James Bourke argues you can’t.
Today, a BlackBerry smartphone is a competitive necessity.
In this week’s AICPA Insider, he says:
Make sure your staff has the correct voice and data plans in place on mobile technologies. To be productive and responsive to clients, your staff needs tools that allow them to talk, e-mail and text. Solutions will run from free to in excess of $500. It would be great to have the latest and greatest handheld technologies with all of the bells and whistles, but given the state of the economy, a device that allows for the basics will suffice.
More at Technology Spending in a Down Economy.
Contrary to IRS claims last year, audit rate for wealthy Americans sharply declines.
According to agency data obtained by the Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse in Syracuse, N.Y.:
The significant turndown in audits for richer Americans from FY 2007 to FY 2008 sharply contrasts with the IRS claim in a 2008 press release boasting that the agency was making “strong progress in a number of key enforcement areas,” especially for “those with incomes of $1 million or more.”
The IRS data clearly show that the audit rate on the 300,000-plus returns reporting incomes of more than $1 million was substantially down last year — dropping at least 19 percent. But because of admitted agency accounting errors and two sets of conflicting numbers the IRS published just last Friday (March 13, 2009), the actual extent of this decline may be much larger.
Continued here.
As Tax Season 2009 rumbles toward its climax on April 15, practitioners are suddenly reporting a mounting list of problems – most them stemming from an uncertain and increasingly grim economy.
NEXT QUESTION: How are firms planning to celebrate April 15th? Join the Busy Season 2009 survey; see the results.
By Rick Telberg
Tax accountants are scrambling to keep up with skittish clients and tardy forms and information. Many are making allowances and concessions to economically strapped customers by delaying or extending payment terms. Others are requiring some clients to pay upfront.
In Lithonia, Ga., for example, soloist Sabrina M. Batts at the Batts Tax Service Center tells me that this season is marked by “clients having a lack of money to pay for fees,” adding, “This the slowest season I have every seen.” As a result, she’s “making client leave post-dated checks.”
For the second year in a row, CPA C.J. Spady has ben giving a 10% discount to clients bringing their information prior to Feb. 13. It worked great last year. But this it took more “hustle,” Spady says, to get their information.
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In these tough times, leadership may be the deciding factor in survival.
How does your firm measure up?
Professor John Gaynard writes:
After using many different varieties of opinion survey, the Gallup Organization came to the conclusion a few years ago that the responses to just 12 questions can show why one organization, division, department or any other managerial unit is happier and more profitable than another
1. Does everybody know what is expected of them at work?
2. Do they have the materials and equipment they need to do the work right?
3. At work, do the great manager’s team members have the opportunity to do what they do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have they received recognition or praise for good work?
5. Does their manager, or someone else in the team, care about each individual as a person?
6. Does every person in the work group or team have someone who encourages their development?
7. Does everybody’s opinion in the team seem to count for the manager?
8. Is the mission/purpose of the company explained in such a way that the manager makes each member feel that his or her work is important?
9. Are all the people in the manager’s team or work group visibly committed to doing quality work?
10. Does everybody in the team or group have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has the manager talked to every member of the team or group about progress?
12. In that manager’s group or team, does every person have the opportunities to learn and grow at work?
A good manager will have high “yes” answers (4/5 or 5/5) when people answer the questions in his or her team. Â A manager who is not performing well will have a lot of “no” answers. Â Groups or teams with a lot of “yes” answers generate more profit and contentment at work.
The questions, how they were arrived at and their ability to analyze managerial performance are documented in a book by Marcus Buckingham, “First Break all the Rules.”
Source: http://coachingleadership.blogspot.com/2009/03/12-questions-that-show-good-or-poor.html
How will accountants celebrate the Busy Season 2009 Finale?
What are your plans? Comment here. Then join the survey and get all the answers.
by Rick Telberg
How you celebrate can depend on what you’re celebrating, particularly if you’re celebrating the end of busy season 2009.
There will, no doubt, be parties and much rejoicing. Maybe even some dancing, and, dare we say, drinking? So it’s time to start chilling the champagne and booking the rooms. The end of busy season is within sight.
The celebrations, like accountants and accounting firms, come in all favors and styles.
Take, for instance, Mark Borel’s small practice in Reno, Nev. One year recently, his post-season celebration plans included a staff lunch, after which all the ladies were sent to a spa for all-afternoon treatments. And then the shop was closed for a three-day weekend.
