Today's Features
CPA SHOW

The Role of Finance in Adaptive and Interactive Learning


Are you using everyone to their full potential?

By Jennifer Templeman
Jumpstart

Templeman will be appearing at the Accounting & Finance Show. Click here to learn more
Portrait of Jennifer Templeman
Templeman

I believe in the power of creativity, in innovative thinking, and of play as a conduit to bring forth new ideas. And yes, and I’m a CFO who leads a team of finance professionals who focus on compliance, adherence to regulations, and perfecting the process of predicting and ensuring an outcome based on historic performance and data.

Despite how at odds these two confessions may seem, they work together in a way that supports my belief that finance is a department designed to lead the culture in an organization.

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GROWTH STRATEGIES

Building a CPA Marketer’s Tech Stack

The right tools for the job.

Goricki

By Bob Goricki
Skoda Minotti

Being a CPA firm marketer means that you are often faced with two major limitations: time and budget. Unfortunately, I’m unable to create more of either, but I can point you in the direction of tools that can help maximize both.

10 More Great Tools at AAM Summit: For more tools, join Bob at the AAM Summit in Portland, Ore., May 15, at 3:50 p.m. for “10 Powerful Marketing Tools CPA Marketers Can Leverage Today.” To get more information or register for 2018 AAM Summit: Think Fresh! click here.

More at CPA Trendlines on: Marketing, Practice Development, Sales, Growth Strategies, and the AAM Summit.

Click to learn more

At this year’s AAM Summit, I’ll be sharing 10 of my favorite tools that help CPA marketers work smarter, not harder. While the full list will have to wait until May, I want to share a few “bonus” tools in this blog to jumpstart your post busy season marketing efforts before the conference. All of the tools below are free to try, so get started today!

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BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

IRS in Retreat from Communities

Disappearing brick-and-mortar offices undermine voluntary compliance, raising IRS costs.

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines

In case you haven’t noticed, the Internal Revenue Service has been retreating from local communities.

SPECIAL REPORT – Fixing the IRS: IRS #FAILs at Online Services Spell Problems for Professionals | Tax Accountants Fill the Breach of a Failing IRS | Beware the EZ Way Out | Can the IRS Improve Its Phone Service? | When Clients Face ‘Unreal’ IRS Audits | IRS Warns about Private Debt Collectors for Tax Season 2018  | Underfunded IRS Swamped with Problems | IRS in Retreat from Communities | Military Personnel Face New Battles at Home: The IRS | As New Economy Surges, IRS Falls Further Behind | Is the IRS Winning the Battle Against Identity Theft? | IRS Mulls Raising Fees to Cover Budget Shortfalls  |

More at taxtrendlines.com

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Today it has outreach offices in only 33 states and the District of Columbia. Private sector tax preparers are about as close to the IRS as most taxpayers can get.

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INNOVATION & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

How to Decide Who Decides Pay

Woman on building roof spraying out dollars with a garden hoseWhere to draw the line between managing partner and compensation committee.

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli
CPA Trendlines / Succession Institute

Everyone likes the idea that “I” will hold “me” accountable. But few like the idea of “anyone else” holding “them” accountable.

MORE ON PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: Accountability Requires Clear Expectations | Base Retirement on Today’s Operations | Who Decides What? | How Retired Partners Are Robbing their Own Firms | Best Practices for Mandatory Retirement | How Retirement Issues Affect Succession Planning | Succession: The Questions to Care About | How to Target What Skills to Develop Now | What Having Your Employees’ Backs Means | 5 Harmful Management Attitudes (and How to Fix Them) | Do CPA Firms Need Management or Leadership? |  Job 1 for The Practice Owner: Client Management

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So, once the decision has been made to implement systemic changes to hold partners accountable to specific performance expectations rather than just relying on everyone to put in a self-proclaimed “good day’s work,” the next battleground is determining who will be holding whom accountable. The discussion always shifts to “let’s have a group of people, like a compensation committee, hold us accountable.”
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CHARTS & GRAPHS

Tax Pros E-File 63 Million Returns through April 13

Chart of IRS filing dataAverage refunds remain positive even as totals are in the red.

