CPA Trendlines

Today's Features

Rosenbloom: Don’t Merge for the Money

Merge to make a better business.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Ira Rosenbloom has worked in M&A with accounting firms for years, but things are changing today. The community of buyers is shrinking, so firms are being more selective about with whom they partner. Rosenbloom is also seeing more creativity in transactions, and acquiring firms are looking closer at the clients they may be adding.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Adam Lean: Get Out of the Accountant’s Trap | Geraldine Carter: Charging More is Better for Your Clients | Vimal Bava: When Working Smarter, Not Harder, Is the Only Option | Dawn Brolin Says Grow Your Firm by Shrinking It | Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |

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“We’re bringing in more clients. Are they the right clients?” he asks. “And if we bring in clients from this other firm, and we do some cutting, how do we let that other firm earn some money back?”

PRO Member Exclusive

Startup Creates Legolike Brick That Can Store Air Pollution

Could something so simple save the planet?

By Rick Richardson
Technology This Week

A business supported by Bill Gates, Graphyte, is bringing the pipe dream of carbon capture one step closer to reality by burying bricks made of plant material.

MORE: AI Displacing More Jobs in Banking Than Other Sectors | Your Brain Can Store 10 Times More Than Anyone Thought | How Many EV Charging Stations Will We Need? | Google Launches New Private Space Feature | Microsoft Discovers a Security Flaw Impacting Android Apps | What Is an AI PC, and Should I Get One? | Fool’s Gold May Not Be So Foolish Now | AI-Engineered Enzyme Could Be Solution to Plastic Pollution
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The Washington Post described Graphyte’s “deceptively simple” process for sequestering blocks of rice hulls and wood chips as “a game-changer” for the sector, which has been hindered by the high cost of alternative approaches.

PODCAST

Steve Yoss, Quick Tech Talk: Creating Powerful and Effective Presentations Using Microsoft PowerPoint

Knock your next presentation out of the park with PowerPoint tools and tricks.

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Quick Tech Talk
With Steve Yoss
CPE Today

PowerPoint is incredibly useful for crafting a message and getting that point across to your audience. I use PowerPoint all the time to design and curate content to present to audiences to help them understand how to better use accounting and technology in their day-to-day work.

AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Move to Advisory and Assurance with Relevance

Relevance protects you from technological obsolescence.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

The days of delivering an audit report months after year-end are numbered. How relevant is an audit report when it’s months after the fact? Even when we move to continuous audit – which will happen sooner than you think – it will still be historical information. But what will make it more relevant is that it will be delivered more timely, even if we don’t change much about how we perform the audit.

MORE: How ‘Business Expert CPAs’ Get Their Own Business Wrong | Say Adios to Audit Fee Pressure | Eight Items to Cover in the Audit Exit to Deepen Client Relationships and Prove Value | Know Your Three Audit W’s | Planning Lays the Foundation of Audit Relevance | How Do We Drive Relevance in Audit? | Before the Audit: More Than Just Planning | Are You Correctly Identifying the Relevance Intersection? | Lack of Relevance Drives Audit Commoditization | Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership | Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master
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If you’re taking the time to understand the workings of the business, how that business works in relation to the industry, and how it serves its customers, you’re on the path to providing true relevance. That’s how you move into advisory and assurance. If you provide that baseline level of relevance and then build more real-time techniques and tools, you can expand on that knowledge base of the industry and the operating environment. Then you can give your clients even more advice and suggestions for what they do.

ADVISORY & CONSULTING

The Accountant as a Strategic Business Partner

Shift from transactional to advisory to become vital to your clients’ success.

By Katie Thomas

Traditional accounting roles are evolving, now more than ever, as client needs change. Ask 10 of your friends, and most will assume that an accountant is a number cruncher and focuses on compliance issues.

And, to some degree, these people are correct.

MORE: Is Tech Causing Both CPA Shortage and Low Salaries? | Audit Firms Nervous about New Tech | What Accountants Can Learn from T-Ball | Staffing Tops List of Woes at CPA Firms | To Replenish the Talent Pipeline, Go Back to the Classroom | Beware the Work-Life/Workload Doom Spiral | Why the Dry Pipeline? It’s About Time | Business Model Transformation: Do It or Die | Misperceptions, Corrections, Accountancy and Lemonade | Whole Person Retention: When It’s Not Just the Money | Global Trends Show Many Dissatisfied CPAs | More Big Firms Shut Their Doors to New College Grads
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Certified public accountants know a lot about numbers. They analyze them, forecast them and “crunch” them, but over 50 percent of firms now offer client advisory services and have become strategic partners with clients. Accountants are doing a lot more today than even a few years ago.

Why?

Client needs are evolving, and you, as their accountant, are in the perfect position to serve them. After all, you’re viewed as a trusted advisor and have access to the data to help your clients reach their goals faster and make better decisions.
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