April 2014

As the space for practice management applications has changed over the last year, we have changed the applications which we cover as part of this review to reflect the desire of many mid-sized and large firms to implement staff scheduling tools.

How often do you talk on the phone, look at email messages, check the news or weather, read or composts text messages while you're driving? We take pride in our ability to multi-task, but at what cost? Centuries of accountants managed to drive from point A to point B without phones in their hands. Today, it seems everyone is connected.

What is at the top of your accounting firm's agenda when the sun rises on April 16? Is it all crash and burn? Do you have a pile of unanswered messages and unread articles to plow through?

The owners of Mattingly Zsebe, PA weren’t any different from most practitioners in terms of how they viewed marketing. In essence, “Marketing sucked…it didn’t work…it was a waste of time.” These were the sentiments of the partners, Bill Mattingly, CPA, and Dylan Zsebe, CPA, before they started their journey of understanding just a year ago.

We’re in the middle of a fundamental shift – from client-centric accounting, where clients do their own bookkeeping and then send the records (often full of errors) to the tax preparer once a year – to an accountant-centric model, where accountants use cloud-based tools to provide accounting services as well as higher level consulting services. This shift is forcing the profession to reexamine the whole model of the practice.

Five years ago I embarked on an extraordinary journey by joining the editorial team of this magazine, known then as CPA Technology Advisor. Today, I share with you my final column as its executive editor.

You may have heard it before, or you may have actually uttered these words, “Why did we wait so long to let an underperforming employee go?" In some firms today it may actually be called the underperforming epidemic or the underperformer drag, but no matter what words you are using to describe the problem, the results are the same - our firm suffers when the leaders do not take action.

For the past several decades, the function of marketing has been focused on selling consumers about the benefits of a particular service or product. Most companies, accounting firms included, have tried to create “hype” about their wares using mass media to generate sales.

Is your firm leveraging technology as a strategic asset or is it viewed as simply a cost of doing business? Successful firms view it as an asset and build an IT leadership and governance model that helps harness the power of technology as an accelerator toward improved performance, profitability and growth. There are five aspects of IT governance that are differentiating the best from rest.

It is impossible to think too much about protecting your data. If you are the business owner, responsible for Information Technology or an IT professional, protecting data has to always be top of mind. Backup and recovery is not an area you can leave to chance. The January installment of this column spoke about alternative approaches and pitfalls of backup and recovery. The options are worthy of review if you are interested in backup and business continuity.

Tax preparation remains a major source of revenue for many accounting firms. Although seasonal income for many, a lot of consideration should still be given for the most appropriate tax software solution. Each firm has a different number of employees, client focus and a host of other differences to consider. Thankfully there are plenty of tax software solutions to choose from to fit individual firm needs.

Accounting offices across the country have started transitioning to offices that allow staff to work anywhere, anytime. This has led to many professionals “burning the midnight oil” to get more done at a time when everything else slows down.

Late last year, Intuit unveiled its app depot designed to make it easier for small business owners to manage their business. Since its debut, it has seen huge growth in the number of developers creating apps, with new apps being added regularly. In addition, the number of QuickBooks subscribers outside the U.S. has nearly doubled to 46,000 subscribers, and continues to grow - one more reason Intuit is looking to extend the number and types of apps available to its more than 561,000 online subscribers and 1.57 million users worldwide.