CPA Trendlines

Today's Features

Forged in Fire: The Pains of Leadership

Think of it as an upward spiral.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

Unhappy and difficult clients help our firms to improve our client management skills and present opportunities to refine our leadership skills.

MORE: Perception Is Reality, Client Version | Your Website Promises. Do You Deliver? | Five Reasons Firms Don’t Thrive | Four Biz Dev Tasks to Start the New Year | What the Next Generation of Practice Leaders Faces | Nine Points to Check Before Hello | Why Clients Struggle with Growth | Nine Biz-Dev Metrics for Making Partner
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It is tough for us to build a successful firm without difficult clients or internal personnel issues in order to provide learning experiences for us to build a robust and commercially successful infrastructure.
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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Why BOS Calls for Flat Rates

Timesheets are used, but for tracking productivity.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Let’s get to the big questions that confound professional service providers of all types in today’s tech environment:

How do I charge my client for these services?
How do I continue to get paid?
How do I charge hourly for processes that will be taking less and less time because of the application of technology?

MORE: Four Steps for Controlling Source Documents | Why You Need Standard Naming Conventions | How to Develop Internal Procedures | Workflow Tools Can Deepen Client Relationships | Going Viral: Today’s Top Marketing Strategies | Which Kind of Team Do You Have? | Meet the New BOS | Why AI Is Not the Enemy
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Fixed Pricing

Flat-rate billing is the logical choice for back office support (BOS) services. This fixed pricing is typically used for monthly recurring work. We can do this by knowing how long it takes to create any given transaction. There will be swings in time, but the idea is that the fixed monthly rate considers the busiest season or months for the business. That way, on less heavy months, you receive the same rate and it makes up for the times when the workload increases.
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PRO Member Exclusive

Phishing Attack Hackers Have a New Trick

And it’s working.

By Rick Richardson

Cybercriminals are experimenting with a new method of delivering dangerous payloads and employing targeted phishing emails to infect users with malware.

According to a study by Proofpoint, digital OneNote notebooks (denoted by “.one” extensions) are increasingly being used by cyber-attackers to spread malware. OneNote is included in the Microsoft 365 office software bundle and is a widely used piece of software.

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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OneNote documents are rarely misused in this manner, according to cybersecurity professionals, and there is only one clear reason attackers are experimenting with them: They can more readily avoid threat detection than other attachments. And it seems to be effective.

PRO Member Exclusive

Price Not Always the Top Consideration in a Sale

What does the owner really want?

By Ed Mendlowitz
77 Ways to Wow!

A friend just sold his business and retired. The price he received was not a life-changing sum, but the future time he gained was priceless.

MORE: Eight Ways to Value a Family-Owned Business | Solos Need Plans for Death, Disability | Five Ways to Ward Off Fraud in Not-For-Profits | Client Hires New Manager: You Need a Plan | Anatomy of a Fraud | How to Explain Internal Controls to Clients | The Priorities Were Backward | How to Read a Financial Statement | 77 Thoughts about Client Needs
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People who own a business make their livings from it while also accumulating savings for their sunset days. Many work until they drop. Some have foresight to leave earlier. Some don’t contemplate ever retiring, but a health scare delivers a reminder of their mortality and then they decide that life is more than just working. After all, the purpose of working is to make a living. When wealth is secure, why continue working?
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CLIENT ACCOUNTING SERVICES

Who Is the Professional?

The mindset you need for client accounting services.

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

It was the 10^th of May, 2012.

Over dinner on that quiet mid-spring evening, at a classic traditional Italian restaurant, I met the owner of one of my largest clients, only after about five years of providing services to his firm. His firm had chosen a particular niche industry to serve and only that. He was doing well – over $3.5 million in annual revenue, growing consistently, and employing 39 staff members. In any given week, two new clients were being onboarded via a very detailed process, moving clients’ accounting databases and processes into his firm.

MORE: Review Your CAS: When, What, How | Be Serious About AI, Not Amused | Get Clients to Toot Your CAS Horn | Seven Ways to Market Your CAS Offering | The Top CAS Pricing Strategies | How to Choose Your CAS Processes | Nine Ways to Measure Client Experience | Twelve Clues It’s Time to Outsource or Offshore | Yes, You Have the Staffing for CAS | Why Firms Shy Away from CAS | Hook Your Firm on CAS | Can You Identify Real CAS Prospects? | 8 Ways to Create Your CAS Practice | Do You Value Your CAS Value?
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He would not take on any new client unless the client handed over all of the accounting work responsibilities to the firm.

All or none.
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PRO Member Exclusive

Countdown to Important Dates

Including the big one in April.

