Three questions to re-set your mindset.
By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide
Mike says: "We have decided to be more intentional in running our firm as a business, and I’m interested in gaining the perspective of other firms and experts in our field."
Thanks, Mike!
Because COVID-19 punishes the complacent.
By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library
Jeff Mowery with Gale Crosley
“If you have great talent, you can accomplish anything.”
Guidance, templates, client letters and emails, phone scripts, conversation starters, best practices for your firm – available through CPA Trendlines.
CPA Trendlines is partnering with Inovautus Consulting, a nationally recognized leader in marketing and business development programs for accounting firms, to offer a new client COVID-19 client communications and practice management toolkit that will be updated continuously for the duration of the Coronavirus crisis.
Save $50 today with discount code CPATRENDLINES20
Click here to learn more
The "FFCRA+ Toolkit" was launched with coverage for the Families First Coronavirus Response and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Acts, and will include coverage of all future crisis-related legislative, regulatory, and business impacts.
From The Succession Institute
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, CPA Trendlines is partnering with The Succession Institute to offer free access to some of its most popular video training programs. This is a limited-time-only offer, expiring June 30.
CPA Trendlines readers can use the password "free" (all lower case) for each video (plus the handouts) and get more details here.
Now is the time to re-think and re-plan how you want your firm to evolve and prosper as this pandemic fades into the background. The videos are packed full of ideas and opportunities to become better, faster, and stronger in the future. READ MORE →
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And the top five survival strategies, according to CPA Trendlines Research.
CPA Trendlines Business Barometer:
How accountants are managing:
Join the survey. Get the results.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Under the historically unprecedented pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. accounting firms large and small are adapting as fast as they can—or rather, as fast as they must.
MORE: Feeling the Pain? The Biggest Job Losses by Client Sector | Tax Season Pivots to Covid Rescue Season | How Accountants Are Coping with COVID-19 | SURVEY: Confronting Coronavirus Chaos | Planning for the Coronavirus Recession | Tax Season Turns Ugly under Coronavirus | Tax Season Turns Ugly under Coronavirus | Coronavirus Culture-Shift Hits Accounting Firms | 41 Items to Check on Business Tax Returns | Tax Season Funnies: The Poetic Versions | How to Stop Drowning in COVID Tax Deadlines [Webinar]
CPA Trendlines is providing FREE access to some of our latest coronavirus crisis updates: Start here for a guide to all our free coverage.
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.
Practitioners are striving, struggling, scrambling to do what they have always done, and on top of that, to learn what they never knew in order to serve clients as in ways they needed to before.
Less than three months from when the first cases were reported, the pandemic has taken the lives of over 70,000 Americans and is approaching 3,000 deaths a day. While the pandemic has been a shock to the economy, tax and accounting practices appear to be maneuvering through it better than many other businesses.
Live 2-hour Webinar: Playing Dodgeball in a Maze. Avoiding Hits, Getting Through.
With Bradley Burnett
On late Friday, May 14, SBA launched its maiden voyage application for PPP loan forgiveness. This never-seen-before adventure goes a long way to clearing up most of our questions about PPP loan forgiveness. Yet, in true SBA fashion, in part, it leaves us hanging in peril.
Tuesday, May 26
11 a.m. ET / 2 hours, 2 CPE/CE
Register Today
Only $79
(Until May 24, then $99)
NEW DATES ADDED:
Monday, June 1
3 p.m. ET / 2 hours, 2 CPE/CE
Register Now for $79
(Until 05/30 then $99)
Friday, June 5
12 p.m. ET / 2 hours, 2 CPE/CE
Register Now for $79
(Until 06/03 then $99)
It’s a bit like playing a game of dodgeball while working through a maze to become free. The object of the game is to make it to the other side without taking a hit. Every hit costs the freedom forgiveness brings. Both safe harbors and peril lurk around almost every corner. READ MORE →
Help yourself while you're helping them.
By Jody Grunden
Clients desire transparency. Being transparent with clients and having open, honest communication with them helps build really strong, healthy working relationships. It’s never been so important for us to have open communication channels with our clients at all times no matter what form of communication is being utilized.
MORE: The Right Way to Onboard New Clients | How to Audit 401(k)s | 3 Measures of the Effectiveness of Your Team | How to Profit with Workflow Apps | Cyber Security at a Virtual CPA Firm | Top Tech Choices for the Virtual Firm | Keeping the Right People on the Bus
In some organizations, people hide behind their computers if they feel too busy or if they don’t want to face the client because they aren’t able to meet a deadline. We, on the other hand, make it a priority to be available to our clients at all times.
READ MORE →
How many are still using Word 2007 – Who are they? And why?
Checklists: Top 10 Tips for Buyers and Sellers.
