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best tips and strategies for working at home. read more →
the nine essential personal commitments each partner must make.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
a firm’s success is ultimately tied to its partners’ performance. and yet, improving partner performance is one of the key issues facing the majority of firm leaders today. read more →
by 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 →
don’t even try. you’ll get flattened. by bruce w. marcus professional services marketing 3.0 assuring cpa firm survival in the coming decades starts not with a radical redesign of the traditional firm – that will come of itself – but … continued
as data-entry costs plummet, new opportunities for accountants open up.
by sandi smith leyva
accountant’s accelerator
after over 30 years in this profession, accounting has never been more promising and more exciting. the main reason is technology is driving data entry costs so low that it’s just about to disappear. that means we can finally focus on helping small businesses get more out of their accounting dollars through more analysis and better tools.
here are five areas that i believe are essential to serving clients best: read more →
what it takes to make partner: the 27-point checklist the best firms follow.
marc rosenberg, author of how to bring in new partners, cites at least six areas that partnerships at the nation’s best firms habitually evaluate before naming a new partner, including: nine intangibles, four financial and legal considerations, five practice development issues, three production and client management metrics, two technical proficiencies, three supervisory skills and one very important administrative credo. read more →
in its first sounding on tax season 2013, the irs says filings are coming in faster this year. and that may be true enough. as of feb. 7, the irs received 27.3 million returns, up 2.5 percent compared to the same time last year. electronically filed returns account for almost 96 percent of those filed so far this year.
but filing by professionals is actually running behind last year, by about 5.6%, and without the crushing effects of last year’s government shutdown. read more →
nine questions to test your mettle.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
creating the effective partnership
not every cpa firm can be the market leader. but every firm can strive to be the best at everything they do. read more →
by ed mendlowitz
101 questions and answers for managing an accounting practice
question: a former client wrote me a letter threatening to sue me for bad services. i did nothing wrong and actually did a great job and they still owe me money. what should i do?
response: walk away! ignore the threat. don’t respond. stop billing them. and go about your business. life is too short to get tied up in dissipating actions. it is rare to run a business without getting stuck from someone. read more →
call it “the investment hour” and go hunting for business. by bruce w. marcus professional services marketing 3.0 if the accounting firm’s management hasn’t made clear that participation by every professional in the firm is an integral part of recognition … continued
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 →
five reasons for one, eight for the other. and they’re not all created equal.
after studying some 700 firms, marc rosenberg has some fairly hard-and-fast rules about how to bring in new partners. here, he delivers five reasons to lean toward deciding on bringing in traditional equity partners and eight reasons for making them non-equity partners. all things being equal, they aren’t.
job #1: setting direction.
by robert j. lees and august j. aquila
how to engage partners in the firm’s future
there are many reasons why too many managing partners fail to truly engage their partners, especially as no managing partner we know ever sets out to fail. read more →