Are Bad Clients Driving You Crazy?

Or worse: Undermining profits and impeding growth and progress?

If your partners are putting up a fight to keep clients should be let go, take a look at our compensation system. It’s not just about billable hours.

In this month’s Journal of Accountancy, AICPA exec Mark Koziel urges firms to consider “encouraging other compensation measures in your firm.”

Koziel quotes August Aquila and Coral Rice, authors of “Compensation as a Strategic Asset: The New Paradigm,” in advising practitioners to consider 16 criteria for compensation. “While the list is not exhaustive,” Koziel says, “it does provide the breadth of criteria that firms can consider beyond revenue.”

  1. Book of businesses
  2. Client or book gross profitability
  3. Community involvement
  4. Cross-selling
  5. Fees collected
  6. Firm management responsibilities
  7. Industry experience/expertise
  8. Managed charge hours
  9. Mentoring and training employees
  10. New business development (origination)
  11. Ownership percentage
  12. Professional involvement
  13. Realization
  14. Seniority
  15. Technical expertise
  16. Utilization

Cleaning up your client book does more than just allow you to focus on A-list clients, make more money and get more sleep at night. It also helps you retain your best, most difficult-to-replace staffers, according to Koziel, who, as a former recruiter, has heard plenty of war stories.

More here.

Going, Going… Gone Paperless!

Kepczyck

The question today isn’t: “When are you going paperless?” Now it’s: “Why haven’t you already?”

The new study by Roman Kepczyck (pictured) for the Association for Accounting Administration shows that vast majorities of CPA firms have already gone paperless. The AAA 2009 Benchmarking Paperless Office Best Practices Survey updates a similar survey from two years ago. (Via IOMA.)

2009 Highlights:

Tax

● 86% are scanning client-supplied information for storage of tax return supporting documents, up from 75% in 2007.
● 57% have a policy to deliver electronic tax information to clients in secure password-protected or encrypted methods, including a portal or FTP site. This is up from 45% that had such a policy two years ago. READ MORE →

Accountants Lead Professions in Client Satisfaction

52% of accounting firm clients say they’re “very satisfied.”

That’s markedly better than lawyers, consultants or the rest of the professional services industries studied by Wellesley Hills Group, a management consulting, marketing, and lead generation firm. Buy the study at their RainToday website here.