does firm culture still matter?
…having staff that can state the uniform culture. as i said above, if you don’t know, ask. in fact, you should be regularly engaged with your team, whether it’s a…
…having staff that can state the uniform culture. as i said above, if you don’t know, ask. in fact, you should be regularly engaged with your team, whether it’s a…
turn the staffing shortage into a new opportunity.
by frank stiteley
the relentless cpa
charles dickens had to be writing about the accounting profession when he wrote, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
clients are plentiful. i met a new client coming out of the restroom at our office complex. we get four to five inquiries a day – out of tax season. during tax season, we turned down four out of five prospective clients.
staff are not plentiful – at least not good ones. i’m getting two or three resumes a day, but they’re the warm body sort most of us learned the hard way not to hire during the pandemic. you’ve seen these resumes too. they are people with six employers in eight years. you are certain to be number seven in nine years. they claim eight years of experience, but you can see from their job history that it’s really two years of experience repeated four times. and – they want $100k for those two years of real experience.
has microsoft created the ultimate public anti-hack?
by rick richardson
technology this week
your computer or tablet screen can easily be visually hacked in public, which allows someone to steal private information. plastic screen coverings are one technique to stop this from happening, as they make it harder for someone to view the document unless they are directly in front of it. microsoft might develop a technology that encrypts text graphically as you read it.
a recent microsoft patent describes a system that encrypts a document so that only the reader can decipher it. the approach encrypts the document by changing the letters in the text section of the original document. the document is then shown in a private mode using an alpha-blended version that combines the encoded and original copies of the text. next, the system uses eye tracking to show the user the decoded portion of the document at their fixation point and the encoded version at the periphery of their field of vision.
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what would you say?
by ed mendlowitz
202 questions and answers: managing an accounting practice
question: i know you have a lot of advice on how to review tax returns. what’s your single best tip?
response: i had never thought about this until this question was asked.
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providing superior client service eliminates the perception of audit as a commodity.
by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future
most firms have abysmal project management, which makes it nearly impossible to see if there’s any room to take on extra work. plus, piling all the work into busy season means your people already work far beyond 40 hours a week. and, if you’re relying on timesheets as a measure of capacity, you may not be capturing the time your staff eats because the work is taking more than 40 or even 60 hours in a week to complete.
during the 2020-21 covid-19 pandemic, some audit firms had to lay people off, or reduce work hours as projects got canceled or curtailed. but the long-term trend for years has been a shortfall in talent that will only get worse. burnout from overwork is the number one cause of employee turnover.
does everyone have the same vision?
by august j. aquila
price it right: how to value accounting services
i have discussed some of the issues behind developing an effective website. if your partners can’t agree on the overall points of the website, it merely means that there are different visions for the firm within the firm. the best way to overcome this obstacle is to conduct a self-analysis.
you can use the following questions at a firm retreat. hand out the questions to the retreat participants prior to the meeting. ask the retreat participants to write out the answer to each question. then have open discussions about the questions and their answers, and try to come to some agreement. here are the questions:
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hourly earnings fluctuate.
by beth bellor
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
despite a slowing increase in employment for the u.s. economy in general, the nation’s tax and accounting sector is improving on most fronts, marking more than four years of solid year-over-year gains.
to be sure, tax and accounting employment nudged slightly down in july, according to the latest data available to 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research. but it remains ahead of last year’s figures. and record highs are popping in key hiring segments, including staff, cpa firms and payroll services. is talk of staffing shortages overblown, or would growth be even stronger if more qualified candidates were available? read more →
seventeen ways to improve.
by marc rosenberg
cpa firm staff: managing your #1 asset
the business graveyard is littered with major organizations that missed the boat by failing to see cataclysmic game changers happening right before their eyes.
in all fairness it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate and accept massive changes like these.
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