September 2017 - CPA Practice Advisor

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In this issue

Accounting

5 Retirement Tips For Landscapers

Entrepreneurs go in business for a number of reasons, and you would be hard pressed to find retirement benefits to be one of them. Yet ask employees about why they chose or stick with a job, and benefits, including retirement, are often listed.

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September 2017 Tax Channel

Most business owners want the same thing; they want to pass on their business to their kids. Others may want to sell the business, and some just want to give it away. However, all these options have unique tax concerns that must be considered.

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Accounting

September 2017 Accounting & Audit Channel

The relentless advance of technology. You are aware of it. Whether you are boomer, a millennial, or even Gen Z (some call them the “iGeneration”). We can’t deny it. We live in a time of technological marvels. And the velocity of development related to ...

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Firm Management

September 2017 Firm Management Channel

The office network that tax professionals and accountants use is at risk by hackers looking to do more than just peek at client information: The hackers are trying to take those networks over, says the IRS and state tax agencies. If that happens, the ...

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Payroll

Survey Pinpoints Costs of New Labor Regulations

As the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives return to session, a new survey from The Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated and Future Workplace reveals it can cost organizations as much as $100,000 each time a federal, state, or even local labor-related regulation is created or changed. “The $100,000 Bill” report is based on […]

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Payroll

September 2017 Payroll Channel

Looking to enhance your payroll offering? There’s no better way than placing time clocks in your clients’ businesses. Time clocks are simple to implement; in many cases they integrate with your current payroll software. They also provide an ...

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Small Business

Accounting Done in One Place

Continuous enhancements and integrations allow accounting professionals who use QuickBooks Online Accountant to streamline their workflow to get more done in one place.

Small Business

September 2017 Small Business Channel

There may be nothing more certain than death and taxes, but Americans like to push thoughts of that first topic away. Perhaps that's why almost three-fourths of U.S. small businesses don't have a succession plan and most small business owners don't ...

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Firm Management

Female Partners: A Year Later, Where Are We?

In 2017, female accounting professionals still lack the support they need in the workplace in order to advance their careers. Last year, I wrote a column on the topic of females only being represented in 19% of accounting firm leadership positions, ...

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Accounting

How to Value a Green Industry Business

Few topics are as poorly understood as business valuation. Despite common misperceptions, it is a complex topic that cannot be boiled down to simplistic formulas or rules of thumbs.

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Small Business

Apps We Love September 2017: Disaster Relief Apps

When natural disasters strike, Americans naturally want to help. And that feeling of compassion is doubled when those catastrophes happen to our neighbors, our fellow citizens.

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Accounting

How to Grow Your Landscape Client Base – Including Retailers

Like accountants, landscapers have a busy season and a not-so-busy season, which happens to be nearly opposite of yours. How can you focus your marketing and lead generation efforts during your busiest time of the year to gain new clients?

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Artificial Intelligence

CPA Tomorrowland

This is a tantalizing brave new world for younger accountants who like the idea of turning their penchant for number-crunching into a sexier profession, but what about those who are, ahem, reaching their golden age? It kind of sounds like rather than ...

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Firm Management

Hardware Matters – Think About Working With None!

With so much focus on Cloud and Mobile, can you imagine using your technology with no hardware? Hardware has become so cheap, reliable and generally good, many of us take this part of our technology experience for granted. It has been ten years since ...

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Small Business

2017 Reviews of Inventory Management Systems

While inventory management is not a new concept, with the advent of online stores to coincide with their brick and mortar counterparts, it’s more important than ever that retailers have a solid handle on their inventory. Good inventory management is ...

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Firm Management

6 Strategies for Resolving and Minimizing Staff Conflicts

Ideally, a CPA firm’s management team concentrates most of its time on ensuring clients receive the best possible service and strategizing ways to cultivate new customers. That’s the ideal scenario.

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Small Business

Accounting for Inventory Shrinkage After a Major Loss

Your small business clients who suffer inventory shrinkage – whether it’s from a natural disaster like Hurricane Harvey or Irma, or theft or simple mismanagement – must account for the event on their financial books. Generally, a firm can enter a ...

Payroll

The Fight for $15, and More

Over the past several years we have seen nationwide efforts, often precipitated by unions, to increase the minimum wage at the local level to $15 as a means of addressing economic inequality. The movement, called the "Fight for $15," has seen some ...

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Small Business

2017 Reviews of Retail Point-of-Sale Systems

As we all know, the historical prototype for a retail business was a brick and mortar store, or multiple stores. But today, these same stores are competing with a variety of other retailers including Internet-only sellers, mobile-only retailers, and ...

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Accounting

What the End of DACA Means for Dreamer Employers

USCIS announced on September 5, 2017, that they are phasing in a rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). The DACA program began in 2012 and granted temporary status and work permits to the “dreamers” who came here as ...

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Accounting

5 Accounting Steps when Disaster Strikes

When a flood, fire, hurricane or other disaster strikes your business, you may suffer heavy property damage along with lost sales during the time you're forced to close. Having a good understanding of the accounting rules related to natural disasters ...

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Accounting

The Changing Role of IT Personnel in Accounting Firms

Has the IT role within CPA firms finally come full circle? I began the IT portion of my career providing support for IBM XT personal computers that were used by accountants to produce spreadsheets and word processing, while all the “real” data ...

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Charitable Remainder Trusts and Their Cousins: Real Tax Savings for High Net Worth Clients

There are many offshoots of a CRAT, such as a Charitable Remainder Uniform Trust (CRUT). In contrast to a CRAT, the payout provided to the noncharitable beneficiary from a CRUT can be either a fixed amount or a percentage of the FMV of the trust ...

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Payroll

7 Smart Reasons for Your Payroll Clients to Use Time Clocks

Time clocks are simple to implement; in many cases they integrate with your current payroll software. They also provide an additional revenue stream for your firm, in addition to other benefits we’ll explore in this post.

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Tax Planning

Estate Planning Part III – Bypass Trusts

In the final part of my estate planning series, I would like to tackle more complicated themes that build on the first two parts. The first thing that I would like to discuss in this article is a trust that was once used frequently before portability.

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Income Tax

Don’t Miss Out on IRC §1202 Stock

First of all, to qualify as IRC §1202 Stock, the stock must be in a domestic C-Corporation. The stock cannot be held by an S-Corporation or a limited liability company (LLC). Another caveat is that the corporation may not have more than $50 million in ...

Firm Management

Succession Planning for CPAs: A Tale of Two Exit Strategies

Succession planning is a major area of concern for CPA firms. With baby boomers hitting retirement age, the following statistics underscore why it is such a compelling issue to the profession:

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Accounting

4 Marketing Tips to Keep Your Accounting Firm Top of Mind with Contractors

Contractors are unique when it comes to location. Their office often changes based on the project location. Knowing that, what can you do to maximize your efforts to reach these nomadic business pros?

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Taxes

The Whistleblower Award – IRS Dysfunction at its Best

On paper, it sounds good. As a concerned citizen, you see something that isn’t right and you do your American duty and blow the whistle. All government agencies have a Whistleblower Program, but none quite as dysfunctional as the IRS’.