OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Financial Services Up at Largest Firms, Down at Smaller Ones

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Couple meeting with investment advisor.Conflict of interest is one reason smaller firms shy away from RIAs.

The largest CPA firms are by far the leaders in providing investment advisory services, but the rest of the profession does not appear to be following their lead too closely.

Fifty-eight percent of the profession’s largest firms, with more than $20 million in annual fees, offer investment advisory services, up from 51 percent in 2012, and another 9.1 percent were at least somewhat likely to add the services to their menus, according to the “The National MAP Survey of CPA Firm Statistics: The Rosenberg Survey.”

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How to Tell a Client How the Fee Was Set

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Ed Mendlowitz CPA The Practice Doctor Q and ABy Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I performed some additional services for a client and gave her a bill that she questioned and wanted to know how much time I had spent. I billed more than the time charges, but this client never gets time bills – everything I do is on a fixed fee so I never account for my time with her. What should I say now?

MORE PRACTICE DOCTOR Q&A: 18 Ways to Blow a Partnership Opportunity | When Experience Doesn’t Add Up | 8 Times When Hourly Billing Trumps Value Pricing | 6 Simple Steps to Impress a Prospect | Making Meetings More Productive | 5 Time Management Tips for an Overworked Accountant | Running an Accounting Business | 14 Ways to Switch to Value Pricing | Pricing, Billing, Costing: Don’t Blame Clients

RESPONSE: If a client is on a strict time basis, they are entitled to a breakdown of the hours and person performing the services.

Otherwise, when clients ask me how I arrived at a bill I tell them something similar to this:

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18 Ways to Blow a Partnership Opportunity

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By Ed Mendlowitz

QUESTION: I have been working for a one-owner CPA firm for the past eight years and want a partnership, but it hasn’t been offered. How should I approach it?

RESPONSE: I had a couple of rather long discussions with this practitioner. Why, I don’t know. I suppose I was being polite to the person who told him to call me.

Here is some additional information before I give my response: READ MORE →

How Accountants Get New Clients

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Angry young woman, blowing steam coming out of earsWith client retention the top issue for firms, we go looking for the “secret sauce” for landing new business.
Join the survey; get the results

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines

If you want some real answers for how to avoid losing clients, just start asking CPAs how they’ve managed to pick up new clients.

That’s exactly what we’ve been doing lately. Some of the answers are startling. All of them are instructional. Most of the time, accountants can blame the CPA that their new clients were abandoned. READ MORE →

Early Data Exchange Vital to Evaluate a Merger

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Three possible outcomes from trading numbers early.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Mergers

I have always been a big believer in the buyer and seller exchanging financial and operating information as early in the process as possible.

MORE ON CPA FIRM MERGERS: Deciphering the Current State of the CPA Firm Merger Market | The Law of Attraction: 15 Ways to Romance a Merger Partner | The 14 Keys to a Successful Merger | Mergers: 11 Lessons from Done Deals | The 21 Steps in Every Merger Deal | Today’s 15 Essential Deal Points in Accounting Firm Mergers

Numbers aren’t everything, but they do speak volumes. The data enable each firm to gain an understanding of the other in a manner that is not always possible in conversation.

The data is also a good way to corroborate things that are said verbally. Here are some examples: READ MORE →