Busy Season 2015: When Clients Are the Problem

Get a read on the busy season. Join the survey; get the results
Get a read on the busy season. Join the survey; get the results

Top nine client management solutions.

NEXT QUESTION: Lessons Learned.
Join the survey; get the results

By CPA Trendlines Research

The CPA Trendlines annual Busy Season Barometer is uncovering some frank and candid talk about clients. Yes, we love them. Couldn’t live without them. Most of the time. But, well, not always.

It’s not that they’re bad people. But let’s face it, they aren’t always sweating tax prep much in advance of April 1, they have no idea what new regulations are in effect this year and their advisories from their CPA are filed under “migraines that can wait.” Plus, they truly believe their CPA is exclusively dedicated to their company and doesn’t really have much else to do but wait around for their phone call.

“No matter how proactive you try to be at scheduling and planning ahead, clients still delay providing information for their taxes,” Bryan Lantz says. “Seems the IRS, Congress and the media are out to make our jobs even more compressed and stressful.” His solution: “Keep communicating with clients to ensure that we can do the best we can at equalizing workflow during busy season.”

From their remarks, CPA Trendlines draws at least nine lessons in smart client management.:

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Busy Season 2015: Short-Term Staffing Problems Need Long-Term Solutions

Get a read on the busy season. Join the survey; get the results
Get a read on the busy season. Join the survey; get the results

Not enough trained staff, not enough seasonal staff, not enough staff.

Next question: The smartest moves this busy season? Join the survey; get the results.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The CPA Trendlines annual Busy Season Barometer is eliciting a panoply of lessons learned and plans for a smoother season next year. A lot of professionals’ comments this year are nothing short of outright complaint. And not without reason. It’s been a rough year. If the snow didn’t get you, Forms 3115, 8962, 8965 or 1095a did. Plus all things IRS got more complicated, clients got more desperate and, apparently, tensions rose as CPAs and staff stretched themselves to the limits of professional endurance.

Nancy Casburn
Casburn

One of the main lessons learned is the need for enough staff — enough staff hired early enough and trained well enough. Nancy Casburn at Casburn CPA in Lee’s Summit, Mo., sums up the importance of the softest of software: “Staffing is the most important reason for failing or succeeding at tax season.”

If we can draw any conclusion from all the staff-related lessons reported in this year’s Busy Season Barometer, it is that the profession needs more staff, better trained staff and an availability of seasonal staff. Given the increasing complexity of tax returns, the solution of this problem — more training, more accounting majors — needs to arrive quickly and be broadly based.

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Busy Season 2015: Headaches from Obamacare

Affordable Care Act‘ACA is PITA BS for CPAs.’ Next year’s plan: ‘Become a monk.’

Next question: The smartest moves this busy season? Join the survey; get the results

By CPA Trendlines Research

As Busy Season 2015 grinds down, tax prep professionals are grappling with myriad and continuing issues with new rules, thin staffing and difficult clients, according to the CPA Trendlines annual Busy Season Barometer. But the new Affordable Care Act seems to be causing the most widespread aches and pains among accountants.

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How to Transition Clients from Retiring Partners

Older businessman shaking hands with businesswoman across deskDon’t make this common but potentially expensive error.

By Marc Rosenberg
Retirements & Buyouts

I have done extensive polling of firms in recent years on client transition and offer here some of their practices.

The BEST transition practice of course falls under the category of “the best way to solve a problem is to never let it happen to begin with.”

MORE ON RETIREMENT: Retirement Plan Funding? What Funding? | Vesting Can Cover Part-Timers, Too | Compromise Is In Order for Some Goodwill Payouts | When Retiring Partners Take a Specialty With Them | Why You’ll Get Less from Your Partners in a Buyout than You Might by Selling the Whole Firm | Eat What You Kill? Then Maybe ‘Book of Business’ Is for You | 5 Points to Consider When Paying Out Goodwill | Clients Leaving? Time to Reduce Retirement Benefits | 4 Ways to Decide How to Pay Out Capital | Partners May Balk at Guaranteeing Retirement Obligations

Said one MP: “The ‘transition’ process should start as soon as the firm gets a client (some start even sooner – on the sale pitch). Clients should be assigned a team, including a backup partner and a manager. The client should be told who the team members will be. Some call this institutionalizing the clients. If you do this, there is very little else that needs to be done when a partner announces his/her retirement.”

