However, all is not lost! There are proven strategies that can guide your project management toward efficiency and success—although, it took some serious digging for us to find them. We’ve scoured the archives of time-tested accounting wisdom to share with you these 10 valuable insights.

Legend has it…

As we explored the accounting myths of old, we stumbled onto an ancient tome—the EAAP (Eternally Accepted Accounting Principles.) It was there we discovered this relevant tale:

In the days before project management, Accountant was overwrought with anguish. His team scrambled from one task to another, missing deadlines with abandon. Accountant’s clients grew impatient, lashing out with mighty tirades of passive-aggressive rage.

Left with no other options, Accountant chose to scale the cliffs of Mount § 509(a). According to legend, reaching the peak would provide great wisdom—but it was a journey from which no CPA had ever returned.

Accountant climbed for 65 hours over seven days, comforted only by his state’s generous laws on overtime pay. As Accountant reached the mountain’s peak, the Mage of Numbers appeared, and spoke in a booming voice:

“You have conquered the mountain! To reward your tenacity and willingness to work on weekends, I now pass on to you the secrets of project management for accounting firms. Listen well, for I shall only speak them once.”

And Accountant, who had long forsaken cardio as was thus totally spent, replied, “Could you maybe just put them in an email?”

Read on to discover the 10 principles Accountant learned that day. Along the way, we’ll offer commentary from Going Concern and our friends at Firm360 to provide further insight.

1. Preparation is key

Let’s get this straight: winging it is fine for karaoke night, not for managing multiple accounting projects. Plan it, map it, put it on a spreadsheet—or better yet, use proper project management software. Just don’t go in blind.

2. Respect your deadlines

Or else they will come back to haunt you, like a restless spirit demanding a tax refund. Treat deadlines with the utmost importance; they’re foundational to project success and healthy client relationships.

3. Maintain project integrity

You know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men? We don’t, either, but scope creep can be a real problem. So do everything you can to keep your scope intact. Anything extra gets billed, discussed, and properly managed.

4. Stay true to your projections

Be realistic with your project estimates. Claiming you can do a full-scale audit in a week is not optimism; it’s an invitation for apocalypse.

5. Value your team

Your team is your most valuable resource, so treat them more like your TI-86 and less like those plastic blue solar calculators with faded displays they handed out in school. Proper communication and clear task allocation are essential to making your team feel valued and motivated.

6. Remember the weekend

All work and no play makes Jack a disgruntled accountant. Treat work/life balance seriously, and ensure your team always has time for a weekend mimosa or two.

7. Prioritize projects effectively

Before you drool over a new project, make sure your current ones are manageable. “Project FOMO” can lead to bad decisions, stressed teams, and unhappy clients.

8. Equip your team with the right tools

In the sage words of Clay Lehman, Head of Product at Firm360: “Managing projects without the proper technology is like letting a horse direct traffic. No one can get where they need to go except by sheer luck or coincidence, and it’s only a matter of time before a nasty pileup occurs.”

9. Monitor your progress

“Set it and forget it” did wonders for Ron Popeil, but it’s a terrible project management strategy. Across all your projects, you should monitor progress, measure results, and optimize processes based on the insights you uncover.

10. Learn from mistakes

We’re all human—and if you’re not, how are you reading this and will you come to our next party?—so mistakes are inevitable. When things go south, be sure to learn, adapt, and determine what steps you can take to avoid making the same error again.

Unlock efficiency with Firm360

Firm360 makes following these principles easier than solving the $100 clue on Celebrity Baby Jeopardy (“What is ‘goo’?”). With robust project management features designed specifically for accounting firms, Firm360 allows you to know what your team is working on and track their efficiency with ease.

Firm360 also simplifies handing off tasks between team members, seamlessly integrates with email from Office365 and Google, and sets you on course to never miss a client deadline again.

Best of all, Firm360 removes the need to endlessly pivot between project management software and other tools. It’s a true all-in-one platform, combining client management, project management, document management, time and billing, and advanced reporting into a single solution.

Say goodbye to chaos and hello to managed success by trying Firm360 today.

Learn more >

About Firm360
If your accounting firm has ever wanted a magic wand that can turn a project management mess into a paradise of productivity, Firm360 is the ‘abra cadabra’ you’ve been waiting for. Designed by accountants, for accountants, it offers everything from project management to document management and even time and billing capabilities. Try Firm360—and leap into the future of accounting today.

The post 10 Essential Project Management Principles for Accounting Firms appeared first on Going Concern.

If your accounting firm still relies heavily on email for client communication and document management, you’re not in the fast lane—you’re on the road to ruin. Let’s expose email for the silent assassin it is by running down the six ways email is secretly destroying your accounting firm.

1. Email threads tie your accounting firm in knots

Check your inbox. How many email threads do you have that resemble an entire season of a soap opera? If you’re like most people, you’ve got multiple sub-threads, people added in midway, and enough “Re: Re: Re: Re:” to populate the Psycho shower scene soundtrack ten times over.

Navigating those threads for one crucial piece of information is about as fun as untangling Christmas lights. Except it’s not Christmas. It’s April 15th, and your client is waiting.

2. File management is a fiasco

Sure, digging through hundreds of emails to find that one PDF your client sent you three months ago sounds exhilarating. It’s like a treasure hunt, except the treasure is a file named “Final_version_7.pdf,” and it’s buried under heaps of spam and calendar invites.

3. Email traps you in the ninth circle of versioning hell

Received an updated file via email while working on the original? Great! Now you’ve got two versions and zero clue which changes were made when. Your spreadsheet now has more conflicting versions than the tales of high school football glory your Cousin Earl tells every Thanksgiving.

4. Accountability is a circus

Tiffany changed the deadline to next Thursday but forgot to copy Rob, who was supposed to send the files to Joan but sent them to Lisa, who is out on vacation for the next two weeks but forgot to set her OOO auto-responder. So Tiffany doesn’t know that Rob sent the files, who doesn’t know when they’re due, and everything sucks.

Sound familiar? Email makes it hard to keep track of who sent what when—and virtually impossible to determine accountability when things go wrong. It’s a total circus, but swap the trapeze artists and clowns for miscommunication and time delays.

5. Security shmashmurity

If you’re sending sensitive documents through email, you’re doing it wrong. It’s actually hard to imagine a less secure way to communicate with your teammates and clients. Even using carrier pigeons would be safer, as birds have yet to master identity fraud.

6. Zero compatibility with modern workflows

Clay Lehman, Head of Product at Firm360, puts it succinctly: “When accounting firms rely on email to communicate with clients and manage documents, it’s like using a walkie-talkie in the era of smartphones. Sure, it technically works, but you’re not playing the same game as everyone else.”

Bring your accounting firm into the modern era

If you’re still using email as your primary tool for client communication and document management, it’s time for an intervention.

Solutions like Firm360 offer a powerful alternative to email—centralizing your communication, document management, and project management into an all-in-one platform that delivers advanced security email can only dream of.

Step into the 21st century with a comprehensive solution that can keep up with the dynamic needs of modern accounting. Get started with Firm360 today.

Learn more >

About Firm360
Feeling the pinch from email inefficiencies? Get with the times and upgrade to Firm360. Developed by accountants who’ve walked miles in your shoes, our platform provides project management, document management, time and billing capabilities, and even a portal for client communications. With Firm360, you can ditch email debacles and leap into the future of accounting. Are you in?

The post 6 Ways Email is Secretly Destroying Your Accounting Firm appeared first on Going Concern.

We’re not suggesting you slam on the brakes or hit the slo-mo button on growing your firm, however. Instead, you should identify your unscalable practices, and then replace them with flexible, sustainable strategies that grow with your business.

Going Concern is all about helping people (the word our staff psychologist used was “enabling,” but close enough,) so we’ve made the first part easy for you by drafting a “Dear John” style letter you can use to break up with those nasty unscalable habits. Simply copy and paste the content below, print it out on some nice letterhead, invent a way to send letters to abstract concepts, apply appropriate postage, and—BOOM—your accounting firm will be growing sustainably in no time!

It’s not you, it’s me (but really it’s you)

Dear Unscalable Accounting Firm Practices,

Look, we’ve had some good times, okay? But there are some issues I simply can’t ignore any longer.

Let’s start with this: your processes are inconsistent. I won’t deny that the spontaneity and unpredictability were exciting at first. My business license may have read “sole prop,” but it was only when I partnered with you that I truly felt incorporated.

It’s time to face facts, however. A lack of standardized processes is preventing the firm from remaining healthy as it grows. Every time we prepare a statement, conduct an audit, perform a cost analysis—anything—it’s like we’re doing it for the first time. That leaves my team (particularly the newer hires) unsure of what to do. And it creates repetitive and unnecessary work. Even worse, having no standards leads to random decisions based on gut instincts instead of best practices and real data.

Maybe if it were just you and me, we could find a way to make it work—but we have to consider the whole team. And, quite frankly, you and my staff go together like orange juice and toothpaste.

Time was, the staff would cheer each time we landed a new client. Now, when we sign a new customer, they sob and panic and update their LinkedIn profiles. And it’s all because you’re so hesitant to adopt new technology! That stubbornness is forcing the staff to spend 60 hours a week on work that could easily be done in 30—maybe even less.

Our firm also needs automation, but when I asked you about it, you rambled for 15 minutes about alien robots that can turn into cars and something called “energon.”

Your inconsistency has also scattered our documents across Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack threads, email attachments, and who knows where else? I would say that locating the documents we need is like finding a needle in a haystack, but that would be an insult to needles, haystacks, hay, and the general concept of finding things.

Even if I could forgive everything else, the damage you’ve done to our client relationships would still be enough to bring our journey to an end. It’s gotten so bad that they question whether we can meet deadlines or even respond to their queries. You’re not just burning bridges—you’re napalming them.

With a heavy heart and a massive sense of relief, it’s time to say goodbye.

Sincerely,
An Overworked, Stressed-Out-Yet-Hopeful Accounting Firm Owner

Unlocking scalable practices for your accounting firm

There you have it, folks—the break-up letter that every fast-growing accounting firm needs to send to its unscalable practices. A little harsh? Maybe. Necessary? Absolutely.

Now that you’ve done the hard work of identifying those bad habits and kicking them to the curb, it’s time to move on and find your accounting firm’s true soul mate: practices that not only scale as your organization grows, but also help your firm grow even faster

By adopting standardized processes for tax returns, audits, and even client onboarding and communications, you can enable your staff to work more efficiently, complete projects faster, and enjoy a healthier work/life balance.

Finding the right accounting firm technology

One of the best ways to adopt scalable business practices is through technology. Project management software can help your staff stay on task, efficiently collaborate, easily hand off work between team members, and prevent them from missing deadlines.

Clay Lehman, Head of Product at Firm360, put it like this: “Project management shouldn’t be another project to manage. For accounting firms, software that enables seamless collaboration is just as essential as decimal points and caffeine.”

With document management solutions, you can unite all your documents into a single tool—no more wasting time digging through multiple systems to find what you need.

Along the way, technology can help automate many of the manual and repetitive tasks that hold your firm back—giving you more time to focus on delivering great results for your clients.

According to Lehman, “Client dissatisfaction is the silent killer of accounting firms. Modern practices need modern solutions to keep clients in the loop and satisfied.”

The best way to achieve all of the above is with a single platform that combines project management, document management, and automation into a single tool. That’s exactly what you’ll get with Firm360—plus time and billing features, a client portal that enables easier communication and more efficient movement of documents, and an easy-to-use, mobile-friendly interface your entire team will love.

Reach out to Firm360 to unite your accounting firm with the kind of scalable business practices you can bring home to Mom. Instead of growing your firm out of business, you’ll make your practice more efficient, your staff less frazzled, and your clients much happier.

Learn more >

About Firm360
Developed by accountants who actually know what it’s like to drown in paperwork, Firm360 offers an all-in-one platform that combines project management, document management, and time and billing capabilities. Say goodbye to lost billing, unorganized filing cabinets, and unhappy clients, and enter a new era of efficiency and peace of mind for your firm.

The post Don’t Grow Your Accounting Firm Out of Business! Break Up With These Unscalable Practices Now appeared first on Going Concern.

Let’s make this quick. If you need some help hiring US-based accounting talent, Accountingfly can help, and if they can’t, they’ll let you know. We’re giving them the mic to explain what they do and why accounting employers love them. TL;DR Accountingfly isn’t in the business of wasting everyone’s time. They’re in the business of matching the right candidates to the right firms.

Who are you?

We are a recruiting agency with ten years of experience helping firms hire accounting talent. You could use the word “small” to describe us, we prefer “cozy” or “personal.” We’re powered by people, not algorithms.

We don’t deal in healthcare, law, or any other industry–we’re 100% accounting, 100% of the time.

We specialize in placing remote, US-based accounting talent. We’ll occasionally help firms hire various hybrid models or location-based talent, but we were into remote work before it was cool, that’s our thing.

We know the market, have access to some really stellar US-based accounting professionals looking for career opportunities, and try our very best to provide exceptional service to all of our clients. We value our candidates too, they’re your future staff and deserve not to be jerked around.

Sounds great, I’m in. What services do you offer?

We offer exactly three services:

• Specific Talent Searches. Need a tax senior with client experience in a specific industry, specialized tax expertise, or particular software proficiency? Gotchu.

We’re kind of giving away the trade secrets here, but here’s what we’d do for you. We’ll launch a dedicated search for the right fit remote candidate (they might already be in our database), conduct initial interviews with people who match your needs, help coordinate final-stage interviews for the best of the best, conduct background checks, facilitate negotiations, and overall do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Once you make a hire, you’re covered by Accountingfly’s 90-day guarantee. Our success rate for placing candidates is about 90% which is pretty amazing in this line of work, but just in case they don’t work out, we’ll keep looking until you find the right fit.

• Weekly Summaries of Top Candidates. This is the option you pick if you’re interested in the hiring market but don’t have highly specific requirements you need met RIGHT NOW.

Want to see five to ten top-flight remote (US only) accounting candidate profiles every week with no risk, no upfront cost, and no obligation? Wow, that sounded like a late-night infomercial. Well, that’s the pitch, that’s what we call Always-On Recruiting.

Every week, Accountingfly sifts through roughly a thousand applications from accounting professionals. We interview the most promising ones with the most in-demand qualifications and send email summaries of the week’s top candidates to employers like you. That’s it.

If you want to learn more about these candidates, we’ll provide full recruiting support (interview scheduling, background checks, negotiation facilitation, etc.), and all hires are backed by our 90-day guarantee.

Contact us to start receiving weekly emails with profiles of our top accounting talent.

• Seasonal/Freelance Placements (for busy season or any season). This option is for employers who might need an extra hand, be it for busy season, month-end close crunch time, or an engagement that could use some support. US-based remote freelancers are a great way to get the work done when there’s too much of it for your in-house team to do.

Just like all our candidates, freelancers are all remote, US-based, and screened to match employers that need their particular expertise.

And that’s it. Our unique fee structure typically results in substantial savings of time and money for employers, and our focus on remote talent offers you access to the best accounting professionals from across the country.

*taking back the mic*

If you are hiring or thinking about hiring in the world of accounting, you have got to check these people out!

P.S. They only work with US-based clients and companies.

The post Risk-Free Recruiting for the Accounting Industry appeared first on Going Concern.

The below essays reflect the author’s opinion not necessarily the opinion of The Pennsylvania State University nor that of Going Concern.

Why I Am Quitting the AAA

by J. Edward Ketz

The American Accounting Association (AAA) is the organization for accounting professors not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. It is a prestigious group for advancing accounting thought, developing improved teaching methods and materials, improving the public’s understanding of financial reports and the tax system, and enhancing ethics and the public trust. Unfortunately, the latter function is broken.

The AAA approached me in July of 2022, asking me to write an opinion piece “to provoke thought on an important contemporary issue,” similar to an essay penned by Maurice Moonitz in January 1979. I agreed and soon sent the accompanying essay about E&Y personnel caught cheating on an ethics exam and the SEC’s claim about the firm’s interfering with its investigation of the incident. Initially I was congratulated about discussing a topic on many minds. Shortly thereafter I was told that some in the organization wanted a temporary halt to the publication and wanted to study the “process” of putting opinion pieces into its publications. I was reassured that it was only a matter of time before the piece could see the light of day.

During the past year, there has been a snail-like pace by the Board and then by Management of the AAA. Nobody wanted to reject the paper but neither did anybody want to accept it. I have been put off for a year with no resolution in sight. So now I seek an alternative publication space.

Admittedly the story is a year old, but the questions are not resolved. The issue remains whether the profession wants to get serious about ethics.

In the meantime it appears that the AAA is not serious. Therefore I am saying good-bye to the AAA.

Ernst & Young in an Ethics Scandal: Ho-Hum

By J. Edward Ketz

Written for Accounting Education News, not published.

On June 28 of this year the SEC announced its largest penalty ever levied against a large accounting firm because E&Y had many of its audit professionals cheating on ethics exams. (How deliciously ironic when one cheats on an ethics exam!) Says the SEC, the firm “hindered our investigation” by “withholding evidence of this misconduct.” E&Y, in the end, agreed to pay a fine of $100 million to settle the matter, which follows similar incidents by PwC Canada earlier this year and by KPMG in 2019.

When this announcement was made public by the SEC, news agencies, blogs, and twitter feeds exploded with tsking, booing, alas-ing, and pshaw-ing. There was shock and dismay—how could they do this? There was surprise and bewilderment—what is going on with those entrusted to ensure financial integrity? And, of course, there was condemnation and finger pointing.

Going Concern, for example, says that “there’s a serious ethics problem at large firms that clearly isn’t being addressed.” Michael Shaub says he felt anger at first, now replaced by sorrow. He asks why the public trusts us with audits of corporate reports. They show outrage at this lapse of professional ethics, and I agree that such episodes are repugnant, but let’s shift attention to the question of who is surprised by the incident. Given the many ethical lapses of the last (say) 25 years, why does anybody express astonishment?

Instead of our collective chest thumping about how independent auditors are paragons of integrity, we should examine humbly the human situation. In The Cheating Culture David Callahan asserts that the U.S. society is seeing an ever-increasing amount of cheating, and “everybody does it.” Temptations abound, which are dangerous with America’s winner-take-all attitude and the rewards for success bigger than ever. Dan Ariely contributes to this discussion in his The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty. He claims people desire to view themselves as honest individuals, but cheat because they gain many benefits from duplicity. He advances the fudge factor theory to account for both tendencies. What is most interesting about this theory is that Ariely practices what he preaches. In an expose by Alexander Danvers, Ariely was found faking data in a 2012 honesty study!

If Callahan and Ariely are correct, one wonders how humans, free moral agents, have devolved to this nadir. Gary Becker assists this understanding by postulating an economic model of crime in which rational beings will commit crime if the rewards are sufficiently high, the odds of getting caught sufficiently low, and the punishments if caught sufficiently low. Ariely claims that this model is not quite correct because, wanting to be seen as “good,” humans typically will commit crime only to a point. Callahan does not address these economic accounts, resting instead on social forces.

Regarding E&Y, there are plenty of examples that are congruent with Callahan, Ariely, and Becker and beg the question why anybody is surprised at what transpired. One recalls the egregious tax shelter set up by E&Y to benefit Sprint and its top executives. Another incident involved an E&Y auditor and her romantic entanglement with the CFO of the firm being audited. There was also a case that involved an E&Y auditor’s spending a fortune on football and hockey games and vacations with the CFO of the firm for which he was the audit partner in charge. Another demonstration focused on auditor independence when the independent E&Y auditors interfered with a firm’s auditor proposal process. And let us not forget the sad and ineffective audit at Wirecard; it was not the profession’s finest hour. I should add that there exists a plethora of similar episodes at the other large accounting firms. (Also see my essay “The Myth of Auditor Independence.”)

Researchers should find fertile territory to study. What is the cost-benefit calculus that auditors employ when deciding to cheat on ethics exams? What social factors and historical antecedents explain the behavior of the accounting industry? How are juniors socialized in the practices of their chosen profession and to what are they socialized?

These incidents also impact our teaching mission. How are we to teach professional ethics and tenets like independence—are they desired ideals or mere myths?

These situations do not occur every day, so many conclude that these events merely prove that there are some bad apples in the profession. In this case, “over 200 EY audit professionals” cheated. How many ethical lapses does one need to see a cultural paradigm rather than isolated incidents? It is no longer meaningful to deny the obvious.

