Today's Features

Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership

As CPAs, we exercise due professional care in all we do. When we perform audits, the bar is higher.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

In my work with auditors around the country, and as I’ve thought about where audit is headed, I’ve developed a framework of five key attributes of successful leadership for audit. If we focus on these five attributes, I truly believe we can transform audit from the checklist exercise that it’s becoming into a service that genuinely adds value to our clients.

MORE: Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions? | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
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Let’s look at each of these five crucial attributes of successful audit leadership:

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Tax Pros Handle 46.4% of E-filing

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The happy news for taxpayers: refunds are up.

By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research

The tax deadline, as most Americans define it, is drawing closer, and the country’s tax pros are gaining about 2 percentage points a week in market share of tax filings. Go, accountants!

MORE: Tax Refunds, Tax Pro Market Share Trending Up | Refunds Up as Tax Pros Tackle 41.5% of E-filingsTax Pros Handle 37.7% of E-filings | Tax Pros File 33% of Early Returns
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The Internal Revenue Service had received 54 million individual income tax returns, down 1.7 percent, as of March 1, the latest data available. It had processed 53.2 million returns, down 2 percent from one year ago. The 2024 season has been seven days shorter than the 2023 season because of a later start date.
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ChatGPT for the Reluctant Accountant

two men looking at a computer screen

Getting started is fast and easy.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Artificial intelligence has a lot in store for the accounting industry. AI is still in its infancy, but it’s also ready to start helping any CPA firm, even the low-tech solo shop.

MORE: CPAs Needed to Help Small Biz Adopt AI | Revenue Growth Is Top Priority for Small Firms | Survey Shows That Tech Remains the Great Divide | Can Big Data Spot Financial Fraud? | Accountants Hopeful, Concerned and Confused about AI | The 7 Categories of Cybersecurity Solutions Firms Need | Research: Accounting Pros Cautiously Optimistic about Generative AI | How Auditors Can Beat AI
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You can start right now. You don’t need to invest anything other than the few minutes it takes to register to use ChatGPT at chat.openai.com. It’s free. You can ask a question, and an astonishingly poignant and detailed answer will appear within seconds.

And there you are, on the cusp of 21st-century technology.
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‘Sales’ Is Not a Four-Letter Word

woman listens as two clients speak

The five steps of the sales cycle and what you need to know.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

For a long time, the word “sales” was not an accepted word in accounting firms. Unfortunately, too many accountants associated sales work with some type of unprofessional and even unethical activity. Fortunately, those days are long gone.

MORE: Three Pillars Support a Successful Accounting Firm | Four Questions for Choosing Your Marketing Audit Strategies | Four Steps to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign | Five Reasons to Implement Change Orders | Make Your Practice Better | Eleven Marketing Strategies for Smaller Firms | Five Questions for Developing Your Marketing Plan | You Only Have Four Strategies
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The word “sales” is not a four-letter word; it is a professional activity. People who sell make a promise of some future deliverable: “I will do this and this for you.” In turbulent times, selling is a skill that accountants must learn to be successful. Here is my definition of selling: “Selling is problem solving.” Nothing more and nothing less. It’s what you do every time you help a client with a problem. If you have been a successful new business developer, then you have been a successful salesperson.
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Randy Crabtree: Stress Management for Overworked Accountants

Tax Chat ’24: How to pause and recharge when you hit the wall in tax season.


With Seth Fineberg
for CPA Trendlines

Randy Crabtree, perhaps best known as the host of The Unique CPA Podcast, tells Seth Fineberg in this episode of Tax Chat ’24 that tax practitioners can avoid tax-season burnout with just a few simple shifts in their workflows.

MORE CRABTREE: Follow These 3 Rules to Keep Employees Happy

More takeaways:

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CPAs Needed to Help Small Biz Adopt AI

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Which areas of your business would you expect to be the most and the least affected by artificial intelligence?

 

Privacy, intellectual property concern many survey respondents.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Small businesses are getting more comfortable with artificial intelligence, according to a survey-based report from FreshBooks.

“Small business owners are less convinced that AI is coming for their jobs and/or the jobs of their employees,” the report says, “with two-thirds disagreeing that AI will replace them.”

MORE: Revenue Growth Is Top Priority for Small Firms | Survey Shows Challenges, Priorities Shifting | Survey Shows That Tech Remains the Great Divide | Is the CPA Business Model the Clog in the Pipeline? | Can Big Data Spot Financial Fraud? | Will Unclogging the Accounting Pro Pipeline Kill Mobility? | Accountants Bullish on Income | 42% of Accountants Turn Away Work Over Staff Shortages | Accountants Hopeful, Concerned and Confused about AI
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Still, in a bit of a contradiction, 44 percent of owners say they expect to hire fewer people in the future thanks to expected AI capabilities. And the larger the business, the more likely they will use AI to reduce payroll.
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Bissett Bullet: Who are Your Centers of Influence?

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Who is sending new business your way and who isn’t but really ought to be?”

By Martin Bissett

A “center of influence” is someone who is well known and respected within their community or industry and as a result is a valued and trusted source of referral.

This may be a restaurant owner who knows everybody in the local area because they come through their door on a regular basis, or the head of your local chamber of commerce or networking group.

Today’s To-Do:

List two or three people who are influential in your local area that you don’t have a relationship with but you should, and get to know them. Identify a mutual contact who could make an introduction or a local networking event where you might have an opportunity to speak with them.

See more Bissett Bullets here

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Create a Bad Website in Ten Easy Steps

You have eight seconds to make a first impression. What kind do you want it to be?

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

You can indeed get more business, more clients and more profits from your website. But not if you make these common mistakes!

MORE: Eight Steps to Getting Started with AI: A Guide for Tax Professionals | How to Weather Any Economic Storm | Ten Ways to Have More Energy This Tax Season | Seven Steps to Keeping Your Clients Forever | Give to Receive, and Eight More Ways to Boost Sales | Five Things That Clients Don’t Know about Accountants | Five Ways to Wow Your Clients | You’re Missing 60% of Your Revenue | Make the Most of CPE Conferences | Beyond Compliance: Six Tips for Adding Value
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Whether creating a new site or updating your existing site, here are some common pitfalls to avoid.

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