SPECIAL

Raise Client Expectations with CAS

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Businessman pressing virtual "automation" buttonThey see what can be automated.

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

We know that CAS generally constitutes three key service segments:

  • after-the-fact financial statement preparation, i.e., “write-up,”
  • business transaction processing and
  • outsourced CFO and controller services.

MORE: Launch CAS in Just Eight Steps | Get Sticky with CAS | The Why Behind Your CAS Why | Who Is the Professional?
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Tax planning/tax strategy services may also become part of your CAS offering if you have interest/expertise in that segment.
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Rate Managing Partners in Six Areas

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Blue pencil on survey formINCLUDED: Six tables to help you do just that.

By August J. Aquila
What Makes a Great Partnership

According to Marc Rosenberg, managing partners should focus on the following six areas:

  • Leadership
  • Profitability
  • Strategic planning
  • Team building
  • Learning/Training
  • Asset protection

MORE: Eight Ways Managing Partners Make a Real Difference | Ten Steps to a New Managing Partner | What Managing Partners Must Be Doing | Do Your Partners Pay Their Own Way? | How to Create Firm Accountability
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Each of these areas is important and worthy of further discussion. The size of your firm, number of partners/owners and the existing management team will influence the areas of importance. The following rating scale applies:
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Have You Planned How to Service Your New Revenue?

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Two businessmen discussing a projectSix marketing considerations. ALSO: Nine goals beyond getting new clients.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

Firm objectives are the context for marketing programs, which are, in turn, the blueprints for achieving firm objectives. To think of marketing otherwise is to court marketing programs that are irrelevant and unproductive.

MORE: How to Set Marketing Objectives | Nine Reasons That Prospects Say Yes | How Marketing Evolved to 3.0 | Accountants Don’t Sell Soap.
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The word market warrants some clear definition. A market is a group, of any size, with a common need or purpose. A market is a group that can be reached by common media. A market group is dynamic, subject to change, to reorganize, to respond to such external forces as the economy, law and regulation, and social factors.
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Cyber Insurance Costs Rise in Health Care as Attacks Soar

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Just how will that affect health care costs for employers?
Illustration of man pushing padlock button

By Rick Richardson
Technology This Week

Health systems – having already been hit by labor and supply chain costs and broader economic woes – have another unwieldy financial problem: the soaring costs of cyber insurance.

Moody’s Investors Service notes that, while it’s not sexy, the sheer size of cyber-crimes and insurers’ reluctance to cover losses brought on by ransomware attacks are seriously impacting hospitals.

MORE TECH THIS WEEK:  ChatGPT: What It Is. Why You Need to Know. | Russia-linked Ransomware Back with a Vengeance | Amazon AWS: The Mainframe Killer? | Amazon Launching Its First Internet Satellites | Russian SolarWinds Hackers at It Again | NASA Finds a $10 Quintillion Asteroid | Firms Must Balance Benefits, Risks of Emerging Technology | Microsoft and Google Go to War
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“The timing of the insurance price increase is bad for health care. There isn’t much room for error, ” said Matthew Cahill, a Moody’s analyst. There have been double-digit increases in premiums over the past four years, often more than tripling in a single year. According to a recent analysis from Property Casualty 360, the industry’s insurance costs have finally started to stabilize in the first quarter of 2023.

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Four Philosophies for Managing a CPA Firm

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Closeup of businesswoman writing on a flipchartBONUSES: Org charts for small, medium and large firms, plus 25 best practices.

By Marc Rosenberg
How to Bring in New Partners

When we discuss how CPA firms are managed, there are two kinds of firms.

MORE: How Partner and Staff Actions Impact Profits | The Business Side of CPA Firms | It Shouldn’t Take So Long to Make Partner | Three Types of Skills You Need to Become a Partner | Seventeen Basic Expectations of Partners | Nine Ways to Woo a Prospective Partner
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The first kind of firm argues that there is not much that needs to be managed at a CPA firm. These cynics might say, “Come on. Running a CPA firm isn’t rocket science. You hang out your shingle. You get clients. You hire staff. You do the work. Bill and collect. What needs to be managed?”
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Find an Extra Set of Hands for Time-Consuming Tasks

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Get personal and professional help at a fraction of the cost. Man with head down on desk, sticky note with "HELP" writte on it on baseball cap

By Beth Ziesenis
App of the Week

Admins around the globe keep the world spinning, and Administrative Professionals Day is the day to sing their praises (okay, you should be thanking them all day, every day, but especially at the end of April).