Having auditing professionals cheat on ethics exams is tragic, sad, appalling, and confusing. But surprising? Hardly.

About the author: J. Edward Ketz is Associate Professor of Accounting at Penn State and has been a member of the faculty since 1981. Ed has authored and edited 17 books as well as numerous articles. He has been cited often in the popular and business press; he also has appeared as an accounting commentator on radio and television. Besides teaching and writing, he serves as an accounting expert witness from time to time.

The post ‘The American Accounting Association Is Not Serious’ and Other Such Thoughts From a Professor Who’s Quitting the AAA appeared first on Going Concern.

Remember your first job? Not your first real job, the one you took in high school before you were saddled with student loans, rent, and monthly bills. If you graduated in the last 10-15 years, it was no more than $15, likely closer to $7.25.

When you grow up and score your first internship, $25 an hour is a lot of money (p.s. It’s closer to $50 nowadays, thank you accountant shortage). And there’s overtime! Then comes your full-time offer. If you graduated in the last two decades it was probably around $50,000. Maybe $60,000. Maybe much more if you just graduated but we’re not going to get into that because the class of 2019 is still angry about it.

Did you ever stop to do the math on what you’re making by the hour? It was easy to do when you were getting paid $7.25 an hour for afterschool shifts but in the real world it gets murkier, especially accounting for busy season. If you do well, you’ll get a nice bonus at the end of the year, but if you do twice as well, don’t expect twice the bonus. It just doesn’t work that way, which is probably part of the reason why the old-timers are so bitter. There’s little incentive for you to go above and beyond because the only thing you get at the end is overworked.

In the process of writing this article, we asked ChatGPT to help out on the math of yearly accounting salary versus hours worked because it’s better at math than anyone on the Going Concern payroll (which is not saying much). Prompting it to crunch the numbers on a public accountant making $60,000 a year with 50-60 hour weeks, it hilariously assumed that hours in excess of 40 come with overtime. Oh, if only.

On the next prompt it did much better, factually anyway. It assumed no vacations.

If you work 50 hours per week: $60,000 ÷ 2,080 hours (52 weeks x 40 hours per week) = $28.85 per hour

If you work 60 hours per week: $60,000 ÷ 2,480 hours (52 weeks x 60 hours per week) = $24.19 per hour

Let’s be real, if you compare 60 hours a week during busy season to what a teenager makes bagging groceries, you are going to be a little angry (and also eager to update your résumé, we assume).

Then there’s career progression. In public accounting, early progression is rarely based on merit, but rather on the passage of time. Meet goals and hit the two year mark? Congratulations, you leveled up. The highest performers may see early promotions, most everyone shuffles up the ladder the same prescribed way. At the lower levels you are completely disconnected from the big picture at the top, a cog in the machine with little ownership of the firm’s success. And let’s say you do give 150%, impress the heck out of clients, and attract new business surely by virtue of your hardworking, shining efforts. At most you get an extra slice of pizza at the third pizza party of the quarter and more work. Yay.

OK so what’s the point of all of this besides more complaining? As you probably gathered from the big “sponsored by” at the beginning of this post, FloQast commissioned this article because they are looking for Business Development Representatives who bring past public accounting experience to the table. Why? Because despite its downsides, public accounting offers a unique learning experience and teaches you a wealth of skills that you’ll carry with you for a lifetime, skills in high demand especially at FloQast. They love prior public accounting experience – particularly audit! – because you have a unique understanding of the problems facing the people you’d be speaking to in the BDR role, people who are in the trenches just like you used to be (or currently are. We see that wandering eye of yours…).

Wouldn’t it be nice to feel like you’re helping and not just grinding away to buy partners’ summer homes? Here’s the best part: it pays. Seriously, go on Glassdoor. Google it. If you’re feeling lazy and would rather not, just compare these rankings at FloQast to the rankings of a large accounting firm we shall not name.

And just look at these happy people. LOOK AT THEM. They have all the camaraderie of the audit room without the pain of auditing.

Video evidence:

We know that many of you are currently looking to jump, particularly those of you who got disappointing news this promotion season and all of you who are about to receive unexpectedly bleak ratings in upcoming performance discussions. Although the headlines are still screaming “accountant shortage,” the reality is that firms are beginning to tighten their belts and aren’t as scared as they were a year ago about losing people. This shift is especially obvious in firms’ attitudes toward remote and hybrid work; for example, a firm that proudly announced its “hybrid forever” way of working not even two years ago has just issued soft mandates to its people to get back in the office. There’s never been a better time to think about exit opportunities. Is there ever a bad one?

If you still need convincing, here is a non-exhaustive list of the benefits you’ll get working at FloQast:

• Employee Choice Policy or Work From Home
  • FloQast maintains a flexible policy on how and where employees choose to work. Employees can work from home and also have the option to work in a FloQast office or maintain a hybrid work schedule.
• Vacation and Public Holidays
  • FloQast observes major public holidays and provides unlimited vacation time to US employees to allow them to rest, recharge, and spend time with their loved ones.
• Mental Health Days
  • FloQast provides Mental Health Days in addition to company holidays where the Company closes to allow employees to unplug, relax, and recharge.
• Stock Options
  • Long-term incentive that provides employees the opportunity to participate in the growth of the company by purchasing equity through granted stock options.
• Medical/Rx
  • FloQast offers a variety of Medical plans to fit the needs of our employees and their needs. FloQast pays 100% of the premium for employees and families for most plans.
  • Dental & Vision
  • FloQast offers a comprehensive Dental PPO plan that includes orthodontia benefits for children and adults. Premiums are 100% paid for by FloQast.
  • Choice of two vision plans where FloQast pays 100% of the premiums for the Base plan, and employees can buy up to the Choice plan.
• Carrot
  • Global Employees have access to Carrot – a family forming benefit that provides resources and experts to assist with fertility, adoption, surrogacy, and other family-forming journeys.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
  • Global Employees have access to a wide range of no-cost services to assist them with financial planning, legal assistance, and addressing mental health care & wellness needs.

So what do you have to lose? Certainly not money.

About FloQast     www.floqast.com
FloQast is the leader in accounting workflow automation created by accountants for accountants. By automating and modernizing everyday accounting workflows, FloQast enables accountants to work better together and perform their tasks with greater efficiency and accuracy. The cloud-based, AI-enhanced software is trusted by more than 2,000 accounting teams, including those at Snowflake, Kodiak, Instacart, Zoom, and The Golden State Warriors – and still growing! We aspire to forever elevate accounting and improve both the practice and perceptions of the profession.

Our values serve as a compass that guides our decisions and are considered non-negotiable, especially when it comes to hiring. Together with our employees, partners, and customers, we live these values every day.

Unwaveringly Authentic
Ambitious with Integrity
Empowered to Grow
Committed to Collaboration
Customer Obsessed in All Ways

Here’s Why You Should Apply:
Amazing Benefits – FloQast pays 100% of the premium for employees and families for most Medical, Dental, & Vision plans.

Competitive Compensation & Stock Options

FloQast is regularly rated as a Best Place to Work!
– Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces in 2023, 2022, and 2021
– Best Places to Work by LA Business Journal since 2017 (that’s 6 years!)
– Built In’s Best Place to Work in Los Angeles 4 years in a row!

Professional Growth & Community – We believe community extends through and beyond the office. We have Employee Resource Groups, community volunteer opportunities, social events, DEI initiatives, and reimbursements for professional development relevant to your role.

Work-Life Balance – We have unlimited PTO along with a generous parental leave policy. To top it off, we have Mental Health Days, where the company closes to allow employees to unplug, relax, and recharge (we know Zoom fatigue is a real thing!)

Employee Choice Policy – Employees can work from home and also have the option to work in a FloQast office or maintain a hybrid work schedule.

Our customers love us! See for yourself on G2 Crowd.

FloQast, Inc is committed to operating fair and unbiased recruitment procedures allowing all applicants an equal opportunity for employment, free from discrimination on the basis of religion, race, sex, age, sexual orientation, disability, color, ethnic or national origin, or any other classification as may be protected by applicable law. We aim to recruit the right people for the jobs we have to offer, and to assess applications on the basis of relevant skills, education, and experience. We welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. We are an equal opportunity employer and strive to provide a professional and welcoming workplace for all employees.

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You may have seen clickbait articles about entire marketing departments being turfed in favor of ChatGPT (we never liked the people in marketing anyway!) and we’ve been hearing for at least as long as this website has been alive that AI will all but eliminate accountants. No doubt, as time goes on, AI will get better and more positions may be replaced by AI but do you, the accountant, have to worry about your job? Haven’t they been saying for at least ten years now that 95% of accountants will be replaced by 2030? See also: this 2013 Oxford University research entitled “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?”

There are already AI tools out there doing the more menial tasks accountants, bookkeepers, and interns once did. There are still plenty of flesh and blood humans doing those menial jobs because, let’s face it, a mom-and-pop business isn’t going to use any AI tool if the work volume (or the price and perceived difficulty in implementing it) doesn’t warrant it. Good luck convincing someone who still isn’t in the cloud to take AI out for a spin.

You can get anxious about the future if you want but to determine whether or not your job is at risk, it might be worth busting a few myths about AI.

Myth #1
Artificial Intelligence is Actually Intelligent

It’s important to know that AI is not sentient, aware, or conscious, and far from being intelligent in the traditional sense (for now). If you’ve played around with ChatGPT at all you know this. It’s simply a series of code, lacking all impulse to enslave the human race (but so was HAL 9000). Like interns, AI in its current form is trained on data sets provided to it for the purpose of achieving a specific task; in the case of ChatGPT, the specific task is actually a wide variety of functions, the depth of which we are only just now discovering.

When AI accounting software is used to automate manual data entry to do things like scan and interpret invoices, it has to be trained by humans to recognize specific fields such as addresses, company name, dates, purchase order number, etc, for each vendor. The software company has created the AI software to be able to learn these things, and once learned, will recognize this data at a later time, and be able to code and enter the data for you. This isn’t much different from a sole proprietor CPA teaching his high school daughter how to enter receipts in Excel to make a little extra cash over the summer. Over time, she gets faster and better at inputting the data with a little practice.

AI doesn’t know anything in the fundamental way you do. For example, we’ve all heard the stories about Roombas not recognizing dog crap and smearing it all over the house. Roomba is now using AI to recognize dog turds but the AI wouldn’t intrinsically know dog turds = bad unless we tell it that. Roomba’s anti-poo technology was such a big deal when it debuted in 2021 – iRobot founder Colin Angle literally said “It’s a big deal for us” when the company did its big media run – because it took a lot of time and effort to get to the point where the AI understood poop = bad. Even three-year-old humans can be taught this more quickly than AI (Imagine what a thankless job that was!) and we know toddlers aren’t taking your job any time soon.

Myth #2
AI Will Take Your Job

There’s always a lot of worry about the unknown. That’s perfectly natural, especially in high-strung accountants. Your job may not be the same in five years, but you’ll still have a job. AI isn’t going to take it, but it does promise to change it. Accounting, as we know, isn’t a purely mechanical function, but there’s a lot of repetitive work that can – and should – be automated.

AI does promise to make your job easier, by automating routine work; work that is easily repeatable, such as entering invoices. This foundational work does require accuracy, and your job may change to auditing AI-entered data to ensure it’s accurate, and to look for non-routine data that AI is unsure about how to handle or code. What happens if your vendors change the format and structure of their invoice?

What about one-off vendors? Do you have a purchase order system to match invoices against? Humans will also be able to perform an audit role here to ensure invoices are legitimate and not a scam. First, those sorts of invoices may not even be submitted to AI for entry or, if they are, removed from the system if there is an issue.

Just make sure to be nice when you’re training your AI system. You know, just in case it does actually become intelligent in the future and remembers when you were being an ass to it in the early days!

AI promises to free up your time from those routine tasks and allow you to focus on higher level tasks that you may not have had time for before. We’re hopeful at this stage that this optimism is based in reality and not delusion.

For the futurists and statistics geeks out there, you should check out this working paper GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models. AI in its current state is stochastic, it’s the human input (that’s you) that really makes it shine. And that’s the exciting part!

Myth #3
AI Will Eliminate Grunt Work

Given time and training, any kind of work can be regarded as grunt work. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say. Grunt work will never really disappear in any job. Once you get good at it, it becomes routine, and probably kind of boring.

What is considered grunt work will change, and more and more of that grunt work will eventually be performed by AI as we figure out ways to make it routine.

Once your time is freed up from your current grunt work, you’ll move on to higher level tasks, master that future grunt work, and the cycle continues. Sorry, this probably isn’t what you wanted to hear.

Myth #4
AI Will Transform Accounting, Change the World, and Save Humanity

Wait, I thought AI was going to destroy the world? I guess it depends on whom you believe, how many fringe websites you visit, and if you buy into the marketing hype. Either way, if your name is Sarah Connor, you may want to consider changing your name. Our robot overlords of the future might be a little touchy about it!

Let’s break this down. First of all, AI will change accounting, not transform it. It’s simply going to be a tool to make our lives easier so we can focus on other tasks that we’ve likely been neglecting, or simply haven’t had the time to do. We’re still going to have debits and credits, financial statements, and audits.

Every seemingly radical new technology seems to have its share of sycophants that buy every bit of marketing hype, and beg for more. At the same time, there are the tinfoil hat Chicken Littles out there bemoaning the end of humanity. Search hard enough and I’m sure you’ll find 5,000-year-old hieroglyphics that proclaim the Earth (what was known of it) would end in mere months.

Will AI change the world? Well, maybe. It’s hard to know for sure what its effects will be. Will it be the radical change some claim? Not likely. Humans are still human. We tend to be reluctant to accept change, so the effects of AI are likely to be less radical than claimed, but change will happen gradually. Time will tell.

And finally, nothing will save humanity. We’re all doomed! Unless we make it off the planet to other galaxies, we have about 5 billion years left until our sun turns into a red giant and wipes out our solar system. (I know, I’m being very optimistic!)

OK So Now What?

AI tools are so new, and we’re so early in the process with them, that it’s hard to tell exactly what will happen, and how everything will shake out.

Some sound advice would be to learn how to use the emerging AI tools. Accept them, understand their strengths and limitations, learn how to use them, and craft queries that get the results you’re expecting. Prompting will become the new Googling, those who create good prompts get the best output. Also, learn how these tools might benefit your organization. Pay attention to thought leaders in this space and the future-forward accounting firms harnessing this technology to get things done. Try not to read too many fringe websites talking about AI taking over the world.

It is guaranteed that AI will play a big part in the future of accounting, and setting yourself up as an expert in this space now will set you up for a spot at the table in the future. Figure out how you can use these tools to make your work life easier, even if your firm isn’t using them on a grand scale (keeping in mind that your firm may have an AI policy and if not, it’s always a good idea to never input PII or confidential information).

Soon to be gone are the days where you can simply outwork fellow accountants by putting in more hours. With these new AI tools, you’ll be able to work smarter, achieve substantial time savings and realize productivity gains, allowing you to focus on higher level tasks which, hopefully, will provide more value to your company and clients, all while offering you a few more hours of sleep than you’re used to. At least that’s what we’re hoping for.

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By utilizing Flow’s advanced technology, businesses can streamline accounts payable workflow, reduce errors, and improve accuracy, all while freeing up valuable time and resources (finally, you can take a nap for lunch). Say goodbye to the hassle of manual data entry and complicated approvals processes and hello to a smarter, more efficient way of doing business. If you’re ready to join the thousands of companies already benefiting from Nanonets’ cutting-edge technology, contact us for a free demonstration.

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Nanonets is a SF-based software company founded in 2017 specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning models for intelligent document processing. If you’d like to reduce costs, speed up your document workflow, and are interested in incorporating AI into your company, contact Nanonets for a free demonstration.

The post ChatGPT Can Pass the CPA Exam But Here’s What It Can’t Do (Yet) appeared first on Going Concern.

You are not charging enough.

Honestly, we could just end the article here but there are minimum word counts to hit so in a moment we’re going to give you a few reasons why you need to raise your fees, though you don’t need them. Crazy concept, right? You can just raise your fees. Period, end of sentence, mic drop. Just raise them. Hit the back button on your browser right now and go read some accounting gossip elsewhere on this site because you do not need a reason to raise your fees.

That idea sounds better on paper than in real life, of course. In real life, you would have raised your fees already a year ago if it were as simple as just raising them. Maybe you are waiting for someone to give you permission to. In which case, you have our permission. That was easy, wasn’t it?

Ugh. You’re still not ready to do it, are you?

We are not going to waste precious word count on the economic reasons behind raising your fees, you already know what they are. But despite having no idea who you are – yes, you reading this right now – we can guess with some authority that you are undercharging. No, the Going Concern editorial desk is not staffed by clairvoyants (sadly. Those people all work for Accounting Today). We know you are undercharging because pretty much everyone is, or at least was up until recently.

Maybe it’s accountants’ nature to want to appease clients and undercut their own talents because so few people appreciate them. You know that you know your stuff, you know the hard work you put in on your education and your certifications and all that time you spend reading up on new regulations and best practices. Guess what, clients don’t care. Which is fine, we aren’t asking clients to perform an elaborate economic analysis on your worth and thank goodness we aren’t because we know clients would undervalue you even worse than you undervalue yourself. Not only are they terrible at valuation, they don’t even know what exactly you do. Imagine the anarchy if we let clients set their own fees.

Raising your fees is something you’ve been thinking about for a while. You know you should, and you know that you’re justified to do so. But something is holding you back, be it fear or anxiety or an allergy to serious conversations with clients. We get it.

Take a second to think about a few reasons why you should charge more. And if you can’t come up with enough reasons, here are some more.

You have been undercharging for a long time

By now you’ve heard about – and experienced – the accountant shortage. If you have been living under a rock for two years (welcome back to civilization btw) the TL;DR is that interest in the accounting profession has been waning for years and demand for accountants remains higher than the supply of accounting graduates can satisfy.

The profession’s greatest minds are working harder than an associate during busy season to understand why this is happening and what can be done to fix it. Salary – specifically, starting salaries that can’t compete with other white collar fields – is a factor that comes up more often than not. At issue, for many years public accounting firms did not raise starting salaries like they should have and with each passing year, public accounting became less and less attractive to college students. There’s an argument to be made here about accounting as a recession-proof career and the myriad of opportunities offered to you when you have CPA after your name and paying your dues blah blah blah, we aren’t talking about that because that’s not what we’re here to convince you of.

While new graduate salaries were stagnating, so were your fees. Year after year you did not raise your fees because your practice was thriving and you didn’t think you needed to or you were afraid of losing clients if you did or you worried that #TaxTwitter would talk about you behind your back for being a money-grubbing jerk. Whatever your reasons, because you haven’t raised your fees incrementally over time you now find yourself in a position similar to that of gargantuan public accounting firms: you now have to raise fees and perhaps significantly.

Accountants are like toilet paper and other terrible metaphors

Circling back to a couple paragraphs ago, there is currently a critical accountant shortage. This means that smaller clients especially are having trouble even finding accountants. If you still remember what you learned in Econ 101, you know that high demand and low supply has a direct effect on prices. You are in high demand. Think of yourself like toilet paper in 2020. You are toilet paper. Wow, that’s a terrible metaphor. OK, think of yourself like a PS5 the day it was released. You are a PS5. Ugh, that one is pretty dumb too. Got it! Think of yourself like a diamond. You are a diamond.

There are many gemstones that rival or even surpass diamonds in beauty yet diamonds are a highly sought-after stone due to rarity. Granted, the rarity is completely manufactured and they aren’t actually as rare as diamond sellers would want you to believe (fun fact: it’s estimated there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 tons of rough diamonds hidden beneath the Earth) but we can’t possibly hamfist another metaphor in here, we’re just going to go with diamonds.

The high demand for accounting services makes those services much more valuable than they would be if there were 1,000,000,000,000,000 tons of accountants. We’re not saying you should jack up your prices just because you can, rather we are reminding you that you provide a valuable service in a non-saturated market.

Your competitors are already doing it

Your competitors don’t need to read this article because they have already raised their fees. They’re off somewhere else on the site reading old Big 4 farewell emails with lots of expletives in them from 2011. Your competitors already completed the analysis you are doing right now. They scribbled out the pros and the cons, read the practice management articles that explain why fees should be raised and how to delicately approach the issue with clients, and gave themselves a pep talk in the mirror like a Sim raising their charisma points. Then they did it.

#TaxTwitter is full of people who are thinking about raising fees, in the process of doing so, or have done so and regret nothing. When you finish this article, go over there and see for yourself.

