. Although they’re exempt from financial liability in most states except in cases of fraud, they worry that in this climate their reputations could be hurt if money is misused or the organization falters.
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Wireless networking is too critical to ignore for long.
By Rick Telberg
[Special for HP]
Imagine trying to operate a competitive business without a telephone. Obviously, that would have been impossible for the last 100 years.
American business is now waking up to the reality that being competitive without wireless technology will be equally impossible in the new century. Wireless by all accounts is fast becoming the dominant force in communicating with employees, increasing their job satisfaction and helping them produce the best results. Companies, particularly small and midsize businesses that wait too long to go wireless, risk falling far behind in all of those categories.
Businesses of all sizes are rushing toward wireless system implementation almost as quickly as they adopted personal computers in the early 1980s. More than 77 percent of North American organizations will have adopted wireless technology systems by mid-2005, with most of the implementations occurring at mid-sized businesses, according to IDC, while another research firm, Allied Business Intelligence, projects that wireless local area network equipment sales revenue will reach $4.5 billion in 2006, up from $969 million in 2000. READ MORE →
