Why You Can’t Skip Checklists
Do you want tax returns fast or right?
By Ed Mendlowitz
How to Review Tax Returns
CHECKLIST
The Three Challenges on the Road to Partnership
And why we need them.
By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership
Now we move on to our sixth “C” in the passport to partnership – challenges.
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Again the heading has more than a single application, which we’ll explore here.
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What Accounting Firm Start-Ups Are Doing Right
And why other firms should worry
By CPA Trendlines Research
If your firm is 10 tears old, its probably getting stale facing intense competition for talent and Grade-A clients from newer firms, less than 10 years, according to new research
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It was the youngest firms – those in business for just one to two years – that scored highest. In hindsight, the reason is obvious: they began their firms during the pandemic. They didn’t have to change or adapt to the rigors of remote offices and limited client contact. They built their firms to fit the pandemic context.
The Ten Financial Controls That’ll Make You a Hero
What clients need to know.
By Ed Mendlowitz
77 Ways to Wow!
If you want your business to grow, don’t focus on only the easy financial controls where you can see quick results – such as holding down petty cash expenditures or checking expense accounts for accuracy.
MORE: Rule #1: Start with Cash | Organization Minutes Too Often Overlooked | The Seven-Minute Financial Statement | The KPI an Absentee Manager Needs
Instead, go for the tough steps that affect long-term profits and facilitate growth.
Captive Insurance: The Top Eight Myths
Deconstructing misconceptions about forming your own insurance company to optimize cash, mitigate taxes and build enterprise value
By Ken Huffman, CPA
President
Captive Nation
With continued economic uncertainty, companies of all sizes are looking toward captives as a way to manage high-severity risks and gain enhanced flexibility and greater control over their total cost of risk. And you don’t have to be a global behemoth to form a captive.
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Captive insurance can be one of the most effective ways for businesses to protect themselves, optimize cash, mitigate taxes and build enterprise value. However, captives often arouse suspicion among those who are not well-informed. That’s because there have been widely publicized cases of companies using captives as illegal tax shelters, among other abuses.
To separate fact from fiction, I will walk you through some of the most frequently heard objections to captives and explain why those objections are often short-sighted. READ MORE →
Five Tests: How Open Are You to Change?
You can’t fix what you don’t see.
By Sandi Leyva
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Tax & Accounting Firms
A long time ago, a participant in one of my classes passed a note saying, “The only people who like change are babies.” I believe everyone will agree that change is not easy until you develop a skill to embrace it.
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Here are five quick questions for your consideration:
Fourteen Rules for Lateral Partner Hires
Be clear about their client base.
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Mergers: Your Complete Guide
It’s fairly common for law firms to hire partners from other firms, a practice termed “lateral partner hires.” CPA firms do this but much less often.
MORE: Where Mergers Go Wrong | Twelve Tips for Negotiating Mergers | Buying a Solo | Why Merging in Smaller Firms Is Fabulous 13 Reasons to Merge Up | Thinking Merger? First Ask Why.
The main reason for this difference is that law firms cannot legally have nonsolicitation or noncompete covenants in their partner agreements. Most CPA firms do have such provisions, which severely restrict the movement of partners from firm to firm.
Despite these nonsolicitation provisions, CPA firms do sometimes make lateral partner hires (LPs). There are several variations:
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Keep the Accountants Focused on Accounting
CHECKLIST: The 10 questions you need to ask.
By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers
I’ve developed a series of questions to assess someone’s aptitude for being on a team. Each person in your firm who is a possible member of the back office support (BOS) team needs to answer these questions. That includes you, as you are a potential team member.
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Ask others in your firm or people you work with outside your firm to give you feedback on these questions as they see you and the other potential members of your team. Their responses will give you a second filtering of your potential as well as others you would like on your team. Notice these are not questions relating to the competencies in accounting functions. The assumption is that you and your people already possess those skills.
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