Clients are much more amenable than you think

Although they may not always express appreciation for your skills and everything you do for them, clients are pretty reasonable (most of the time) and do value what you provide for them. Not as much as they should, but enough that a fee increase won’t automatically scare them away.

…And if they aren’t, who cares

Will you lose clients if you raise your fees? Maybe. And so what if you do? Know that those clients will then seek out other practitioners – many of whom have raised their fees, remember – and find out that the other accountants are charging as much if not more than you. Many accountants aren’t accepting new clients. Some of them immediately blacklist any potential clients who say “I fired my last accountant when they raised fees” and refuse to work with someone like that. There aren’t a quadrillion accountants sitting on the bench eager for Coach to put them in on tax returns (see above re: supply and demand), clients are feeling the accountant shortage just like everyone else.

One last thing

Remember the old SNL skit Daily Affirmation? I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

Channel that next time you are questioning your worth. Just do it less awkwardly than ole Stuart up there.

This article has been brought to you by Melio, an online AP and AR platform designed specifically for the needs of your SMB clients. They commissioned it because they believe in the work you do and want to see you charge what you’re worth. If you happen to be in the market for B2B payment solutions that play well with your existing accounting software, go swing by their site and give them a try. After you draft that email to clients, that is.

About Melio
Melio is a business-to-business (B2B) online payment platform specifically built with small businesses in mind. It requires no subscription and allows you to send and receive business payments for free, only charging for fast and premium options. Sign up to start paying all of your clients’ business bills with Melio.

The post You Are Not Charging Enough appeared first on Going Concern.

Was ChatGPT sent to us from the future to rescue the industry from the pipeline crisis by filling open accounting jobs with cyborgs and sentient machines? Not to my knowledge – though that doesn’t mean it won’t shake up our industry anyway.

Accounting is ridiculously rules-based: assets = liabilities plus equities; debits = credits; cash in > cash out, etc. It’s the black-and-white methodology that draws many students into it. And it’s the exact type of work that is prime for replacement by AI*. Some of it already has been. TurboTax and QuickBooks are full of rudimentary AI features and already have reduced the need for some bookkeepers and tax preparers. The products can sort accounts, predict the other side of a journal entry, and populate a tax form with high accuracy. However, compared to ChatGPT, their AI abilities are a toddler learning to walk. ChatGPT is Usain Bolt.

If you’ve been on an audit or prepared a tax return and at some point thought “a monkey could do my job,” you weren’t far off. A monkey probably can’t, but AI tools such as ChatGPT likely can (example: at Surgent, our algorithms can predict your exam score with over 90% accuracy, monkeys couldn’t even break 40). How much better would ChatGPT be at the same task with unlimited data inputs? If it can generate hundreds of thousands of protein sequences or map cancer progression, it can certainly summarize an FASB standard, assess a going concern risk, match documents, or determine the tax consequences for a partnership split. It’s the type of tool that the Big 4 firms envisioned having years ago and is part of the reason why they weren’t worried (until they were) about declining accounting enrollments in colleges and universities.

There are two ways we need to think about our Terminator moment: what it means today and what it could mean soon. Today, just because a tool with the ability to automate much of our work now exists, it doesn’t mean we need to drop everything and go back to school to become data analysts, engineers, or lawyers. But it does mean we need to learn how to utilize the tool in our jobs. Because ChatGPT is still “learning,” it’s currently far from perfect, even with the release of GPT-4, and can give inaccurate or incomplete information. It confuses like terms, particularly technical accounting terms.

Since it’s not perfect, it places an increased emphasis on knowledge and expertise. Sure, ChatGPT can write multiple memos in seconds that would’ve previously taken hours of work and five staff accountants, but we still need an accountant to determine if it’s right. And we still need an accountant to know what questions to ask it. The better the inputs, the better the outputs. The only way to know the best inputs is to have the existing knowledge. Knowledge will still be power. Accountants who can best work with ChatGPT will thrive, those who don’t will ultimately be out of a job.

The future is different. It isn’t just another game, it’s a different sport. The next version of language-based AI will be even more powerful, thorough, and accurate than we can envision right now. It’s going to improve and expand in mere weeks and months, not years and decades. It seems like every major tech company domestically and abroad is working to develop their own AI learning tools. More competition will lead to more innovation and abilities that we cannot even visualize today. The future ChatGPT may not look like the Terminator, but it will probably be way more advanced.

The largest accounting firms will start training their staff on the tools immediately, building existing employees’ knowledge and reducing the need to hire more staff down the road. It will also allow them to go after smaller clients and those with simple business models currently being audited or tax advised by small and medium-sized firms. It will eliminate the need for many entry-level and senior roles. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to look out and see a future where no one except the wealthiest clients prepare tax returns with human interaction or where large company audits are performed by auditor teams that can fit around a coffee table instead of a conference table.

ChatGPT may be a temporary solution for the pipeline problem of today. It already can do the work of entry-level staff. In the future, instead of eliminating the pipeline, it’s more likely to create an even greater need for technical expertise and the ability to synthesize outputs amongst a wide array of topics among entry-level staff. It will undoubtedly change the nature of work performed, but there will certainly still be work for accountants.

Maybe it was sent from the future after all – not to replace accountants, but to evolve us.

*In fact, a 2013 Oxford study predicted that accounting and auditing jobs had a 94% probability of being replaced with computers: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf. This study caused quite a stir in the accounting profession when we finally noticed it a few years after it came out.

The post ChatGPT Isn’t Terminator for Accountants…Yet appeared first on Going Concern.

Q: Edwards Engineering is a client of what tax consulting firm, a popular subject at Going Concern due to its ongoing problems across several areas?

A: Oh wait, it’s in the headline.

We can’t directly tie the $732,597 boo-boo to malfeasance by Alliantgroup, but the company did issue a press release claiming that the Tax Court “found that alliantgroup properly applied the law” and proclaiming the ruling a “historic win for taxpayers.” If Alliantgroup is taking credit for the positive outcomes of the case, shouldn’t they get the blame for the bad parts, too?

We’ll leave it for you to decide, but regardless, it’s certainly not a good look to have the Tax Court rule that your tax client went way too far with its tax deductions. As you dive into the details, the look only gets worse, as it appears that the overclaim stems from a misunderstanding of the law, an overly aggressive stance against its ambiguities, or a combination of both.

The case ultimately proves the value of hiring a firm with specific experience and a strong track record of successful client outcomes for §179D deductions.

We caught up with our buddy David Diaz, partner at Walker Reid Strategies, to help us better understand what happened with this case—and what we can learn from it.

Hey, back up! Beep, beep, beep! What is §179D?

Calm down, there’s no need to make Seinfeld references at us. For those of you who aren’t masters of the tax domain, here’s the yada yada yada on IRS Section 179D. Fusili Jerry.

Section 179D of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) is an engineered-based tax incentive available for the reduction of energy and power costs in commercial buildings. The §179D tax deduction specifically applies to commercial buildings that notably reduce their interior lighting energy costs, as well as their heating, cooling, and building envelope.

“Like most sections of the IRC, §179D is complicated,” Diaz said. “There’s a lot of confusion about who qualifies, and you typically need an advisor like Walker Reid to help certify everything and calculate your deduction.”

What happened in the Edwards Engineering §179D Tax Court case?

Edwards Engineering engaged Alliantgroup to conduct an Energy Efficient Commercial Building Tax Deduction Study for the work it performed in 2012 and 2013 on a Hines VA Medical Center in Illinois. Edwards Engineering then claimed a deduction of $1,037,237 under §179D for the 2013 tax year.

The IRS actually disallowed the deduction entirely by notices of deficiency dated July 12, 2018. The IRS listed several reasons for this, including:

• The property was not installed as part of a plan to achieve energy savings
• The computed energy savings were not derived from the property installed
• The certification and notice to the building owner required by §179D(d)(5) and (6) were deficient

The Tax Court wound up disagreeing with the IRS’s logic, technically ruling in favor of Edwards Engineering. This is the “victory” claimed by Alliantgroup in its press release. But the Tax Court also determined that Edwards had claimed far more than it should have, to the tune of over $700,000.

How did Edwards Engineering overstate its §179D deduction?

This bit gets complicated, but basically, Edwards Engineering used the square footage of the entire building in its deduction calculation, based on the position that costs of prior projects not performed by Edwards Engineering were also considered part of the EECBP costs. The max deduction in 2013 under §179D was $1.80 per square foot, so their logic looked like this:

$1.80/sq. ft. x 596,243 sq. ft. = $1,073,237 deduction

“I think this represents an aggressive stance on §179D, which put Edwards Engineering at risk of IRS penalties, tax repayment, and operational disruption,” Diaz said. “When dealing with complex tax code sections like §179D, you need a partner that balances maximizing incentives for clients and strictly adhering to the reasonable interpretation of tax law.”

The Tax Court ruled that Edwards Engineering could not deduct more than $304,640, which was the cost of EECBP placed in service during the 2013 tax year at Hines VA.

What can we learn from Edwards Engineering’s §179D overclaim?

At Going Concern, we learned about the karmic consequences of regularly taking pleasure in the misfortune of others when, just before completing this article, we received a letter from the cockroaches that live in our office basement declaring their intent to unionize.

As for the lessons tax professionals and anyone looking into §179D write-offs should learn, we’ll leave that to our resident expert, Mr. Diaz.

“Everyone wants the biggest possible deduction, but if the positions being taken create undue risk for your company, you’re doing far more harm than good,” Diaz said. “This case highlights the importance of engaging with reputable and knowledgeable firms, such as Walker Reid, to avoid the consequences of taking an overly aggressive stance on §179D or any section of the tax code.”

Diaz went on to tell us how the case also helped resolve three previously unclear areas in the interpretation of §179D. We nodded and pretended to understand as we wrote down his words verbatim, which we will now shamelessly present to you as our own:

The Edwards Engineering case helped clarify these uncertainties surrounding §179D:

All told, the case spells more bad news for the increasingly beleaguered Alliantgroup. It also illustrates a key principle of the legal system that we at Going Concern try to live by: Test cases are essential to interpreting and understanding the law…but, if possible, always let someone else be the test case.

David Diaz is a partner at Walker Reid Strategies, a licensed engineering firm specializing in §179D studies and §45L certifications, and is an expert in energy efficiency and tax services. You can find more information about him and his insights at www.walkerreid.com and through webinars. You can also reach him at ddiaz@walkerreid.com for more details.

The post $700,000+ Overclaim by Alliantgroup Client Shows Value of §179D Expertise appeared first on Going Concern.

1. Email threads,
2. Excel docs,
3. Handwritten scribbles on the back of a tear-soaked cocktail napkin from last night’s happy hour that ended with you making merciful pleas to a series of increasingly obscure deities and fictional wizards,
4. Etc.

The internet offers no shortage of guides and tips on overcoming your busy season woes. But nearly all of them miss a relatively simple step: Get the flow of documents between you and your clients under control with a document request management solution.

In our research for this article, a public accounting firm revealed that it spent up to 30% of its time collecting documents in a typical engagement. So there seems to be a ton of potential for time-savings and stress relief with a solution that keeps everything in one place as you request, track, and review large volumes of document requests.

No doubt, document request management can make the 2023 busy season less sucky for CPAs, accountants, and auditors—and even help you build smarter processes that deliver long-term busy season relief. We thought of several hundred reasons why, but our editors made us condense it down to these four:

1. It helps you stay calm under pressure

Ah, the busy season fire drill. We can picture it now:

The client takes three months to get you the documents you need—then demands immediate results. So you’re wading through the year’s worth of Excel docs and emails that flooded your inbox over the last two hours, trying to reconcile the mess while the partner is asking the manager who is asking you if anything is missing because he has a client meeting in 13 minutes. Tensions are high, and angry Teams messages PING your desktop and phone with greater frequency, but without a PING predictable cadence or rhythm PING that would allow you to PING PING tune them out, driving you PING ever closer PING PING PING PING to the edge PING PING PING of madness PING…

With a proper PBC (Provided by Client) request solution, however, a different picture comes into view—one where busy season fires can be extinguished with just a few clicks, coworkers and clients keep their cool, and, most importantly, your sanity remains intact.

“Instead of having to reconcile everything, you could open your dashboard on UpLink and see exactly what documents are missing, late, or have been uploaded for your review,” said Alex Maher, co-founder of UpLink, a leading document request management solution.

When problems do occur, document request management makes it much easier to discover what happened and validate it to the client.

“When you wait three months to get something from a client, and then they ask you to turn it around in a day…(UpLink) gives you ammunition to go back to the client so you can stand up for your staff,” said Alex Grant, co-founder of UpLink.

(And yes, two of the co-founders of UpLink are named Alex. Maher refers to Grant as “Grant” to avoid confusion. It’s kind of adorable.)

2. It gives you more time to build relationships

Conversations with clients can be painful endeavors, especially during busy season. But a document request management solution can give you the power to check off meeting agenda items in rapid succession, easily confirming what you have, identifying what you still need, and even receiving and uploading documents in real-time.

“When you get all the important meeting items out of the way in five minutes, that puts valuable time back in your day,” Grant said. “Sometimes those calls will end early, allowing you to move on to something else. But you can also use the 25 minutes left to develop that relationship.”

When you know your clients—who they are, what sports teams they like, which circle of hell they ascended from to make your life miserable, etc—you can serve them better, reduce friction, and gain some leeway for when mistakes do happen.

“Several of our customers have stories about clients staying on the call longer to talk about hobbies, interests, whatever,” Maher said. “That may not always be a good thing, but…it leads to more collaboration, more sharing the load…so clients want to get you things faster and are generally nicer.”

3. It helps you empathize with clients

Clients can be mean during busy season. But it’s important to remember that clients…(extra long pause for emphasis)…are still human beings.

They’re under intense pressure from their bosses and colleagues to achieve results within tight timeframes. And while that’s no excuse to take out their frustrations on you, you can still defuse a lot of problems with a few simple expressions of human empathy.

One way to get there is to remind yourself that, as the auditor, you have the power in these situations.

“It may not seem like it, but a lot of times, clients are afraid of you,” Maher said. “When they come at you with bad behavior—bullying, finger-pointing—that may be their misguided way of dealing with that fear.”

That’s where solutions like document request management can play an important role. It’s a tool that empowers you to demonstrate exactly what you need from the client, why you can’t move forward without it, when it was delivered vs when it was promised, etc. And that enables you to use your power in a confident way.

“When you have that confidence, you can stand your ground but also be more empathetic,” Grant said. “You can say, ‘I understand your frustrations, but we are about to run up against the holidays, and I don’t want you to stress when you’re trying to enjoy your family.’ So you’re better able to push them forward while still being nice about it.”

4. It can help you make your clients look good

While they may not always deserve it, making your clients look good is generally in your best interests. Document request management makes it easy to provide specific metrics to clients that validate their hard work (even if their efforts can’t reasonably be called “hard” or “work”), strengthening your goodwill with them.

“With good telemetry into your whole request system, you can find slivers of gold even in a sea of you-know-what,” Grant said. “You get insights to say things like, ‘Wow, Bill got us stuff 30 percent faster this year!’ Instead of, ‘We got behind again because Bill is too slow.’ Hyping up your contacts like that can encourage them to be more proactive with you in the future.”

Why use UpLink for document request management?

Now that we’ve empirically, indisputably, and oh-so-humbly proved that document request management makes busy season less sucky for CPAs, accountants, and auditors, there’s only one question left to answer: Which document request management solution is right for you?

Hell, we don’t know. What does this look like, Consumer Reports? But, according to a public accounting associate we spoke to:

“Most of the tools out there are not that great and feel outdated. UpLink has a really modern interface, and it’s dead simple for clients to use.”

And, from an accounting manager at a large energy company:

“I wish all my auditors would use (UpLink), because version control around updating Excel request lists is terrible.”

Also, Team Alex gave us the deets on several features UpLink has that its competitors don’t, ultimately making UpLink easier to use and more effective:

• • Excel integration. Bulk create and edit the PBC using Excel
  • In-app preview: Review documents without needing to download them
  • Mobile-friendly interface: Take UpLink with you and access a single source of truth across your devices
  • Custom attributes: Tag requests with specific values that are important on your engagement, such as priority, control number, department, etc.

Special offer: Readers of Going Concern can try UpLink risk-free with a complimentary free trial: either two months or 5 engagements free, your choice. Sign up before the end of February and you’ll get a six-month window to activate your trial whenever you’re ready.

Sign up for a free trial of UpLink >

The post 4 Ways PBC Management Makes Busy Season Less Sucky appeared first on Going Concern.

The grief is understandable, although we’re not sure how “good” it is. The FASB—along with its younger-but-still-well-adjusted sister, the Government Accounting Standards Board, or GASB—has been rolling out major changes to lease accounting standards since 2016. Many of these new rules are already in place, with others scheduled to go into effect soon.

Specifically, accounting and finance professionals are expressing grief over the impact of these new standards on their balance sheets. Once a relatively simple endeavor, determining whether a lease qualifies as an asset or liability has mutated into a kafkaesque odyssey across labyrinthine regulations, and efforts to implement the resulting changes have been marred by traps and pitfalls.

Navigating your grief over lease accounting changes

According to a random episode of 30 Rock, there are five stages of grief². And—despite the near-total lack of empirical evidence that the five-stages (aka Kübler-Ross) model of grief is real or helpful in any way³—we’re not going to risk arguing with Alec Baldwin at this particular time.

Instead, because it’s fun and should make for a good article, we’ll plow ahead with the unfounded assumption that grief over the new lease accounting standards unfolds in a Kübler-Ross kind of way. Let’s explore the five stages of lease accounting grief—and, more importantly, examine expert advice on how you can navigate and overcome them.

Stage 1 of lease accounting grief:

Denial (of how much work you’ll need to do)

Underestimating (or outright denying) the amount of work required to implement the new lease accounting standards is an understandable temptation—but it’s also a dangerous one.

According to Deloitte, organizations must “radically transform how they account for leases,” with the changes causing a “ripple effect on business processes, from contracts to internal controls to debt agreements with banks.”⁴ And an EY report revealed that nearly half of surveyed companies anticipate spending $1-5 million to implement the new lease accounting standards.⁵

To move past denial, you first need to understand the various regulations, their impact, and their deadlines:

ASC 842, aka Topic 842

• Summary: Requires most operating leases to be recorded on the balance sheet.
• Deadline: Public companies had to comply in 2019. For private companies, see the table below.

GASB 87, aka Statement No. 87

• Summary: Requires state and local government organizations to capitalize most leases on the balance sheet.
• Deadline: Applies to fiscal years beginning after June 15, 2021.

GASB 96, Subscription-Based Information Technology Arrangements (SBITAs)

• Summary: Requires government entities to recognize a right-to-use subscription asset and corresponding subscription liability for such contracts with a specified term.
• Deadline: Applies to fiscal years beginning after June 15, 2022.

And here are some more actions you can take to overcome lease accounting denial and procrastination, courtesy of the experts at EZLease:

• Build time into your project to identify and load leases.
• Consider choosing technology that has a short implementation timeline.
• For ongoing compliance, keep the auditor’s “provided by client” list in mind throughout each financial period to avoid the last-minute rush.

Stage 2 of lease accounting grief:

Anger (over discovering you don’t know everything you lease)

Simply identifying everything your company leases can be challenging. In most cases, the real estate team knows what buildings are being leased. But what about all the other leases, for things like photocopiers, office furniture, laptops, servers, forklifts, trucks, cars, or even aircraft?

A study by EZLease found that private companies had the most difficulty finding and analyzing their equipment leases, followed by real estate leases, embedded leases, and international leases.⁶

When we can’t find what we need to start a project, it definitely makes us angry—like the time we really needed a Phillips-head screwdriver, but all we could find was the court citation from repeatedly breaking into the hardware store across the street.

So, while anger is a reasonable response to being unable to find your leases, you can do plenty of things to restore calm. This handy Quick Start Guide, for instance, provides some concrete steps you can take to locate all your lease data and load it into a centralized database.

Stage 3 of lease accounting grief:

Bargaining (with makeshift solutions that only make things worse)

With actual grief, the bargaining stage involves pledging to reform one’s life in exchange for avoidance or reversal of the initial grief-inducing circumstances. The lease accounting equivalent to this would be something akin to an attitude of, “If I can just survive the first audit under the new standards, I swear I’ll get my lease data organized for real next time.”

