Here are 10 ways to nurture happier, richer clients. Meanwhile: Check the Tax Season Stress-O-Meter.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
If this is tax season, it should also be personal financial planning season. Tax practitioners don’t need to be reminded about the personal financial planning opportunities that lie untapped in their legions of tax clients. Or do they? A remarkably large number of tax mavens remain quite content to fill in the blanks, file the forms and cash the check. But, except in some of the more complex situations, it doesn’t take all the acquired skills of an accomplished and experienced CPA to do that. Sure, CPAs do taxes, and they do them probably better, more accurately and more reliably than anyone else. But the super-CPA can do so much more. And, by the way, many CPAs working in private practice business and industry also have an important role to play. If you’re like most finance and accounting professionals, you have the ear of the owner and directors of your company. What kind of planning have they done for themselves? Or succession planning for the business? READ MORE →
Be worried: It could work
According to J. Edward Ketz, Jeffrey Skilling may get off the hook through his attorney’s “blame the accountants” strategy. Read the rest at SmartPros…
READ MORE →
The preliminary answers are in.
And it appears that finance and accounting professionals are among the hardest working and most stressed-out white-collar workers in the nation.
KEY DATA POINTS:
About two-thirds of finance and accounting professionals consider themselves ?frequently? stressed or ?at a crisis point!?
About 38% would change jobs for better working conditions ? even it means a pay cut.
Some 92% of professionals work more than 41 hours per week.
Download the FREE 24-page report here…
HowHardAreYOUWorkingExecPreview.pdf
…and find out:
Are things getting better or worse?
How professionals spend their precious time.
The latest busy season outlook.
How bad will it be?
Do you know the best techniques for time management and work-life balance?
MORE STUDIES INTO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICES AND ATTITUDES
You may also be interested in these other (FREE) Bay Street Group reports:
Trends and Issues in Personal Financial Advisory Services:
BSGPFPTrendsExecPreviewNov05_wbdr.pdf
Small-Office and Home-Office Strategies for Peak Productivity:
SOHOPreview.pdf
The CPAs’ Technology Wish List:
CPATechWishListOct05.pdf
READ MORE →
Do you have what it takes to go mobile, solo, or SOHO?
by Rick Telberg
At Large
Working from home may be the greatest thing since computerized spreadsheets, but it can wreak psychological havoc, according to the finance and accounting professionals who do it regularly.
You’re probably one of them. Most accountants and finance managers take at least some work home with them, and others work full-time at home or in a small office. Almost everyone is going mobile to one degree or another.
Technology often plays a key role in keeping people connected. But professionals say you also need the right psychological equipment too. READ MORE →
Read it and weep.
Thanks to Gary Zeune, of The Pros & The Cons, for pointing us to more than 300,000 real Enron email messages. The emails were gathered and are being offered by MetaLINCS, a provider of E-Discovery software, whose demo version you first need to register for and download before attacking the mountain of material.
A few choice morsels from Ken Lay:
“I think the primary reason for Enron’s collapse was Andy Fastow and his little group of people and what they did.”
“But certainly I didn’t know he was doing anything that was criminal.”
“But I can’t take responsibility for criminal conduct of somebody inside the company.”
READ MORE →
The Client Service Team As A Growing Phenomenon
By Bruce Marcus
Excerpted from the MarcusLetter
Once a novelty, a growing number of firms have discovered the benefits of using the client service team as an approach to dealing with larger clients, for both better service and better client relations. Professional firms tend to be spare in accepting new ideas and concepts. But now, the time of the client service team has come. And as firms see other firms use them successfully, and begin to understand the value of the concept, they may seem willing to try it. They begin to understand that with client service teams, clients benefit from the combined brainpower of the well-chosen and well-run team, the firm benefits by both demonstrating the depth of its skills and by the extensive access to the client?s business, and the firm has a competitive advantage in its extended presence and greater ability to serve clients. With this access, the firm has greater rapport with the client, and more intensive access to the client?s thinking and response to the firm?s efforts.
Read the full article…
READ MORE →
January 19, 2006
Despite great demand for their services, CPAs are increasingly concerned about staff recruiting, retention and work-life balance.
from AICPA Career Insider staff
https://www.cpa2biz.com/Career/Top+10+CPA+Career+Stories+of+2005.htm
The 2005 headlines were chock full of stories about the keen demand for experienced accounting and financial professionals – particular those with internal audit experience – but Career Insider readers and HR managers in the trenches of the number crunching world were not as enthused as one might think.
