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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
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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 About | Conference Season Exposes Accounting’s Knowledge Gap | The Feedback Mistake That Costs You Your Best People | Is Your Boss Really the Problem? | Most Accountants Are Missing This AI Shift | AI Can Fix Your Workflow—or Break It in Seconds | Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal for AI | Accounting’s Hidden Talent Risk: The Sandwich Generation | Built Fast. Sold Faster. Broken Later? The Truth About Accounting Tech | Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn Out | Valuing 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.”
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
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Response: I had never thought about this until this question was asked.
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Can a Service Center Model Solve Audit Staffing Shortages?
Providing superior client service eliminates the perception of audit as a commodity.
By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future
Most firms have abysmal project management, which makes it nearly impossible to see if there’s any room to take on extra work. Plus, piling all the work into busy season means your people already work far beyond 40 hours a week. And, if you’re relying on timesheets as a measure of capacity, you may not be capturing the time your staff eats because the work is taking more than 40 or even 60 hours in a week to complete.
MORE: Don’t Take on Audits in an Industry You Don’t Understand | Four Questions to Make Your Firm More Successful as a Business | Say Adios to Audit Fee Pressure | Deliver More Audit Value by Getting Out of the Conference Room | Six Essential Elements in Audit Planning | Before the Audit: More Than Just Planning | Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions?
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During the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic, some audit firms had to lay people off, or reduce work hours as projects got canceled or curtailed. But the long-term trend for years has been a shortfall in talent that will only get worse. Burnout from overwork is the number one cause of employee turnover.
Analyze Your Firm to Keep It Current
Does everyone have the same vision?
By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services
I have discussed some of the issues behind developing an effective website. If your partners can’t agree on the overall points of the website, it merely means that there are different visions for the firm within the firm. The best way to overcome this obstacle is to conduct a self-analysis.
MORE: What Makes a Great Website? | Losing Can Help You Win More | Eight Areas to Cover for Personal Goals | Service Quality: The Key to Client Retention | How Life Cycle Changes Your Marketing | Clients Buy Solutions, Not Features | Make Sure You Know What You Will Get from Your Marketing | Three Pillars Support a Successful Accounting Firm | Clients Have Six Reasons for Needing You | Six Ways to Market Your Technology Consulting Practice | Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try | The Four Steps of Your Personal Marketing Process
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You can use the following questions at a firm retreat. Hand out the questions to the retreat participants prior to the meeting. Ask the retreat participants to write out the answer to each question. Then have open discussions about the questions and their answers, and try to come to some agreement. Here are the questions:
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What Relevance Means for Staffing in Accounting
Seventeen ways to improve.
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset
The business graveyard is littered with major organizations that missed the boat by failing to see cataclysmic game changers happening right before their eyes.
- Ice companies failed to get into refrigeration because they saw themselves in the ice business.
- Railroads missed out on autos and aerospace because they didn’t see themselves in the transportation business.
- A CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation said he couldn’t imagine why people would want a computer in their own house.
- It took the Wright Brothers five years to get the U.S. government to even talk to them about their invention.
MORE: How Accounting Staffing Has Changed
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In all fairness it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate and accept massive changes like these.
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