CPA Trendlines

Today's Features

Bissett Bullet: The Tortoise Will Always Beat the Hare

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “When times are tough, choose short-term lifestyle changes over sacrificing long-term investments.”

By Martin Bissett

The temptation will always be to cash in an investment in order to enjoy the spoils of your previous discipline and maintain the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed. Before you sacrifice your future with no guarantee that you’ll ever catch up on that lost income, have you considered cutting back?

Play the long game for your future. Run a budget at home and in your business that ensures that you spend less than you earn and that allows you to invest even when times are hard. Stay the course slowly but surely and resist the urge to keep up with the Joneses.

Today’s To-Do:

Where could you cut back if you had to in order to avoid sacrificing an investment you’ve worked hard toward? Make a list of unnecessary outgoings that could be canceled in the event of a reduction in income.

See more Bissett Bullets here

MARKETING & SALES

Give to Receive, and Eight More Ways to Boost Sales

These tips work for referrals, too.

By Sandi Leyva
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Tax & Accounting Firms

Networking is an essential part of building your business.

Whether you network locally, nationally or internationally, there are some tips that are common to all businesses:

MORE: Five Ways to Target the Low-Hanging Fruit | Eight Ways to Build Busy-Season Stamina | Make Your Prospect Kit Stand Out | Six Ways to Beat the Competition | Grow Your Revenue with Three Marketing Strategies | What Can ChatGPT Do for Accounting Professionals? | Generative AI: Should You Avoid It or Adopt It? | Want Better Clients? Here’s How | Get Your Name in the News
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1. Be crystal clear about what you do and how people can use you. Also know exactly who your ideal client is in case you’re asked. If you don’t do this, you’ll leave people scratching their heads about you and they won’t know how to connect with you even if they want to.
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OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

2024 OUTLOOK: ‘Specialization Is the Future’

Audit troubles meet staffing shortages; uh-oh.

By Carrie Steffen
The Rosenberg MAP Survey

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every year, the Rosenberg MAP Survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms across the country. How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Also, how would you assess the last 12 months?

There are a couple of interesting stories on the horizon. First is the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s crackdown on audit deficiencies and how that will play out vs. a push to ease some of the requirements to become a CPA.

MORE: Remote Work Will See Cuts; PE Will Trickle Down | Three Ways Firms Can Succeed in 2024 | New Energy Comes from New Ways of Doing Business | AI for Accounting Automation Will Be Significant | A 40-Hour Workweek Is Feasible | It’s Time for a New Business Model
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With a perception of the quality of audits declining and the number of CPA candidates dropping, how will the profession reconcile the pressure to improve quality with fewer people to do the work and the proposed solution of lowering the threshold to become a CPA?
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CLIENT ACCOUNTING SERVICES

Accountants Cozy Up to Clients with CAS

Survey respondents tell us what their clients want from CAS that they don’t get from other services.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Accountants are using client accounting services (CAS) to get closer to their clients, according to early results from the CPA Trendlines Outlook 2024: Emerging Issues, Opportunities and Trends survey.

MORE: Accountants Torn Over 2024 Economy, Offer Advice | Accountants Bullish on Income | CPAs Culling Clients for Better Work-Life Balance | Are You Offering the Right Services? | Which Niche’s the Best Niche? | 42% of Accountants Turn Away Work Over Staff Shortages
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The survey doesn’t exactly ask about CAS leading to a closer relationship with clients, but responses to various questions indicate just such a result.
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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Best Practices for Source Doc Permissions and Handling

Four steps to asserting control.

By Penny Breslin
It’s Not Just the Numbers

Permissions are key. In our company only three people have a connection to their local C drive from our managed server. Also, we can track who is logged in, from where, how long and what they accessed.

MORE: Sixteen Guidelines for Naming Conventions | Revisit Your Back Office Support Procedures | Federated Search: What It Is, Why It Matters | Accounting Tech Tools to Minimize Your Pain | Do Your Apps Play Well with Others? | It’s OK to Have Favorite Clients
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

If documents are in our cloud storage, the permissions to download them can be turned off. Viewing is done from within the document storage app. Nothing is perfect. They can still take a screenshot but we attempt to keep things as closed as possible while still allowing for work and efficiency.
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