But this approach will only cause further problems down the road (which we’ll examine more in the next section.) Instead, the first audit should lay the groundwork for future success. By taking the time upfront to establish complete and accurate lease data, document policy requirements, and implement the right technologies and solutions, you can create a scalable, workable strategy that will make subsequent audits far less painful.

Accounting and finance professionals who spend too long in Stage One (denial) may have particular trouble with this stage, wherein panic over rapidly approaching deadlines leads to short-term fixes or patchwork solutions made from legacy processes and outdated or improper tools.

Spreadsheets, for example, may seem “good enough” to allow you to survive your first audit. Unfortunately, spreadsheets are missing essential functions needed to achieve and maintain compliance, especially when lease counts go above 10.

Here are some other actions you can take to move beyond the bargaining stage (again courtesy of EZLease):

• Work with your auditors ahead of time to understand what they require for the new standards.
• Use technology to ensure your work is repeatable from period to period to make ongoing audits easier.

Stage 4 of lease accounting grief:

Depression (over realizing the long-term impact of quick fixes)

You may be able to avoid this stage if you follow our advice re: bargaining and put the proper lease accounting solutions in place from the start. For many of you, however, that advice is like the $1-off VHS rental Blockbuster coupons we gave our employees as “holiday bonuses” on January 16th—too little, too late.

If you took a triage, duct-tape-style approach to achieve compliance with new lease accounting standards for your first audit, you might already be feeling the sting of the resulting complications. These could include challenges with scalability, version control, collaboration, data integrity, and audit trails. It all adds up to untold amounts of redundant or unnecessary work that—while maybe not “depressing”—is more than enough to give your average accounting or finance exec the lease accounting blues.

As the lawyers in our numerous libel, slander, and felony jaywalking court cases keep reminding us, however, it’s never too late to do things the right way. Which brings us to…

Stage 5 of lease accounting grief:

Acceptance (that your approach needs to change)

At long last, there’s acceptance—the calm, stable relief that makes the fight through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression all worth it. (Or it would be, if the Kübler-Ross model was, you know, real. But you’ve humored this labored metaphor all the way to the end, so we think you deserve some degree of resolution.)

Ultimately, overcoming your grief over the new FASB and GASB standards means accepting that you’ll need to rethink how you handle lease accounting. It means acknowledging that change is required—and that the right way forward may include forgoing legacy processes and solutions in favor of new technology and/or services.

The good news is, the right lease accounting software can help you implement the new standards with minimal cost, risk, and negative impact. But if you decide to go this route, be sure to do your homework.

Qualities to look for when researching lease accounting software include:

• • Fast setup
  • Quick, easy, bulk loading of lease data
  • Automated data validation for all related standards
  • Easy lease modification and validation of changes
  • “Push-button” accounting and disclosure reporting features
  • Proven experience with firms of your size
  • Training and onboarding support

Alternatively, you can outsource some or all of your lease accounting needs through managed services. This is a good option for if you are:

• Not staffed to set up or manage lease accounting and/or software
• Just starting to manage leases and have a large, complex portfolio
• Running out of time
• Looking for lease abstraction, attestation, policy decisions, and memos

Get (and stay) ahead of lease accounting compliance

By implementing the right business processes, controls, technology, and services, you can stay on top of lease accounting compliance—and achieve sustainable results that allow you to shift focus back to your core mission and customers.

Hundreds of companies of all sizes, with hundreds of thousands of real estate and equipment leases, trust EZLease for their lease accounting needs. Backed by decades of expertise, EZLease helps entities from solo CPAs to Fortune 500 enterprises—carrying anywhere from just a few to over 50,000 leases—achieve and maintain compliance.

You can try EZLease for free for 15 days and return it risk-free after 30 days if you aren’t satisfied. Even better: If you have fewer than 10 leases, EZLease offers a free tier via its Essentials Plan.

Sign up for a free trial now to discover how EZLease can get you compliant with ASC 842, GASB 87, GASB 96, and/or IFRS 16 in just hours—and learn why EZLease is the simplest, highest-rated lease accounting software.

Try EZLease for free >

¹Lugo, Denise, “FASB Proposes to Clarify Lease Accounting Rules for Subsidiaries Controlled by the Same Parent Company,” Thomson Reuters, December 2, 2022.
² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIKx9mk5VMU
³ Stroebe M, Schut H, Boerner K, “Cautioning Health-Care Professionals,” Omega (Westport), March 2017.
⁴“Flashpoint: Changes to Lease Accounting Standards,” Deloitte, 2016.
⁵Cohn, Michael, “Lease Accounting Changes Expected to Cost Millions,” Accounting Today, December 4, 2018.
⁶“6 Steps to Finding and Loading Lease Data: EZ Lease Quick Start Guide,” EZLease, 2021.

The post Overcoming the Five Stages of Lease Accounting Grief appeared first on Going Concern.

Take a look at the description, salary range, and requirements and if you’re so compelled, head over to Accountingfly to apply for this Remote Tax Manager position.

Remote Tax Manager needed at small but progressive firm – with NO crazy busy season hours. The work and clients promise to be interesting, with the goal of helping business owners create highly profitable companies. If you have strong tax and advisory skills and are looking for 30 to 40 steady hours a week, all year round, let’s talk!

Job Type:

Full time, W2
Location: REMOTE within the US
Compensation: $75,000 to $95,000, for a consistent 30 to 40 hours a week

Firm/Team Culture
Work for an innovative, boutique advisory, tax, and accounting firm that works exclusively with growth-focused small to medium-sized businesses. This is a paperless environment using cloud tools. This is a fun, team environment, with meaningful client interaction, rewards, challenges, and successes; all team members have an opportunity to make a direct and meaningful impact.

Benefits and what’s in it for you?

• Generous salary for a consistent 30 to 40-hour work week, all year around
• Flexible remote role
• Discretionary bonus program
• 401(k) with 4% match and discretionary Profit Sharing
• Consistent annual growth with the potential to grow into a director-level position.
• 10 days PTO plus holidays.
• Flexible and relaxed small team environment
• Annual team retreat. Past locations have included Las Vegas, Rocky Point, Florida, and San Diego.

Responsibilities:

• You will be deeply involved with preparing tax planning & tax consulting services.
• Reviewing and preparing individual, partnership, trust, and corporate tax returns
• Researching tax issues for small to medium-sized businesses and wealthy individuals.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s (Required)
• CPA
• 7+ years of recent tax experience in public accounting and a CPA license are required.
• Strong technical, communication, customer service, and practice development skills are highly desirable.
• 7 tax seasons preparing signature-ready complex individual and business tax returns.
• Technical review experience of federal and state tax returns for business entities, trusts, and individuals.
• Strong research tax research and planning experience along with the ability to communicate complex tax concepts to business owners.
• Excellent verbal skills to discover client goals and present solutions in alignment with their overall objectives.
• Ability to use progressive technology forward cloud accounting and tax tools.
• Knowledge of tax laws and strategies is required.

Apply here.

The post Hey Tax People, You’ll Be Thankful For This Remote Job That Promises No More Than 40 Hours a Week EVER appeared first on Going Concern.

With all this excitement, comes a bit of uncertainty of course. Will the economy get better? Will the job market normalize? Will I ever be able to figure out the unnecessarily complicated visual menu on my car’s information center so I can open the stupid glove box? Asking the important questions.

If you own an accounting firm or small practice, you’ve no doubt asked yourself in the last year how you can make the most of these exciting, if uncertain, times. What will profits look like a year from now? Will you be able to hire talent? Should you be on TikTok? Again with the questions, some less important than others.

We can’t advise you if you should get on TikTik or not but what we can tell you is this: There is no better time than the present to think about how modernizing processes with profitability in mind can help you navigate the months and years ahead. “Profitability” doesn’t have to be a dirty word. We thought about putting a list of words that are dirty here to prove how not dirty it is but the sponsors of this article weren’t cool with that (understandably).

The following are five suggestions for maximizing profitability in uncertain times. We were going to give you ten but we decided to maximize the efficiency of this post. Ain’t nobody got time for ten items.

Let new technologies work for you

There’s a technological revolution happening in the accounting profession as we speak and there has never been a more exciting time to be an accountant. Your accounting professors probably told you that back in college but it’s actually true now.

Future-ready firms at the forefront of this movement are hauling giant cartoon bags of money to the bank every other day, that’s how profitable they are. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. Getting all your clients in the cloud and automating a few manual tasks won’t fulfill your fantasies of swimming through a pool of cash a la Scrooge McDuck. But it will increase profitability because your time is money and the time you’re spending on repetitive, manual tasks is money you’re leaving on the table.

Are there tasks you are currently doing manually that you don’t need to be? And if so, what’s stopping you from getting it off your plate?

Here’s a real-world example: Every day, you’re spending hours on sending payments or reconciling incoming payments, precious time that could be better spent elsewhere. Let’s be real, no one enjoys doing this. Good news! There are online tools to manage accounts payable and receivable (AP and AR) for you. Melio, for example, allows you to manage and schedule business payments for your own business or your clients. It comes with no monthly fees and offers free ACH transactions and incoming payments. We encourage you to take it out for a spin and start saving time and money as early as now.

Take off some hats

If you’re running a firm, you’re no doubt wearing many hats. Juggling all these tasks at once on top of the actual service you provide is not only exhausting, it’s unsustainable. You. Are. Tired. We know. We see you, #TaxTwitter.

Are you doing all of your own social media, advertising, appointment-setting, and client-hounding? Do you hate it? Bet you do. The only person who enjoys this is that one weirdo up there ^^ whose favorite part of the day is reconciling payments.

Here’s what you do: Take some of that off your plate and pay someone else to do it. Now, you’re probably wondering how paying for something will make your practice more profitable in the long run and that is a reasonable thing to wonder. But outsourcing some of these things to experts whose job it is to do them not only frees you up to do the important stuff, it can improve your brand, which means more clients. Your clients don’t DIY their taxes, why are you DIYing marketing?

For those of you already doing this, great! You’re a clever one, aren’t you? Think of some other things you could outsource or improve. Maybe your website could use a facelift. Perhaps you could hire a freelance writer to produce regular newsletters informing your clients of important tax deadlines and changes.

You get the idea. Improve your image, improve your appeal, improve your profitability. It’s like the underpants gnome meme but without the ambiguous “???” step. And it’s a win-win for you because it frees you up to focus on more important things than scheduling tweets.

Referrals

While we’re on the topic of marketing, referrals are an excellent way to get the word out without a whole lot of effort on your part. You’re already doing the hard part, that is, providing excellent service to your clients. Now let clients return the favor. They are probably already talking about you when a friend asks them “hey, I need an accountant do you know anyone?”

Plant the seed in clients’ minds that you appreciate referrals, and maybe give them a few extra business cards to hand out if needed. You can offer an incentive if you want, such as a discount on services, but often just nicely asking for referrals is incentive enough. If they’re happy with you–and they must be if you have an ongoing relationship–then they’ll surely spread your name around. Not in that “omg did you see what she wore?” way we spread things around in high school, I mean telling their friends they know someone who does an awesome job.

Reduce expenses

Alright, so just two items ago this article said “hire someone to do your social media” and reducing expenses sounds like the exact opposite of that because you’ll have to pay this person, but hear us out.

Let’s use streaming services as an example of smart thriftiness. Many people don’t subscribe to all the streaming services at once because who can watch all that TV in a month. No, they rotate. Netflix one month, HBO the next. Are you doing that at your business too? Did you pay for a yearly Adobe subscription two years ago for those three flyers you create a year and forgot about it? That’s a lot of money to throw away for something you aren’t using.

Think about things that you’re paying for that you don’t need to be. Imagine all the office water deliveries that were paid for from 2020-2021 that were never used, for example.

Periodically go through your subscriptions and purchases to figure out where a few pennies can be pinched, focusing, of course, on the things that you aren’t actually using and don’t need. Like that monthly subscription of coffee that’s been stacking up in the break room for two years.

On this subject, think about ways technology can work for you to help reduce expenses. If you’re spending $70 a month on bank transfer fees, for example, consider using Melio to send payments for free.

Raise fees

As you’ve probably noticed by now, we started the list with some fun stuff and now we’re working our way down to more sensitive topics. Chances are you’ve considered raising fees, but you just don’t know how to have those difficult conversations with your customers. You certainly don’t want to do it, especially with long-time clients who might leave to find someone cheaper.

Thing is, your peers are already raising their fees. If they haven’t already, they’re thinking about it or are in the process of initiating the discussion with clients.

It’s an uncomfortable conversation to have for sure but it’s not like you’re doing it for the fun of it. Everyone understands that costs are going up. Have those difficult conversations. The results may surprise you.

Fire clients

Well, we’ve reached the bottom of the list, and fittingly so since saying goodbye to paying clients is probably the last thing on your list, too. If you successfully deployed item #4 then, congratulations, some of your clients probably took care of this one themselves.

Much like eliminating unnecessary expenses, sometimes you need to think about eliminating unnecessary clients. Don’t tell them they are unnecessary, obviously, clients hate that. You can always go with the old “it’s not you, it’s me” that daters have used since the dawn of time. We all know it really is them, but they don’t have to know that.

We bet when you read the line “fire clients” at least a few immediately came to mind. You’ve known for some time that you should sever these relationships, you just didn’t know how or thought maybe with a sufficient amount of coaching these jerks might one day turn into lovely, promptly-paying people with whom you are honored to work. Yeah no.

When you eliminate the most difficult of clients it frees you up to give more of your limited time and energy to the delightful ones. Not to mention it gives you more of those precious, finite resources for yourself and your practice. Aren’t you worth it?

We’ve reached the end of the list and hopefully given you some things to think about and take action on. We know some of these topics can be difficult to mull over, which is all the more reason to take an inventory of your processes (audit pun not intended) and ask yourself if what you’re doing now is really working for you. The sooner you put these profitability ideas to action, the sooner you can get back to the fun stuff.

About Melio
Melio is a business-to-business (B2B) online payment tool specifically built with small businesses in mind. It requires no subscription and allows you to send and receive business payments for free, only charging for fast and premium options. Sign up to start paying all of your clients’ business bills with Melio.

The post Five Ways to Incorporate Profitability Into Your Practice appeared first on Going Concern.

Welcome to part two of our series on the IRS Section 179D tax deduction. We explained how the §179D tax deduction works and who qualifies for it in part one. For this entry, we’ll take a look at the future of our plucky lil’ write-off friend, focusing mainly on the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (hint: those effects have nothing to do with inflation.)

How will the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 affect §179D?

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 spells out specific changes to §179D. The most substantial of these are:

1. The minimum requirements for qualifying for some deduction under §179D
2. The maximum possible write-off

Let’s start with #1, because it only took us three tries to pass kindergarten, and we’re pretty sure that one comes before two. Originally, to qualify for §179D, you would need to reduce the energy usage of your HVAC, lighting, and/or building envelope systems down to at least half that of a “standard” building (as defined by ASHRAE).

Starting in 2023, the barrier to entry will be lower—from a percentage standpoint, at least. You can start qualifying for §179D with a 25% reduction in power use, and your deduction scales higher with every point you shave on the way toward a 50% reduction. However, your energy savings will be measured against a more recent version of the ASHRAE standard. So, in some cases, qualifying for §179D will actually be more difficult.

“This makes a lot more sense, as we can look at the overall energy cost savings of the building rather than being limited to partial deductions for individual categories, like HVAC, lighting, and building envelope,” said David Diaz, partner at Walker Reid Strategies. “A lot more buildings should qualify, and the scaling deductions will incentivize them to keep making improvements, even if they never ultimately reach 50%.”

The law also introduces new prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements that further determine the size of the deduction. If these requirements are met, you qualify for a larger deduction. If not, it’ll be like when we received a box of unsharpened pencils for “honorable mention” at the Accounting News Websites That Start With ‘G’ Awards—at least you got something, but you can’t help but feel like you could’ve done better.

We could try to explain this further, but why not let a table do the work instead?

It’s that number in the top right that has people the most excited, which brings us to the second item on our list: an increase in the maximum possible deduction, from today’s $1.88 / sq ft to $5.00 / sq ft. That’s roughly a 166% increase, which can add up to some serious savings for owners of large or multiple qualifying buildings.

So, if you want those big savings, all you have to do is:

1. Bring energy usage down to 50% of a standard building;
2. Meet the new prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements;
3. Satisfy a dozen or so other requirements that we don’t have the space to get into here.

“Qualifying for §179D and maximizing your deduction are still going to be challenging,” Diaz said. “You’ll need to work with a partner like Walker Reid to sort through tax code and the changes, figure out the best way forward, and get certified.”

Additional changes to §179D

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 spells out further changes to §179D—but they’re complicated, confusing, and not nearly as exciting as the bump from $1.88 to $5.00.

So, in the spirit of finishing this article so we can get back to playing video games, we’re going to put those changes into a bulleted list and let you figure out the rest. (Just kidding—we’ve been playing video games this entire time.)

• • Tax-exempt building owners may now allocate §179D deductions to designers of energy-efficient commercial buildings (EECB). The rules for allocating §179D to designers are expected to mirror existing ones.
  • There is a new qualifying methodology for analyzing energy use intensity for retrofits.
  • Buildings can get recertified if additional energy improvements are made every three years for privately-owned buildings and every four years for government/tax-exempt owned buildings.
  • Real estate investment trusts (REITs) will now be able to use §179D in calculating profits.

How should you prepare for changes to §179D?

Like any change to the tax code, preparation is key. And the best way to prepare for these new standards is to go ahead and qualify for §179D in its current iteration—and do whatever you can to maximize your deduction now.

“It will take some time to get guidance on exactly how the changes will be applied and how they will affect projects being placed in 2023 and beyond,” Diaz said. “So we highly recommend that you get ahead of the game by starting on §179D now—and Walker Reid can help you do that.”

As the implications of these changes become more widely understood, you should see the emergence of taxpayer-created initiatives designed to take full advantage of §179D. But, again, the prevailing guidance is to start qualifying for §179D now, then take advantage of these programs as they start to pop up.

What will be the long-term effects of changes to §179D?

This is an easy one: A series of apocalyptic plagues that make The Ten Commandments look like a laundry soap commercial.

We’re kidding (we think). We have no clue what to expect from the changes to §179D. But our friends over at Walker Reid have a few ideas.

With all the uncertainty surrounding the law, the Walker Reid team stresses that its thoughts should be considered more like educated guesses than actual predictions. But, since we lost our copy of Responsible Journalism and You years ago, we’re going to print them anyway.

“You may not see a ton of projects qualifying at the full $5.00/sq ft right away, but we think there will be lots of deductions in the $3-4 range,” Diaz said. “We also think you’ll see a major boost in government projects with deductions allocated to designers.”

While this was a perfectly fine answer, we pressed Diaz further, asking him what he thought §179D might look like 20 years from now. Diaz said this was the equivalent of requesting a Tarot reading, but he gave us an answer anyway—in exchange for our promise never to call him again at 3 AM, or ever.

“The need for more energy-efficient infrastructure in response to climate change isn’t going anywhere,” Diaz said. “So I believe the incentives will continue to strengthen and further expand. And with ESG (environmental, social, and governance) taking a seat at the table, CPAs will be brought along for the ride.”

No matter how these changes unfold or what effects they have, Diaz says the most important thing is to work with a trustworthy, proven partner with plenty of §179D experience.

“We are excited to be the go-to partner for building owners, designers, and CPA firms on energy tax incentives and ESG consulting,” Diaz said.

Read part one of our series on understanding the §179D tax deduction here.

ABOUT WALKER STRATEGIES
With over $1 billion in total certified §179D deductions and §45L tax credits, Walker Reid Strategies has experience with proven results. We are a licensed professional engineering firm that specializes in performing §179D studies and §45L certifications. We have refined our processes to maximize financial benefits while reducing our clients’ internal costs and efforts.

The post Understanding the §179D Tax Deduction for Humans, Part 2 appeared first on Going Concern.

That’s not to say the traditional path is bad and the sole reason why people are bypassing it these days. Quite the opposite, actually. No matter what you read on social media and certain accounting blogs (*cough*), there is no experience like putting in a few years at a public accounting firm. Yes, you will be tested. Yes, you will sacrifice. And yes, the pay leaves something to be desired, at least for those early years. In exchange, you will see the man behind the curtain pulling the levers of business. You’ll be exposed to different kinds of clients, make connections that will last a lifetime, and, most of all, you’ll learn how to thrive in a people-centric, oftentimes (OK, almost always) stressful environment. If you can make it in public, you can make it anywhere. Well, except in public for any longer than you have to.