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Francine McKenna has long been a must-read at re:theAuditors.
Now she’s at The Huffington Post too, and a force to be reckoned with:
Governments all over the world are protecting and shielding the public accounting firms from failure under any circumstances, even in the face of repeated failure on their part. The current business model for global public accounting firms no longer promotes the safeguarding of shareholder interests in the modern publicly traded multinational. Shareholders, and other stakeholders, are being shafted. The firms and their partners may be corrupt. They are unequivocally self-interested.
When it comes to the Big 4 public accounting firms, the official word is still, “Too few to fail. Too powerful to call to account.”
Go to Francine McKenna: The Button-Down Mafia: How the Public Accounting Firms Run a Racket on Investors and Thrive While Their Clients Fail.
The SEC has declared that UK companies which agree to new proportionate liability rules for their auditors can’t use their financial statements in the U.S.
Peterson calls it a “non-surprise:”
The only surprise about the SEC’s position — which effectively slams the door on the world’s only remotely influential action affecting the large auditors’ deadly litigation exposure — is that it took so long to arrive.
Peterson has long been saying that the Big Four firms face potentially lethal liability issues. His views are especially worth listing to, considering he’s a former Big Four attorney. If he’s worried, we should all worry.
Continued here: Re:Balance — Jim Peterson.
The Obama administration is focusing some of its recovery efforts on small businesses.
“It’s about time,” says Bill Sheridan here: CPA Success: Small business takes its turn in economic recovery’s spotlight.
Howard Wolosky’s guest commentary, “Are Ethics and Profits Mutually Exclusive,” has sparked some feedback by a couple leaders of the profession.
Rex Gatto, Ph.D. at http://rexgatto.com:
Howard: As always, you present interesting and thought provoking questions and insight. What has happened to our sense of integrity and loyalty? Do we focus on greed and competition or do we focus on what is in the best interest of our firm, community and nations? We need to find leaders who will go against the current events of the day to be role models for ethical behavior. It is difficult to turn around a nation that is going in the wrong directions but it can be done in our communities and cities and work upward. CPAs are trusted advisors who care and want to support their clients. Who are the inspirations leaders who are being inclusive rather than exclusive to pull a wounded economy and national together is the macro question. The micro question is can people in a profession such as CPAs provide the ethical leadership and direction that is needed. CPAs can and should provide ethical leadership while working with their clients, guiding them to do the right things. Ethics and profits can concurrently exist in a healthy and correct way.
Ed Kless at http://www.verasage.com and www.choosegreat.com:
The answer to your headline question is a resounding NO!
As George Gilder demonstrated in his 1981 masterpiece Wealth & Poverty, profits are an index of altruism – the other centeredness of the business. Oil companies have been highly profitable because they create great value for their customers.
What you are talking about if FRAUD. Fraud and 99% of all business do not go hand in hand. The most despicable thing that has come out of the past few months in the ever increasing belief that businesses and business people are all evil frauds. The overwhelming majority are not.
Recovery demands that we reverse the thinking on this. Regulation along will not do it. I am with you that transparency is absolutely needed. The reason is it turns us all into potential regulators.
No matter what laws are passed there will never be a governmental agency that can uncover all fraud. No should the elimination of all fraud by the goal, it is just not possible.
Life is risky! If zero risk is the goal, you should end your life now!
CPAs rally around a few tried-and-true business-getting strategies.
By Rick Telberg/At Large
There are three kinds of marketing: lousy, tried and true, and new.
Just because there’s a lot of overlap doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Some marketing doesn’t work or doesn’t work well. Then there’s the marketing techniques that have always been around, some of which work well and some of which yield an unsatisfying bang-to-buck ratio.
And there’s the new stuff, the new strategies that don’t yet qualify as tried and true. Among these strategies we’re bound to find ideas both good and bad.
But as we grapple with a faltering economy, the pool of clients is going to shrink a bit, and those businesses that survive are going to get pickier about how they spend their money. Marketing will become a more important factor in determining which accounting firms thrive. At that point, poor marketing means disaster, and the tried and true just might not be good enough.
Interested in what’s new in marketing for accounting and audit firms, we regularly survey our most dedicated readers and how they’ve been promoting their firms and developing new business. Some very interesting ideas have been coming back.
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