Seth Fineberg, Author at CPA Trendlines

3 Ways to Raise the Bar for Your Business

Stop allowing your business bar to maintain the status quo – or worse, lower.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

As most accountants prepare to shake off the effects of yet another tax season, the question remains: What will take you and your firm to the next level?

MORE FINEBERG: Make it ‘Productive Season’ | It’s Time to Do the Uncomfortable | Jeremy Sulzmann: Can Intuit Mend Fences with Accountants at QB Connect? | Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block | Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously? |You’re Doing Email Wrong | Careful … You May Be Advising! | When Live Events Fail | Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | Accounting Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting |Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients?

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Perhaps you’re not thinking about what’s next for your business, but you kind of should. If you’re frustrated with aspects of your business, you need to take a good, hard look at what is making it that way and ask yourself, “What is going to raise the bar?” Staying the same is easy, but it gets harder as you look around you and see other practices making core changes to improve life-work balance and revenue and remove blockers through technology, service, or client mix.

Randy Crabtree: Stress Management for Overworked Accountants

Tax Chat ’24: How to pause and recharge when you hit the wall in tax season.

With Seth Fineberg
for CPA Trendlines

Randy Crabtree, perhaps best known as the host of The Unique CPA Podcast, tells Seth Fineberg in this episode of Tax Chat ’24 that tax practitioners can avoid tax-season burnout with just a few simple shifts in their workflows.

MORE CRABTREE: Follow These 3 Rules to Keep Employees Happy

More takeaways:

BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Make It ‘Productive Season’

Don’t be busy. Be productive.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

At this time of year, most accountants are considered to be mired in an annual waterboarding-like ritual known as “busy season.” While the moniker has long stirred ire, one way to rally against its implication is to take a good look at what being “busy” means. Moreover, why not make it more productive?

MORE FINEBERG: It’s Time to Do the Uncomfortable | Jeremy Sulzmann: Can Intuit Mend Fences with Accountants at QB Connect? | Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block | Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously? |You’re Doing Email Wrong | Careful … You May Be Advising! | When Live Events Fail | Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | Accounting Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting |Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients?

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Perspective is everything. And while I’ve noticed more accounting professionals making concerted efforts to have more of a life/work balance, it is apparent that much of the work that contributes to being “busy” could evolve into productivity.

MANAGEMENT

It’s Time to Do the Uncomfortable

Change can be difficult, but it can also be the key to success.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

Yes, it’s that time of year again when proclamations of change are made, and everyone professes to be resolute in their goals.

The fact is that most of these statements don’t happen, despite all the best intentions, but let me give you one prescription for the New Year. Hopefully, beyond if accountants and the profession have any hope or goal of change, you need to do the uncomfortable.

MORE FINEBERG: Jeremy Sulzmann: Can Intuit Mend Fences with Accountants at QB Connect? | Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block | Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously? | You’re Doing Email Wrong | Careful… You May Be Advising! | When Live Events Fail | Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | Accounting Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting | Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients? | Time Management Rule #1 for Accountants | Plan to Go ‘Live’ Post Tax Season | Why VC Is a Bigger Threat Than AI | What Does Taking Control of Your Firm Mean? | Accountants Need Each Other More Than Ever | Marchternity: Just Say ‘No’ | Some Thoughts on In-Person Events | So You Think You Know Accountants? | What Bogs Down Accountants

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What does it mean to “do the uncomfortable”? It can include nearly anything outside of one’s comfort zone, ranging from not responding to every client call or email to working comparatively fewer hours using new technology to increase efficiency. It could even mean posting entry-level positions at a higher pay (you are raising fees anyway, yes?). And maybe, just maybe, embrace more diverse staffing practices.

Change, in and of itself, IS uncomfortable and not for everyone. It also doesn’t have to be anything major. These are incremental steps to improve your life and the life of your firm.

SPECIAL

Three Ways to Improve Next Tax Season

You’ve survived 2023. Here are some key lessons.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

In accounting, you know that tax season doesn’t end in April, as it often extends well into October. So, now that another season has come and gone and you’ve endured all the things you swore you’d never do again this year, What will be different in 2024 and beyond?

