Firm Management

November 18, 2011 

While we all cherish the most trusted advisor status that accountants have earned, this status must be continually re-earned with clients. Ask yourself whether your clients want you to serve them or lead them to better success. I believe your clients desperately want you to lead them — and if you don’t, they may turn...…

Doug Sleeter

November 4, 2011 

How a Tech-Savvy Accountant Waited for Technology to Catch Up to Her Vision. Some of the greatest ideas are imagined years before they can be accomplished. In 2002, a young professional accountant had the idea of providing virtual accounting services to clients.

Isaac M. O'Bannon

October 10, 2011 

How optimism and remote technologies paved the way to one firm's success. The accounting profession has often been stereotyped as curmudgeonly, grumpy, stodgy, and fiscally dour, and, well … there were probably good reasons for those descriptions at one time.

Isaac M. O'Bannon

September 1, 2011 

Accountants and accounting firms have long suffered from the false stereotype of being stodgy, even predictable and boring. Even more so, the auditor: that truly numbers-focused researcher of data whose sole purpose is to determine the propriety of an organization’s financial reporting and their internal controls over financial reporting. Perhaps only actuaries are more maligned…

Isaac M. O'Bannon

August 4, 2011 

A Productivity in Practice Feature. A small business is most productive when its owners are doing what they love. Whether a mechanic, baker, landscaper, restaurateur, childcare provider or a merchant, small business owners usually like what they do.

Isaac M. O'Bannon

August 2, 2011 

A standard consulting practice rule is that switching software is expensive. Disruptions to procedures occur, retraining is required, and without careful analysis you may force your organization into a product that has less capability or is more difficult to use. We expect clients to switch software as frequently as they switch physicians or religions. The...…

Randy Johnston

June 24, 2011 

Sometimes, things need mixing up. Chris Farmand, who grew up in a Florida family centered around the accounting practice led by his father and two uncles, was destined for a career in accounting. His parents knew it, the rest of his family knew it, and his teachers knew it. But even though he’d been in...…

Isaac M. O'Bannon

June 24, 2011 

  This is our first annual review of tax document automation tools. While we have presented feature articles on this topic in the past, this category is rapidly maturing to include some common feature sets. Internal estimates from vendors based on data provided to CPA Practice Advisor suggest that around 1% of all individual income...…

Brian Tankersley

June 6, 2011 

Imagine an accounting practice where you rarely met your clients, didn’t market to the local business community or belong to chambers of commerce … and don’t even have a sign on the office. You worked pretty much when you wanted to and tried to focus on anything but tax returns. This is probably nearly impossible...…

May 23, 2011 

The literal definition of a well-oiled machine is … well, a machine that is well-oiled. It’s a term I use figuratively quite often to describe a business that is producing strong revenues and operating at peak efficiency … without an excess amount of effort. When I think back 10 years to what I thought was...…

April 26, 2011 

Where does innovation come from? While this may be a rhetorical question for some, it was precisely the intent of the inaugural CPA Practice Advisor Thought Leader Symposium, which brought together 25 of the most influential tax and accounting professionals, technophiles and consultants for three days of collaboration and dialogue. As the host of the...…

Isaac M. O'Bannon

November 29, 2010 

A Productivity in Practice Feature