When you get to the point in your public accounting career that you’re ready to start thinking about exit opportunities, you no doubt think of industry, non-profit, or government, usually in that order. Thing is, something’s changed in recent years. Accounting students are going straight to data analytics fresh out of school, firms are hiring more non-accounting grads than ever, fewer and fewer accounting graduates are even pursuing the CPA exam. You are no longer bound by tradition. The road is wide open.

Over the years, we at Going Concern have written about all kinds of public accounting exit opportunities from corporate finance to startups to academia. One possibility that doesn’t get much lip service around here: sales.

Bear with us, we know it’s a bit out there of a suggestion. What if there were a way for you to utilize those awesome people skills you learned from interacting with clients and colleagues in public accounting and could apply them to making other people’s lives easier? People whose shoes you’ve been in so you understand their pain points better than anyone?

Is interacting with clients one of your favorite parts of public accounting? Are you a little competitive? Do you break the “introverted accountant” stereotype? Can you write a killer email? Then the opportunity we’re about to share might just be for you.

Our friends at FloQast are looking for current and former public accountants with a handful of specific skills because it takes a certain kind of person to thrive in this role. FloQast actually employs former auditors and accountants on every team within the company. You heard that right: They make it a priority to identify and train professionals with accounting backgrounds in order to influence operations, specifically on the sales side. If you’re the type who actually likes talking to clients, solving problems, and working in teams, perhaps you’re exactly who they are looking for. Does this sound like you?

• Demonstrated ability and desire to learn new concepts
• Eager to be coached
• Commitment to self-improvement and success
• Team player with a collaborative orientation
• Ability to remain organized and execute in a fast-paced environment
• Tenacious and committed to exceeding targets
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Competitive, ambitious and driven, with a self-starter attitude
• Interested in starting a sales career

About 90% of the team has past audit/accounting experience because it’s that experience that makes you uniquely qualified to understand the problems the people you’ll be talking to are having and how FloQast’s accounting workflow automation can solve those problems. Didn’t you ever sit around at your firm some days wishing a fairy godparent would appear out of thin air, wave their wand, and take a bit of the stress and tedium off your plate? Well, that’s what you’d be doing for others in this role. Cool, right? Sorry, the wand isn’t included.

“I just hit my two-year mark, and I realized that there hasn’t been a single day where I was dreading coming to work or just feeling unmotivated.”

— Former auditor who hasn’t felt the Sunday Scaries in 104 consecutive weeks since joining FloQast

Add to that you’ll be working for a high-growth tech company which sounds impressive on a Bumble LinkedIn profile. It’s a unique experience on the technology side that will sharpen your already awesome communication skills so there’s that, too. Still not sure? Check out what these three auditors have to say about their transition into tech [PDF warning]. Just a heads up: FOMO might strike fast when you’re reading about people who used to do what you do having a way better time at work than you are right now.

“FloQast invests so much time and effort into proper training, and having other accountants who’ve been through it already available to help you. When you’re surrounded by motivated, intelligent people who all want to see you succeed, it’s almost impossible to fail.”

— Brandon Malekie, CPA, Inside Sales Manager, FloQast

Why You Should Apply

Customer success is a priority at FloQast and their 500+ 5-star reviews on G2 Crowd don’t lie. Just check out all these glowing endorsements from customers whose lives are made better because FloQast is in them.

Do you ever go on Glassdoor for fun to see what horrible things people are saying about the accounting firms they work for? No? Just us? OK well you won’t find many negatives on FloQast’s Glassdoor page. 95% of reviewers say they would refer FloQast as an employer to a friend. Like this guy who actually has time to go to the gym now that he works for FloQast. Imagine: you could finally work on your quads!

“My overall well-being has improved significantly, I have more time (and money) to spend with my family and friends, and I love my job and LOVE talking about what I do. Both my mental and physical health have improved drastically.”

— Guy who has time to go to the gym now that he doesn’t work in public

Go on, check out their Glassdoor reviews yourself.

And of course, the part you scrolled this far down to read about, comp and benefits:

FloQast offers competitive compensation, stock options, full benefits, and a positive and supportive work environment.

FloQast is regularly rated as one of the best places to work:

• Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces in 2021
• Best Places to Work by LA Business Journal since 2017
• Built In’s ​​Best Place to Work in Los Angeles since 2018

Ready to receive this sign from the universe and seriously consider your next opportunity? Read on to learn a little more about FloQast and get a link to apply. Tell them GC sent you!

About FloQast www.floqast.com
Recognized as one of the Most Innovative Finance Companies of 2022 by Fast Company, FloQast is the leader in accounting workflow automation created by accountants for accountants. The cloud-based, AI-enhanced software is trusted by more than 2,000 accounting teams, including those at Snowflake, Twilio, Instacart, Zoom, and The Golden State Warriors. In July 2021, FloQast raised a $110 million Series D at a $1.2 billion valuation — and still growing!

What We Do
By automating common accounting workflows and helping to streamline and make them more efficient, FloQast is the place where accounting teams want to work so they can focus on what matters most, even when that’s just logging off on time. Whether automating reconciliations, documentation requests, or streamlining recurring accounting processes, such as the month-end close, financial reporting, or payroll, FloQast enhances the way accounting teams already work to help them operate more efficiently. Learn more at FloQast.com.

Don’t meet every single requirement listed on the job ad? We encourage you to consider applying anyway! You may be the right candidate for this role or for other open roles.

Apply for this unique opportunity as a Business Development Representative (Audit/Accounting Experience) at FloQast here.

The post Here’s Your Sign From the Universe to Find a Better Opportunity appeared first on Going Concern.

If you listen closely, you can hear it: The IRS Section 179D tax deduction is suddenly generating a lot of buzz.

The provision, which provides incentives in the form of tax deductions to commercial building owners and designers of government-owned buildings who meet specific energy efficiency requirements, has proven popular since going into effect in 2006. But the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (which is totally about reducing inflation and nothing else) changed the game, increasing the maximum deduction from $1.88 to $5.00 per sq ft. Now every builder, designer, architect, engineer, and contractor wants to know how to get a piece of those sweet, sweet write-offs.

In the first of this two-part series, we’ll attempt to explain §179D in plain English—who qualifies, how to qualify, and how to calculate the total deduction. Look for part two soon, which will explore the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act on §179D in greater detail—and offer expert guidance on taking advantage of the changes.

What is IRS Section 179D?

Section 179D of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) is an engineered-based tax incentive available for the reduction of energy and power costs in commercial buildings.

The §179D tax deduction specifically applies to commercial buildings that notably reduce their interior lighting energy costs, as well as their heating, cooling, and building envelope. Currently, the maximum tax deduction is $1.88 per sq ft, and buildings can also qualify for a partial deduction for the efficiency of their individual HVAC, building envelope, and lighting systems.

“Like most sections of the IRC, §179D is complicated,” said David Diaz, partner at Walker Reid Strategies. “There’s a lot of confusion about who qualifies, and you typically need an advisor like Walker Reid to help certify everything and calculate your deduction.”

Who qualifies for tax deductions under IRS Section 179D?

Certainly not anyone at Going Concern, as our office is a Herbert Hoover-era shack powered only by burning garbage and the tears of overworked CPAs.

For real, though, the deduction broadly applies to two groups of people:

1. Property owners who install “energy efficient commercial building property” (EECBP)
2. Designers who install EECBP on or in a government-owned building

Practically every word in those two statements requires further explanation, and we’ll do our best to provide more clarity in layman’s terms. However, if you really want the full scoop on §179D—or find out if you or one of your clients qualifies—we suggest you contact the experts at Walker Reid.

What is an EECBP?

Among other qualifiers, the IRS defines an EECBP as property:

“…which is certified in accordance with subsection (d)(6) as being installed as part of a plan designed to reduce the total annual energy and power costs with respect to the interior lighting systems, heating, cooling, ventilation, and hot water systems of the building by 50 percent or more in comparison to a reference building which meets the minimum requirements of Standard 90.1–2001 using methods of calculation under subsection (d)(2).”

We’ll talk more about subsections (d)(6) and (d)(2) in just a bit.

The IRC goes on to explain that “Standard 90.1-2001,” i.e. the specs of the hypothetical building used for comparison against a potential EECBP, is determined by The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) AND the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES). Perhaps one day, the two will merge to form ASHRAEIES (or, likely, an even more unwieldy acronym), but until then, we suppose you’ll have to deal with both.

Standard 90.1 has been updated for projects placed in service in 2017 or later, however. And, starting in 2023, you’ll need to go by whatever standard was in place four years prior to when the building was placed in service. Simple, right?

How does a plan or building get certified as an EECBP?

Here’s where things get really fun. Subsection (d)(6) of §179D lays out the rules for certification. But the text pretty much amounts to saying, “buildings that meet the requirements for certification can be certified.”

Thankfully, our friends at Walker Reid were able to provide us with some better clarification:

EECBP certification requirements

• • The energy and power costs savings calculations must be performed with Dept. of Energy approved software
  • Field inspections must be performed after the energy efficient property has been placed into service in accordance with NREL Guidelines
  • Certifications and inspections must be completed by a qualified engineer or contractor in the jurisdiction of the qualifying building
  • The taxpayer shall maintain the certification in their records to establish the entitlement to and amount of the deduction claimed

“§179D isn’t something you can pursue on your own,” Diaz said. “You need qualified, independent people to perform inspections and get you certified.”

And, when looking for a §179D certification partner, nothing is more important than trust and engineering expertise.

“You need someone who only has your best interests in mind,” Diaz said. “We’ve helped property owners and designers achieve over $1 billion in §179D and §45L tax credits. It’s why Walker Reid exists. We’ll be honest and straightforward with you at every step, but we’ll also help you maximize your savings.”

How do you calculate the total deduction for §179D?

Again, the IRC doesn’t offer a lot of help here. Subsection (d)(2) basically says that “the method of calculation will be described by the people responsible for describing the method of calculation.”

We mentioned previously that the building has to meet or exceed a 50% savings in energy and power costs compared to a theoretical baseline building. As long as those standards are met, and they’ve been properly certified, and the calculations have been performed with software approved by the Department of Energy, the building owner should qualify for the full $1.88 per sq ft deduction. Probably.

For buildings that don’t meet the full requirements, §179D also provides deductions for partially qualifying systems:

• $0.60/SF for HVAC systems meeting 15% savings
• $0.60/SF for lighting systems meeting 25% savings
• $0.60/SF for building envelope systems meeting 10% savings

The deductions are actually a bit higher now, as they’ve been adjusted for inflation. THANKS A LOT…um…whomever we’re blaming/crediting for inflation these days. Kanye, maybe?

“There are so many exceptions and qualifiers to the rules, you really need a certified partner to help you add it all up,” Diaz said. “Your standard CPA or tax accountant is almost certainly going to miss something, or worse, claim more than you should.”

How can a designer claim deductions through §179D?

Many run-on sentences and poor attempts at humor ago, we told you that two types of taxpayers could qualify for §179D. The “property owners” one seems self-explanatory, although it probably isn’t. But what the heck is a “designer who installs EECBP on or in a government-owned building?”

Apparently, a lot of people have the same question. In 2018, the IRS released a memo explaining how one qualifies as a designer under §179D. It even provides eight hypothetical scenarios, then details why the taxpayer would or wouldn’t qualify under those conditions. A helpful document from the IRS? Miracles do happen, and not just on ice.

Reading the full document (or, better yet, reaching out to our friends at Walker Reid) will explain it better than we can. But we’ll grab a few choice sections for the TL;DR crowd.

The memo defines a “designer” as:

“…a person that creates the technical specifications for installation of energy efficient commercial building property…for example, an architect, engineer, contractor, environmental consultant or energy services provider…A person that merely installs, repairs, or maintains the property is not a designer.”

And the memo ultimately draws two conclusions:

“(1) A taxpayer can qualify as a Designer of energy efficient commercial building property under § 179D(d)(4) if the taxpayer created technical specifications for construction contract documents for the design of the energy efficient commercial building property.

(2) If a building owner could have qualified for the maximum § 179D deduction of $1.80 per square foot for the installation of certain energy efficient commercial building property, then the government building owner has discretion to allocate the full $1.80 per square foot deduction to the primary Designer of one system of such property or to allocate the $1.80 per square foot deduction among several Designers.”

So, wait…who gets §179D again?

We don’t know, okay? Give us some slack, we’re breathing nothing but garbage fumes here. But, thankfully, the good people at Walker Reid know the rules of §179D inside and out.

“The answers to ‘Who gets §179D?’ and ‘How much do they get?’ are extremely nuanced, and they’re constantly in flux,” Diaz said. “That’s why our work at Walker Reid is so important. We’ll help you understand everything, stay ahead of the changes, and get the biggest deduction—all while performing the inspection and certification you need to qualify.”

In part two of this series, we examine the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 on §179D in greater detail.

ABOUT WALKER STRATEGIES
With over $1 billion in total certified §179D deductions and §45L tax credits, Walker Reid Strategies has experience with proven results. We are a licensed professional engineering firm that specializes in performing §179D studies and §45L certifications. We have refined our processes to maximize financial benefits while reducing our clients’ internal costs and efforts.

The post Understanding the §179D Tax Deduction for Humans, Part 1 appeared first on Going Concern.

Thanks for doing your part to feed the pipeline, ma’am.

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What if clients thought of you as that friend? What if when something happens with your client’s business you are the first one they think of to call? What if you could give them advice before things happen? No, we’re not encouraging you to dabble in astrology. We’re talking about harnessing data to give clients a fuller picture of their financial condition.

You have likely heard that the hot thing at firms these days is client advisory. CAS or “client advisory services” is defined by the AICPA as a practice where firms advise clients across a spectrum of financial and accounting related decisions with the goal of delivering higher value and deepening the trusted advisor relationship.

“Businesses [are] seeking advice and assurance on a broad range of areas beyond financial statements.”

At the recent ENGAGE 2022 event in Las Vegas, AICPA President and CEO Barry Melancon, CPA, CGMA, said the profession is at a defining moment, with businesses seeking advice and assurance on a broad range of areas beyond financial statements, from sustainability to integrated tax planning to the transformation of the finance function. At the root of this shift to a full suite of services for clients is the technology making it possible. “Technology is raising the role of the management accountant to be a more strategic role,” said AICPA Chair Anoop Mehta, CPA, CGMA.

So how do accountants send the signal to their clients that their door is open and they are a valuable resource not only for making sure tax deadlines are met but also for guiding clients through turbulent times like these and offering actionable insight into their businesses?

“Are you having substantive conversations with your clients? If you are being reactive in your interactions with clients, something needs to change.”

Ask yourself this: are you having substantive conversations with your clients? If you are being reactive in your interactions with clients – that is to say avoiding client calls, only hearing from clients once a year when it’s time to file, and responding to frequent complaints rather than anticipating your clients’ needs – something needs to change. If this is the extent of your relationship with clients, your door is not open. It’s only slightly ajar and clients don’t feel as though they can walk through it to discuss their needs with you.

Making Client Advisory Services a focus of your practice can open that door. Embracing CAS moves away from those occasional discussions about deadlines and filings and opens the door for substantive, proactive conversations with your clients. You build income statements and balance sheets with professional looking graphs that give clients insight into the meaning behind their financial data and through this you give your clients the benefit of a trusted advisor on their side to help them make sense of their business. This, in turn, drives the success of their business (and yours). Clients start to see you not as the professional who pesters them for receipts and sends them a bill but as an ally, like that friend of yours who is always there to listen when you need them most.

Alright, so you’re all in on CAS. We don’t have to convince you why it’s a good idea. You jump into Quickbooks to see what data there is to glean and oh no, all you’ve got is less-than-beautiful data to export into Excel and you know immediately this is of no use to your clients. Nothing has ever stood in the way of productive client conversations and deteriorated a client relationship more than passing five versions of an Excel file back and forth between the two of you. That’s not a conversation, it’s a terrible game of .xlsx ping pong.

“With FP&A platforms financial statements take minutes – not hours – to create and the result is attractive as well as useful.”

Enter FP&A platforms. These innovative solutions connect to cloud accounting platforms like Quickbooks and Xero, payroll systems, and even non-financial data sources like Salesforce and you can import data from spreadsheets, too. Now those financial statements take minutes – not hours – to create and the result is attractive as well as useful. With these tools, you can easily graph trends in income, net assets, and budget vs. actual that are ten times more meaningful and informative to your client than any spreadsheet could be (apologies to the Excel fans out there, you know we’re right).

There are a lot of FP&A platforms out there to choose from, but one that’s leading the pack is Jirav. In addition to reporting, dashboards, and lots of accounting platform integrations that play nice with your clients’ data, it offers advanced capabilities for departmental budgeting and workforce planning.

It’s everything you need to transform your practice to one of trusted insight and advisory, something your clients need now more than ever in our stormy world.

The business environment is volatile and dynamic; supply chain disruptions, a remote workforce, rapid inflation, and rising energy costs are just a few concerns at the top of company leaders’ minds. What if you could help them sleep just a little more soundly with rich, practical data? It’s time to open that door.

Jirav delivers an all-in-one budgeting, forecasting and planning technology solution that empowers accounting firms of all sizes to grow by delivering smarter financials and faster insights. Jirav quickly integrates with your clients’ existing financial, HRIS, Payroll, CRM and other systems to seamlessly generate custom client dashboards and reports in minutes! Whether you’re just starting out on your financial planning and advisory journey or want to optimize your existing practice, Jirav is with you every step of the way. We’ll provide training, sales and marketing support, as well as key insights we’ve learned from working with over 300 accounting firms so you can take your client advisory services to new heights!

The post Spreadsheets Suck, Say Clients appeared first on Going Concern.

Today we’ve got one of our own. Is It Time To Break Up With Your Big 4 Firm?

Pick your answers to these five simple questions and check the scoring key at the bottom to find out if you’re partner material or should have quit two busy seasons ago.

The post Is It Time To Break Up With Your Big 4 Firm? A Quiz appeared first on Going Concern.

These shows appealed to those of us who enjoy a challenge (you know who you are), making us see the possibilities awaiting if only someone cared enough to put in the work.

If you’ve ever encountered sloppy recordkeeping in the workplace that somehow became your responsibility to organize, you might feel a bit like those house flippers taking a sledgehammer to moldy walls and rickety decks. Something needs to be done but there’s so much mess you aren’t sure where to start. And if the mess is really, really bad, the only thing you can do is strip it down to the foundation.

The challenge of cleaning up others’ messes can come from many sides: the disorganized client who never sends over the right file, the colleague who goes on vacation and leaves you an encyclopedia of spreadsheet files to dig through to find the one you need, the poorly named files cluttering up team Dropboxes everywhere. You know what we’re talking about. You’re probably thinking about a time you’ve been in this situation as you read this.

And if you’re not, let’s give a real world example of a big mess. You’re assisting a client with an IRS audit – a daunting task even in the most ideal of circumstances like when it’s a Type A client who is meticulously organized – and upon requesting documents from your client you receive a stack of bankers boxes packed with paper receipts, printed invoices from who-knows-where, and hand-scribbled notes. Ah right, the IRS totally accepts random dollar figures written on the back of cocktail napkins as documentation. As the dolly of doom is wheeled into your office, the air escapes from the room and you hear the foreshadowing melody of horror movie music building somewhere in the distance. Perhaps the only thing worse than this scenario is when the client sends an Excel file in PDF.

Thing is, clients will always be disorganized. They aren’t thinking about how difficult it will be for their accountant to sort through this mess, all they know is that you need the receipts. What magic you do with them after they’re delivered is not clients’ concern.

And this is where you become the master of your own fate. Much like the reality show house flippers who choose prefab cabinets over custom made to save time and money, you can save future you so much time – and frustration – by nudging these clients toward digitization. Other than a small few clients who will never adapt to technology no matter how many pep talks you give them, most old school clients are receptive to digitization if you sell it as a timesaver for them (remember, they don’t care about you). Tell them they can save 45 minutes a year by not loading bankers boxes full of receipts into the car to shlep them to your office and hey, you might have a convert.

Once you’ve sold paper-based clients on digitization, it’s time to look at your own house (heh, home renovation pun, sorry). Are you making the most of available technology? Not just the nifty technological innovation that forces a pop-up reminder in Gmail when your email says “see attached” and you haven’t attached anything but organizational tools. Things like Trello to facilitate team communication on ongoing projects. Google Keep for quick checklists. Calendly to let people book meetings with you based on your schedule without the pesky back and forth in email comparing availability. And of course the biggest one: practice management tools that solve problems instead of causing them and consolidate the tedious minutiae of your practice in one place.

