AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Kelly Mann: Be the Bull in the China Shop | The Disruptors

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Stop following SALY. Think about what you are trying to accomplish. Plus 17 key takeaways.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Kelly Mann wants firms to stop relying on SALY – same as last year – for everything: “Everything is same as last year, the way we give bonuses to people, the way we split partner compensation, the way we monitor hours, the way we prepare a work paper, the way we plan an audit,” she says.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Alicia Katz Pollock: Create A Human-Centric Business |  Nancy McClelland: Be the One Your Clients Ask First |Alan Whitman: Stop Accepting the Status Quo | Sean Duncan: Discover Your Own Genius | Ingrid Edstrom: True Wealth Is Not Financial | Caleb Jenkins: Firm Growth Requires Owners to Shift Roles | Chris Hervochon: Be the Leader You Want to Work For | Ira Rosenbloom: Don’t Merge for the Money | Adam Lean: Get Out of the Accountant’s Trap

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When she started in audit, Mann was told to “try not to be such a bull in a china shop.”  She saw many opportunities for improvement by departing from SALY, but leadership told her, “Don’t have crazy ideas, don’t mix everything up, because change is hard and change disrupts.”

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Give Advice While Remaining Independent

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Find the magic 20 percent that could create clients for life.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

The pillars of our ethics are objectivity and integrity, and our profession has chosen independence to measure our objectivity as CPAs. We can still offer advice and insight to our clients and remain objective. We cannot, however, act in the capacity of management. Our clients must decide which ideas to use and implement them.

MORE: Stop Mixing Up Your V’s and Losing Your Best People | Empower Your Team by Dumping C and D Clients | Eleven Types of Audit Clients and Which to Fire | Don’t Take on Audits in an Industry You Don’t Understand | How ‘Business Expert CPAs’ Get Their Own Business Wrong | Exceptional Audit Client Service Demands Effective Communication | Five Ways to Prevent Audit Bottlenecks | How Do We Drive Relevance in Audit? | Lack of Relevance Drives Audit Commoditization | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master
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The tricky part comes when something we recommend fails. For example, let’s say a client asks for software advice, and they choose one of the three options we suggest. But that package isn’t working. Now, can we be objective enough to admit that the advice we gave them and they paid for was wrong? Do we have the integrity to tell the client they must write off the cost of that capitalized software? Can we be objective enough to face the possible negative consequences and not just protect ourselves?

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Stop Mixing Up Your V’s and Losing Your Best People

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When you take a value-based approach to your firm, you measure success in two ways.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Those firms that value the chargeable hour above all risk losing their best team members. The ones who want to think, innovate and come up with creative ideas that add value to the client and the firm will leave.

MORE: Empower Your Team by Dumping C and D Clients | The New Formula for an Accounting Business | Don’t Risk Losing Good Employees for Bad Clients | Four Questions to Make Your Firm More Successful as a Business | Say Adios to Audit Fee Pressure | Deliver More Audit Value by Getting Out of the Conference Room | Six Essential Elements in Audit Planning | Before the Audit: More Than Just Planning | Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm
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My associate Corey told me about his experience and why he left his last firm. See if this sounds familiar:

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Empower Your Team by Dumping C and D Clients

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Keeping bad clients can do more harm than you might think.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Have you ever sat down with your team to get their honest opinions about what it’s like working with each one of your clients? This is an essential exercise if you want to build an empowered team. Their experiences with the same client and people may differ vastly from yours. Clients may treat the audit partner with respect but not the staff.

MORE: The New Formula for an Accounting Business | How to Upgrade C and D Clients | Can a Service Center Model Solve Audit Staffing Shortages? | Move to Advisory and Assurance with Relevance | Use Eight Audit Exit Items to Deepen Client Relationships | Know Your Three Audit W’s | Planning Lays the Foundation of Audit Relevance | Are You Correctly Identifying the Relevance Intersection? | Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams
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Your team wants to do quality work, but they may struggle to deliver if the clients don’t honor their end of the agreement.

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The New Formula for an Accounting Business

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Productivity isn’t the same as putting in the hours.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Getting the right clients and projects goes a long way toward building a profitable and successful firm. But that’s only part of being business-minded about your firm. CPA firms have followed the same overall business model for generations, based on billing clients for the hours worked on a file. While that has been successful and has allowed many partners to achieve great wealth, a few forward-thinking firms are successfully challenging that model.

MORE: How to Upgrade C and D Clients | Eleven Types of Audit Clients and Which to Fire | Don’t Take on Audits in an Industry You Don’t Understand | How ‘Business Expert CPAs’ Get Their Own Business Wrong | Exceptional Audit Client Service Demands Effective Communication | Five Ways to Prevent Audit Bottlenecks | How Do We Drive Relevance in Audit? | Lack of Relevance Drives Audit Commoditization | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
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Many firm owners obsess about chargeability and realization rates. But that’s missing the big picture: the only thing your revenue model needs to accomplish is bringing in enough cash to cover your expenses with leftover profit. We know how much we’re paying the staff working on the audit, and we need to collect two to three times their salaries for that work. That will give us the cash we need to pay them and all our other expenses, plus a return to the partner, and make up for the weeks when they’re not as busy or are in CPE or taking PTO.

That’s why, instead of obsessing about chargeability and realization rates, a better way to measure success for your firm is by looking at your collected rate. READ MORE →