Edward Mendlowitz, Author at CPA Trendlines

21 Reasons Tax Clients Fire Accountants

What could you be preventing right now?

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Clients have many choices, including the choice of a tax preparer. Every new client an accountant gets is because that client left – fired – their previous accountant.

MORE: 16 Traits of the Best Tax Clients | Eight Ways to Charm a Client | Plug Small Leaks Before They Become Big Floods | You’re Only as Good as Your Last Screw-Up | Four Issues with ‘Quick’ Tax Questions | When to Pick Up the Phone This Tax Season | These Five Procedures Will Simplify Your Tax Season | 11 Steps to Better Client Tax Instructions | Get Your Team Ready for Tax Season | 12 Ways to Squeeze Fun into Tax Season | 6 Ways to Get Paid Faster in Tax Season
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So why do clients leave?

Here are 21 good reasons why they should: READ MORE →

CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Buying a Practice from an Estate

Make the terms work for you.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Call Me Before You Do Anything: The Art of Accounting

This was precipitated by my hearing of the untimely death of a sole practitioner who was a friend. His family wanted to sell the practice and was shopping around for a buyer.

MORE: The Growing Pains of a Small Firm | Giving Clients the Best You’ve Got | Secrets in Specialties | 10 More Reasons CPAs Quit Public Accounting | The 10 Best Movie Accountants | When CPAs Leave to Work for a Client | When Parents, Children Hit an Impasse | Wealth Is a State of Mind | The Six Types of “Impossible” Clients
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He died two and a half months ago and a deal still hasn’t been consummated. Another friend who was trying to acquire what was left of the practice has kept me advised of the progress.
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FEATURED

Unhappy about Tax Season?

It’s time to figure out why.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Successful people are happy with their practices and what they do and get joy from interacting and helping clients. I know a lot of accountants who continuously complain about tax season – yet they make most of their money during the period.

MORE: 16 Traits of the Best Tax Clients | Eight Ways to Charm a Client | Plug Small Leaks Before They Become Big Floods | You’re Only as Good as Your Last Screw-Up
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Do they expect someone to knock on their door with a wheelbarrow of money to hand them? If they are financially secure, why do they keep working?
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FEATURED

The Growing Pains of a Small Firm

The lessons every firm needs to learn.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Call Me Before You Do Anything: The Art of Accounting

“CPA Firm Grows Prosperous by Heeding Its Own Advice.” The Wall Street Journal published an article with that title in their May 18, 1981 issue about my firm, and this column describes some of what we did.

MORE: Giving Clients the Best You’ve Got | Why MAP Programs Are Essential | Making Sure the Son Got Proper Credit | Family Trees of Clients | Why Accountants Quit | When Siblings Battle over the Family Business | How Bickering Can Ruin a Family Business
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The article began by stating there were about 28,000 CPA firms in the U.S., with about 19,000 being sole practitioners and many others with just two or three CPAs. These numbers are lower than now, so the profession and small firms have grown significantly in the last 40-plus years.
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FEATURED

16 Traits of the Best Tax Clients

Subscriber Frank Kistner adds No. 17: Clients who remove staples from source documents (because they can damage your scanner/copier).

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Clients are our customers who pay our salaries and present us with stimulating opportunities allowing us to grow.

MORE: Eight Ways to Charm a Client | Plug Small Leaks Before They Become Big Floods | You’re Only as Good as Your Last Screw-Up | Four Issues with ‘Quick’ Tax Questions | When to Pick Up the Phone This Tax Season | These Five Procedures Will Simplify Your Tax Season | 11 Steps to Better Client Tax Instructions
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

There is no such thing as a bad or nuisance client – although there are clients who sometimes do bad or nuisance things.
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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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