By Sandi Smith Leyva, CPA
Accountant’s Accelerator
With Labor Day closing in, it’s a good time to take stock of where we stand for the year, plus re-group as needed before the 2014 busy season is upon us. With so many changes in software, politics, tax laws, and global standards, it’s pretty easy to feel a little disorganized.
More for soloists and small firms: The Five Essential Skills Accountants Need Today | The Seven Essential Components of a Simple Marketing Plan for Accountants | Take Six Big Steps to Go Beyond Compliance Services | When Your Business Needs to Be Rebooted | Two Steps to Easy Cross-sells | The Hot New Tech Product for Automated Data Entry | Five Value-Add Service Areas to Take You Beyond Bookkeeping | Six Money-Making Strategies to Take You Beyond QuickBooks | Proactive Ways to Get More Referrals | The Three Biggest Money Leaks in Your Practice | New Client Opportunities with Mobile Apps | Six Questions to Launch Your Summer Strategy Sessions | What Most Accountants Miss in the Five Simple Steps to Get More Clients | Accountants, Do You Know Your Opportunity Number? | Five Ideas to Reduce Client Price-Sensitivity | Rise to the Top with a Fresh Elevator Speech | Four Ways to Practice Entrepreneurial Perseverance | 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Seeking New Clients | The Top 12 Business Card Blunders Accountants Make | Seven Tips to Keep the Clients You Have | How to Attract Clients Like a Magnet | Eleven Easy Ways to Deliver More Value to Clients
Here are three steps to help us take stock of our foundational business goals, re-evaluate our big picture, and get us centered as we enter the next quarter. READ MORE →
Including: Managing Partner Evaluation Forms, Parts 1 and 2.
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Management & Governance
This is really an upward evaluation. Like all upward evaluations, people evaluating the managing partner should be limited to those in a position to offer informed input. This means that at firms of fewer than 10 to 15 partners all the partners will probably want to participate. But once a firm gets beyond 10 to 15 partners, an increasing number of partners may not be in a position to respond to the evaluation factors listed in the form.
More CPA Firm Management & Governance: 18 Things Partners Owe their Firms – And Each Other | 17 Ways to Measure a Partner | How The Structure of an Accounting Firm Changes through the Years | Congratulations! Your Firm Needs a Human Resources Director | The 19-Point Marketing Director Job Description | Checklist: How the Best Managing Partners and Firm Admins Work in Concert | 21 Questions for Managing the Managing Partner | No Partner Vote Needed: 17 Decisions Best Left to the Managing Partner Alone | New Rules: 13 Items that Should be in Your Managing Partner’s Job Description | When Is It Time to Shift Your Firm from Partnership-style to Corporate-style Governance? | Not Every Firm Needs a General Patton |
Firms with management or executive committees may wish to limit the evaluation to the partners on those committees.
Once you have decided who will be allowed to participate in the evaluation, each partner should complete the evaluation forms. READ MORE →
Ed Mendlowitz, CPA, ABV, PFS
Author of “Implementing Fee Increases“
Question: Client didn’t pay his bills to me, doesn’t return my phone calls, and his secretary keeps sending me the tax notices he gets with notes of “when are you going to take care of them?” I tell her that I need the client to call me before I can do any more work and she ignores this and keeps sending me the notices and other tax correspondence he gets. I don’t want to tell him I am dropping him because then I don’t think I’ll ever be paid. Every year he goes on extension and he usually pays me half of what he owes when he sends me his tax info, but the past due amount has really accumulated to about three year’s fees. What should I do about getting paid? READ MORE →
The dysfunctional partner team and three ways to get them back on track.
You’ve tried management by committee. And by now, you know it doesn’t work. In a new analysis of CPA firm management practices, Marc Rosenberg finds, “Management by committee rarely works.”
There must be a better way. And, yes, there are a few. Here is a five-point spectrum of approaches that firms use to make decisions. One of them may work for your firm.
A sign of economic recovery and increased competition.
Bringing in new business and finding top-notch staffers to handle anticipated growth are emerging as the new, most pressing challenges for CPA firms today.
With a rebounding economy, the AICPA says in its new PCPS “Top Issues Survey” that client retention, which had been a significant concern for firms in the 2009 survey, has been overtaken by a tilt toward growth issues.
“Finding qualified staff” was a top issue from 1997 to 2007 for all but the smallest firms, but disappeared entirely from Top 5 lists in 2009. Now it’s back.
Start with a clean spreadsheet.