By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines

With less than a week to go, tax processing slowed slightly.

MORE ON TAX SEASON: DIYers Outpace Pros in E-Filing Growth Rate | Pros Filing 55% of E-Returns | IRS in Retreat from Communities | SURVEY: New Tax Law Roils Busy Season | David Bergstein on Tax Season | Tax Accountants Fill the Breach of a Failing IRS | Artificial Intelligence Gets a Boost with Tax Reforms
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The IRS had received 118.6 million individual income tax returns as of April 13, the latest data available. That's up 0.1 percent from the same week in 2017. It had processed 114.8 million of those, down 0.2 percent.
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CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

The Advisor of the Future: Client Champion

Servicing clients with courage and conviction.

Join Marc Rosen and other CPA Trendlines experts at the 2018 Association for Accounting Marketing Summit in Portland, Ore., May 14-17. Click to learn more

By Marc Rosen
Client Experience Institute

With many clients demanding more from their accountants and advisors, it's time to embrace a more proactive approach – Client Champion.

More at CPA Trendlines on: Marketing, Practice Development, Sales, Growth Strategies, and the AAM Summit.

More Marc Rosen: Marc Rosen on Relationship Capital [VIDEO]

By serving as a Client Champion, you can unleash another form of value that creates true distinction. READ MORE →

TECHNOLOGY

Holographic Memory Film Is Thinner Than Human Hair

Person working on holographic filmThis version is stable in UV light, unlike earlier attempts.

By Rick Richardson

As humanity creates more and more digital information, we'll need better ways to store it.

MORE TECH THIS WEEK: How Blockchain Is Changing Our World | IBM Has Created a Computer Smaller Than a Grain of Salt | Solar Panels Generate Power from Falling Raindrops | Facial Recognition Could Replace Boarding Passes Within 4 Years | Google, Rolls-Royce to Create Self-Piloting Ships | Blockchain Corporate Strategies [VIDEO] | New AI Can Detect Colorectal Cancer Quickly | Blockchain Defined [VIDEO]
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That's why newly developed nanoparticle-based films may be so critical. They're over 80 times thinner than a human hair and could create materials that can holographically archive at least 1,000 times more data than a DVD in a 10- by 10-centimeter piece of film.
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MARKETING & SALES

How to Create and Communicate Value in Every Prospect or Client Interaction

Portrait of Amy Franko
Franko
Join Amy Franko and other CPA Trendlines experts at the 2018 Association for Accounting Marketing Summit in Portland, Ore., May 14-17. Click to learn more

3 steps to communicating business value.

By Amy Franko

As a busy practice leader, it can be tough to balance the delivery aspects of your role with the continual need to cultivate new business.

As you think about your prospects and clients, take a moment to consider your interactions with them.

More at CPA Trendlines on: Marketing, Practice Development, Sales, Growth Strategies, and the AAM Summit.

What kind of impression do you make on your clients?

Each time you meet with, talk to or write to them, you have an opportunity to bring value.

Do they think of you as someone who leaves every interaction better than you found it?
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BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Busy Season 2018: How Good Can It Get?

Join the survey. Get the results.

More work, more clients, more fees, more profits. So who's complaining?

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines

Despite beginning in chaos and uncertainty with the biggest tax-law change in three decades, Busy Season 2018 may go down as a banner year in the books for the tax profession – one of the best ever, according to the annual CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.

Scroggs

Kathy J. Scroggs, of Scroggs & Associates in Montecito, Calif., says, “My team is working like a well-tuned grand piano.”

Almost half of all CPAs report a busy season better than last year, with more work and higher profits. Additionally, two-thirds cite gains in revenue and in the number of clients.

One tax practitioner, reporting a “much better year,” is riding a wave of shifting clientele. “I'm having more people coming in to prepare and use e-file, more than last year,” he tells CPA Trendlines, “especially new business owners opening LLCs.”

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