A lot of recent research indicates that CPAs may be more confident about their job security than at any time in recent memory, but their level of job satisfaction seems to be lacking. Over and over again in 2005, they shared with us their fears about burnout, their inability to keep up with an ever-increasing workload and generally feeling under-appreciated by their superiors. Senior partners maligned the perceived lack of dedication and commitment from younger colleagues and hiring managers lamented their inability to find (much less retain) experienced staffers to help them handle their workloads.
Here’s a look at our most popular stories of 2005 with links to our archives if you’d like to read them again. Our Reader Engagement Index (REI) measures how popular the story was relative to the average story (Index = 100) that appeared in CPA Career Insider in 2005.
Most Popular CPA Career Insider Articles of 2005
Story REI
Index*
6 Good Ideas for Happy Staffs 882
Boomers, X-ers and Y’s: CPA Generation Gap Is Real 485
Tips and Traps for Going SOHO 429
Why Are You Working So Hard? 402
What’s the Secret to Success for CPAs? 391
Happy Holidays … Now Get Back to Work! 344
Benefits: The New Weapon in the Battle for Staff 308
New Year’s Resolution #1: Find a New Job 301
CPAs Mull Work/Life Balance on Eve of Busy Season 280
Do You Need a Vacation? 274
Source: AICPA Insider 2005, Doubleclick DARTMail
* The AICPA Career Insider Reader Engagement Index (REI) assigns a relative measure of reader interest in each story published. A story with a median level of reader interest is assigned a value of 100. A story with an index of 150, means 1.5 times as many readers viewed it than the typical AICPA Career Insider story.
READ MORE →
What makes a place a GREAT place to work?
David Maister, commenting on the Fortune list of Great Places to Work, has, as usual, his own unique and powerful take on the subject.
Here are some of Maister’s hypotheses:
– A high percentage of smart, energetic colleagues (no dummies.)
– A disproportionately high percentage of top-end assignments. (Only bring in challenging work.)
– An A client list. (Refuse to work for the rest.)
– Real mutual support and collaboration among partners (Get rid of the cowboys.)
– Practicing with others who share mutual interests. (Base teams around individual enthusiasms, not dry analytics.)
– Lots of help around (Real coaching from peers and group leaders)
– A willingness by the firm to provide the tools and support needed. (Avoid excessive cost-cutting)
– High standards, enforced with help and discipline. (Acting according to what we preach.)
– A clearly articulated set of values that everyone believes in. (A firm driven by principle, not expediency) READ MORE →
The knack of feedback doesn’t always come naturally.
by Rick Telberg
On Careers
If the finance and accounting people in your office work together like a well oiled machine, then consider yourself lucky.
Let me suggest you take them all out to lunch and raise a toast to their attitudes … Because without their skills and goodwill, you are no longer working in a firm or company. You are a solo practitioner.
Even if you’re not working in a traditional command-and-control hierarchical organization, you are, in the end, a professional. And you work with fellow professionals. Understanding how to trade feedback honestly, openly and without rancor is an essential ingredient to your successful work life.
Personnel who fall short on skills can usually be brought up to speed. All it takes is a little coaching and training. READ MORE →
Who ya gonna trust?
Ask entrepreneurs, as one research firm has done, about whose opinions they rely on for purchasing decisions — like technology, courier, financial, telecommunications and insurance products and services — and you’ll find that their spouse and employees may be the most-often consulted. But they trust their accountant more — more indded — than anyone else.
Primary Sources of Advice in Entrepreneur?s Decision to Purchase Products & Services
Source: Warrillow & Co.
The person consulted and the importance of their recommendations varied significantly depending on the product or service in question. Spouses, for example, were consulted most often for the purchase of laptop computers and least often for courier services. Friends rated a 5.7 (out of 7) for the importance of their wireless LAN recommendations but only a 3.3 for commercial mortgages.
“Not all small business influencers are created equal,” according to By Zach Vetter, a consultant at small-business researchers Warrillow & Co.
Key insights:
1) Business owners take different approaches for different products and services (even with the same category, such as telecommunications), therefore its necessary to look at influencers at a granular level.
2) Even in ?smaller? small businesses, employees are influencing purchase decisions.
“Consider widening your messaging to include not only the business owner but also other key players,” Warrillow advises. READ MORE →
