CPAs share some of their best time-management tips. How hard are YOU working? Join the survey, compare the answers.
by Rick Telberg
With the days of summer rapidly dwindling, accountants and finance managers across the nation are grabbing their last vacation days. But it’s not always easy.
Many finance and accounting professionals are working harder than ever, doing more with less as their organizations cut back with the recession. Balancing life and work becomes all the more difficult and all the more important. So we’ve been asking AICPA Insider readers for their best time-management tips for a balanced life.
Here are a few of the best we’ve received so far: READ MORE →
Six-year culture of abundance ends with a thud, firms re-group, restructure and re-learn how to operate in a culture of recession.
via news release
The CPA profession opened 2008 on the heels of several years of extraordinary growth and profits, hopeful that the economic slowdown would not morph into a recession. CPA firms ended the year with results most industries would have been happy with. The full effect of the recession didn’t have a big impact on CPA firms in 2008 because by the time the economic woes surfaced in the 4th quarter, most firms’ revenues were collected, invoiced or booked. Firms with annual net fees over $2 million (referred to as the “Over $2M Group”) posted the following 2008 results:
- Annual net fee growth was 8.2%, down from 10.8% in 2007. This marks the end of a remarkable six-year run for the CPA profession, triggered by the scandals of Enron and others in 2002 and fueled by the multi-billion dollar market created by legislation that followed.
- Average income per partner declined slightly to $365,000 compared to $369,000 the year before. But larger firms’ (over $10 million in annual fees) earnings were down 8% from 2007 due to a drop-off in Sarbanes-Oxley and internal audit work. However, medium sized firms’ ($2-10 million) profits were up almost 1%.
Changes hit the CPA profession like a ton of bricks
Rosenberg
“The CPA profession had a great run for these past six years,” said Marc Rosenberg, creator of The Rosenberg Survey. “The post-Enron climate created a huge surge in demand for CPA firm services, allowing firms to virtually become order takers. Throttled by a historically low supply of experienced staff, partners worked harder than ever before, and the benefits showed up in their paychecks:  income per partner rose 50% since 2003.”
READ MORE →
Almost half of all CPAs say they’d quit for a job with better working conditions — even if it means a pay cut — even in this economy.
How hard are YOU working? Join the survey, compare the answers. And then add your comments here.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
While the CPA profession is proving remarkably recession-resistant, the worst business downturn since the Great Depression is nevertheless taking a toll.
To be sure, a number of firms and finance organizations have been forced into painful layoffs, although the latest jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a net seasonally adjusted 4,000-job increase from June to July at accounting and bookkeeping services, bringing the industry workforce to about 940,300. Still, that’s down from a year-ago July, when the BLS reported 947,500 jobs in the industry.
Despite the recession or because of it, the CPA profession is attracting unprecedented interest from college students. The AICPA reported a couple weeks ago that the number of students graduating with a bachelor’s or a post-grad degree in accounting rose 3.5 percent to more than 66,000 in 2008 – a new record. To be sure, the students chose their majors long before the recession became official, but after signs of economic uncertainty began. And there are now 213,000 more in the pipeline.
But the stresses and burdens of the recession on CPA workplaces are beginning to show. An increasing number of CPAs are telling me that they are working longer hours and enjoying it less. At the first sign of a recovery, the most talented and in-demand professionals could jump to a better job.
READ MORE →
Are the forecasters finally right?
Small Business Labs reminds us that “for at least 3 decades futurists and tech forecasters have declared the imminent decline of paper due to digital technology. And for three decades they’ve been wrong.”
Now, citing an IDC study: for the first time the number of printed pages in the U.S. will decline from 1.5 trillion in 2008 to 1.47 trillion in 2009.
“Despite this,” Steve King at Small Business Labs, says, “our use of printers has gone up. Scanning has become more important as has copying. We recently added several new standalone printers to replace older models and improve our scanning capability.”
Early results suggest CPAs haven’t cut technology spending as much as some have feared.
As we posted a little while ago, accounting firms and finance organizations are reacting, like many businesses, by curtailing or postponing expenditures on technology. But how much, exactly, is the question we’re trying to answer in this week’s new survey. Join the survey here and get a preview of the results.
The answers are starting to roll in… READ MORE →
What’s next in CPA technology? Join the survey; get more answers.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
Hit hard by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, accounting firms and finance organizations are reacting, like many businesses, by curtailing or postponing expenditures on technology.
How much, exactly, is the question we’re trying to answer in this week’s new survey. Join the survey here and get a preview of the results.
But accountants and finance professionals can hardly afford to fall behind at a time like this, according to three leading technology advisers with whom I have spoken. Instead, finance and accounting professionals should be using this period to catch up and even leap ahead. And with technology costs coming down, it’s hard to argue with the arithmetic.
There are at least five key strategies these leading advisers are recommending today: READ MORE →
What’s your best recession-busting idea? Add your suggestion here; then join the survey and get all the results.
by Rick Telberg
CPAs are grappling with the nation’s credit crisis with innovation, discipline and, mostly, a stiff upper lip. But no one ever said it was going to be easy.
One mid-level financial manager at a large company tells me things may be looking up, if only because companies like his are ratcheting down costs, sometimes painfully.
“Companies are doing better,” he says, “by restricting compensation and adopting industry practices towards base pay and bonuses.” Still, many companies remain top-heavy with management positions. “My company,” he says, “has announced great recent contracts but is wary about the
global economy.” READ MORE →
Could it be a “classic management-and-union battle?”
McGladrey & Pullen shook the accounting world July 21 when it announced that it planned to terminate a service agreement with RSM McGladrey, a unit of H&R Block Inc. and the nation’s fifth-largest accounting firm.
Get the story here:
“There really isn’t a precedent on this,†Allan Koltin, CEO of Chicago-based accounting consultant PDI Global Inc., tells James Dornbrook at the Kansas City Business Journal. READ MORE →
Forrester SMB study mirrors activity in accounting market.
It looks like many small and medium-size businesses are acting a lot like many accounting firms… which makes sense when you consider that most accounting firms are working hard to keep up with their clients and yet not stray too far ahead to the bleeding edge, nor fall too far behind. See Survey Results: Top Tech Trends 2009. All of this will be examined in-depth in an upcoming Aug. 11 webinar with Jean Caragher of Capstone Marketing and made possible by BizActions.
Meanwhile, Fredric Paul at bMighty reports: READ MORE →
