The votes are coming in: CPA firms are powering up their competitive profiles with full-featured mobile phones that can do it all.
Smartphones are proving to be a key ingredient for CPA success in today’s mobile world. But how do you manage the technology for maximum productivity and competitive advantage?
The initial responses are flowing in to our new survey, “Accounting Firm Mobile Phone Productivity Strategies.â€
The survey is delving into some of the hottest questions in practice management today:
Best practices in mobile phone spending and management.
Maximizing staff productivity with mobile phones.
Which mobile phone strategies are right for your firm.
The questionnaire should take only about three minutes, but the results could be immensely useful to you and your firm. Join the survey; get the results.Check back often as the survey results come in.
Whether you’re looking to grow your own practice or take a stake as a partner in the practice where you already work, a few key questions need to be asked, answered and considered.
And, as this list from a U.K. consultant proves, the basic economics of an accounting practice are well nigh universal.
So, whether you’re buying or selling, ask…
What services does any practice offer? In seeking to place a value on the goodwill of an accounting firm it is useful to look not just at its historic and projected performance, but also at its potential. Some key questions to consider are:
Does it provide more than just a compliance service to its clients?
Could it supply value added services?
Could it get involved in the needs of its clients for investment, pensions, life insurance, mortgages, the inheritance tax planning sector, probate, litigation support and management accounting services, and of course, business advice?
Rather than simply trying to protect its clients against paying too much tax, are they advised on how to make money?
Is the business profitable?
Looking inwards, what is the firm’s gross payroll cost? Is it more than one third of the turnover?
Are the employees remunerated in line with the local competition?
Do the key fee-earners have suitable restrictive covenants in their contracts of employment?
Are the premises owned or rented? (If the answer is the latter, is there a heavy contingent liability in the lease?)
What is the firm’s working capital requirement?
Is the business managing its debt efficiently? The amount of working capital tied up in debtors is critical to most practices. It has a direct impact on cash flow and the overall level of funding required. Many firms are extremely lax and the level of debt within the average practice is far too high.
And, by the way, the going rate in the U.K. is much the same as in the U.S. — 0.9 to 1.2 times annual revenue (or “turnover” as they say there).
Tom Hood, head of the Maryland CPA association, recently met with a class of college accounting students. They picked the topics: corporate scandals and fraud, which, in itself, it an encouraging sign that some of our hopes can rest easy in the next generation.
But some of what Tom delivered could be useful for anyone.
We finished with tips for them to stay ethical (the mirror test) and have the courage to “do the right thing”:
1. Publicity test – how would your action look on national tv or in a headline?
2. Conscience test – listen to your inside voice
3. Parent test – if you had children looking over your shoulder would the be embarrassed?
4. Role Model test – would your role model approve?
5. Universality test – what if everyone did this?
6. Golden Rule – would you like to be treated this way?
A smartphone — like a BlackBerry, iPhone, or Palm — handles more than just phone calls. Accounting firms are finding that a well-managed mobile strategy adds competitive advantage, improves client service and satisfaction, and even helps maintain a sensible work/life balance
A new CPA Trendlines research project is yielding some interesting and useful early results.
For intance, we’ve been asking: “What’s the single most important thing that a smartphone helps accomplish for your firm?”
Here are a few snippets from the comments:
Expands productivity beyond the normal “8-to-5″—both a blessing…and a curse.
Allows us to maintain real-time communications.
Client service and responsiveness.
Reduces back log of phone and email requiring attention upon return to office.
can be away from office & stay in touch
Communication with clients
Access
Access to the firms lifeline of contacts and stockpiled emails and voicemails. Keeping those in check allow me to stay on top of them or they are like an unruly haircut.
Keep in touch
Saves time in getting information needed to manage client service
Access to Outlook Calender, email & tasks for improved time management & organization
Constant communication with co-workers to maintain productivity.
client response time
email and schedule
be in contact with clients and staff
Manage email, be accessible
Faster response time for e-mail questions from clients
Allows us to be in contact with our clients outside of the office.
help balance life and work
Work Life Balance
Stay in touch with office and clients while out for field work.
Let’s face, this is a really tough economy and it’s very difficult to find a new job opportunity. What that means is more and more people are networking like crazy with family, friends, former co workers and the like. One of the natural outgrowths of this is the informational or exploratory meeting.
If you are having an informational job interview as part of your job search there are steps you should take to make the process more of a two way exchange of information. This will allow the company to learn about your expertise while allowing you to lean how the company may benefit your career. Here are some sound do’s and don’ts.
Some CPAs are ahead of the curve. Here’s one of them.
Kathleen Huston, head of McGuire Williams CPAs, posts:
Huston
Ah, how do you make tax meetings less painful and less dry? Meet and greet at Starbucks. You get to swill some tasty java while giving some sage tax advice. This is the new meeting place chosen by the Gen-X society. So, I decided to GO WITH THE FLOW.
On Wednesday or Friday when I am already working remotely, I schedule meetings with those clients who are the city dwellers and many don’t even own a car.
First thing they want to know when scheduling a meeting is where the nearest Metro station is. Of course, our office is about 1 mile from the Springfield Metro. Not a walk in the park!
And since I need my daily Starbucks hit in the afternoon, a meeting at Starbucks is pretty palatable in my book. There is one close to my remote office and right at the Metro stop.
So, there I sit today across from a new tax client. We are both sipping coffee and typing away on our laptops. Then I swap my data stick between laptops.
And we had never met either, but he had our website page on his laptop screen when I got there. My bio and picture let him know who I was. I was no strange face in the crowd.
