Webcast Series: Build a Better Firm with The Succession Institute
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Today's Features
SIX-MINUTE SURVEY: Top Business Strategies for After Busy Season
After Busy Season, which STRATEGIC ACTIVITY will be your TOP PRIORITY?
Check one to launch the survey and get the results.
b. Focus on marketing and getting new business
c. Learning from Busy Season '19
d. Investing in new technology
e. Adding, cutting, or upgrading staff
f. Adjusting pricing strategies & billing rates
g. Changing jobs or getting a promotion
i. Other
Yes, the survey should take only six minutes. (We timed it.)
And you'll be the first to get the special topline executive summary, just for participating. As always, confidentiality assured.
Go PRO Today! See Why Everyone Follows CPA Trendlines
"Thank You!" to all our great readers and colleagues...
We're celebrating at CPA Trendlines. And we couldn't do it without the support and interest of the great people in this great profession.
Thank you for your great feedback!
– Rick Telberg
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Be Careful with Microsoft Office Upgrades
Consider more training on productivity applications.
By Roman H. Kepczyk
Quantum of Paperless
To be effective in business today, every member of your firm must optimally utilize the Microsoft Office suite at an intermediate to advanced level for Outlook, Excel and Word.
MORE: Jumping to Windows 10 | SURVEY: Have You Dumped Manual Invoices Yet? | File Server Replacement Not for the Inexperienced | SURVEY: When Firms Track CPE Digitally
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.
The CPAFMA 2018 IT Survey found that 45 percent of responding firms had standardized on Office 2016 (including Office365 users), 31 percent had standardized on Office 2013 and 23 percent on Office 2010. Firms have traditionally been behind the adoption curve because of the lag time of accounting vendors supporting the latest version, particularly for audit engagement binders.
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Flying Taxis Could Beat Cars for Efficiency
Distance and capacity matter.
By Rick Richardson
Flying cars do sound cool, but whether they’re a good idea is up for debate.
MORE TECH THIS WEEK: How to Beat the Online Sales Tax | New TSA Tech Will Let You Keep Laptops, Liquids in Bags | Technology Helped Hikers Survive 5 Days in Mountains | Microsoft’s Word on Protecting Your Network | How Google Maps Can Help You Avoid Speeding Tickets | What’s Ahead for the Smart Home in 2019?
Fortunately, they do seem to have some benefits, among them, improved efficiency – at least on long trips.
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Start with the Cash
After all, what is most important?
By Ed Mendlowitz
Call Me Before You Do Anything: The Art of Accounting
One time I was asked to audit a hotel in Florida that was going to be foreclosed on by the mortgagor and for which I was paid in advance.
MORE: Secret Success Formula: E=fs4Uh | The Staffer Who Was Too Smart | How I Got a Mercedes as a Fee | Hot Shot Sales Manager Is Not Such a Hot Shot | You Must Push the Pencil | The Art of the Deal Starts with Listening | Working for a Jerk | The ‘Wrong’ CPE
The audit was planned and scheduled, and it looked like we had everything under control from our end as much as we could.
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SURVEY: 59% Deliver Invoices on Paper
6 Ways to Retain NextGen Staff
68% of young employees are job hunting in the next year. How about yours?
By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library
Our Chicago roundtable, consisting of the most prestigious and largest local CPA firms in the Windy City, convened a conference that brought the house down. Jennifer Wilson, who leads Convergence Coaching, was our speaker.
MORE: How to Develop a Truly Progressive NextGen Culture | The Top 5 Concerns of Great Managing Partners | Partners: When To Speak Up and When To Shut Up
Having the right staff and using people in the right way – highest and best use – and keeping your best people is still the #1 challenge that firms face. Jen addressed this issue with magnum force.
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SURVEY: Accountants’ Favorite Desktop PC
Strimo: New Tech for Managing Cannabis Business Performance
Could this be the new standard?
By Liz Gold
CannaBizCPA.Pro
If you’re in the cannabis industry and you’re working with cannabis clients, you've likely had your fair share of experiences with point-of-sales systems. Like all technology, some platforms work better than others and the key is to find the right system for your company’s particular needs. Often it’s a compromise or giving up a function for a feature that is more important.
MORE ON CANNABIZ: CohnReznick Goes National on Cannabis | Cannabis: Embracing Risk as a Market Advantage | John Pellitteri Takes Grassi Full Steam into the Cannabis Industry | Moving Beyond 280E: Dean Guske on the Cannabusiness
Enter Strimo.
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How to Beat the Online Sales Tax
Is a special card the answer?
By Rick Richardson
Nobody likes to pay sales tax and until recently, most of us shopped online to avoid our local sales tax.
