Edward Mendlowitz, Author at CPA Trendlines

Profit Sharing for a Staffer?

The owner wants to offer a percentage to a staff person, but how?

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I have a small practice and have a staff person with me for eight years (who had nine years of experience before coming to me), and I want to offer him some profit-sharing percentage.

MORE: The Secret Recipe for Staff Retention | Writing a Reference? Here’s How | 44 Key Attributes for Assessing Staffers | Make CPE Worth Your While | What To Do with a Lousy Client? | But I AM Managing! | How to Run a Practice in 90 Pages
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How do I approach it?
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FEATURED

Why CPAs Should Stay in Public Accounting

Age discrimination is a real concern.

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

I’ve written about a CPA going to work for a small client who was creating a controller’s position.

Today I’ll talk about going to work for a client who already has a controller or working for a large company.

MORE: When CPAs Leave to Work for a Client | When Siblings Battle over the Family Business | How Bickering Can Ruin a Family Business | One Hour a Year Since 1972 | 50 Ways to Make More Money in Busy Season | Why Annual Staff Evaluations Fall Short | Why Create an Accounting Firm Business Model? | The Clients Who Keep You Awake at Night
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The company that already has a controller is a much safer bet for a departing CPA. The position is established, the work is integrated with the outside accounting firm that will maintain its role and there is a place in the management hierarchy. The role is clear and the CPA knows what to expect in terms of daily activity. If there are growth opportunities for the company, the controller could or would be part of them.
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FEATURED

The Secret Recipe for Staff Retention

The three reasons people stay at jobs.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I know you advocate hiring out of school, but that seems to present a danger when they leave after we have invested so much in training them. What can be done to retain them longer, if that is possible?

MORE: Writing a Reference? Here’s How | Titles Can Make People Happier | Reasons to Drop Your Book of Business | Are You Marketing for 2022 Yet? | Stop Drowning in Client Documents | Make More Money Starting Now | The Wrong Way to Look for Staff
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ANSWER: Unless everyone you hire will become a partner, you will have people leaving. That’s just a fact of life.
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CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Writing a Reference? Here’s How

Stick to the facts.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I have been asked to provide a reference for a former controller of a former client.

MORE: Titles Can Make People Happier | Help! Key Staffer Refuses to Supervise People | Get More Done By Saying No | Are You Marketing for 2022 Yet? | But I AM Managing! | How Are You Spending the Next Five Years?
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Should I do it?
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FEATURED

Titles Can Make People Happier

But some people will never be happy enough.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: My top staff person wants a better title than manager, or senior manager. Any suggestions?

MORE: Help! Key Staffer Refuses to Supervise People | 44 Key Attributes for Assessing Staffers | Make CPE Worth Your While | What To Do with a Lousy Client? | But I AM Managing! | How to Run a Practice in 90 Pages | How Improv Can Help Accountants
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ANSWER: In larger firms, senior manager is one step below partner.
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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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