“For deadlines, you need a project management system that keeps track of those and automates as much of the recurrence as possible.”

“For deadlines, you need a project management system that keeps track of those and automates as much of the recurrence as possible,” says Brandon Gray, CPA and Founder of Firm360. Don’t be afraid to consider a personal assistant, too. Getting help from someone whose job it is to take things off your plate can free up so much more time to be used evangelizing digital records to dinosaur paper clients, among other things. “Game changer!” Brandon says.

“We were using 5 different systems to run our firm.”

Perhaps your problem is not a lack of technology to help organize your practice and your work life but rather that your firm adopted too many solutions which leads to a unique problem: the “solutions” are causing more problems. Piecemeal solutions are often not solutions at all but more work to just make them play nice together. It’s not only more work, it’s wasted time spent training staff on each solution and often it takes more steps than an all-in-one platform only to arrive at what might be a subpar result.

“One of the main challenges we faced in our firm was training someone to do the work, and then having to manage that workflow,” said one Firm360 client. “We were using 5 different systems to run our firm. Firm 360 consolidates that into one cloud based platform, everything is encompassed there and team members have to learn one platform now.” In flipper terms, imagine what happens when you have five different contractors working on five distinct parts of the house at the same time with minimal communication among them. You end up with…a mess. Which is exactly what you want to avoid.

Practice management is not something people get excited about (unlike dramatic home renovations in reality show form). But it’s necessary to grow your practice and perhaps most importantly to save your sanity. Those awful “before” homes would only look worse with fancy additions slapped on them, that’s why they are stripped down to the frame and beautifully rebuilt with cohesive design. That’s what an all-in-one practice management solution can do, and it scales as you grow unlike a beat-up house with a crumbling foundation. So grab that sledgehammer and get to fixing your mess.

This reminder to renovate your practice was brought to you by Firm360. Firm360 was built by accountants for accountants with the sole purpose of taking the stress out of running your firm. Their all-in-one, cloud-based practice management platform empowers you to easily manage your clients, projects, documents, time, and billing in one place. Hundreds of accountants rely on the Firm360 platform to run their firms and take the mess out of practice management. They can’t tear down your load-bearing walls but they would love to discuss how Firm360 could help you and your firm get out from under all that mess. Book a demo with them today! That’s demo as in demonstration, not demolition.

The post Is It Time to Renovate Your Practice? appeared first on Going Concern.

Speaking of steaks, did they ever come back after The Great Unsteakoning of 2020?

Stay safe out there everyone and MUUUUUURICA!!!

The post Happy 4th of July and Also a Lesson in How Not to Be appeared first on Going Concern.

The workshop takes place at the Wigwam resort in Litchfield Park, Arizona October 12-14, 2022 and aims to strengthen students’ professional skills and understanding of the limitless possibilities and benefits of the career and earning the CPA credential. Participants will participate in learning sessions and panel discussions covering a wide array of topics such as developing leadership skills and the CPA exam. Participants will also have the opportunity to interact with CPA professionals who will share priceless knowledge regarding career opportunities in accounting and the value of networking. [Note: the preceding paragraph was copied directly from the AICPA hence the flowery language. We’ll give them a pass because the pipeline is a critical issue; if no one wants to be a CPA we’ll have nothing to write about]

Eligibility requirements are as follows:

• Be a declared accounting major, or have interest in joining the accounting profession
• Be a college freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, 5th year, or graduate student
• Be actively involved in campus and community activities
• Have not attended a past workshop
• Be an ethnic minority (i.e., Black or African American; Hispanic or Latino; Native American; or Asian, etc.)
• Be a U.S. citizen or Permanent Resident (green card holder)
• Be a Student Affiliate Member of the AICPA
• Be able to provide the name and email address of two references who have agreed to provide a recommendation on your behalf. The reference must be from a faculty member.

Link to apply here. Current CPAs are not eligible to attend this event. Questions can be directed to diversity@aicpa.org.

For tons more scholarship opportunities, visit the This Way to CPA to search national scholarships.

The post YSK: AICPA Accounting Scholars Leadership Workshop Application Period Ends June 15 appeared first on Going Concern.

Using direct indexing for charitable gifting (and for other things, too) is sort of like leveling up in a role-playing game (RPG)—a metaphor we’ll try not to wring completely dry by the end of this piece. It allows investors to gradually improve aspects of their portfolios, gaining a figurative “+1” in factors like flexibility and control—without the need to grind for XP slaying hundreds of boars in the Enchanted Forest.

But before we dive into the specifics of direct indexing and charitable gifting, let’s address the question that’s probably on a lot of your minds (especially those of you who aren’t regular Going Concern readers—we’re looking at you, Steve): What is direct indexing?

We’ve covered the topic in two previous articles. In the first, we explored some fun ways CPAs can explain the tax advantages of direct indexing to their clients. Then, we talked about how CPAs can make direct indexing their estate planning secret weapon. 

If you’re unfamiliar with direct indexing, you might want to go back and read those articles, particularly the first one. But don’t worry, we’ll explain the term for you one more time, maybe because we’re nice or maybe because we get paid by the word—we’re not even sure anymore.

What is direct indexing, and why does it matter to CPAs?

In short: Direct indexing is an investment strategy in which the investor owns the individual securities that would normally make up a commingled fund (like a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund), rather than owning shares of the fund itself. So, for example, instead of owning shares of an S&P 500 Index fund, the investor would directly own shares in those individual companies. And, with direct indexing, the investor owns those shares in a separately managed account (SMA) instead of a mutual fund or ETF.

Direct indexing provides investors with greater flexibility and control, as they can buy, sell, and trade individual securities that would otherwise be trapped within the fund, while still enjoying the broad market exposure that’s critical to passive investing.

Returning to our RPG analogy, direct indexing tends to deliver the best results when multiple people are involved. Many RPGs require you to form a party before you can tackle the most difficult (and rewarding) quests. When building your party, you’ll want to find characters with strengths and abilities that complement each other, creating a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. 

Similarly, using direct indexing for charitable gifting (or for anything, really) is a challenge that shouldn’t be approached alone. The client’s financial advisor should take the lead, but CPAs like yourself can be important members of the party, too. By learning about these kinds of strategies, suggesting them to your clients and to financial advisors, and referring financial advisors to firms that are experienced in direct indexing, you can provide your clients with a more holistic level of support—and set your practice apart from less-knowledgeable competitors.

Before this article itself starts taking on a particularly annoying aspect of RPGs—an overly long, unskippable intro that takes forever to get to the point—let’s move on to our chosen topic. Here are three ways direct indexing can help investors level up their charitable gifting.

1. Direct indexing provides more control over charitable gifting

As we stated earlier, direct indexing gives your clients more flexibility and control over their investments and assets. It allows investors to gift individual stocks or bonds that might otherwise be trapped inside a mutual fund or ETF to the charities of their choice, which can provide compelling advantages, particularly with regard to taxes (more on this later).

Direct indexing can also help investors avoid awkward situations and conflicts of interest in charitable gifting. You wouldn’t want to, say, donate shares of a mutual fund that’s heavy in Big Oil to Greenpeace. With direct indexing, investors have the power to gift their assets more intelligently, preventing conflicts of interest and helping ensure that the right cause receives the right benefits.

(Of course, direct indexing could also allow mischievous investors to create these conflicts on purpose and with greater ease—like, for instance, forking a huge pile of Burger King shares over to the Ronald McDonald House. The charity would likely be thankful for the gift regardless, but that would be a -1 integrity kind of move.)

2. Direct indexing helps maximize the benefits of donating securities instead of cash

Deciding whether to donate cash or securities to a charity can be complicated, and it’s ultimately something investors will want to discuss with their advisors in detail. But for investors who do choose to donate securities, direct indexing can help them maximize the benefits.

To illustrate, let’s briefly head back into the world of gaming. In most RPGs, inventory management is a critical component of a winning strategy. You can’t carry around that +5 battle axe forever—especially if your character isn’t strong enough to lift it—and over time it will become a drag on your character’s performance. You could sell it, sure, but sometimes it’s smarter to give it away to another member of your party or guild who needs it, thus creating benefits for everyone involved.

The idea behind gifting securities in lieu of cash is similar, and direct indexing can make the effect even more powerful. If an investor chooses to gift highly appreciated assets (i.e., those that have substantially increased in value since the investor purchased them), both the investor and the charity can avoid tax liability. The investor offloads the asset without paying capital gains tax on it, while the charity gains a step-up in cost basis once the assets are transferred. 

On top of the benefits of gifting highly appreciated securities instead of cash, investors with a tax-managed direct indexing portfolio can realize additional benefits if they replenish their investment portfolio with cash that equals the value of gifted stocks. This manner of reinvesting results in a cost-basis increase that enhances the potential for eventual tax-loss harvesting, which should help reduce future tax payments. We’ll review a real-world example of this at the end of the article.

In either case, direct indexing provides investors with more flexibility and options for which securities they’ll gift and which they’ll retain. This can ultimately lead to better after-tax performance for the investor—and possibly for the charity, as well.

3. Combining direct indexing with CRTs reduces the taxable estate

We briefly covered charitable remainder trusts (CRTs) in our previous article on estate planning, but because they apply even more to this topic, we’ll dive a bit deeper this time. Using a combination of CRTs and direct indexing can help investors improve their financial security and increase support for their chosen charity—sort of like how some RPGs allow you to combine multiple magic spells to achieve a more potent or specific effect.

CRTs come in two forms: the charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) and the charitable remainder annuity trust (CRAT). As before, we’re going to focus on CRUTs because they are better suited to a low-interest-rate environment (although, with the Fed’s recent half-point hike to its benchmark interest rate, it might be wise to look into CRATs as well.)

The general idea behind CRTs is that assets are placed into a trust that creates both a tax deduction and an income stream for the donor. At the trust’s completion, the remaining assets move out of the donor’s estate—reducing its size for tax purposes—and the chosen charity receives the remainder.

A CRUT itself is generally exempt from tax, just like an actual charity. However, unitrust distributions—the cash flow the trust provides to the investor—are subject to tax. The IRS uses characterization rules to determine the nature of distributions from the trust. The character of distributions received by CRT income beneficiaries is determined using a separate-tier system, which establishes an order for the distribution of four categories of income and corpus. 

We won’t get into what the four tiers are and how they work, but this paper on improving the tax management of charitable remainder unitrusts covers it quite well. You can begin to see how direct indexing could provide a lot of value here, though. Having the ability to select individual securities instead of shares of a commingled fund gives investors more flexibility and control over what goes into the CRUT and where the money goes when it comes out, potentially improving after-tax results for everyone involved.

Meet the direct indexing gurus at Parametric

Throughout this article series, we’ve been encouraging you to refer your financial advisor friends to Parametric to gain more advice and guidance on direct indexing. For Parametric, direct indexing is no game—it’s a potent investment strategy they’ve been perfecting for more than 30 years. Parametric can help clients improve their after-tax performance using direct indexing and other strategies across investing, estate planning, and—yep, you guessed it—charitable gifting. 

For you “show me” types, this case study shows how Parametric helped a client achieve better tax efficiency with her charitable gifting. Previously, she was selling stocks and donating the cash proceeds to a local food bank. Parametric helped her switch to a two-step process: 1) identify the most advantageous securities and donate them directly to the food bank, then 2) use cash to purchase stocks with a much higher cost basis to essentially “replace” the donated shares. The strategy increases the potential for tax-loss harvesting, which should help reduce her future tax payments.

With $415 billion in assets under its management, Parametric helps clients in North America and around the globe access efficient market exposures, solve implementation challenges, and design portfolios that respond to their evolving needs. 

Ready to learn more? Dive deeper into Parametric’s offerings and access additional resources on direct indexing and other topics now.

The post CPAs: 3 Ways Direct Indexing Can Help Your Clients Level Up Their Charitable Gifting appeared first on Going Concern.

There’s no better way to push into that great, uncharted, nebulously-described ‘future’ than to turn your attention to the people pioneering the space. To open your eyes and ears to the possibilities. To let those who came before you guide you confidently into this exciting future. And to have the difficult discussions that need to be had about how AI can address some of the profession’s most pressing problems.

Enter the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Annual Meeting coming up on June 1.

The keynote speaker at this year’s meeting is Dr. Daniel Susskind, a fellow in economics at Oxford University and a senior research associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI. Daniel is co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015), and the author of A World Without Work (2020). You may have seen his TED Talk on the future of work in which he addresses myths about the future of work and how “automation anxiety” is a completely rational response to the rapid adoption of technology happening so quickly many of us don’t know what exactly is happening. It’s OK if you’re anxious, but you really don’t have to be.

Machines can and will do even more as we move forward and it’s time for the profession to talk about how to use that technology to meet our needs. Even before we get to the AI-dominated future Dr. Susskind describes the profession is undergoing big change right now as firms and companies figure out how to use people and technology in new and exciting ways. There is also the ongoing issue of attracting talent to the profession, and ensuring the talent of the future accurately reflects the diversity of the businesses and communities they serve.

PICPA CEO Jennifer Cryder, CPA will give updates on the accounting profession and will be joined later by Charles Weinstein, CPA, Chief Executive Officer at Eisner Advisory Group LLC, for a discussion on alternative structures for accounting firms. Attendees can choose to attend in-person at The Hershey Hotel or may opt to attend virtually and will have opportunities to interact with key speakers. There is also bonus CPE to be had!

In case you haven’t gathered by now, the big theme for the event is the transformative change happening as we speak in accounting and how CPAs can embrace it. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss technology, transformation, and talent with accounting leaders from across the state and learn more about the exciting – albeit sometimes scary – change reshaping the way CPAs live and work in today’s fast-moving world. Have you been dying to figure out what the metaverse is but too embarrassed to ask? Well here’s your chance to get an answer to that and many more technology questions plaguing young and old alike.

Registration for the PICPA 125th Annual Meeting & Celebration is open now. Hurry, the event is less than 2 weeks away! You can learn more about available sessions, fun optional activities, CPE, and register for the event here. The webcast is available to all and free for PICPA members, $100 for non-members; the webcast includes the do-not-miss keynote from Daniel Susskind, Charles Weinstein, CPA discussing alternative structures for firms, and any other relevant sessions.

About Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants

Founded in 1897, the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA) is the second-oldest CPA organization in the United States and the largest CPA association in Pennsylvania. The PICPA provides continuing education, networking, leadership and volunteer opportunities to CPAs across Pennsylvania and acts as the voice of the CPA profession through advocacy efforts in the state legislature. For more information, visit www.picpa.org.

The post Are You Future-Ready? Learn How to Get There at This PICPA Event appeared first on Going Concern.

As you’re certainly sick of hearing by now, however, today’s most successful CPAs are taking on more advisory functions, with one study projecting that accounting firms can increase their monthly client revenues by up to 50% if they offer strategic advisory services. 

So, as the roles of accountant, planner, and advisor continue to blur, your clients—particularly those with higher incomes—may soon look to you for estate planning expertise that goes beyond tax. Increasingly, you’ll need to collaborate with finance and legal teams to maximize returns and minimize burdens throughout the accumulation, preservation, and transfer of client wealth.

While we can’t give you a crash course on all things estate planning in the space of this article (what do we look like, your CPE vendor?), we can give you the scoop on an investment strategy that will set your estate planning services apart from the average CPA’s: direct indexing.

We covered the tax advantages of direct indexing—and some fun ways to talk to your clients about them—in a previous article. So check there for a more in-depth definition of the term and an explanation of the strategy’s larger tax benefits.

For this article, we’ll explore how direct indexing can enable and enhance a few particularly powerful estate planning strategies. You’ll want to work with or refer your clients to a financial advisory firm to truly put these techniques to work.

The more you know about innovative ways to save your clients money and help them build wealth, the more valuable your services will be to them. So read on, and discover how to make direct indexing your estate planning secret weapon.

The estate planning benefits of direct indexing

As we talked about in our previous article, direct indexing is a strategy wherein the investor directly owns the individual securities that would normally make up a benchmark or commingled fund, like a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF), within a separately managed account (SMA). This enables a great deal of flexibility, which can lead to a number of compelling advantages—while still providing the broad market exposure of traditional passive investment vehicles.

Direct indexing also unlocks greater flexibility for estate planning. Instead of granting blocks of shares in mutual funds or ETFs to heirs or a charity, your client can grant individual stocks or bonds. This is especially valuable for highly appreciated positions within the security (i.e., investments your client purchased for a much lower price than they are currently worth or projected to be worth upon the grantor’s death). Donating these investments directly gives heirs a step-up in cost basis once they’re transferred, reducing the amount of the estate that will ultimately be taxed.

And because direct indexing gives investors more flexibility over the types of securities they own and the types of companies they want to support, it can also help provide more control over how the estate is ultimately divided up. Direct indexing could, for example, help your client avoid leaving oil company stocks to an heir who is a prominent environmentalist (even though that might be hilarious) or donating an asset that could cause controversy or create undue complexity for the receiving charity.

From a high level, direct indexing’s benefit to estate planning is really quite simple—it can help investors improve their after-tax performance and minimize the burdens on their beneficiaries and heirs.

While just being able to communicate the estate planning benefits of direct indexing to your clients can put your CPA practice a step ahead, understanding advanced techniques like the ones we’ll describe in the next three sections is more like taking a leap forward. 

Combine direct indexing with GRATs for substantial estate tax savings

By combining direct indexing with grantor-retained annuity trusts (GRATs), your high-income clients can radically reduce the estate tax burden on their heirs—or even eliminate it entirely. GRATs are powerful wealth transfer tools that can be used to remove assets and their appreciation from the grantor’s estate. 

Additionally, GRATs serve as easy pun-fodder for bored financial writers looking to spice up their article headlines. Check out some of these real-life zingers we found via Google:

• “Grateful for GRATs”
• “Kiss My GRATs”
• “GRAT Expectations”
• “GRITs, GRATs, GRUTs, What?”

And our favorite, even though it isn’t a pun:

• “The Care and Feeding of GRATs”

To create a GRAT, a grantor establishes an irrevocable trust that exists for a set period. The grantor funds the GRAT with assets that have substantial growth potential—such as pre-IPO stocks or private equity holdings. The trust then pays the grantor a fixed annual amount (aka an annuity) for the life of the trust.

When the term of the trust ends, the beneficiaries receive the assets remaining in the GRAT, free of gift and estate tax.

Add direct indexing, and GRATs become even more powerful. With direct indexing, clients can fund their GRATs with high-growth-potential assets that might otherwise be trapped in an ETF or mutual fund. Direct indexing provides them—and, ultimately, their heirs—with more flexibility and control throughout the creation, term, and transfer of the GRAT.

Minimize post-retirement estate reduction with direct indexing for fixed-income investments

Retirement planning is a critical—and, far too often, overlooked—component of estate planning. Minimizing financial drain during the grantor’s retirement period helps keep the estate healthy, and planning ahead for the tax implications of a transition toward a fixed-income portfolio is crucial.

Direct indexing allows for greater flexibility and control throughout this process. As your clients work with their financial advisors to create bond ladders to deliver more consistent returns, direct indexing enables them to use money-saving techniques like tax-loss harvesting to greater effect. Your clients will be able to write off losses from individual bonds and apply them elsewhere, rather than having those losses trapped in a commingled fund.

Use CRTs to reduce the taxable estate

Wealthy investors often include charitable gifts in their wills. Using a combination of charitable remainder trusts (CRTs) and direct indexing can help maximize the benefit to their selected causes—while also providing an income tax deduction for a portion of the donated value.

CRTs come in two forms: the charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) and the charitable remainder annuity trust (CRAT). However, CRUTs are better suited in a low-interest-rate environment to achieve the dual purposes of a CRT: financial security for the donor’s family and support for their chosen charity.

CRUTs, in addition to sounding like a Zoomer slang word we’d pretend to know the meaning of but then discreetly look up on Urban Dictionary, can get pretty complicated. So we won’t go into them too deeply. But the general idea is that assets are placed into a trust that creates both a tax deduction and an income stream for the donor. At the trust’s completion, the remaining assets move out of the donor’s estate, and the chosen charity receives the remainder.

As with GRATs and fixed-income portfolios, direct indexing offers greater flexibility in how the CRT is funded. Securities that would normally be locked in a commingled fund can be placed directly into the CRT, providing the investor with more control—and potentially delivering better results for donor and charity alike.

