Today's Features

Understand Clients’ Relationship with Money

Businessman tightly holding briefcase with dollar sign on it

Start with which of four “money scripts” they follow.

By Rory Henry
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management

Joy Lere Psy.D., licensed clinical psychologist and co-founder of Shaping Wealth, a learning platform transforming the human experience of money, told me on my podcast that she was amazed by how often money was the cause of her clients’ anxiety and unhappiness. Research confirms this phenomenon.

MORE: From Services to Experiences to Transformations | How Behavioral Finance Works | Manage Change through A PACT | Priority No. 1: Your Mental and Physical Health | Build Stronger Financial Futures with Health Care Planning | Marketing Strategies for Wealth Management Services | Trust Is the Primary Ingredient | Use Goodwill to Maximize Exit Readiness | An Accountant’s Role in Exit Planning | How to Prepare Your Clients’ Kids for Their Inheritance | A Question of Trust: Not Just for the Wealthy | Trust and Estate Planning Is for Clients of All Ages | Annuities and Insurance Growing More Attractive | Bridge the Advice Gap for Better Financial Futures
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), money has consistently topped Americans’ list of stressors ever since the first Stress in America survey was conducted in 2007. According to the APA:

  • 72 percent of adults report feeling stressed about money at least some of the time
  • 22 percent reported feeling “extreme stress” about money at some point during the past month
  • 26 percent of adults report feeling stressed about money most or all of the time

It shouldn’t be this way and this is where financial advisors can be a huge help.
READ MORE →

Randy Johnston: Accounting’s Brave New World of MCPs | The Disruptors

If MCPs are the infrastructure, agentic AI is the workforce.

Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: AppleGoogle/YouTubeSpotifyiHeartDeezer, Amazon Music, AudiblePlayer FMAudacy, RSS.
True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Randy Johnston has been in accounting technology longer than many of today’s practitioners have been alive. With more than 50 years in the field, and a hand in designing everything from IBM ThinkPads to Excel’s PivotTables, he has seen more technological revolutions than he can easily count. He even wrote AI code in 1975 in Lisp. Through it all, he has remained true to a singular ideal: “My personal mission has always been to help as many people as possible do the things they want to do with technology.”

MORE DISRUPTORS: David Cristello: Growth Breaks Things – and That’s Normal | The DisruptorsBlumer, Vacin: What Only 5% of Firms Get Right | DisruptorsIra Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | The DisruptorsDoug Slaybaugh: How to Define “Values in Motion” | The DisruptorsNancy McClelland: Bookkeepers Need a Safe Space to Collaborate | The DisruptorsChase Damiano: Good Operations Means Defining How the Hand-Offs Happen | The DisruptorsJeff Seibert: Digits Software Moves Toward Real-Time Accounting | The Disruptors |

MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

Yet Johnston, executive vice president of K2 Enterprises and co-founder of Network Management Group, says the most significant shift is happening right now with Model Context Protocols (MCPs). MCPs are a technical layer that allows multiple systems to be connected and queried through AI. Though he’s spent decades watching technology evolve through mainframes, databases, graphical interfaces, and SaaS, he says MCPs may be the most consequential development he’s seen in years.

READ MORE →

Mark Koziel: The End of Accounting as We Know It | Gear Up for Growth

Koziel Calls for a New CPA Firm Model

Radical Pricing: See Today’s Special Offer
Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: AppleGoogle/YouTubeSpotifyiHeartDeezer, Amazon Music, AudiblePlayer FMAudacy, RSS.

Gear Up for Growth
with Jean Caragher
for CPA Trendlines

Mark Koziel is putting the accounting profession on notice: The business model that sustained CPA firms for generations is running out of time.

Buy now | Learn more

“The hours-times-rate model is a death knell for the profession,” says Koziel, CPA, CGMA, president and CEO of the AICPA and the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, on Gear Up for Growth, powered by CPA Trendlines and hosted by Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing.

MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here |

Gear Up for Growth is tailored specifically for public accounting firms with up to 100 team members looking to expand their practices intelligently and efficiently.

MORE Gear Up for Growth here | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network here

As artificial intelligence accelerates the automation of tax preparation and compliance work, Koziel says CPA firms must fundamentally rethink how they create—and price—value for clients.

“There’s still value to that tax return,” Koziel says. “It’s just not based on our inputs.” READ MORE →

Accounting Internships Need an Upgrade | ARC

As AI handles more routine work, how do young accountants develop judgment, communication and leadership?

Sponsored by Radical Pricing by the Radical CPA, Jody Padar | See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: AppleGoogle/YouTubeSpotifyiHeartDeezer, Amazon Music, AudiblePlayer FMAudacy, RSS.

Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, & Build a Top-Value Firm!

Accounting ARC
With Donny Shimamoto and Liz Mason

Center for Accounting Transformation

The accounting internship is due for an upgrade.

For decades, internships often give aspiring accountants their first real taste of the profession by dropping them into the work: Learn the process, complete the assignment, survive busy season and figure out the unwritten rules along the way.

But as artificial intelligence takes over more of the entry-level work traditionally assigned to new accountants, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, and Liz Mason, CPA, argue the profession needs to reconsider what an internship is actually supposed to teach.

MORE Accounting ARC: The CPA Career Nobody Talks AboutConference Season Exposes Accounting’s Knowledge GapThe Feedback Mistake That Costs You Your Best People | Is Your Boss Really the Problem? | Most Accountants Are Missing This AI ShiftAI Can Fix Your Workflow—or Break It in Seconds | Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal for AI | Accounting’s Hidden Talent Risk: The Sandwich GenerationBuilt Fast. Sold Faster. Broken Later? The Truth About Accounting Tech | Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn OutValuing More Than the Balance Sheet

In this episode of the Accounting ARC podcast, Shimamoto, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation, and Mason, CEO of High Rock Accounting, explore why tomorrow’s accountants need more than technical proficiency.

They need what Shimamoto calls “power skills.”

READ MORE →

The Top Tip for Reviewing Tax Returns

What would you say?

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

Question: I know you have a lot of advice on how to review tax returns. What’s your single best tip?

MORE: You Have to Start Somewhere | Two Options for Collecting Past Due Fees | When Board Service Gets Tricky | Eleven Ways New Staffers Can Help Bring in Business | Busy Season Is Over, So It’s Time for Some Resolutions | Want to Merge? Six Steps to Take | How to Start Providing Family Office Services | Every Accounting Firm Needs Quality Control | No One Listens to You? Change How You Talk | 47 Types of Business Valuation to Provide | Thirteen Things to Consider Before You Sell Your Practice | Uncooperative Partner Might Not be the Problem
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Response: I had never thought about this until this question was asked.
READ MORE →