By Sandi Smith, CPA
Accountant’s Accelerator
There are dozens (and maybe hundreds) of ways your practice can leak money. Here are three ideas that are fairly simple to implement and may be some great goals for you to consider.
More for soloists and small firms: New Client Opportunities with Mobile Apps / Six Questions to Launch Your Strategy Sessions / What Most Accountants Miss in the Five Simple Steps to Get More Clients / 10 Ways to Add a “Money Maker” Hour to Your Day / 11 Sources of Wealth We Can Celebrate / Nine Value-Adds to Command a Higher Fee / How to Design Your Business Around Your Strengths / How to Make It Easy for Clients to Hire You / 12 Fast, Low-Cost Tips for a Stress-Less Practice
The new practice management discipline.
by August Aquila
Author of Leadership At Its Strongest
No profits, no mission, as one of my partners is fond of saying.
While leadership, balanced life, outstanding client service and efficient processes are critical for success, they mean nothing if the firm is not sufficiently profitable to make investments for the future and compensate performers. I want to focus on ten ways to make your practice more profitable.
These ten areas form the basis of a practice operational review. READ MORE →
by Marc Rosenberg
Author of What Really Makes CPA Firms Profitable?
At a monthly roundtable of 25 managing partners from most of Chicago’s largest local firms, several highlights emerged, including insights into:
by Bruce W. Marcus Professional Services Marketing 3.0 While some firms have explored the idea of client service groups, and leading thinkers like Patrick McKenna have been training firms in the concept for several years, few firms have developed the … Continued
Lessons from the best-managed firms.
By Marc Rosenberg
Author of “CPA Firm Management and Governance: The Managing Partner’s Guide to Running a CPA Firm Like a Business.”
Baby boomer partners are rapidly approaching retirement age, resulting in a dramatic increase in new managing partners at firms.
In fact, CPA Trendlines estimates that up to 25% of multi-owner firms are operating under managing partners who are relatively new to the job, with tenures under three years. And over the next five years, one-third of multi-owner firms will undergo a change in ownership and/or control. READ MORE →
Options to grow your profits besides raising revenue and lowering costs.
By Sandi Smith, CPA
Accountant’s Accelerator
Many accountants these days are anxious to hit the golden $100,000 mark this year. Others are interested in growing their revenues steadily and incrementally. Still others are focused on lowering costs, raising profits from that side of the equation.
More for soloists and small firms: Seven Checklist Secrets for Turning Tax Season into Opportunity Season • How to Stay Energized, Upbeat, and Thinking Bigger through Busy Season • Seven Ways to Wow Your Prospect • Rev Up Your Revenue with These Two Daily Rituals • 10 Tips for Creating More Energy this Tax Season • Take a Cue from Venture Capitalists: Your Firm Needs a Brain Trust Trinity • Five Ideas to Reduce Client Price-Sensitivity • Rise to the Top with a Fresh Elevator Speech
All of these approaches are well and good to help you keep more of what you make, but there are far more options to grow your take-home dollars besides raising revenue and lowering costs.
Here are six more ways to get more profit out of your practice: READ MORE →
Help them to do what you want.
by Ed Mendlowitz
Adapted from The 2013 Tax Season Opportunity Guide
Providing instructions of what a client needs to do must be clear enough so that the client doesn’t call you to find out what to do.
Sometimes taking an extra minute to lay out what the client should do can eliminate that call or indecisive moment a client might feel.
The object of the instructions is to have the client do what you want them to do. READ MORE →
Including a sample engagement letter.
Question: Some of my clients are getting older and are becoming unable to handle their own financial affairs and I have been asked if I could assist them. What is involved and how do I charge for it?
Ed Mendlowitz, VPA, PFS, ABV, responds: Many large firms provide “family office” services. This is a complete one stop financial service that helps clients manage their money, pay their bills, collect their dividends and interest, and make sure insurance isn’t cancelled, mortgage, car lease or condo fee payments aren’t skipped, and tax payments paid on time.
More from Ed: Seven Ways to Increase Fees in 2013 | 10 Best Practices for Tax Season | Nine Healthy Things To Do During Tax Season | 12 Reasons to Love Tax Season | FREE INSTANT DOWNLOAD: Sample fee schedule for 1040s | Ask the Geek: A Couple Great Gadgets for Saving Money on All Your Other Gadgets | Three and a Half Ways to Get Your Own CPA Practice | Also: “Implementing Fee Increases” and “The Tax Season Opportunity Guide.”
Following is a sample engagement letter that I use with clients needing such services. Also, this letter provides a detailed description of what the service involves. READ MORE →