Monthly Archives: September 2014

Readers Sound Off on Liberty, H&R Block Plans to Launch Bookkeeping Services

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Liberty Block logosNew strategic ally, or competitive threat?

Practitioners are actively debating the effects and impact of H&R Block and Liberty jumping into the bookkeeping business, as detailed by CPA Trendlines’ Hitendra Patil here.

“This is an opportunity to highlight quality,” says Wesley Middleton, head partner at Middleton Raines in Houston. “The only person who has something to worry about are those that are only focused on price.”

Not all practitioners agree in the discussion which began at CPA Trendlines and has spilled onto the 20,000-member CPA Trendlines Linkedin group. READ MORE →

Client’s Difficult Daughter Balks at Bill

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Ed Mendlowitz CPA The Practice Doctor Q and ADo you talk to the dad?

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I have a very good client who pays us to prepare his daughter’s tax return. The daughter was going through a divorce and asked us to assist her and her attorney and she said she would pay us herself, and we shouldn’t ask her father to pay us and she also asked us not to tell her father what was going on. We did a lot of work and because of what we did she got a much better settlement than if we did not help her. Additionally a lot of what we did was rush on-demand work and some of it was quite difficult. Also, she was not the most pleasant to deal with on many occasions. READ MORE →

6 Ways to Move Beyond Compliance Services

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Dollar Concept, Financial Adviser Or Finance AdvisoryBecoming a ‘trusted advisor.’

By Sandi Smith Leyva
The Accountant’s Accelerator

Here’s a question: What portion of your revenues are derived from compliance work – e.g., tax preparation and IRS representation; bookkeeping; QuickBooks setup, cleanup and training; payroll; and audit work – versus value-added work, e.g., revenue improvement, business consulting, profit margin analysis and workflow improvement projects?

If you answered 100 percent compliance work and no value-added services, you’re not alone.  There’s a lot of lip service about moving from compliance services to becoming a “trusted advisor.” There’s an equal amount of confusion in how to get started.

Here are a few tips to help those of you who want to move in that direction. READ MORE →

SURVEY RESULTS: CPA Firms Accelerate Growth

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The National MAP Survey of CPA Firm Statistics -- The Rosenberg Survey
Click for full report

The 2014 national MAP survey shows widening divide between large and small firms.

Exclusive to CPA Trendlines
The National MAP Survey of CPA Firm Statistics

Marking the third consecutive year of quickening expansion since the recession, CPA firms are posting 6.7% revenue growth, according to the latest results from the National MAP Survey of CPA Firm Statistics reported here exclusively by CPA Trendlines.

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“The National MAP Survey of CPA Firm Statistics: The Rosenberg Survey” is well known and well respected within the national CPA industry, due to its solid reputation for accuracy, thoroughness and high participation rate. Exactly 75% of the firms in this year’s survey participated in 2013. This allows for more accurate year-to-year data comparisons. All of these characteristics, plus the highly sought-after executive summary, make “The Rosenberg Survey” a must-read for any entrepreneurial-minded CPA firm. The survey captures data from participating firms of all revenue ranges, from solo practitioners to those with over $20 million in net fees. READ MORE →

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

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11 weekly self-assessment questions for successful professionals.h

By August Aquila
The Effective Partnership

When’s the last time you talked to your partners about the “mirror questions”? We all know that it’s easy to kid ourselves about how well we’re doing. But when we have to look ourselves in the mirror, well, it’s another story.

Rather than giving the partners the questions they should answer, we suggested that they come up with their own self-assessment. Specifically, we wanted them to devise questions they could ask themselves each week to evaluate how well they had performed. In the end, we came up with 11. READ MORE →