By Beth Ziesenis
App of the Week

I bet you already know how many days, hours and minutes there are until the tax deadline. But just in case…

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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Create your own countdown to anything with a beautiful background on a super cool site to celebrate National Countdown Day every March 21. READ MORE →

PRO Member Exclusive

Judge Reviewers by How Tax Preparers Improve

ALSO: Eight kinds of staff you don’t want.

By Ed Mendlowitz
How to Review Tax Returns: The Field-Tested Update

Reviewers have to face accountability. They are judged several ways, but I feel the best way is not with a metric but by how the quality of the preparers improve during tax season and how the workload is managed.

MORE: Tax Reviewers Can Advance, with a Push | What Makes an Excellent Tax Return Reviewer | 10 Errors That ‘Smart’ Scanners Make | Tax: The Procedural Checklists Your Firm Needs | The Best Way to Review a Tax Return | Why You Can’t Skip Checklists
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Yes, the reviewers are responsible for the preparers’ quality. The reviewers are expected to find errors and show the preparer what they are, how to fix it and to not have them reoccur. And this should be done quickly by not letting prepared returns hang around unchecked for a while. The quicker the turnaround time, the easier and better the training and better all-around job by everyone.
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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Dustin Verity: Keep an Open Mind and Constantly Learn

Tech allows small to mid-size firms to provide better CAS.

^ Click to play video | > Play the podcast and follow CPA Trendlines Podcasts on Apple Podcasts here or grab the RSS feed here.

Transformation Talks
With Bill Penczak
Center for Accounting Transformation

Dustin Verity admits to being cautious. He also admits to being a technophile.

In the latest episode of Transformation Talks, the CPA explained being conflicted between his obsession with playing with the latest technology and finding the right fit for his firm.

MORE: Secret to Success? A Growth and Abundance Mindset | O.D. Lanier: Stepping Into Advisory | From Tax to Transformation | Early Adopters Gain an Edge in Audit | Why the Future is in Risk Advisory | Four Strategies for a Future Ready Firm
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“I’ve always been interested in technology and, and you know, efficiencies,” Verity said, always wanting to know how his firm could produce more and work more efficiently. “That means less hours that we have to spend in the office ourselves.” READ MORE →

CLIENT ACCOUNTING SERVICES

There Are Only Three Growth Strategies

Where will you focus?

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

Q: Most traditional CPA firm growth comes from existing clients and referral sources. Pilot and other similar client accounting and advisory services providers will obviously have a different growth strategy. What can you share about successful growth strategies that vary from traditional accounting firm strategies?

MORE CAS Q&A: Eight Steps to Optimize Capacity | 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: The business model of traditional CPA firms and the likes of Pilot are vastly different. And when growth is financed by other people’s money, the methods and costs of attracting new clients are very different too.
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MARKETING & SALES

Perception Is Reality, Client Version

Avoid the funhouse mirror effect.

By Martin Bissett
Business Development On a Budget

There used to be an old exercise used in training sessions about customer relations or selling or leadership that went like this. The trainer would ask the group to think about the color green. A few seconds later he would ask them what type of green they were thinking of, and of course there would be many variations of green.

MORE: Your Website Promises. Do You Deliver? | A Lesson in Customer Service and Reputation | Prioritize Your Prospects | Consistency Is Key to Business Development | Five Questions about Your Network | Seven Things That Good Advisors Skip
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The point is that, as the saying goes, perception is reality. Whatever each person perceived as green, that would be the reality for them – but it would be different for each person in the room.
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PRO Member Exclusive

The Top Hotspot Router – and Why You Need It

Reliability. Adaptability. And cool capabilities.

By Rick Richardson

Your phone probably has a built-in hotspot feature that enables you to share your internet connection with other devices, regardless of whether you use an iPhone or an Android smartphone.

MORE TECH THIS WEEK: 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
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

It’s a nice function, but if you use it frequently, a separate mobile hotspot router will probably serve you better.

CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Eight Ways to Value a Family-Owned Business

Why fair market value can’t always be used.

By Ed Mendlowitz
77 Ways to Wow!

There are many ways and purposes for valuing a privately owned business. There is no one “right” way. An appropriate method should be determined depending upon the reason and use for the valuation. Here are explanations of some of the most used methods.

MORE: Solos Need Plans for Death, Disability | When an Owner Dies Without a Buy-Sell Agreement | Due Diligence Is in the Details | Manage Better with the Right Financial Tools | Do You Need a Forensic Professional? | Six Benefits of an Internal Audit
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Fair Market Value

Many people refer to a business’ value as its “fair market value” but this is generally a misused term. Its derivation is from a 1959 IRS Revenue Ruling that specifically addresses valuations for gift and estate tax purposes and does not necessarily provide a reasonable valuation for other uses.
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