Edward Mendlowitz, Author at CPA Trendlines

You’re Only as Good as Your Last Screw-Up

Prepping for Tax Season: Clients notice the little things.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Don’t be sloppy. It gets noticed.

MORE: 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
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Sloppy work is always evident and usually incomplete. Thorough work is careful and usually complete.

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Four Issues with ‘Quick’ Tax Questions

Sometimes things aren’t so simple.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

I keep a few of the one-volume tax guides in my office so I could look up a quick answer when I need to. Recently a golf buddy emailed me a question that I thought I could answer quickly. He wanted to know that if he was in the “zero” percent capital gains tax bracket, did that apply to an unlimited amount of capital gains? Sounds like a simple question.

MORE: 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
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Well I looked it up online and then in three one-volume tax guides. Only one source had thorough coverage of the issue. I ended up spending an hour on this “simple” question including my emailed response. Nothing is simple anymore.
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CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

How to Become a Specialist

Some of your training can happen on the job.

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

Once you decide upon a specialization, you need to go about making yourself an expert. Read, join professional associations, take focused CPE, and try to write articles or give speeches. Accountants who are industry experts become industry thought leaders.

MORE: Success Secrets in Specialties | Making Sure the Son Got Proper Credit | Yes, Shirt Logos Can Matter | 10 More Reasons CPAs Quit Public Accounting | Family Trees of Clients
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Some specialties require obtaining designations or certificates of completion that require study and time – an investment you and the firm would have to make. There is no easy path to growing and establishing expertise, but it is a joyful ride.
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CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

When to Pick Up the Phone This Tax Season

Personal touches help retain clients.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Clients are not numbers on a list that needs to be reduced. They are all individuals and consider themselves very important people and want professionals who treat them accordingly.

MORE: 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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It is attitudinal and accountants must adopt that mindset and transmit that through to their culture. So you need to know when it’s essential to pick up the phone.

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These Five Procedures Will Simplify Your Tax Season

Of course, this includes checklists.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

One way to guarantee extra work is to have everything always done differently each time it is done.

MORE: 11 Steps to Better Client Tax Instructions | Get Your Team Ready for Tax Season
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Not establishing uniform procedures is bad business and unnecessarily consumes part of your life. Consistency in performance reduces work and review time and creates a greater reliance on the staff people.
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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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