Ten Tips for Fighting Fraud | Listicle
By CPA Trendlines Research
SPECIAL
Salary Guides for Accountants Vary Widely: Whom Do You Believe?
Recruiters Atrium, LHH and Randstad don’t agree.
By CPA Trendlines Research
So, how much does, say, a tax manager pull down these days?
Well, it depends whom you ask.
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The recruiting firm Atrium says the average tax manager takes home between $100,000 and $142,000.
But another recruiter, LHH, says the same person typically earns $158,750 to $172,850, depending on the size of the company.
Another firm, Randstad, gives tax managers an average of $104,424 to $170,767, depending on experience.
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When Staffing Falls Short, Clients Get Culled
Revenues are taking a hit.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Who ever thought it would come to this – accounting firms reducing their clientele?
It seems to be increasingly common, and the reasons are clear. It isn’t a desire to reduce revenues. It’s a desire to keep up with the workload without burning out.
MORE: How Accounting Firms Are Dealing with Retirement | Next Five Years Are Critical for Accounting Firms | Staffing Turnover’s Down, But Why? | What’s Your Firm Worth? Private Equity Wants to Know | The New Pipeline: Outsourcing and Offshoring | Is This the Last Year of Accounting’s Golden Age?
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With fewer professionals entering the profession, and more of them leaving, more than half of practices are culling their less profitable or more problematic clients.
Is Your Practice Leaking Money?
There’s a spreadsheet for that. Three ways to recapture lost revenue.
By Sandi Leyva
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Tax & Accounting Firms
There are dozens (and maybe hundreds) of ways your practice can leak money.
Here are three ideas that are fairly simple to implement and may be some great goals for you to consider.
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1. Lost customer opportunities.
In just about every business I’ve worked with, there are opportunities within your current customer base that have not been harvested. When you offer multiple services or products, it may even be that some of your clients do not know everything you do.
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Twenty Questions to Ask Before Starting Your Marketing Plan
Make sure you’re prepared.
By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services
Here are 20 basic questions to ask yourself and your partners before engaging a marketing consultant:
- What is our firm’s mission?
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- Is our mission clearly stated and easily understood by the market?
- What is our firm’s image in the market?
What Leadership Looks and Feels at CPA Firms
Thirty ways that firms are developing staff into partners.
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Staff: Managing Your #1 Asset
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch
“Good employees make mistakes. Great leaders let them.” – Anonymous
We are probably the millionth people to form a list of important leadership qualities, but we want to share what we have learned from working with CPA firms for over 20 years.
MORE: Eleven Things That Good Mentors Do | Give the Recognition Your Staff Needs | The Importance of Great Bosses | How Remote Work Is Impacting Accounting Firms | Make Work Flexibility Work for Everyone | Why Staff Leave CPA Firms … and How to Stop Them | How to Solve the Big Disconnect in Talent Management | What Relevance Means for Staffing in Accounting | How Accounting Staffing Has Changed
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Many of these traits are geared to partners and firm management, but many apply to staff as well. READ MORE →
How Accounting Firms Are Dealing with Retirement
Burnout is driving some increases.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Retirement’s great! Long awaited, well deserved.
MORE: Next Five Years Are Critical for Accounting Firms | Staffing Turnover’s Down, But Why? | What’s Your Firm Worth? Private Equity Wants to Know | The New Pipeline: Outsourcing and Offshoring | Is This the Last Year of Accounting’s Golden Age?
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But it’s not so great if you’re not the one retiring. At accounting firms, retirement often means trouble.
- There may be no one to replace the retiree.
- There may not be a succession plan in place.
Bissett Bullet: Was It Worth It?
Today’s Bissett Bullet: “How do you determine the probability of marketing success?”
By Martin Bissett
See more Bissett Bullets here
Who Needs to Understand Scope?
Don’t make the mistake of allowing a partner to scope the engagement alone.
By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA
Partners, managers and accounting professionals must all understand scope to deliver the right amount of work for the engagement.
MORE JODY PADAR |THE RADICAL CPA
Everyone needs to be aligned. Everyone needs to know what the customer ordered, how to deliver it and where the work ends.
Next Five Years Are Critical for Accounting Firms
How deeply are you investing in your future? How are you treating the “three levels” of partners?
By Allan Koltin
The Rosenberg National Survey of CPA Firm Statistics
The next 12 months will start with a handful of firms breaking out of the pack and substantially raising starting salaries for new accountants in a way never seen before (see E&Y’s recent announcement on staff salaries). The domino effect will play out here because if you raise first-year salaries to second-year compensation levels, your second-year staff will need to be paid like third-year staff, and this move will go all the way up to senior managers and principals.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Every year, The Rosenberg National Survey of CPA Firm Statistics asks the profession’s top consultants two sets of questions:
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- How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Trends? Predictions? Other thoughts?
- How would you assess the last 12 months? Trends? Observations? Struggles?
MORE: Staffing Turnover’s Down, But Why? | What’s Your Firm Worth? Private Equity Wants to Know | The New Pipeline: Outsourcing and Offshoring | Is This the Last Year of Accounting’s Golden Age?
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The firms that are “uber” profitable will have an easier time funding this change than their peers. However, if you want to win the important war for talent (I mean attract, keep and grow future stars!), you will now need to pay up for them in a way we never envisioned (simple supply and demand economics in play).
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Microsoft Refreshes Copilot with Wave 2
Revolutionize your workflow by automating tasks, enhancing accuracy and boosting productivity.
By Rick Richardson
Microsoft Copilot has been a competitive alternative to ChatGPT since its inception, sometimes surpassing OpenAI’s product. But Copilot has trailed behind ChatGPT’s advancements – until now.
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In a live event called “Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2,” Microsoft revealed all the next improvements to its AI assistant, which will benefit both business and individual users.
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Give Your Audit Teams Tasks That Increase Business Acumen
Business-mindedness helps you identify risks.
By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future
I’ve previously described a task I have teams perform at the end of an audit. After everyone shares their insights about what they learned about that client and their operations, I ask everyone to complete this phrase:
“If I were running this business, I would ______________.”
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Here are a few of the ideas I’ve heard audit teams come up with in that exercise:
Want to Merge? Here Are 23 Things to Request
This is your starting point.
By Ed Mendlowitz
202 Questions and Answers: Managing an Accounting Practice
QUESTION: What do you ask for when considering a merger?
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RESPONSE: This is a “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” You should have this information fairly well organized.
Also, look at it critically and try to imagine what a prospective partner would say, and how you would react if this were someone else’s information that were being presented to you.
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