By Ira Rosenbloom
Many CPA firms go into merger conversations thinking that, because they have done deals before, they can do what they’ve done in the past. But in this Covid-impacted economy, the tolerance for risk is low—and changing day-to-day.
MORE IRA ROSENBLOOM: Seven Smart Ways to Make This Your Best Tax Season Ever | Eight Steps for Re-engineering the Role of Managing Partner | Ten Steps to a Better Tax Season | Feeling the Urge to Merge? First, Consider the Angles
Coronavirus crisis updates: Start here for a guide to all our coverage.
We're seeing every day how much the pandemic can impair and alter both daily life and business fundamentals, so the more efficient you can be in getting ready for a merger, the better. These days, you need to move fast or risk losing out.
Here are some recommendations crucial for getting both buyers and sellers properly prepared for their next step in M&A negotiation.
5 questions that go beyond the eeny meeny miny moe.
By Steven E. Sacks
The old saying that a camel was a horse created by committee has an element of truth to it. If you think that everyone on a board or executive committee shares the same opinions, philosophies and vision, then think again.
MORE: Confronting Leadership: Not Such a Bad Thing | New Opportunities for a ‘New Normal’ | Working Remotely Shouldn’t Mean Feeling Isolated | 4 Ways to Boost Job Satisfaction
The eeny meeny miny moe may be a little tongue-in-cheek, but the question is how deliberate a CPA firm should be in choosing its board or executive committee members.
READ MORE →
First, a couple of COVID-19 jokes courtesy of a client. (Too soon?)
As collected by Robert E. Mckenzie
I need to practice social distancing from the refrigerator.
Homeschooling is going well. Two students suspended for fighting and one teacher fired for drinking on the job.
MORE: Tax Season Funnies: The Poetic Versions | A Rabbi’s Advice | The Next Political Party Symbol | Gabriel and Saint Peter Confer | A Tax Lawyer at the Pearly Gates | Gargoyles in the IRS? | The ‘Service’ in IRS
The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take,
If the tax collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
~ Ogden Nash READ MORE →
The benefit? Five more years of connectivity.
By Rick Richardson
In a triumph for the nascent industry of “satellite servicing,” an aging communications satellite has returned to service in geostationary orbit.
MORE TECH THIS WEEK: What Wi-Fi 6E Means for You | Buzz-Buzz! Step Back! | FBI Recommends Passphrases Over Password Complexity | How to Sanitize Electronics Against COVID-19 with UV Light | How 5G Changes Everything
Northrop Grumman announced recently that its Mission Extension Vehicle-1, or MEV-1, has restored the Intelsat 901 satellite and relocated it into a position to resume operations.
READ MORE →
Firms target annual net profit caps, early retirement provisions, and mandatory retirement ages.
By Domenick Esposito
With profits likely to take a short-term hit, retired partners at many CPA firms are facing cuts to their payouts, according to our straw poll of 30 leading firms.
MORE from DOM ESPOSITO: Keep Your Firm from Biting the Dust | The Six Ingredients for Firm Value | Four Ways to Add $100,000 in New Business Fees Every Year | Eight Steps to Small Firm Survival | No Partner Candidates? Whose Fault Is That? | Prune Your Firm: ‘Rightsize’ Managers and Partners | How Partners Fail | Ineffective Management Is Hazardous to Your Firm’s Health | Profitability Requires Discipline |
Coronavirus crisis updates: Start here for a guide to all our coverage.
With Covid-19 hurting revenues and bottom lines, firms of all sizes are reconfiguring their staff loads and renegotiating their space requirements.
But we haven't heard much about what firms are doing about their obligations for deferred compensation partner retirement plans. Until now.
Five tough questions to ask about your firm's leadership in these tough times.
By Bill Penczak
In times like these, firms should be challenging themselves with the tough question, “What do we want to be, today and into the future?”
MORE: How to Inoculate Your Firm against Covid Competition | ‘Found Money’ Delights Clients | Don’t Buy a Rolodex, Buy a Process | The Three R’s for Beating the Corona Crisis | 6 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks
If maintaining the status quo and “serving clients,” whatever that really means, are the only responses your partner and leadership teams can muster, then perhaps it's time to evolve from being a lifestyle firm to being one with a vision and the guts to achieve it.
The 15th still means something.
As collected by Robert E. Mckenzie
COVID-19 humor courtesy of clients and friends:
MORE: Tax Season Funnies: Making Sense of Tax Forms | Tax Season Funnies: The Poetic Versions | A Rabbi’s Advice | The Next Political Party Symbol | Gabriel and Saint Peter Confer | A Tax Lawyer at the Pearly Gates | Gargoyles in the IRS? | The ‘Service’ in IRS
I know we have until July 15 this year, but April 15 is still a reference point in tax humor:
“The U.S. tax code was written by "A" students. Every April 15, we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.” – P.J. O’Rourke
READ MORE →
