Every business has problem clients, but not everyone subscribes to the “customer is always right” philosophy. In fact, some businesses will actually fire such clients and report being happier and more successful for it.
CPA firms are often told to be strategic in prospecting for and selecting clients to help dodge such dysfunctional relationships-even when money is tight and all clients look like a gem. That’s easier said than done, of course. READ MORE →
The 1.9-million-member Service Employees International is arguing that Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center violated the SOX act by including losses from bad debts in its tally of the charity care it provides. The union wants the hospital’s financials restated.
The union has little in the way of legal or regulatory grounds for its argument. And it’s not an organizing tactic. But the union’s point has been made. And I think we can expect more controversies like it. More…
The Southfield, Mich., accounting firm has grown revenue 40 percent in the last three years while adding 30 percent more staff.
Managing partner Don Clayton (pictured at desk) and shareholder Kevin McKervey are targeting growing, mid-sized companies with global ambitions.
They credit the firm’s growth to their focus on identifying and pursuing the one thing that they can be best at, what “Good to Great” author Jim Collins calls a company’s “hedgehog” concept. For C&M, that’s helping entrepreneurial companies from other nations expand into the U.S. and U.S. companies to go abroad. The firm counts new clients from China, Britain and Mexico.
“We’ve got a razor-sharp focus,” Clayton said. “That’s a competitive advantage.”
“Over the past decade, the leisure activity has been in a kind of recession,” the New York Times reports, “The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. More troubling to golf boosters, the number of people who play 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a loss of about a third. The industry now counts its core players as those who golf eight or more times a year. That number, too, has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from 17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation.”
What will CPAs do for a marketing strategy if they can’t play golf?
Sage Software is launching an initiative to encourage accountants to drive more business to its resellers with free consulting.
It’s a good sign that the top management at Sage is seeking to leverage the company’s most ardent supporters.
The plan seeks to connect the 10,300 firms in the Sage Software Accountants Network, which has over 22,000 members, with the 620 resellers in the Business Partner Alliance. So far, Sage has signed up 121 resellers, or 20 percent of the the BPA.
A newly released study from the Office of Advocacy of the SBA documents the tax burden among small business owners in bankruptcy. The data suggest that the tax burden is more pervasive among small business owners in bankruptcy than among consumer petitioners. While less than one-quarter of all consumers in the bankruptcy sample reported tax debts, more than half of individual small business owners reported owing some tax debts.
And, indeed, there’s plenty to complain about in the tax code. But, for the time-being, it also argues for better entrepreneurial educationa nd the importance of professional tax and accounting services.
So maybe it was understandable in 2006 when a secretary in the Paris office was sacked after her online diary chronicling her Bridget Jones-style life was discovered.
The secretary, Catherine Sanderson (left), lost her job and won it back.
In the meantime, she got a book deal.
“Petite Anglais (In Paris. In Love. In Trouble.)” isn’t due in U.S. bookstores until June. But it’s available March 6 in the UK.
Turn problems into profits.
It’s worth wading through a couple commercials to get to this video clip from CNN on a 
A newly released study from the Office of Advocacy of the SBA documents the tax burden among small business owners in bankruptcy. The data suggest that the tax burden is more pervasive among small business owners in bankruptcy than among consumer petitioners. While less than one-quarter of all consumers in the bankruptcy sample reported tax debts, more than half of individual small business owners reported owing some tax debts.
How do you know?
The secretary, Catherine Sanderson (left), lost her job and won it back.