How CPAs can take estate planning to the next level

As we mentioned earlier, you’ll likely want to partner with a financial advisor or firm as you talk with your clients about these and other advanced estate planning practices. And if your clients and their advisors want to use direct indexing as part of an estate plan—and why wouldn’t they?—Parametric is the best place to send them for help.

With nearly 30 years of direct indexing experience, Parametric works with financial advisors to help clients access efficient market exposures, solve implementation challenges, and design portfolios that respond to their evolving needs. 

Ready to get started? Learn more about Parametric’s offerings and access additional resources on direct indexing and other topics. And check back with Going Concern soon for a deeper look at the charitable gifting benefits of direct indexing.

The post CPAs: Make Direct Indexing Your Estate Planning Secret Weapon appeared first on Going Concern.

As the world opens up again and we reacquaint ourselves with the gym, perhaps it’s time to consider if your finance department is in need of a fitness plan of its own. And no, not the kind of plan that has you up and lifting weights at 5 a.m., we’re talking about a digital transformation strategy.

The digital finance revolution has been underway in finance departments around the world for some time now. But like many of us turning to fitness and diet to shed the Quarantine 19 (that’s the cute term for the pandemic’s version of the Freshman 15), progress is slow. The reasons are numerous and varied, but here are just a few: legacy systems and an unhealthy attachment to them due to fear of change, manual processes, an overreliance on Excel (blasphemy, I know), too much data and not enough time to make sense of it, and changes to regulatory reporting and compliance requirements in virtually every industry.

Finance departments in organizations of all sizes have been outpaced by every other department in the organization when it comes to automation and digital transformation. Sales and marketing are a decade ahead — they’re doing CrossFit four days a week while finance is out of breath just from going to the mailbox to fetch the mail. Marketing, for example, is mixing AI with social media to reach the right audience with precision, and customer service has been using chatbots to offer their customers self-service options and lighten the load for their human agents.

While technology has greatly influenced the world and how business is conducted, finance teams still find themselves surrounded by piles of paper, manual processes, and quarterly binders with nicknames as though they are a part of the finance family. Just check out this 2020 survey from the Association of Accountants and Financial Professionals (IMA) and Deloitte. In it, 75% of respondents said their company’s accounting processes are either largely manual or still a considerable manual effort.

To some degree the reluctance to modernize finance is understandable. There is limited risk to a marketing team failing with new innovative technology; it’s not like a regulatory agency is going to come down on them because an Insta post didn’t get many likes. The risk is much higher where financial reporting is concerned, especially for public companies. However, this is a risk that at some point has to be taken. In order for organizations to remain competitive, they have to innovate and automate. For many organizations, the pandemic was the needed push.

In a podcast late last year, Allen Narkiewicz, national leader of financial services, Finance Transformation Practice at KPMG, explained how the pandemic exposed just how manual finance processes were.

“When COVID hit, it really highlighted how many manual workarounds there were within the finance and accounting processes at the banks,” he said. “Trying to go and solve these regulatory issues and questions that arose, linking them to your financials, reconciling all this data that might have been dispersed, not in one place, not linked through your systems, all of a sudden it was highlighting people not having job satisfaction. One of my clients — when we asked them what they wanted to stop doing — it was all of this work that could be digitized, you could automate these flows, you could have the lineage of data and have it linked.”

He continues with a story of a client whose finance department is using 50-year-old technology. And no, the client is not some mom-and-pop corner store with a paper ledger that the owner’s wife handles. It is an actual large client. “Right now, you know, one of the banks that I interact with, their ledger is actually about 50 years old. The ledger before their current ledger was pen and paper. It was literally a paper ledger. And so that’s what we’re dealing with. This is a bank that has, of course, had to have manual processes built around how that ledger has been installed, built, designed because we’re dealing with technology that’s 50 years old.”

Fifty. Years. Old. Reminder: Even Excel isn’t that old, it’s not even 40.

Alright so we’ve established that finance departments are the chubby kid in high school gym walking the entire mile on the day class has to run the track. Thankfully there are solutions for finance to get digitally fit. As you think about how to transform your finance department from flab to fit, keep these five things in mind:

Embrace composable architecture

According to Gartner, by 2023, organizations that have adopted a composable approach will outpace competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation. “Composable business is a natural acceleration of the digital business that you live every day. It allows us to deliver the resilience and agility that these interesting times demand,” said Daryl Plummer, distinguished VP analyst, during the opening keynote at virtual Gartner Symposium IT/Xpo®. “We’re talking about the intentional use of ‘composability’ in a business context — architecting your business for real-time adaptability and resilience in the face of uncertainty.”

A composable architecture offers agile, best of breed, automated finance management capabilities and processes enabling progressive modernization, finance innovation, and accelerated speed to value. And it can be adapted along the way (unlike 50-year-old ledgers around which clunky processes have to be built). Solutions must be vendor agnostic and integrate easily with source, target and complementary systems; your department needs to be able to “work out” even when you change gyms.

The finance user needs a custom “workout plan,” not a solution with someone else in mind

Finance solutions should be designed with the finance user in mind and should opt for solutions that include built-in finance IP to accelerate implementations and leverage finance best practices. Finance users should be empowered to configure rules in a non-code environment. Think being able to do perfect squats at home at your convenience instead of only exercising when there’s a trainer there to walk you through every step.

It’s cloud or nothing

Finance has been the slowest department to accept and adopt cloud solutions. Historically, they have been hesitant due to security concerns, with the loss of control and ability to customize the solution (SaaS solutions typically require more standardization), but that time has passed and finance needs to get on board with cloud solutions that offer much higher levels of scalability, automation, performance, and control.

As the pandemic taught us, organization-wide access is critical not only in finance but especially in finance. Now that we have experienced for ourselves trying to organize and access data 100% virtually, it’s time to take those lessons and make sure we never have to be without critical info again. The cloud offers a current, fully available solution that, despite its “newness” in the tech space, has proven itself to be invaluable.

Technology moves fast, and the finance architecture needs to be future-ready

The world is getting less predictable and finance teams need to respond to both business risks and opportunities. Any implemented solutions need to stand the test of time. They need to provide the building blocks, performance, and scalability to react with agility to market factors. Solutions need to natively embrace emerging technologies (AI, MI, blockchain, etc.).

As we learned in March 2020, there will be things completely outside of our control that can have sweeping effects on all aspects of life and business. The best CFO in the world can only control internal factors, and the tools to help these CFOs do their best work need to be responsive to real-time market data and events to allow finance departments necessary agility in changing conditions.

Data is your most valuable commodity and you need access to it at all times

In today’s internet-focused, always-connected world, data is widely considered to be among the world’s most valuable resources because of how much potential revenue and business value it can provide. Data affects all our lives in ways most of us can’t even imagine, and this data can be leveraged in spectacular ways by organizations.

Today’s CFO must have the ability to not only access real-time data but have full traceability of where that data came from and the ability to visualize it to surface trends and insights for the business. Using a data fabric approach to access multiple data sources reduces the duplication of data, storage costs, and complexity.

The finance transformation may not be an easy journey, but neither is getting fit. As with physical health, there are tools available to help finance departments make that difficult journey a little bit easier. And like all good fitness plans, the rewards reaped from investing in health are far-reaching and so worthwhile.

Transforming your finance department into an efficient, automated, high-performance powerhouse can seem daunting. Luckily Aptitude Software has been focused on the office of the CFO for decades and brings deep finance, accounting, and technology expertise. Aptitude has solutions to help you comply with challenging regulations, drive holistic revenue automation, and lead a successful finance transformation.

Curious to hear more about organizations that have improved their digital finance fitness? Listen to an on-demand webinar, Mistakes to avoid for a successful digital finance transformation and hear finance leaders share first-hand experiences from their transformation journeys. Or, peruse our Resource Library for other assets that can help you achieve your finance goals and ambitions.

The post Shape Up With This Five-Step Plan For Finance Department Fitness appeared first on Going Concern.

If your answer is “Pretend I need to go to the bathroom and hope I can get one of my advisor friends on the phone to explain it to me in time,” this article is for you. (If you’re reading this in the bathroom right now after searching “what is direct indexing tax benefits PLEASE HELP ME OH SEARCH ENGINE GODS and I promise never to Google myself again,” then this article is especially for you.)

The finance world is all aflutter over direct indexing and, among other benefits, its ability to allow investors to harvest more losses for tax purposes. Taxes can represent a larger drag on your higher-net-worth clients’ portfolios than fees or trading costs—so if your clients haven’t asked about direct indexing yet, they may very well soon. 

Let’s unpack what CPAs should know about direct indexing from a tax perspective—and explore some unique and effective methods for explaining it to your clients. 

What should CPAs know about direct indexing?

According to Investopedia, direct indexing is: “… an index investing strategy that involves directly purchasing the components of an index at the appropriate weights … (that) can provide greater autonomy, control, and tax advantages to certain investors over owning an index mutual fund or an index exchange-traded fund (index ETF).”

(We suppose you could stop reading here and just plan to repeat this definition to your clients verbatim as they stare blankly at you in response, but we recommend you give it some context.)

Before we dive in too deeply, it’s important to understand that direct indexing involves passive investments—and what that means. Passive investments are meant to gradually build wealth without the need for frequent trading. They include things like mutual funds and ETFs, which package underlying securities into a single vehicle accessible to investors.

Direct indexing takes this idea in a different direction. Instead of owning shares in a commingled fund, your clients own the individual securities in the portfolio directly, in a separately managed account (SMA).

Your clients get the same kind of broad market exposure as a mutual fund or ETF, but with the flexibility to customize their portfolios for a number of compelling advantages. These include the ability to:

• Actively and systematically harvest capital losses from individual securities for tax purposes—and do it all year round, not just at tax time.
• Adjust holdings to screen out industries or companies your clients find objectionable.
• Avoid redundant or risk-concentrating holdings in clients’ portfolios.
• Achieve more flexibility around charitable giving and estate planning.

For this article, we’re going to stay focused on the tax side of direct indexing, but check back for future blogs on some of these other benefits.

Now that we’ve defined the term, let’s go over some methods for talking to your clients about the tax advantages of direct indexing.

Method #1: Use a metaphor (any metaphor)

With commingled assets like mutual funds and ETFs, the losses of individual securities are trapped inside the fund, with your clients unable to use them for tax purposes. But with direct indexing, your clients can harvest those losses—potentially recovering up to 2% of annual after-tax excess returns. 

We know what you’re thinking: “What a perfectly worded explanation of the tax benefits of direct indexing! I can stop reading now.” And we thank you for the praise. However, we at Going Concern feel that any explanation is made better by an overly complicated metaphor. And any explanation is made even even better by an overly complicated metaphor we don’t have to write ourselves. 

So if your clients need a metaphor to help them understand the tax benefits of direct indexing, you’re going to have to put the work in. Fill in the blanks below to create an analogy that should be anywhere from adequate to awesome:

Made with Madlib Maker

Method #2: Show them this chart and wait for the gasps

Another way to demonstrate the potential tax benefits of direct indexing is to show your clients how many of the individual investments within a mutual fund or ETF were money-losers over a particular time period. This will get their wheels turning about the losses they’re potentially leaving on the table.

Obviously, you don’t want to get too specific—that’s for their advisors to handle. But a chart like this one can help demonstrate the principle:Despite the S&P 500 having an incredible year in 2021, with total gains of nearly 29%, 72 names in the index showed a loss. Further, 91% of the stocks in the S&P 500 had a maximum drawdown of more than 10% at some point during the year.

If your clients were index fund investors last year, they wouldn’t have been able to use those losses to offset capital gains elsewhere in their holdings because they were locked in the fund.

With direct indexing, however, your clients could put those losses to work through tax-loss harvesting. If your client is the type who’s interested in the nitty-gritty details of investing and taxes, they may want to know how that process works. Lucky for you, that’s the focus of our next method.

Method #3: Explain the process of tax-loss harvesting

For clients who like to track every dime and decimal, you may need to explain tax-loss harvesting in a bit more detail. Here’s how you can do just that:

Losses are inevitable in any portfolio. But with direct indexing, your clients’ SMA portfolio managers can harvest their losses on individual securities that would normally be trapped in a fund. 

Your clients can bank those losses to use in the current or a future tax year. Then the manager can reinvest the sale proceeds in a similar security (while taking care to avoid IRS wash-sale rules) to preserve your clients’ exposure and risk-return profile.

Essentially, the manager sells a basket of securities at a loss and simultaneously replaces it with a different basket of (hopefully higher-performing) securities.

Your clients may have further questions (or even objections) about tax-loss harvesting, especially if they’ve read articles like this one. Be sure to tell them that, while tax-loss harvesting can lead to great benefits for some investors, it’s not for everyone. If your clients are curious whether tax-loss harvesting is right for them, you can direct them to this quiz—or take it with them. 

Method #4: Go beyond tax-loss harvesting

If your client hits you with the dreaded “tell me more,” we suggest you send them to our friends over at Parametric. They’re the masters of direct indexing and powerful, innovative tax management solutions, including tax-loss harvesting and: 

• Tax-efficient transitions: Balancing capital gains against an acceptable percentage of tracking error to the desired benchmark exposure.
• Gain-realization deferral: Evaluating which securities to sell now and which to hold on to, with the expectation of future loss harvesting at the opportune time.
• Holding-period management: Determining the optimum time to hold a security, with an eye toward differing tax rates for short- and long-term gains.
• Yield consideration: Advising on the treatment of dividend income.
• Tax-lot consideration: Identifying ideal tax lots to trade.
• Wash-sale avoidance: Helping investors navigate IRS wash-sale rules.
• Charitable gifting: Selecting highly appreciated stocks to gift to a tax-exempt charitable organization, donor-advised fund, or family members in lower tax brackets.

“Talk to your CPA about the tax benefits of direct indexing”

Hopefully, you now feel fully empowered to talk to clients at all levels of sophistication and interest about the tax benefits of direct indexing. Check back soon to learn about the impact of direct indexing on estate planning and charitable giving, and discover more resources here.

The post 4 Ways CPAs Can Explain the Tax Benefits of Direct Indexing to Clients appeared first on Going Concern.

Love,

Your friends at Going Concern

The post Reminder: Don’t Forget to Turn In Your Timesheet! appeared first on Going Concern.

Went to @going_concern’s website today to see if they’d have anything clever to say about the big Mazars story, but if course there is nothing. Of course.

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) February 14, 2022

Here ya go, big guy. We’re about to cut out for the day, but feel free to read these until your cold black heart is content:

Accounting Firm Cuts Ties With Trump and Retracts Financial Statements [New York Times]
Tax firm Mazars fires Trump Organization as client, says former president’s financial statements are unreliable [CNBC]
Accounting Firm Drops Trump Organization Over Dubious Financial Docs [Daily Beast]

AG James’ office has submitted a court filing Re Trump case that includes a letter from his company’s accounting firm saying nearly a decade worth of financial statements can no longer be relied upon. pic.twitter.com/sDUcDF1BEd

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 14, 2022

XOXOXO, Jason and Adrienne.

The post Lonely Old Man Chides Going Concern Writers For Having a Life on Valentine’s Day appeared first on Going Concern.

 

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when you open the client’s payroll support pic.twitter.com/JIoD8OXNOW

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That’s all we’ve got. It’s Monday, after all, wouldn’t want to overdo it. Have a great week out there, everyone.

The post It’s Monday, Here Are the Memes You Deserve to Start Your Week appeared first on Going Concern.

October through December is always the “high season” for tax hiring. For tax professionals, there are only so many times during the year that it’s acceptable to switch jobs, and October through December is the window when demand (from firms) ramps up.

But Q4 this year is shaping up to be even busier than usual, according to Beth Dierker, Accountingfly’s Director of Fulfillment. “Not only is this time of year always busy, but we’re also seeing more firms looking to hire remote tax professionals this year than ever before. As a result, applicants have more choices than ever before.”

In other words, if you’ve got solid tax experience and recent experience in public accounting, you’re a seller in a seller’s market.

Look, the future is here. We no longer have to be tethered to our desks. NOW is the time for you laptop hobos to rise up and find a better opportunity if the one you have isn’t working (no pun). As an accounting professional in today’s market, you are the kid in the candy store with $200 of Christmas money in your pocket, the world is your sour jawbreaker.

Firms are seeking tax professionals at all levels and eager to meet you. Remember the last time you went on Tinder and couldn’t get nary a match? Imagine being wanted and adored by throngs of screaming accounting firms, just begging to give you an offer. OK, that’s a bit much. But you get the idea.

Ready to start your next adventure? Browse all available remote accounting jobs on Accountingfly or send in a resume and a real live human being will review it to find the best match for you.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

The post There May Never Be a Better Time Than Right Now to Find a Remote Tax Job appeared first on Going Concern.

On Saturday Night Live last March, Elon Musk came out on national TV as having Asperger’s syndrome. For the neurodiverse, this event was momentous not only because Musk hosted the show, but because four months before he’d been crowned the wealthiest man in the world.

The message was clear: The neurodiverse can and do achieve greatness.

But Musk’s success begs a question for people like me who are neurodiverse and work in corporate America: Could the PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX founder have flourished in a conventional corporate environment as a run-of-the-mill employee? Or has his extreme success been due in part to his entrepreneurship? On being his own boss from the start? On creating a work environment that suited his particular needs? On being able to publicly say controversial things at work and suffering few repercussions?

In the last 10 years, companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Deloitte, Dell, and HPE have created programs and initiatives for the neurodiverse like the “Neurodiversity Hiring Program” and “Autism@Work.” These programs claim to foster a welcoming and productive workplace for people like me, programs committed to providing equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for the neurodiverse.

I know this because four years ago, I was hired into one and stayed for two years. With some solid skills and two years of experience at a well-known firm, I went back onto the competitive job market. I identified as disabled in my application, didn’t require any accommodations in the hiring process. Two years later, I’m still in that job and happy and thriving, and I still haven’t disclosed my disability or requested reasonable accommodations. But would that have been the case if I’d remained in one of the first and preeminent hiring programs run by a firm that, in its own words, leverages the talents of neurodiverse professionals to meet the firm’s most urgent needs?

“Autism can bring many challenges,” says an Ernst & Young invitation to learn about its program, “but it also represents a key opportunity for EY …” I’m not autistic, though I am neurodivergent. Neurodiversity is a broad category that includes ASD and other diagnoses.

My struggle started decades before in leafy Westchester County, NY. Something was amiss in first grade. My teacher said I was scattered and distracted, and I was held back. Undiagnosed as a teen, my social and academic career resembled that of a normative kid struggling with something — but who knew what? No one at the time took a deeper look.

I did finish college and earned a Master’s in Math Education from Teachers College at Columbia University. But a career in teaching was not in the cards as I ran into problems that only made sense later in the light of a diagnosis. My trouble was twofold: managing a classroom and reading nonverbal cues.

In and out of jobs and suffering emotionally, I started therapy for anxiety and depression. Shortly before my 30th birthday, my therapist referred me for neuropsychological testing at Mount Sinai. I was diagnosed with NLD (nonverbal learning disability) and the inattentive type of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) which frequently goes undiagnosed in children.

After my diagnosis, I struggled with what my disability meant for me, how to use this new awareness, how and when to disclose my disability, and how to request accommodations.

After three years, I became more “disability confident,” attending career fairs targeted to disabled people, applying for workforce development programs and vocational rehabilitation with the New York State Department of Labor. On job applications, I began to identify as “disabled.”

In 2017, I completed a training program with what’s now known as Neurodiversity Pathways-Goodwill Silicon Valley. It was a five-week workforce development program in data analysis. It was there that I found EY, recruiting for their new program: the Neuro-Diversity Center of Excellence (NCoE), this one in Texas.

Continuing with EY’s recruitment process, I flew myself to Dallas and attended a week-long interview. The firm called it “Super Week.”

From nine to five daily, they plied us candidates with calculations, word problems, and various projects to see how we’d react to change and handle stress. Shortly thereafter, I was offered a position and moved from New York to Dallas to start. The first NCoE started in Philadelphia, and the team was known as the Philly Four. When my cohort started, we dubbed ourselves the Texas Ten.

It was exciting.

I was hoping, like any employee would, that I could use the opportunity to move from a support position onto a career track. I wasn’t imagining a management position — I knew I wasn’t well-suited for that — but I hoped to become an expert in something for the firm and was ready to work hard and be a loyal employee.

For the first two months, they “onboarded” us with software tutorials — some skills of which I ended up using on the job, but most not. We had a boss who seemed to care and a reason to believe this training would move us forward.