Some other points: READ MORE →

Women Need Promotions, Not Just Advice

Woman and man executive standing in front of office buildingMen advance 2-to-1 over women without sponsors.

By Ida O. Abbott
Sponsoring Women: What Men Need to Know

The benefits of sponsorship are indisputable. Having a highly placed sponsor is a distinct career advantage and when competing for top positions it can be a critical differentiator.

MORE ON SPONSORING WOMEN FOR LEADERSHIP: Is Sponsorship Right for Your Firm? | Your Protégée Needs Your Feedback |  9 Ways to Promote Your Protégée to Others | 8 Ways to Help Your Protégée Focus on Career Opportunities | 3 Ways to Initiate Informal Sponsorship | 3 Roadblocks to Women and Men Working Together Well | Fear of Sex and Rumors Inhibits Sponsorship | Mentor or Sponsor? How to Distinguish Roles | 4 Ways Women Leaders Improve Firms | CPA Firms Must ‘Man Up’ and Get Women On Board

Protégées gain career-enhancing opportunities that others do not get, such as: READ MORE →

In a Pinch, Use Your Phone as a Scanner

Epson WorkForce DS-510 Sheetfed Scanner
Epson WorkForce DS-510 Sheetfed Scanner

With upfront scanning, 78 percent leverage on-screen review.

By Roman H. Kepczyk
Quantum of Paperless 

One of the keys to optimizing accounting firm production processes is capturing information at its “root” source – the moment data enters your firm, regardless of the format – mail, fax, email or on a flash drive.

MORE ON TECH SPENDING: Standardize QuickBooks Support for Clients | How to Choose the Right Client Portal Solution | Automating Bank Deposits Offers Instant ROI | How to ‘Go Digital’ when Partners Demand Monthly P&Ls on Paper | Digital Tools Streamline Audit Production | Tech Tools for Today’s Properly Equipped Field Audit Teams | How to Cut Tax Prep Costs with Scanners | Why Firms Need Document Retention Standards | Intranet Is the Best Place for Firm Knowledge

Ideally, documents would be delivered already in a digital format such as email attachments or preferably through a portal, but the reality today is that a significant portion of accounting firm source documents arrive from clients in a physical paper format. Your firm will need to develop processes to efficiently scan, name and store these documents. READ MORE →

CPA Trendlines Subscribers Sound Off About 2015 Self-Filers

bullhornSome predict those clients will be coming back for cleanup.

Tax professionals are sounding off in CPA Trendlines Comments on an apparent upsurge in do-it-yourself amateur self-filers while e-filing by professionals is lagging last year’s rates for four straights weeks so far.

Bea Nahon
Nahon

“Interesting that self-prepared is up and professionally prepared is down on a YTD basis,” says Bea Nahon, a Bellevue, Wash., CPA, and long-time advocate of women’s and small-firm interests.

“Is that because business is shifting to the do-it-yourselfers?,” Nahon says. “I suspect instead it’s due to the professionals bogged down in the mire of the TPR regulations. And the increasing trend of fraudulent self-prepared returns,”

“In fact,”Nahon adds alarmingly, “some of those self-prepared returns are likely going to turn out to be our clients, which we don’t discover until we attempt to e-file.”

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Quote With Care When Asked for Valuation

Ed Mendlowitz CPA The Practice Doctor Q and A12 issues that might not have been addressed.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I was asked to do a quote on a business valuation for a startup that will be raising money on their second stage financing. How do I quote this?

ANSWER: This is a wide-reaching question and it is not possible to know initially what the client really needs. They could need a valuation, a business plan or a method of bringing in the investor.

Here are some of the many issues and variables:
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