management

14 Smarter Ways to Use Timesheet Data

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Ed Mendlowitz CPA The Practice Doctor Q and AIf you just pay people and move on, you’re missing critical information.

By Ed Mendlowitz

QUESTION: I keep timesheets for billing purposes but am not clear how I can use them to better manage my practice. How can I do this?

MORE PRACTICE DOCTOR Q&A: Why More Firms Are Trashing Timesheets | How Much Overhead Is Too Much? | When Partners Stop Growing | Clear Billing Procedures Make Collecting Easier | Change Your Thinking About ‘Small’ Clients | It’s Not Sales. It’s Your Duty | When Staffers Stagnate | When to Hire an Admin Assistant | Why the Average Fee Doesn’t Matter | 8 Times When Hourly Billing Trumps Value Pricing | 10 (Nearly) Painless Ways to Keep Up to Date with Technology | 5 Time Management Tips for an Overworked Accountant | Running an Accounting Business | 14 Ways to Switch to Value Pricing

ANSWER: Analyzing time records is a very effective practice management tool and is an essential part of most professional services organizations. Some people contend that timesheets should not be used since they should not be the basis of any pricing, with fees solely based on the value to the client.

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5 Harmful Management Attitudes (and How to Fix Them)

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How common management pitfalls hurt firms and employees.

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli
CPA Trendlines / Succession Institute

How do attitudes, misconceptions and bad habits get in the way of our learning to be better managers?

RELATED: Do CPA Firms Need Management or Leadership? | Job 1 for The Practice Owner: Client Management

Here are five common attitudes, practices and perceptions we find:

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Do CPA Firms Need Management or Leadership?

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Differentiating between the two, and the two most common styles of management.

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli
CPA Trendlines / Succession Institute

Let’s start out with a straightforward question. What is the difference between management and leadership?

From one point of view, leadership is far different than management. For example, leadership might be all about developing a vision for the organization, being innovative, motivating others, empowering those around you, focusing on developing the people around you instead of just developing yourself, looking for positive ways to change, doing the right thing, and keeping the forest in view and not just see the trees.

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Get Radical About Pricing

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Two happy businessmen looking at digital tablet at desk in officeForget about measuring by time.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

“Forget about pricing and think about what people buy.”

Customers are not buying our time. They may be buying our expertise. But they’re really buying a solution to their problem. Famed management consultant Peter Drucker says, “A customer never buys a product by definition, the customer buys a satisfac­tion. Satisfaction of a want, he buys value.” He’s buying a good feeling.

MORE ON RADICALISM: Make Radical Connections | Let’s Get Radical About Content | Each Social Channel Has a Language | Get Ready for Radical Transparency | 5 Radical Ways to Be Social AND Strategic | How Social Media Transforms Firms to their Core | 10 Radical Steps into the Cloud | Six Competitive Advantages for The Radical CPA | Radical Customers Are On Their Way | 5 Radical Transparencies; Are You Ready? | 4 Questions Radical Firms Must Face | Being Radical Is All About Your Customer | Going Radical: The 4 Tenets of a ‘New Firm’ | Why Should CPAs Be Radical?

When lipstick leaves the manufacturer, it’s a solution. When it crosses the counter in a department store, it’s hope. From this perspective, how do we make our services into products or solutions? That’s essentially what you are doing with bundling and packages. You are productizing a service. READ MORE →

Make Radical Connections

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You don’t define your brand, your customers do. By Jody Padar The Radical CPA Social media is great for connecting with clients and prospects, but it also makes it easier to get published in the real media and that will … Continued

How to Combine Two Firms after Merger: Carefully

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When the deal is done: A 24-point checklist for the morning after.

By August Aquila
Creating the Effective Partnership

Congratulations! After years of planning and months of tough negotiations, you’ve finally closed the deal on merger of your CPA firm.

You might be thinking the most difficult work is behind you.  Think again! You now have to move your eye from the financial to the human side of the merger.

MORE for PRO Members: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall  |  6 Steps to Handle Staffing Problems in a Merger  |  New Times Call for New CPA Firm Metrics  |  6 Reasons Why CPA Firms Fail in Innovation  |  7 Signs Your Firm Is Headed for an Implosion  |  Why Is It Always about Partner Compensation?  |  Why Merge and What to Watch Out For  |  13 Steps to Fool-Proof Mergers and Acquisitions  |  13 Questions To Ask Yourself for Personal Growth  |  Partner Problem? First, Ask Yourself These 21 Questions  |  12 Reasons CPA Firm Staff Meetings Are a Waste of Time  |  The Managing Partner’s Secret Weapon in Change Management  |  The 10 Basic Ways to Boost Profits at an Accounting Firm  |  12 Must-Do Items for Your Partner Retreat Agenda

Your work in this area has just begun and may last for 12 months or more. The so-called soft side of doing a merger is just as important, if not more important, than the financial side. Just like with an iceberg you don’t know what lies beneath the surface. Just ask the captain of the unsinkable Titanic. Don’t let this same danger destroy your practice

In order to make sure your merger has a better than average chance of succeeding, here are 24 key items to be addressed: READ MORE →

Four Major Misconceptions about Millennials

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And six management strategies to unleash their potential for your firm.

Middleton
Middleton

By Wesley Middleton
Middleton Raines LLP

From the sound of it, Millennials are ruining everything. At least that’s how they’ve been made to feel. Supposed experts focus on how different the Millennials are, how hard they are to understand, to attract and to retain.

After reading the experts, I decided to offer my perspective as a managing partner of a 72-person firm where the average age of our firm is 34.65 and 49 of our people are the age 35 or below.  This experience – along with a 20-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son – has given me a different perspective.

In fact, the differences between the generations are exaggerated. It’s funny to see how the older generation always looks at the generation behind them and says they are so different and won’t achieve what we have or that they have some “hard to understand” ideas. They said that about me when I was 25.

I love this generation coming up and here is why: READ MORE →