management

what stage of business are you in?

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evolving from running a practice to leading a business.

by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

technology has allowed just about everyone to start their own businesses. we can do something part time, full time or in between. we can start and stop our businesses. we can be successful at lots of different business models. and we can go through stages of our business.

if you want to grow exponentially, or even linearly, you’ll need to progress. and before you can do that, it makes sense to figure out where you are now. here are five stages of business so you can see where you are now and where you want to go. read more →

running an accounting business

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ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and aquestion: i am the managing partner of my accounting firm by default. no one else wanted to do it. i am trying to manage things but i have a full schedule, am shorthanded on staff and continue to do a reasonable amount of marketing. i am overwhelmed. how do others do it?

response: i purposely left off the size of the firm because my response applies to every size firm – those with two partners on up to large firms with upward of 50 partners. no matter the size of your practice, it is a business and needs someone dedicated to running it. smaller firms need less time, possibly less skills and perhaps one of the partners can fill in this role. larger firms need a person who spends substantially all of their time running the business, but not necessarily a partner. read more →

4 ways small firms can surpass larger firms

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by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

when i look through accounting today’s top 100 leaders list and the comments they have made about what they perceive to be the challenges in our profession, many of the answers are the same: change, talent and relevance are a few you’ll see. and they are all right to some extent, but there is a deeper systemic problem that i think could fix quite a few of these in one swipe. i’m not saying it will be easy, but it is a fairly straightforward problem once diagnosed.

the most interesting part is that the smallest firms are getting better at solving this than the larger firms. read more →

5 tech tools for managing remote staffers

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by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

when you are working out of your home and have reached the point where you want to hire someone, you have many options, but one of them may not be having employees come to your home to work. and although i have had employees working out of my home when i was single, it was not an option in 2010 when i was ready to hire an assistant. so i hired a virtual one.

today you might be surprised to know that my employees work from home two days a week each, and i only see them in person once a month. how do we do it? we keep our heads in the clouds. here are five tools that keep us seconds away while we’re miles apart. read more →

ten things every firm needs to make clear firmwide

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the main categories of information for internal communications and management. by bruce w. marcus professional services marketing 3.0 while the substance of information varies from firm to firm, there are 10 categories that cannot go unconsidered:

create your “not-to-do’s” list

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by hitendra patil
pransform

you can call it a “stop doing these” list.

if you have done the “abc analysis” of your clients, you know the best customers who yield highest net profit per unit of effort (generally your time) are your a clients and those who yield the least are your clients. now do the same with your – and your firm’s – activities. read more →

is the profit squeeze over?

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new trends emerge in net profit margins and accounts receivable.

after years of intensifying and debilitating pressure on bottom lines, profits at tax, accounting and bookkeeping firms appear to be hitting 10-year highs, according to information obtained by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 from sageworks, the specialist in tracking private-company financials. read more →

mismanaging project management

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ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and a

by ed mendlowitz
101 questions and answers

question: i assigned four projects to a manager who reassigned them to a staff 2 person and i gave a date when they were needed that was three weeks away.  when i asked about the progress after two weeks, i was told that nothing was near completion.  now there is a super rush with much stress. how could this situation have been avoided?

response: first off – you are to blame. you did not work with the manager to see how she would assign the work and to whom.  read more →

fixing the partner entitlement mentality

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nine reasonable entitlements and 15 misconceptions, bad ideas and outright abuses.

it’s a privilege to be a partner in a cpa firm. not an entitlement. too many partnerships seem to operate as if they had it the other way around. and, in most cases, those partnerships don’t usually make the best cpa firms. marc rosenberg has seen his share of dysfunctional firms. they are no better nor no worse than the people who run them. get these 24 points of partner roles and responsibilities correct and your firm could find a renewal in spirit and in growth.

read more →

getting buy-in: rarely easy, always necessary

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ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and aby ed mendlowitz
101 questions and answers

question: how can i get buy-in in the implementation of new things we decide to do? 

response: i find buy-in the key to a successful program.  it is also extremely hard to get.  it is easy in the board room or at the meeting when the new process or procedure is agreed to, but then there has to be a champion to be responsible for the follow-through and success.  read more →

three must-have checklists for your practice

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checklists work for astronauts. why not accountants?

by sandi smith leyva
accountant’s accelerator

airplane pilots and astronauts have checklists for just about everything they do.  checklists promote performance consistency, make it easier to learn new procedures and increase safety exponentially.  in accounting, we can learn from the airline industry and apply checklists to certain areas of our practices in order to reap similar benefits.   here are three areas of your accounting practice that can benefit from checklists: read more →