Monthly Archives: July 2015

5 Cool Ways to Streamline Data Sharing

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Businessman using Internet on smartphone and laptopClients and stakeholders benefit, and so do you.

By Sandi Smith Leyva
The Accountant’s Accelerator

Do you ever get any of the following questions from clients or co-workers?

  • I can’t find your email.
  • I accidentally deleted what you just sent me.
  • My computer crashed and I lost everything. (And I want you to take up your precious time to help me recreate everything you’ve ever sent me.)
  • I lost my tax return and I need it in the next five seconds.

MORE ON SMALL-FIRM GROWTH STRATEGIES: 9 Ways Accountants Throw Away Profits | 5 Ways a Deadline Can Help Close a Deal | 7 Ways to Get New Revenue from Old Clients | 5 Things You Know That Clients Don’t | 3 Ways to Test Your Revenue Forecast | How to Work the Same Hours and Make More Money | Take Advantage of 4 Key Marketing Strategies | Four Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table

These requests can get downright annoying. And they can be expensive, too. Knowledge workers spend anywhere from 15 to 35 percent of their time searching for information. Executives waste six weeks per year searching for lost documents. READ MORE →

Enhancing Client Financial Health through Collaborative Services

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Clients benefit when CPAs and investment advisors work together.

By Martin E. Levine, ChFC, CPA, MBA
4Thought Financial Group, Inc.        

Martin Levine 4Thought
Levine

Even if the client isn’t always right, helping clients understand and make the best financial decisions is always the right course of action. 

CPAs understand the implications of financial decisions and strive to advise clients in ways that improve their financial well-being.  However, clients frequently have multiple – sometimes conflicting – financial goals, and use other financial professionals, including financial advisors, attorneys and business consultants, to achieve them.  READ MORE →

12 Ways to Determine Your Competence

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Martin Bissett
Bissett

BONUS: Case Study and Worksheets:
3 questions to gauge your own competence, 4 questions about your personal brand and a 5-point checklist.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

The Passport to Partnership study collated a number of responses in a conversational style. Two brief but succinct examples that really stood out on the realities of how a firm assesses an individual’s “competence” to lead are showcased below.

  1. Learn more
    Learn more

    They need to explain technical data to me in a way that I know they understand it.

  2. What kind of lifestyle does this person have outside of work? We’ll be looking at Facebook, Twitter and Google to find out.

MORE ON THE PASSPORT TO PARTNERSHIP: Sailing Through the Seven C’s to Partnership | Passport to Partnership: New Research Shows Wide Gap between Partners and Partners-To-Be

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Each Social Channel Has a Language

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Young people holding social media logosBetter to pick one spot and be devoted to it than scattershot across three.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

Each social media channel has its own language, culture and dialect. You need to make sure that your culture (aka your voice and how you post) matches the specific channel, otherwise it’s going to seem awkward. Social media has to be understood and used properly and even though you’re going to be experimenting there are also some unwritten rules. Make sure that you’re fol­lowing the basic rules of the social media channel you’re using.

MORE RADICAL CPA: 5 Radical Ways to Be Social AND Strategic | How I Got Started Being Social | How Social Media Transforms Firms to their Core | 10 Radical Steps into the Cloud | The Market Is Moving Toward the Radicals | 5 Radical Transparencies; Are You Ready? | 4 Questions Radical Firms Must Face | Being Radical Is All About Your Customer | Why Start Being Radical Now? | Why Should CPAs Be Radical? | The Roots of ‘Radical’ CPAs | The First 3 Questions I Should Have Asked Before Starting My Own Practice

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If You Thought Tax Season 2015 Was Bad…

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…The IRS says 2016 could be even worse.

IRS projects even worse taxpayer service for the 2016 filing season (FY 2015).
IRS projects even worse taxpayer service for the 2016 filing season (FY 2015).

By CPA Trendlines

The 2015 filing season was akin to a Tale of Two Cities, according to the IRS’s own watchdog.

“For the majority of taxpayers who filed their returns and did not require IRS assistance, the filing season was generally successful,” according to the report issued to Congress by the national taxpayer advocate’s office headed by Nina Olson. “For the segment of taxpayers who required help from the IRS, the filing season was by far the worst in memory.”

Meanwhile, Olson urges Congress to undertake “fundamental tax reform,” pass a “Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights” law, and boost IRS funding.

“Everyone is in collective denial about what inadequate funding for the IRS means to taxpayers,” Olson says. READ MORE →

Summer Reading List: Five Great Books for the Five Lives of a Busy Accountant

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Game of Thrones wide

Accountants fill many roles. And there’s a good book for each.

By Hitendra Patil

In “A Dance with Dragons,” “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin, says, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one.”

MORE for THE ENTREPRENEURIAL ACCOUNTANT: Four Signs the Uberization of Accounting Has Already Begun |   The One Word that Can Make Accountants Rich  |  Management Guru Chester Elton on Success  |  Savvy CPAS Focus on the Constants  |  10 Things That Accountants Didn’t Need to Worry about 10 Years Ago  |  Three Amazing CPAs Who Want to Do Tax Returns for Free  |  Can Accounting Firms Lead With Work-Life Vision?  |  Why Accountants Could Be the Happiest People on Earth  | More…

Well, accountants don’t live just one life. At work, it’s almost as if they live five different lives. Here is a summer reading list for accountants with one book for each of the lives they live.

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