Blog Archives
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My Wish List for AICPA Leadership Academy Candidates
By Scott Cytron, ABC; President, Cytron and Co. - Tuesday July 7, 2009Today, AICPA is launching its first-ever Leadership Academy in Chicago - a three-day gathering designed to train young CPAs on issues related to the profession so they can be more effective leaders It is the brainchild of AICPA's Chair Ernie Almonte. What a great idea! It not only helps young CPAs realize their potential; it most likely will create some leaders who will rise up in their firms, companies and within Institute ranks. Best of all, it will help promote the accounting profession. Now that you have the background, here's my plea to Mr. Almonte. Please educate tomorrow's leaders on the importance of marketing and communications. I know there's a social media component to the workshop, but that only scratches the... -
Four Ways to Use Twitter for the Accounting Profession
By Scott Cytron, ABC; President, Cytron and Co. - Monday June 29, 2009If "I don't get it" adequately describes your thoughts about Twitter and its uses for the accounting profession, then listen up: You CAN use Twitter to build your practice, increase business and grow your bottom line. I get this question all the time from my clients who want to know how they can build their business through social media, and specifically, Twitter - the hot trend of the day. What I advise is that you want to be considered a "Thought Leader" when you tweet (the term for posting messages on Twitter), so instead of tweeting about what you had for dinner or what meeting you attended, tweet about impactful topics that will position you as an expert: Make an observation about a recent accounting news story, and provide a... -
Changing Your Web Site? Ask These Four Questions, First
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Friday June 26, 2009Whenever I present my seminar on “The Next Generation Accounting Firm,” someone invariably asks me a question related to communications, and specifically, when it’s time to change their Web site. I just ran across this blog on Ragan.com that speaks to this topic, and even though it is internally focused on employees, I’ve added my own twist to the four points below. Most of the time, questions also focus on the ROI connected to changing a Web site, or in some cases, creating one from scratch. That’s why I like these four steps because they focus less on what to communicate versus the return on the communications themselves. 1. What’s the business case? What goals are you trying to meet: cost reduction, innovative products... -
Online Professional Tax Prep... Is it time, yet?
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Monday June 22, 2009In the upcoming July issue of The CPA Technology Advisor, I've written a column that discusses why few tax and accounting professionals are using an online tax preparation system for their client returns. Considering how popular online tax prep is for do-it-yourselfers, I think it's a curious situation. Some might blame it on the old stereotype of the "tech-leery" accountant. I think there are many reasons, but I don't buy that argument anymore. Tax and accountng professionals are no longer tech curmudgeons... they are pretty savvy, actually. And many have recently turned to online (aka hosted/SaaS) applications for many other areas of their practices, so they're obviously not "leery" of remotely hosted programs anymore. Personally, I... -
PayCycle - My Wish List
By Doug Sleeter, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Thursday June 18, 2009Now that PayCycle is becoming part of Intuit (see announcement earlier this month), I'm hoping to see even tighter integration between the PayCycle software and QuickBooks. I'm an avid PayCycle user, and I love what it does already, but here are my top wishes and hopes for the future: Provide for full paycheck transactions to be imported into QuickBooks. At this point, it's impossible for developers to access the PAYCHK transactions in QuickBooks because the SDK doesn't provide any support for that. But now that Intuit will own PayCycle, maybe they'll find a way to get that done. Timesheet integration: Provide a link between QuickBooks timesheets (desktop), and the QuickBooks online time tracker to feed timesheet information directly... -
CITP Credential Changes with the Times
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Thursday June 18, 2009The times … they are a-changin’ … and so is the CITP Credential. According to an announcement made during AICPA’s TECH+ Conference in Las Vegas earlier this week, “the revised credential will concentrate on information technology expertise relating to audit and attest services and financial data components, analysis and reporting. The holder of the revised credential represents a CPA who provides assurance to financial information or insight to business data, process or reporting.” Many may not realize the CITP originated in 2000 when our tech world was booming, However, during the last several years, I believe interest in the credential suffered due to what I call “information overload,” all due to advances in technology... -
The Power of the Portal
By M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP; Executive Editor - Saturday June 13, 2009Congrats go to Thomson Reuters for the significant milestone it hit in the most recent tax season: UltraTax CS™ customers preparing 2008 returns created more than 100,000 portals to serve their clients. This is important to our profession for several reasons. First, it demonstrates how the accounting profession is using technology not only to speed processing, but to save its clients time and resources they would have spent by physically bringing files to our offices in person. Second, using portals helps position us as thought-leaders by using technology to get the job done. However, portals are just one piece of technology in an entire cadre of tools. When I meet our colleagues at conferences and speak to groups, I’m amazed how... -
The Hardware Side of Document Management
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Thursday June 11, 2009And so, at last, we are reaching the goal of a paperless office. Not the way we envisioned it, lo those decades ago when we dreamed of killing fewer trees and putting less stuff in the landfills. No, today's "paperless office" programs – neatly renamed "Document Management" -- are necessary for far more pragmatic reasons like lowering office overhead costs, retrieving information more quickly, collaboration and file sharing over the Internet, and document security. No matter. It turns out that there is more than enough landfill space to handle paper, and more trees on North American soil than there were 100 years ago. It doesn't matter, because we still receive massive benefits from using document management systems. But... -
The 3 "P" Approach to More Creative Marketing
By Scott Cytron, ABC; President, Cytron and Co. - Thursday June 11, 2009When was the last time you looked at something differently? I was in San Francisco June 7-10 for the International Association of Business Communicators' (IABC) Conference, and had the pleasure of hearing Sam Harrison of Zing Zone speak on creative marketing and its three components: Passion, Performance and Pitch. His talk was well worth my time because it provided some really great inspirational ideas on how to be more creative at doing what I do. It also lit a fire under me to "think" differently - not out-of-the-box thinking, but looking at something in another light or perhaps from the inside out. An example. I am a New York Times crossword puzzle fanatic. Most everyone works the puzzle from Clue 1 Across, then proceeds to work... -
New Tax Vendor for the Professional Market? No.
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Wednesday June 10, 2009A few weeks ago, I posted an article here about the possibility of a new professional tax prep vendor coming to the market (www.cpatechviews.com/2009/04/is-a-new-tax-vendor-coming-to-town). That was after I discovered that CLI, Inc., a long-time vendor of practice management systems for accounting firms, had become the U.S. distributor of the APS suite of professional products. The APS system includes practice management, business intelligence, CRM, document management and business process automation applications, and is one of the leading professional suites in England, and the leading vendor in Australia and New Zealand. What piqued my interest is that the APS system also has one other very key component in those countries: Tax...
