Edward Mendlowitz, Author at CPA Trendlines

Client Hires New Manager: You Need a Plan

What they don’t know can hurt you.

Clients hire managers all the time. But getting started as a manager requires many skills, one of which is to review financial data and use it to control your department, division, or company.

MORE: Do You Need a Forensic Professional? | Forensic Techniques Can Be Fraud Deterrence | The Hazards of Poor Internal Controls | Rule #1: Start with Cash | The Priorities Were Backward | How to Read a Financial Statement | 77 Thoughts about Client Needs
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Routine Is Key to Reviewing Tax Returns

Got info they need? Don’t delay.

By Ed Mendlowitz
How to Review Tax Returns: The Field-Tested Update

Reviewing returns is a technical process. However, there are times that the mechanical functioning of tax season interferes with or alters the reviewer routine and momentum.

MORE: Why You Can’t Skip Checklists | Tax Review Procedures Are Your Quality Control | Seven Types of Tax Return Reviews | How to Turn Tax Returns into New Business
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Most returns are reviewed on a FIFO basis as they are transferred to the reviewer. However, in many firms returns are pushed to the head of the line for many reasons – some legitimate, such as the client is going on a vacation, and some because the partner wants to get a return out to the client.
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MANAGEMENT

Do You Need a Forensic Professional?

PLUS: Four ways to improve your systems.

By Ed Mendlowitz
77 Ways to Wow!

Various professionals and consultants can set up controls with in-house accountants, the CFO and financial professionals employed by the firm, but they then leave, and the organization is left with administering it. Unless there is a highly disciplined and committed leadership within the company, the initial enthusiasm dissipates soon after.

MORE: Forensic Techniques Can Be Fraud Deterrence | Anatomy of a Fraud | How to Explain Internal Controls to Clients | Organization Minutes Too Often Overlooked | The Seven-Minute Financial Statement | The KPI an Absentee Manager Needs
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A trained forensic professional will detect flaws and cracks in systems and plug them up. They are also transaction-oriented, more than procedure-oriented, so they examine more closely how things are being done and look for subtle deviations from how they are supposed to be done. This skill should be employed in oversight and periodic monitoring of the controls they helped establish.
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CHECKLIST

Why You Can’t Skip Checklists

Do you want tax returns fast or right?

By Ed Mendlowitz
How to Review Tax Returns: The Field-Tested Update

This is an area I feel very strongly about, and it is a major reason for the success of the better firms and the lack of growth of smaller firms.

MORE: Tax Review Procedures Are Your Quality Control | Seven Types of Tax Return Reviews | How to Turn Tax Returns into New Business
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By my way of thinking, a system must be established to assure the greatest quality at every level, reduce the number of touches per return, and present the client with the type of return he or she is relying on you to deliver. This system only works if there are the right processes and procedures and a strict adherence to them, and this includes the careful and deliberate use of checklists.
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PRO Member Exclusive

Tax Review Procedures Are Your Quality Control

Six questions to ask yourself.

By Ed Mendlowitz
How to Review Tax Returns: The Field-Tested Update

The purpose of tax return reviews is to assure the quality of the return.

MORE: Seven Types of Tax Return Reviews | How to Turn Tax Returns into New Business
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Quality should be defined as an accurate product along with pertinent and applicable tax law benefits applied as well as planning opportunities identified so the client could maximize their financial wealth and security.
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Edward Mendlowitz

MORE AT STORE.CPATRENDLINES.COM

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Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, ABV, PFS, is a partner at Withum, a forward-thinking, technology-driven advisory, and accounting firm. Ed has over 40 years of public accounting experience, is recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today, and is the CPA Trendlines "Practice Doctor." His latest handbook for CPA Trendlines is 77 Ways to Wow! The Handbook for Small-Business Advisory Services.

Ed is also the author of "Memoirs of a CPA," available at Amazon.

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"Memoirs" tells his story as a CPA and provides an inside look at what CPAs do and how they run their accounting "business." CPAs must serve clients effectively and exceptionally, recruit, train, retain and grow staff, and charge fees that clients happily pay because of the value they receive while the CPA earns a living, funds a retirement account, grows infrastructure, and perhaps makes a profit. This book tells how he did all of this and much more.

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He is a licensed, certified public accountant in the states of New Jersey and New York and is accredited by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in business valuation (ABV), certified in financial forensics (CFF) and as a personal financial specialist (PFS). Ed is also admitted to practice before the United States Tax Court and has testified as an expert witness in federal and state court regarding business valuations, and twice at the House Ways and Means Committee on tax reform, fairness, and reduction. A City College of New York graduate, Ed earned his bachelor of business administration degree.

He is a member of the AICPA, the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) and the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (NYSSCPA). In addition, Ed was a founding partner of Mendlowitz Weitsen, LLP, CPAs, which merged with Withum in 2005. Currently, he serves on the NYSSCPA Estate Planning Committee and was chairman of the committee that planned the NYSSCPA’s 100th Anniversary. Ed, the author of 19 books, has also written hundreds of articles for business and professional journals and newsletters.

He is the contributing editor to the Practitioners Publishing Company’s 706/709 Deskbook, the AICPA’s Management of an Accounting Practice Handbook, Corporate Controller’s Handbook and Wiley’s Handbook on Budgeting and is on the editorial board of Bottom Line/Personal newsletter and the Journal of Accountancy Member Panel on Business Valuation. Appearing regularly on television news programs, Ed has also been quoted in numerous major newspapers and periodicals in the United States. He received the Lawler Award for the best article published in 2001 in the Journal of Accountancy.

Ed frequently speaks to many professional and business groups, including the AICPA, NJSCPA, NYSSCPA, American Management Association, the National Committee for Monetary Reform, the University of Medicine and Dentistry in N.J., and many more. For 11 years, he taught courses on financial analysis, corporate financial policy and theory, monetary and fiscal policy, and managerial accounting in the MBA program at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

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