Tax pro Robert D. Flach doesn’t make it easy to do business with him.
There’s a note on the Flach website that says he won’t answer the phone, but you can leave a message on his machine. “I never answer the telephone without first screening the call via my answering machine – so don’t hang up because I may be listening (except on Wednesdays)!” On Wednesdays, he doesn’t answer at all.
He must be doing something right. He’s been at it 35 years and says he goes on vacation from April 16 to January 14, when he also turns off his phone. So don’t try to call him then, either.
But he does seem to find time to keep blogging as “The Wandering Tax Pro,” and on his “New Jersey Tax Practice Blog,” must-read for New Jersey practitioners. READ MORE →
Partner comp averages $186,000, up 16%
New York (from the AICPA) – CPA firms are experiencing strong growth with 76 percent reporting an increase in firm size in the last year, according to the just-released National Management of an Accounting Practice Survey conducted by the Private Companies Practice Section of the AICPA and the Texas Society of CPAs. READ MORE →
CPAs have some ideas about client satisfaction that just aren’t true. Tax season is the best time to get it right.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
“Selling?” First of all, CPAs don’t “sell.” Or do they?
And if they did, they’d call it “practice development,” wouldn’t they?
Welcome to the real world. Successful CPAs are selling and they’re doing it all the time. Many of them just don’t know it. Or they don’t know how they’re doing it.
And you’re certainly too busy to sell, market or conduct “practice development” during tax season, right? Wrong again!
Tax season is, in fact, the once-a-year opportunity to show clients and potential clients who you are, what you do and how well you do it. And, to the prospect, how you sell is how you work. In professional services, the prospect first buys you, then the service. READ MORE →
A lot funnier than your standard Wikipedia
The entry for Auditor at the UNcyclopedia.com (“the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”)…
“An Auditor (auditor sapiens) is a unique mammalian species, first bred in the 1960s by crossbreeding garden variety accountants with serial killers. They were noted for their hard working attitude and quickly became a “fad breed” later in the decade before their dangerous side was well known. Today, most live a lonely existence in offices, separated forever from humanity.” More here….
See also Accountant…
[A hat tip to Toronto accountant Marisa for the joke of the day!]
READ MORE →
Do we learn more from advice or by observing the actions of others?
In a study (PDF download) that has ramifications for CPAs and consultants, Columbia University Professor Bogachan Celen compares how we acquire information. He studies investors, but the dynamics are the same for many business decisions. Investors often ask their friends, colleagues or experts for advice before buying a stock or investing in a mutual fund. So which tack is more productive? “The findings showed that people tend to take advice more seriously than simply watching others,†Celen says. “The nature of asking for advice makes people pay closer attention, and they therefore learn faster.†That may be good advice. Of course, you could wait to see what others do. READ MORE →
CPAs learn accounting, auditing and tax. But how do you make a living?
by Rick Telberg
On Careers
Get the free report: “What Do Clients Really Want?”
Back in school, you probably learned what you need to know to hang out your shingle, but did they teach you to blow your horn?
Because in case you haven’t noticed, you aren’t the only CPA on the block.
Fully half of surveyed corporate financial officers figure they just might switch auditors this year, according to our research. On one hand, that means you’d better be clinging tightly to the clients you have. On the other hand, it means there are a lot of potential clients out there looking for a new CPA firm.
These corporate financial decision-makers who our studies show tend to be CFOs more often than owners or CEOs, aren’t likely to notice the CPAs who have their noses to their respective grindstones. They’re going to notice the ones who are marketing themselves. READ MORE →
Maybe that’s too much to ask.
But Anne Stanton makes the point that CPAs should put aside their biases, their old habits, misguided beliefs, and, yes, she says, their egos, to get on track with new technologies like Vista.
What’s at stake? Oh, just the future of the profession.
“Small firms are missing out on technologies enablement, because they are not supported by all their advisors in using the proper selection and implementation of technology best practices. Sure you can spend money on technology toys… but you can also waste a lot of time using products selected from a very limited list. A great example? The number of people who use EXCEL to do everything and as such instead of using the right tool (already designed to solve the business problem), end users customize/hack/creatively create solutions, spending hours using Excel to do something that perhaps a Business Intelligence tool can do in seconds, or an accounting software product can do effortlessly.” Read the rest here… READ MORE →