MORE TECH THIS WEEK: New TSA Tech Will Let You Keep Laptops, Liquids in Bags | How to Fix Coffee-Shop Wi-Fi | 5 Cybersecurity Best Practices for Small Businesses with Remote Employees | SAP’s New Blockchain Project Helps Weed Out Counterfeit Drugs | IBM’s New Quantum Computer Could Make History
Nearly one year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that out-of-state retailers must collect sales tax on internet sales.
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Jumping to Windows 10
And new processors, drives, and RAM you need.
By Roman H. Kepczyk
Quantum of Paperless
Okay, we all know that the Microsoft Windows operating system is preferred to run computers by the primary vendors to the accounting profession.
MORE: SURVEY: Have You Dumped Manual Invoices Yet? | Is It Time to Update Your Offsite Backups? | SURVEY: Who Stores CPE Certificates Digitally? | SURVEY: Digitizing Employee Evaluations | The Five Rules of Smart Tech | SURVEY: Paper Beats Electronic for Paying Bills | 2019: The Biggest Tech Changes Yet
While firms don’t place too much emphasis on the workstation operating system, one significant issue that firms can’t overlook is increasing computer memory to ensure computers function optimally with today’s multimonitor requirements and the multitude of concurrent applications your staff will be running, which can impact your Windows version decision.
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Secret Success Formula: E=fs4Uh
What do you do?
By Ed Mendlowitz
Call Me Before You Do Anything: The Art of Accounting
Einstein developed a simple formula that provided the solution to the cosmos, energy and matter. Well, by working on it long enough, with determined, focus I just developed my own formula for the solution to client financial success.
MORE: The Staffer Who Was Too Smart | Why a Break-Even Analysis Matters | How I Owned a Printing Company and Restaurant | Am I Happy? | My Boss Hated the Client
It's E=fs4Uh. And it stands for "Ed = financial security for You at a higher level."
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How to Develop a Truly Progressive NextGen Culture
Why following up is so important.
By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library
Earlier this year our Chicago roundtable, consisting of the most prestigious and largest local CPA firms in the Windy City, convened a conference that brought the house down. Our goal was (a) to address the #1 challenge to CPA firms today – managing all staff issues from recruiting to retention to developing NextGen leaders and (b) to bring in THE #1 authority on these issues to speak to us about state-of-the-art practices.
MORE: The Top 5 Concerns of Great Managing Partners | Partners: When To Speak Up and When To Shut Up
Jennifer Wilson was our speaker and wow, did she hit it out of the park! Jen, who leads Convergence Coaching, is regularly recognized by "Accounting Today" as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting and by "INSIDE Public Accounting" as one of the Most Recommended Consultants To CPA Firms.
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What Aspiring Accountants Need to Know
The five keys to kick-starting new careers they don't teach in college.
By Steven Sacks
When I was asked recently to address college seniors in accounting, we initially thought it would be all about technology. Instead, we talked about something else: How their real education would be learned on the job. And neither their skills in technology nor accounting would be their most important advantages.
MORE: Is Your Firm’s Culture a Magnet? | Improve Job Satisfaction or It’ll Cost Your Firm | Performing Like CRAP Can Be a Badge of Honor | 7 Steps to Take As Your Firm Grows | The Damocles Sword of Staff Retention | Five PowerPoint Rules to Live By | Can We Please Refer to Accounting as a Profession?
The students, by this time, had all the technical knowledge they would need to begin a career in either the public or private sector. So they were more interested in the evolution of the profession and the necessary human skills that would help kick-start their careers. Come to think of it, what we discussed might be as relevant to a senior partner as a newbie recruit. They are the essentials for achieving long-term success at any stage, and maybe in any line of work.
We covered five major topics: READ MORE →
Troubles with IRS Private Debt Collection
The IRS listed 6 risks. The GAO found 10 more.
By CPA Trendlines
Here’s a curious situation: The Internal Revenue Service of the wealthiest nation on earth, with all its power to collect taxes – be it by withholding, by a polite letter of request, by slapping somebody’s assets with a lien, by knocking on a delinquent’s door – sometimes the IRS can’t afford to collect back taxes.
MORE: What Difference Does One Word Make? | What’s the Real Impact of IRS Audits? | Tough Lessons from Tax Season | Why Shouldn’t All Tax Practitioners Need Licenses? | Data Divers Profile Taxpayer Filing Styles | Salary Survey Shows Pay for Tax Professionals | Fixing the Tax System: Accountants Sound Off | The Big Free-File Flop
When it can’t, it gives the power and privilege to a private debt collection (PDC) agency.
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