Alan Anderson

Stop Mixing Up Your V’s and Losing Your Best People

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When you take a value-based approach to your firm, you measure success in two ways.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Those firms that value the chargeable hour above all risk losing their best team members. The ones who want to think, innovate and come up with creative ideas that add value to the client and the firm will leave.

MORE: Empower Your Team by Dumping C and D Clients | The New Formula for an Accounting Business | Don’t Risk Losing Good Employees for Bad Clients | Four Questions to Make Your Firm More Successful as a Business | Say Adios to Audit Fee Pressure | Deliver More Audit Value by Getting Out of the Conference Room | Six Essential Elements in Audit Planning | Before the Audit: More Than Just Planning | Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm
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My associate Corey told me about his experience and why he left his last firm. See if this sounds familiar:

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Empower Your Team by Dumping C and D Clients

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Keeping bad clients can do more harm than you might think.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Have you ever sat down with your team to get their honest opinions about what it’s like working with each one of your clients? This is an essential exercise if you want to build an empowered team. Their experiences with the same client and people may differ vastly from yours. Clients may treat the audit partner with respect but not the staff.

MORE: The New Formula for an Accounting Business | How to Upgrade C and D Clients | Can a Service Center Model Solve Audit Staffing Shortages? | Move to Advisory and Assurance with Relevance | Use Eight Audit Exit Items to Deepen Client Relationships | Know Your Three Audit W’s | Planning Lays the Foundation of Audit Relevance | Are You Correctly Identifying the Relevance Intersection? | Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing | Turning Audit & Accounting into Assurance & Advisory | Stop Sending the Wrong Message to Audit Teams
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Your team wants to do quality work, but they may struggle to deliver if the clients don’t honor their end of the agreement.

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Eleven Types of Audit Clients and Which to Fire

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Bad clients can bring turmoil by increasing the likelihood of regulatory scrutiny, legal troubles and reputational damage.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

In the realm of auditing, client selection is a critical decision that can significantly impact the health and harmony of your team and your firm. Auditors should be highly selective about their clients because engaging with entities that lack ethical standards, have complex or opaque financial practices, or demonstrate a history of compliance issues can lead to substantial risks and challenges.

MORE: Don’t Risk Losing Good Employees for Bad Clients | Can a Service Center Model Solve Audit Staffing Shortages? | Move to Advisory and Assurance with Relevance | Use Eight Audit Exit Items to Deepen Client Relationships | Know Your Three Audit W’s | Planning Lays the Foundation of Audit Relevance | Are You Correctly Identifying the Relevance Intersection? | Traditional Audits Don’t Deserve Premium Billing

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When we discuss the types of clients that our teams find challenging to work with, we can divide them into these categories:

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Don’t Risk Losing Good Employees for Bad Clients

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Keep the right KPIs and the right clients, and you’ll keep the right staff.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Audit in the future will be much different than in the past. It’s going to require different skill sets. In the future, we need to teach more thinking and interpretive skills. The ticking and tying can be automated, but we’ll need people to interpret the anomalies that the bots and automation tools kick out. They’ll need to develop a deeper understanding of the industry, the client, and general business sense to discern whether an anomaly is just a mistake or a sign of something more profound.

MORE: Can a Service Center Model Solve Audit Staffing Shortages? | Don’t Take on Audits in an Industry You Don’t Understand | How ‘Business Expert CPAs’ Get Their Own Business Wrong | Exceptional Audit Client Service Demands Effective Communication | Five Ways to Prevent Audit Bottlenecks | How Do We Drive Relevance in Audit? | Lack of Relevance Drives Audit Commoditization | Four Basic Understandings Every Auditor Must Master | WANTED: Great Audit Mentors | Closing the Audit Expectations Gap
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As the owner of a business myself, I understand the need to ensure there is enough cash coming in to keep the lights on and everyone paid. But sometimes, firms take on work just to keep people busy all year round. A prime example of this is EBP audits, which seem quick and easy but have their own risk factors. Doing only one or two a year can be especially risky for your firm.

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Can a Service Center Model Solve Audit Staffing Shortages?

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Providing superior client service eliminates the perception of audit as a commodity.

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Most firms have abysmal project management, which makes it nearly impossible to see if there’s any room to take on extra work. Plus, piling all the work into busy season means your people already work far beyond 40 hours a week. And, if you’re relying on timesheets as a measure of capacity, you may not be capturing the time your staff eats because the work is taking more than 40 or even 60 hours in a week to complete.

MORE: Don’t Take on Audits in an Industry You Don’t Understand | Four Questions to Make Your Firm More Successful as a Business | Say Adios to Audit Fee Pressure | Deliver More Audit Value by Getting Out of the Conference Room | Six Essential Elements in Audit Planning | Before the Audit: More Than Just Planning | Five Crucial Attributes for Successful Audit Leadership | Put the Ethics Code to Work for Your Clients and Your Firm | Is Audit in Crisis Because of Definitions?
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

During the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic, some audit firms had to lay people off, or reduce work hours as projects got canceled or curtailed. But the long-term trend for years has been a shortfall in talent that will only get worse. Burnout from overwork is the number one cause of employee turnover.

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