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.
READ MORE →
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.
READ MORE →
Finding and keeping good, young talent can be challenging for any business. And in today’s economy, the next generation can hold the key to boosting your bottom line.
Or, so we said in this post: Seven Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Millennial Workers
But Kel, the AccountingElf, left some good ideas too:
Wow. It was really interesting to read a summary like that, as I can really see a lot of those characteristics in my friends and myself. Especially the “feeling special†part. We have being well-rounded emphasized to us a lot, and so I think most people are confident that even if they don’t have the top grades, their other talents make up for it.
Feedback is important too. This may not be just my generation, but the work world is so different than what we are used to, that it can be hard to judge what we are or aren’t doing that is important. I think this ties into the big picture idea too- help your young employees understand the big picture and their place in it, and understand where they’re being evaluated. They will reward you by performing better in those areas.
And so did muunkky:
I like your points, but I think you’re being a bit soft. In order to really get the hearts of millenials you should actually listen to them and help them rethink the way you are doing business. Let them challenge everything about the current status quo and help them champion fundamental change in culture and communication.
Thanks for the comments!
