Today's Features

After You Check Your Cybersecurity, Help Others

Make it a client service option.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

In 2020, like many businesses, we went remote. My remote team of excellent ladies in Chennai, India, had to go even more remote than they already were. When India shut down, I figured I was out of business. We promise our cybersecurity is job number one to our accounting and financial firms. We have a highly controlled work environment, except for the day care and under 3’s occasionally looking for Mum. I did not think sending our employees home would work.

MORE: Cover These Five Areas of Information Security | Let Tech Make Communication Easier | How to Assess Needs for a Client Proposal | Best Practices for Source Doc Permissions and Handling | Every Back Office Support Client Needs a Playbook | Creating a Back Office Support Playbook | Strengthen Client Ties with Workflow Tools | Understand Your Online Marketing Options | Narrow Your Prospects by Choosing a Vertical | Build Your Team, Then Choose Your Clients | How Back Office Support Adds Value | AI Is Not Your Enemy
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But thank the universe, many of our clients had no problem as long as we could figure out the security. They had been working with the same team of ladies. They saw them on Zoom and communicated daily on Slack. So, in 48 hours we went through an internal change to allow that to happen.
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Be Clear About Your ROI Proposition

Woman's hand pressing words "ASK AN EXPERT"

Consider what the next generation of practice leaders faces.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

The Passport to Partnership study collated a number of responses in a conversational style. The need for professionals who can remain calm in the storm is showcased below and was repeated many times in various different ways.

MORE: Keep Business Development Going During Busy Season | Health, Wealth, Stealth: Challenges on the Path to Partnership | Don’t Let Recurring Fees Kill Your Practice | Rate Your Personal Purpose | Five Ways to Make Selling Easier | Six Keys to Getting a Proposal Accepted | Tell the World Your Worth | Four Surprising Keys to Communication | Culture Can’t Be Ignored
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The expert council

What is going to be the single biggest challenge for the next generation of practice leaders?
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End Tax Season Meetings with Clients … Seriously

Clients who want to meet should be more than willing to pay for that meeting.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

What did Dorothy and her friends fear in The Wizard of Oz? “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Dorothy feared the wrong things if she was a partner in a CPA firm. We don’t see much wildlife in our offices during tax season unless you count fast-food delivery people and the occasional crazy client.

MORE: Get Clients to Understand Firm Processes … or Say Goodbye | Train Now Before It Costs You Down the Road | Keep Clients from “Balance Due” Shock | It’s OK to Say No to Clients (Even the Large Ones) | You Train Your Clients, Whether You Mean To or Not | Business Owners Face One of Three Exits | How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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We should fear the events that destroy our priorities and drain hours from productive work. Meetings and phone calls and emails, oh my! From a practice management standpoint, let’s look at why these communication methods are so destructive.

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Tax Refunds, Tax Pro Market Share Trending Up

data table

* Total refunds issued represents returns received and processed in 2024 – the current year only. The number of direct deposit refunds represents returns received in the current and prior year but processed in 2024.

 

How long before more figures flip positive … or might they not?

By Beth Bellor

The 2024 filing season has been seven days shorter than 2023’s, but that’s making less difference as individual income tax returns keep dropping into the Internal Revenue Service inbox, just 3 percent off last year’s pace.

MORE: Tax Pros Handle 37.7% of E-filings | Tax Pros File 33% of Early Returns
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The IRS had received 44.6 million such returns as of Feb. 23, the last week for which data has been released. It had processed 44.1 million returns, down 3.6 percent.
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Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing

Relevance empowers staff to do their best work because an audit isn’t reduced to checklists.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

If we can’t demonstrate to our clients that our work is relevant, then the audit will go the way of the dinosaur. Relevance underpins the other attributes.

MORE: Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
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Relevance is not a one-time event. It’s a continuous process woven through everything your firm does. You build it one step at a time. This should be done with every audit, so this becomes core to the fabric of the firm’s culture.
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Courting a Client? Don’t Give Too Much Away for Free

businesswoman shakes client's hand across desk, both seated

What to say instead.

By Ed Mendlowitz
202 Questions and Answers: Managing an Accounting Practice

Question: I usually give away too much info at a meeting to get a new client.

MORE: How to Start Providing Family Office Services | Higher Fees to Start: Ten Ways to Make Your Tax Season Better | Three Ways to Start an Accounting Practice | Free Consultation? Not Always | Referral Fee? Forget It | How Much Is Your Tax Practice Worth? | Merge in Lower-Priced Work without Losing Out
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We simply answer too many of their questions during the initial meeting. We don’t know how much info to give away so the possible new client will get hooked and not take the information and run to somebody else.
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Make It ‘Productive Season’

Don’t be busy. Be productive.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

At this time of year, most accountants are considered to be mired in an annual waterboarding-like ritual known as “busy season.” While the moniker has long stirred ire, one way to rally against its implication is to take a good look at what being “busy” means. Moreover, why not make it more productive?

MORE FINEBERG: It’s Time to Do the Uncomfortable | Jeremy Sulzmann: Can Intuit Mend Fences with Accountants at QB Connect? | Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block | Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously? |You’re Doing Email Wrong | Careful … You May Be Advising! | When Live Events Fail | Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | Accounting Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting |Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients?

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Perspective is everything. And while I’ve noticed more accounting professionals making concerted efforts to have more of a life/work balance, it is apparent that much of the work that contributes to being “busy” could evolve into productivity.

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Survey Shows Challenges, Priorities Shifting

two worried businesspeople having coffee and looking at computer

Top concerns vary widely by firm size.

By CPA Trendlines Research

CPA firms small, midsized and large are facing new challenges and reorganizing their priorities as they shake off the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the Wolters Kluwer 2024 Accounting Industry Report, based on a survey of 1,509 accounting firms, pricing and competitive fee pressures are the overall biggest challenges firms are dealing with. The pressure is most prominent at small firms, which comprised 90 percent of the survey respondents. Forty percent of those smaller firms said it was their top concern.

MORE: Survey Shows That Tech Remains the Great Divide | Is the CPA Business Model the Clog in the Pipeline? | Accountants Cozy Up to Clients with CAS CPAs Culling Clients for Better Work-Life Balance | Women-Owned Businesses Upbeat but Need Help | Accountants to the Rescue as Startups Struggle | Looking for Recent Grads? Good Luck
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This is the first time pricing has ranked among the top five challenges since 2015.

Pricing ranked third among large firms, 39 percent of which said it was a problem.
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