Edward Mendlowitz, Author at CPA Trendlines

11 Steps to Better Client Tax Instructions

Help them help you.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Providing instructions of what a client needs to do must be clear enough so that the client doesn’t call you to find out what to do.

MORE: 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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Sometimes taking an extra minute to lay out what the client should do can eliminate that call or indecisive moment a client might feel.
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Get Your Team Ready for Tax Season

Three steps to a happier grind.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

If you have staff, have happy cheerful helpful people. Don’t surround yourself with downers and naysayers.

MORE: 12 Ways to Squeeze Fun into Tax Season | 6 Ways to Get Paid Faster in Tax Season
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Also have team players. Part of this is your firm’s culture. It takes work to get people to work together and to focus on doing what it takes to service the client fully, properly and timely. Everyone working together gets it done.
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CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Success Secrets in Specialties

Make sure your choice is interesting and portable.

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

I was not a specialist. In some respects, I am the last of the “expert generalists” and generalists are fast becoming extinct.

MORE: Making Sure the Son Got Proper Credit | Yes, Shirt Logos Can Matter | Preparing for the Worst (Thanks to My Wife) | Why CPAs Should Stay in Public Accounting | Readers Rip: ‘She Wanted Her Shoebox Back’ | CEOs Don’t Always Know Numbers
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In this age of specialization and niche expertise, being a generalist is a negative to most people, indicating a lack of competency in their area. I tend to think of the old general practitioner physicians versus the modern-day specialists. No one looks at the whole patient.
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12 Ways to Squeeze Fun into Tax Season

Why not?

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Tax season presents exciting opportunities for accounting firms and their staffs. Every moment should be enjoyed and appreciated.

MORE: 6 Ways to Get Paid Faster in Tax Season

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Following are 12 reasons:

1. Tax season is profitable and accounting is a business where we try to maximize our earnings. Sure, there is a great concentration of work in a short period with occasional pressure, but if handled properly, the work can be managed sensibly with tensions at reasonable levels. I also believe much of the pressure is self-induced by poor scheduling, inadequate quality control and the lack of uniform systems that are followed by everyone in the firm, particularly the partners.

CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Making Sure the Son Got Proper Credit

The difference a graph can make.

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

I have a client who owns considerable real estate that her son manages. The son actually does a very good job maintaining the property, growing rents and keeping vacancies to a minimum.

MORE: Yes, Shirt Logos Can Matter | 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
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My client’s husband was the builder and driving force behind this mini empire, but he passed on a few years ago. He was a dynamic self-made person who amassed quite a fortune and turned over daily operations to his son about 10 years before he died to spend considerable time golfing and traveling.
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Edward Mendlowitz

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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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