MORE FINEBERG: Jeremy Sulzmann: Can Intuit Mend Fences with Accountants at QB Connect? | Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block | Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously? | You’re Doing Email Wrong | Careful… You May Be Advising! | When Live Events Fail | Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | Accounting Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting | Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients? | Time Management Rule #1 for Accountants | Plan to Go ‘Live’ Post Tax Season | Why VC Is a Bigger Threat Than AI | What Does Taking Control of Your Firm Mean? | Accountants Need Each Other More Than Ever | Marchternity: Just Say ‘No’ | Some Thoughts on In-Person Events | So You Think You Know Accountants? | What Bogs Down Accountants

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Every year, I speak to tax pros and accountants with tax work at their practice’s core. I listen, I read what they share on social media, and it always seems to be the same. They swear they’ll get rid of clients who regularly extend into October. Still, they must hound those to the IRS deadline. They rail against the IRS and lack of guidance, or the hours spent on the phone trying to get answers or to resolve an issue for their clients. They exclaim, “This is the last year I’m going to…” And yet, little to nothing of significance changes. With more accountants getting increasingly frustrated with their careers and fewer coming into the profession, it is up to you to say what will change.

So, again, I ask you all, what do you need to change to make it more enjoyable, bearable and even productive for yourself?

Here are a few suggestions based on my observations. Take them for what you will.

READ MORE →

SPECIAL

Jeremy Sulzmann: Can Intuit Mend Fences with Accountants at QB Connect?

How Intuit plans to heal a strained relationship with accountants.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

It’s no secret that Intuit’s relationship with the accounting community has been somewhat strained recently. So Intuit has work to do at this year’s QuickBooks Connect.

MORE FINEBERG: Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block | Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously? | You’re Doing Email Wrong | Careful… You May Be Advising! | When Live Events Fail | Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | Accounting Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting | Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients? | Time Management Rule #1 for Accountants | Plan to Go ‘Live’ Post Tax Season | Why VC Is a Bigger Threat Than AI | What Does Taking Control of Your Firm Mean? | Accountants Need Each Other More Than Ever | Marchternity: Just Say ‘No’ | Some Thoughts on In-Person Events | So You Think You Know Accountants? | What Bogs Down Accountants

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“Accountants are our Number 1 partner,” says Jeremy Sulzmann, Vice President and General Manager of the QuickBooks Partners Segment, in this exclusive interview.

But it’s a relationship. And like any relationship, it has required some navigation.

Managing expectations has become a bit of a sub-theme for accountants these days, from the regulatory environment to AI and, of course, navigating the relationship with your primary service providers, like Intuit. Moreover, as technology has permeated nearly every aspect of an accountant’s work, the relationship with respective service providers has become more essential.

In this interview, Salzman talks about a wide range of issues, including Intuit’s current and future relationship with the accounting community and the role AI and technology will play in accountants’ lives.

SPECIAL

Meet Basis, the New AI Bookkeeper on the Block

Founders focused on accountants’ pain points.

By Seth Fineberg

Artificial intelligence is entering accounting in numerous ways, so it should be no surprise that another company has thrown its hat in the ring to automate the bookkeeping and related processes for accounting firms.

MORE: Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously? | When Live Events Fail | Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients? | Time Management Rule #1 for Accountants
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After closing on a $3.6 million seed round, Basis, which touts itself as an AI platform for accounting firms, is officially coming into the accounting market. The idea behind Basis is that accountants can have AI-powered “intelligence” so they can (wait for it …) focus on being better advisors and not the “tasks” of being an accountant.
READ MORE →

Is This When Accountants Start Taking Freshbooks Seriously?

Twyla Verhelst explains ‘collaborative accounting.’

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

By Seth Fineberg
At Large for CPA Trendlines

FreshBooks is taking another step to evolve from being a cloud-based invoicing solution for gig workers to being more strongly considered a true accounting solution that accountants could use to collaborate with clients as their business needs evolve.

MORE FINEBERG: Your Classic Business Model Won’t Allow Growth | Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today | You’re Doing Email Wrong | When Live Events Fail | Who’s in Control? You? Or Your Clients? | Time Management Rule #1 for Accountants

MORE TECH: Major Websites Blocking Content from AI Crawlers | AI and the Future of Advisory | How Much a Data Breach Will Cost You – Directly and Indirectly | Strengthen Client Ties with Workflow Tools | The Art of Prompt Engineering for A.I. Accountants

MORE VERHELST: Twyla Verhelst on How Firms Are Getting Creative to Compete

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“We are definitely in this flow of evolving the platform to support accountants better,” Twyla Verhelst, head of FreshBooks’ accountant channel, tells CPA Trendlines’ Seth Fineberg. “We now have an accountant hub, which we will continue to add to; and a robust roadmap, one in which we’re building from a place of [asking] accounting partners what do you need?”

Here’s what you’re looking for: Seth Fineberg

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).