MORE APPS of the WEEK:  Make Your Computer a Clean Slate | Recycle and Repurpose Old Devices | Enlist AI for More Productive Meetings | Keep Teams on Task with Project Management Apps | Apps to Put Your Affairs in Order | App of the Week: Celebrate Black Business Month | App of the Week: Cheap Flights | Help Your Clients Save Money | Time to Upgrade Your Spreadsheets | App of the Week: Secretly Stash Cash | Easy Apps for Increasing Client Engagement with Video | App of the Week: Grow Your Business Knowledge and Career Skill Sets | App of the Week: Upgrade Your Resume | App of the Week: End Procrastination | 
SEE ALL: Apps of the Week here |
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We could all use a little more support, and you have outsourcing options galore in today’s tech-connected world. Here are a few of my favorites:

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Twyla Verhelst: How Firms Get Creative to Compete

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

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
for CPA Trendlines

You have to be intentional about creating the firm you want, said Twyla Verhelst, CPA. The head of Accountant Channel at FreshBooks and creator of Women in Accounting Mentorship said the first step is getting clear on your why, your firm’s why and your team’s why so you can approach growth more intentionally.

MORE: Clayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for Life | Randy Crabtree: Follow These Three Rules to Keep Employees Happy | Erik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a Mindshift | Jennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone Loves | Mike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training Practices | Hector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be Free| Private Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt Wilkinson | When Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey Schmidt | Can Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves? | Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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She said CPAs should be asking, “Why is it that a particular goal appeals to you?” “Is that the right thing to be working toward now?” “What will you do to get there?”

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Four Additional Services to Suggest

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Overhead view of two businessmen having meetingBONUS: sample letters to send clients.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

In order to help clients work out their problems, we need to give them suggestions and we need to charge the clients an appropriate fee.

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No matter how you price or bill for your services you will be spending time helping them and during that period you will be drawing on your vast experience, knowledge and data base of the client’s affairs.
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Use CAS to Focus on Strategy

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Hitendra Patil CAS Q-and-A logoYou’ll learn how your clients think.

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

Q: How can I use client accounting services to offer more strategic advisory services to my clients?

MORE CAS Q&A: Automation Is Key to CAS | How to Get Clients to Adopt CAAS Tech | Four Steps to Firm CAAS Buy-In | Clients Don’t Understand CAS, but They Know Value | Do I Need to Learn New Skills to Succeed in CAS?
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A: “Books” are not dead animals you can take a picture of. Live accounting, at least near-real-time, gives you powerful insights into your client’s business as it happens. Real useful advisory emerges from (live) accounting.
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IRS Sets Milestones for Radically New Service

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Calendar pages turningWhat’s promised between now and the end of 2027.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Funded with $80 billion in new appropriations, the IRS has laid out detailed plans for overhauling the service with better customer service, more online options and a modernized information technology system.

MORE: IRS Promises 12 Customer Service Initiatives | Clientele and Revenues Rising, But … | Should Tax Preparers Be Certified Competent? | IRS: Let the Sun Shine In … and Out | IRS Has Big Plans for Its $80 Billion | Can’t IRS Tax Pro Accounts Do More? | Hello? IRS? Anybody Home? | Taxpayer Assistance Centers Need Upgrade
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It’s an ambitious – and necessary and long overdue – plan. Can the IRS pull it off?

We’ll know they can do it if they manage to hit the milestones they’ve set for the next few years. If they do, the United States may be on the road to a just and user-friendly system of tax collection.
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Three Demos: Pricing Your Value Add

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Woman examining documentHow to take that big first step.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

The big part of pricing is the value added. How do we go from fixed to value-added pricing where the firm actually can really make a difference and move from just back-office support to client advisory services? The steps to get there mean providing the base of BOS so that you have the needed knowledge to perform client advisory services.

MORE: Set Expectations with an Anticipatory Set | Get the Most Out of Your Client Meeting | Why BOS Calls for Flat Rates | Four Steps for Controlling Source Documents | Why You Need Standard Naming Conventions | Procedures Require Regular Revisiting
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that about 20 percent of small businesses will fail in their first year and by the end of the fifth year 50 percent will fail.
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Pros Filing 54% of Individual Tax Returns

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data tableTotal refunds down 10 percent.

By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research

With 11 days to go in the tax season, the Internal Revenue Service was seeing red. Only two of its weekly data points were on the plus side, and those at less than 1 percent.

MORE: Average Tax Refunds Down 10% | Tax Pro E-filings Up 3% | Pros Handle 45% of Income Tax Returns | IRS Processing Returns as Fast as It Gets Them | Only 39% of Tax Returns Filed by Pros | Tax Season Opens with Refunds Up 85%
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The IRS received 101.3 million individual income tax returns as of April 7, the latest data available. That’s down 1.9 percent from the same period in 2022.
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