Our boss was compassionate and willing to listen to what we had to say; to meet our needs so we could meet the company’s needs. Like Jerry Maguire, her modus operandi was something like, “Help me help you help me.” She treated the team like adults and individuals.

But sadly, she didn’t last.

The woman who replaced her knew only enough about neurodiversity and only enough about information technology (not that much) to end up a danger to us all. We found ourselves living in the shadow of a boss and a program manager beset by the Dunning-Kruger effect: they both thought they knew more than we did about our talents and needs.

We were treated like a monolith kindergarten class.

We were forced into the same stereotypical accommodations whether we requested them or not, whether we needed them or not. We were made to work in a segregated office space. There were the regular HR rules and other unwritten rules we learned by getting caught out, like spending too much time in the mini conference room or asking too many questions.

And when our program managers weren’t choosing to infantilize and isolate us, they went the other way and paraded us around, selling the program and those of us in it like a circus act, on display, forcing us to identify ourselves by the program and therefore our diagnoses, too (which violated our rights to medical privacy.)

As months went on, it became clear to me that the Center didn’t want what was best for me or even the firm and its partners.

The Center wanted what was best for the Center.

My hopes to be mainstreamed, to move up and out, were moot. Like Hotel California, my program director wanted me to enter and stay in the program … forever. This was the real cost of entrance. The price of the ticket.

The highest functioning among us made the Center look great. When things were going well, we streamlined and automated time-sucking processes, coded, and built websites. I was part of a team that developed an automation algorithm that saved the company half a million work hours a year.

EY has taken its model to market, so to speak, and advises other companies worldwide to implement similar programs, hawking and branding potential neurodiverse candidates as having the “autism talent advantage.” This is biz speak for our stereotypical traits: myopic focus, an interest in tech, the ability to withstand repetitive busywork, and savant memory.

You know. You’ve seen The Big Bang Theory and Rainman.

Even as these companies parade these programs in front of the press, virtue signaling every time they start a new one in a new office or a new city, what they fail to mention is that they’re also fulfilling a federal mandate. Many hold contracts with the U.S. government for deals in the millions. To comply with these contracts, they must prove that they adhere to Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which requires them “to take affirmative action to recruit, hire, promote, and retain people with physical and mental impairments.”

So is this the true incentive for the programs? It’s hard to know.

During my last four months on the job, my team’s morale hit a new low and so did mine. In an esteem-building exercise, members of the Texas Ten said they felt “siloed” and “segregated.” One asked our manager what he meant by the word “inclusion.” He said point-blank, “If you don’t like it, you can find the door.”

Felt right for Hollywood. Maybe Wall Street. The difference between the firm’s stated values and the reality of our day-to-day work lives was stark. This was supposed to be a safe place where we could be authentic and I was shocked by his response.

We were not to question. We were not to protest or challenge.

They were giving us a full-time job with salary and benefits — it helped them fulfill a federal mandate, the work we did, despite our disabilities, was value-added. They required not only our work, but our undue compliance and gratitude.

The office was filled with tension, mixed emotion, mixed messaging, and a resigned sadness that came from knowing our chance to advance was close to nil. Some months we were assigned long bouts of busy work or no work at all. Of my team of 10, two ended up taking leaves of absence to deal with subsequent depression and anxiety. One even went out on disability. Me, I filed an ethics complaint, found a new job, and gave the requisite two-weeks notice.

Two years later, I’m still in my new job. It’s not accounting or auditing, but I enjoy it, and my boss is respectful and encouraging. I’ve earned performance awards, accolades, and best of all, I do meaningful work, and am growing professionally.

I’ve never mentioned my neurodiversity, and no one’s ever asked.

Elon Musk is quoted as saying, “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”

It’s good advice.

These programs could work. Some of them do to a degree, no doubt. Some don’t. I’m a private person who finds it difficult to discuss my disability even discreetly, much less in public, but if I were asked how to improve these programs — which I wasn’t, of course, while I was in one – I’d advise this: let your neurodiverse employees tell you who they are, what they can offer, and dictate the services they need. Don’t blanket us with your good intentions and broad ideas. Allow us to hope and dream. Let us explore, let us climb, like any other employee might. Allow your programs to be an on-ramp into your company. Let us show you what we can do. Take risks. Treat us like the adults we are. We might embarrass you in front of a client. We might not. The neurodiverse population is as diverse as the female or African American or LGBTQ population. We’re not all the same, even if we fall into this category. Not even close.

In the U.S. alone in the next decade, more than 500,000 college graduates across the autism spectrum will age into young adults who need jobs. Today, only 15% of autistic college graduates are employed. That math should alarm everyone as the price is a cost to us all.

If these inclusion programs worked and worked well, we’d all stand to profit.

The post Here’s the Truth About What Really Happens at EY’s Neuro-Diverse Center of Excellence From Someone Who Was There appeared first on Going Concern.

Intuit is hiring at scale, onboarding thousands of new recruits that want to make a difference in the Intuit Expert Network mission. Intuit experts help TurboTax Live, QuickBooks Live, and Mint Live customers have confidence that their taxes and personal and business finances are accurate and complete, which in turn positively impacts their financial lives. 

The Intuit Expert Network is your opportunity to achieve your optimal work/life balance from your home office, while enabling you to connect and collaborate virtually with peers and expand your knowledge. And you’ll do it all through a powerful, unified technology platform that provides a seamless experience. 

Let’s take a look at how the Intuit platform can help you do what you do better—so you can open new career opportunities and guide customers toward better financial outcomes.

Capitalize on rapid changes in accounting technology

Over the last 40-plus years, accounting technology has evolved from text-based, command-line software to cloud-based systems offering automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Technology is changing faster all the time, and that trend is expected to continue. The COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to rapidly develop remote working solutions, further hastening the rate of transformation.

Now more than ever, businesses and consumers need highly skilled tax, bookkeeping, and financial professionals to help them navigate the quickly-evolving and intersecting worlds of finance and technology. Becoming an Intuit Expert allows you to capitalize on this trend, learning Intuit products inside and out and keeping your abilities up-to-date as new solutions emerge.

Intuit was founded in 1983, and—with the release of Quicken DOS—emerged as a pioneer in leading-edge accounting technology. The company has built a proven track record of technology excellence in the decades since. Intuit has continued to grow and stand out throughout the Microsoft Windows era of the 1990s, the web era of the 2000s, and into today’s mobile and cloud era.

The company has also developed a reputation for disrupting how and where experts can serve customers, adapting its solutions to the cloud and successfully maintaining a large remote workforce years before COVID-19. Working with Intuit allows you to work on a platform from the industry-recognized leader in accounting technology—and gain the prestige of adding the Intuit name to your resume. 

Learn and work from a unified, intuitive platform

Intuit Experts build their skills and assist clients from a single, intuitive platform that leverages AI, machine learning, and automation for intelligent, personalized experiences. 

The platform provides a comprehensive, end-to-end experience that uses intelligent capabilities to help experts quickly onboard through a digital onboarding center, visually manage, track, and stay on top of their work, collaborate with other experts, enhance their skills, and communicate with customers.

If you become an Intuit Expert, you’ll have everything you need to develop your technology skills, serve clients, and expand your career—in your own way and remotely within the U.S. 

Work smarter and automate manual tasks

As an Intuit Expert, you’ll work from an ever-evolving platform that automates many mundane tasks. This allows you to be more productive and spend less time making calculations—and more time delivering great results for customers.

The platform also intelligently guides you as you work with customers, helping you identify customer priority and the specific task to tackle next. With powerful technology backing you up at every step, you can more easily and thoroughly give customers financial peace of mind. 

“The Intuit Expert Portal tool is pretty high tech. The use of applications interchangeably for client data, smart look, scheduling and even community questions is very impressive.”

— TurboTax Live Expert

Get the right technology and training to advance your career

Whether you’re just starting out, have an established practice, or are nearing the end of your career, becoming an Intuit Expert is a great way to chart a brighter professional future. You can use intelligent technology to deliver better results, increase your knowledge, and shape your career to fit your needs.

Reach out to Intuit now to learn more.

Learn more about becoming an Intuit Expert >

Related articles:

How Intuit Can Help Your Career Thrive In the Remote Work Era
Shape Your Accounting Career Your Way with the Intuit Expert Network

The post Advance Your Accounting Career with Intuit’s AI-driven, Intuitive Technology Platform appeared first on Going Concern.

Accountingfly is the answer to your “never commute again/never wear suit pants again” prayer–their core business is placing candidates in 100% permanently remote accounting jobs. 

Whether you’re looking for a permanent position or a freelance/temp gig, check out a sample of their current remote jobs below or visit Accountingfly.com to see all open positions. Before you go full-blown Office Space.

Not ready to jump ship quite yet, but know the day is coming? Sign up for Accountingfly’s Job Alerts. You’ll get notified whenever new remote accounting jobs open up. 

PS–Friendly reminder, if you want a remote job, don’t make a monkey of yourself in the video interview. Learn how to operate Zoom, be prepared for the interview, and most of all, don’t be like these people. If you need it spelled out for you in text form, here are some things NOT to do during a virtual interview. 

PPS–Required marketing tagline: Let Accountingfly make remote work for your career. Also, check out their Career Center if you want career advice from people who work from beach chairs and haven’t seen the inside of an office since before YouTube existed. 

PPPS–When you’re done applying for your new remote gigs, sign up for the Going Concern Accounting News Roundup (ANR) newsletter to get extraordinary accounting content (and/or just random news tangentially related to accounting) twice a week.

Top remote accounting jobs:

• Remote SALT Accountant
• Remote Tax Accountant, CPA
• Remote Tax and Accounting Manager
• Remote Tax Manager
• Remote Tax Freelancers
• Remote Business Advisor, CPA
• Remote Senior Accountant, Fund Accounting
• Remote Senior Accountant
• Remote Audit Freelancer
• Remote Workflow Automation Project Manager
• Remote Full Charge Bookkeeper

Click here to view all available remote positions.

The post Making Remote Work: June’s Hottest Remote Accounting Jobs appeared first on Going Concern.

You can move upward in your chosen field or move outward, ”changing lanes” to expand your expertise and learn new skills. And, no matter what, you can choose your own schedule according to your personal and professional needs.

But don’t take our word for it. Let’s take a deeper look at what it means to be an Intuit Expert—and, along the way, hear from some professionals on how they leveraged the opportunities offered by Intuit to create their ideal careers.

Choose your path 

As an Intuit Expert, you’ll be equipped with support and training to provide customers with the expertise they need and to help them overcome their most important financial challenges. Speaking broadly, you can work for the Intuit Expert Network in one of three roles:

“As you go” tax expert: You’ll take contacts (calls and chats) from customers, where you’ll support them in preparing and filing their taxes themselves. You’ll guide customers through their own tax returns and review their returns before filing, help them navigate TurboTax, answer specific questions, and advise and guide them on questions that range from simple to complex. 

Full service tax expert: If you’re hired as a full service tax expert, you’ll be responsible for preparing returns on behalf of customers. You’ll handle returns (nearly) from start to finish, spending some of your time interacting with customers and some preparing the return. You’ll supplement any downtime in full service taking “as you go” calls and chats.

Bookkeeper: You’ll work with our small business customers to help them better manage their business finances. You might help customers get set up on QuickBooks or onboarded to the QuickBooks Live service. Bookkeepers who are dedicated to “ongoing” bookkeeping service work in teams, which act as “firms” that manage a dedicated book of a business. Some work primarily in a front-office role, serving as the liaison between small business customers and their bookkeepers; others work primarily in a back-office role, preparing and managing the books. 

Expand your knowledge

Once you are interviewed and hired as an Intuit expert, you’ll get onboarded, receive training and resources, and continue learning and upskilling as you help clients and grow your career.

Michaela Schoonover, Expert Bookkeeper with QuickBooks Live and owner of Arm’s Reach Bookkeeping, said she found the training and knowledge-building opportunities offered by Intuit especially helpful. 

“By the time I had completed my training sessions, I was confident I had a team of managers, leads, and colleagues who would provide support when I needed it,” Michaela said. “My first days on the job left me with a very singular feeling—‘this is a place I want to be.’”

Michaela has continued to learn and grow as an Intuit Expert, taking advantage of both the educational resources and the vibrant network of professionals.

“Having the tools and resources to help so many customers from a wide variety of industries has given me new skills and a new confidence in myself,” Michaela said. “Above all, I’ve learned that finding a professional community can help get you closer to your goals, and make work a more rewarding part of your life.”

Expand your skills

As an Intuit Expert, you’ll take on projects and responsibilities that allow you to move up in your chosen field and build your professional skills. And you’ll get all the resources, support, and encouragement you need along the way. 

As a QuickBooks Live Expert, Wayne Brown discovered ample opportunities to grow his career.

“My performance led to me being on several special projects … which, in turn, has resulted in me being a subject-matter expert in certain areas of QuickBooks Live and also QuickBooks,” Wayne said. “In addition, I have made hundreds of connections with other Intuit Experts … and made an impact on the growth of my business.” 

Expand your expertise

Perhaps the most unique aspect of the Intuit Expert Network is the opportunity to “change lanes.” You can gain skills and even earn certifications that will expand your expertise from taxes to bookkeeping (or vice-versa). The network gives you the freedom to chart your own career path (or career paths, as the case may be.)

For example, the Intuit Expert Network can help you earn your Enrolled Agent (EA) credential, which is the highest credential the IRS awards. Let’s hear from three Intuit Experts who have taken advantage of this opportunity:

“I enjoyed study sessions, developed lasting relationships with peers, and shared insights on tax situations. As a result, I feel more confident interacting with clients, teammates, and peers when discussing various tax laws and situations.”

— Stephanie Brooks, EA

“Having great mentors, managers, leads, peers, and a support system helping me along the way was a big part of earning my EA. The credential, in addition to my years of tax experience, has helped me feel more confident answering questions and researching topics. I love being able to provide experts and customers with a much deeper understanding and knowledge necessary to address the different challenges concerning the ever-changing tax laws.”

— Robin Copeland, Tax Expert Lead and EA

“The EA program was great! I learned so much and feel so much more confident answering questions and researching topics. I was promoted up two levels … I’m enjoying much deeper interactions with clients and really feel I have the chance to make a difference.”

— Elizabeth Dickinson, EA

Shape your accounting career path, your way

Get on the path to expanding your career, learning new skills, and shaping your professional life to fit your needs. And find out just how far you can go. Learn more about becoming an Intuit Expert today.

Get started >

The post Shape Your Accounting Career Your Way with the Intuit Expert Network appeared first on Going Concern.

The more we talk to accountants, bookkeepers, tax preparers, and finance professionals, the more we hear from them that working remotely is having a positive impact on their careers. All it takes is the right attitude and the right strategy to ensure you’re making the most of today’s opportunities.

To that end, Intuit is providing a great way for you to advance your career in the remote work era. The company has begun hiring at scale, onboarding thousands of Intuit Experts in 2021 with plans to continue growing the program yearly. Intuit Experts help TurboTax Live, QuickBooks Live, and Mint Live customers have confidence that their taxes and personal and business finances are accurate and complete, which in turn positively impacts their financial lives.

Here are three reasons becoming an Intuit Expert can help your career thrive in the remote work era:  

1) You’ll personalize your career path

With more time on your hands, more freedom, and more options, the remote era allows you to wave goodbye to the rigid, programmed career paths of the past and blaze your own unique professional trail.

As an Intuit Expert, you’ll have the freedom to shape your career to fit your life. Choose how and when you want to work to fit your career goals or experience level. Select hours that work with your current practice, if you have one. Scale up or down as your needs change, or focus on the work that’s most rewarding to you as you move into the next chapter of your life. And you can even explore new skills across disciplines, from personal taxes to bookkeeping and more.

2) You’ll learn new skills and expand your expertise

Rather than remaining focused on a single discipline, the remote era allows you to shape your expertise however you want. Like a train shifting tracks, you can move between accounting, bookkeeping, tax, and finance, depending on your skills, gaining additional experience and building a practice that meets your clients’ needs more holistically.

Here again, Intuit offers an opportunity for you to expand your knowledge. Intuit Experts are provided with training, technology, and credentialing that leads to transformative learning and growth, enabling you to serve clients in a variety of meaningful ways. 

Intuit Experts also gain access to Intuit University, an unrivaled library of development programs and microlearning courses. These offerings go beyond simple training and education, delivering learning experiences that are engaging, personalized, and highly effective. 

The Intuit Expert program has a track record of helping professionals grow into new areas, currently sending through 1,000 new certified tax experts annually. And it boasts a 90% return rate for tax experts, a clear indication of its popularity and ability to help professionals advance their careers.

3) You’ll connect with others and collaborate in new ways

Thanks to advancements in technology and new methods of collaboration, accounting professionals are finding innovative ways to come together, helping each other solve problems and benefit from a larger pool of experience.

Becoming an Intuit Expert is a great way to quickly tap into this spirit of collaboration, leveraging a network of professionals to advance your career. Intuit’s community of experienced experts and team managers serve as advocates along your journey, providing you with the advice and mentorship you need to take your career wherever you want it to go. From virtual team rooms that let you engage with other experts and get advice anytime you want it to one-on-one guidance from your managers, the help you need is always close at hand. 

Your accounting career, now with limitless potential

In the remote working era, there’s nothing to stop you from achieving everything you want to do in your accounting or finance career. With the freedom to personalize your path, learn new skills, and connect with peers and mentors, the only limit to your potential is your imagination.

Whether you’re just starting out, have an established practice, or are nearing the end of your career, becoming an Intuit Expert is the perfect way to take full advantage of the newfound freedoms of the remote era. Reach out to Intuit now to learn more—and find out just how far your professional future can go.

Learn more about becoming an Intuit Expert >

The post How Intuit Can Help Your Career Thrive In the Remote Work Era appeared first on Going Concern.

The timesheet isn’t dead, but it may well be on life support. According to a 2018 study from the AICPA, firms of all sizes are increasing their use of value pricing. The smallest subset of firms in the study reported that value pricing accounts for 50% of their total fees, indicating a particular attraction to value pricing models among smaller businesses and individual accountants.

In the value pricing era, accountants who spend less time on administrative tasks and more time knocking out projects for clients will win the day. So let’s look at some ways you can get through the tedious stuff faster—and make the value pricing era truly awesome for your accounting career or firm.

1. Spend less time billing (and more time earning)

Every minute spent handling payments is a minute you could be spending executing paid work for your clients. Today’s accountants need to find ways to accelerate their clients’ billing—so they can get back to creating awesome results.

Such was the case at Latitude Bookkeeping, a firm in Plattsburgh, NY. With many of its clients’ vendors insisting on the use of paper checks, Latitude and its clients were spending too much time handling payments. The company found the perfect solution in Melio, an online payment solution that allows its customers to send and receive payments in any form, all from one unified online platform.

“With Melio, a client can use a credit card to pay rent (and utilities) and Melio will send a check or ACH,” said David Perry, founder of Latitude. “It’s great to have all these payment options available to us not only on the payable side, but also for whoever is receiving the payment, and we can tailor it to their preference.”

Since partnering with Melio, Latitude has decreased their payment handling time by as much as 90%, saving an average of eight minutes on each bill payment.

“Once a week we go into Melio, we pay the bill. The client gets an email, approves, and that’s it,” Perry said. 

2. Onboard clients faster

Congratulations, you just signed a new client! You made the winning pitch, shook all the right hands (virtually, of course), and the ink on the contracts has dried. Now it’s time for the awesomeness to begin, right?

Hold up there, cowboy. First, you need to onboard the new client, teaching them how to work with you and use your services. Onboarding can take as long as 60 days, creating lead time between signing a new client and completing paid projects for them.

Fast onboarding has always been the goal, but it’s even more essential in the value pricing era. Without billable hours, you can no longer take your time getting a client set up—you need to move quickly so you can start working on projects. Plus, you can’t afford to take too much time away from other paying clients. 

Houston-based accounting firm Walker Agency got fed up onboarding its clients to use multiple clunky bank bill pay platforms. The firm turned to Melio to help increase efficiency and fill the accounts payable “hole” in its tech stack. Melio enabled Walker Agency to reduce onboarding and training time by three to four hours per client and decrease overall payment handling time by 40%.

“(Melio) takes very little time to set up,” said Amy Walker, founder of Walker Agency. “You hook up your bank account, put some approval levels in place, and you just start using it. On top of that, it’s free, so it saves our clients money and makes them very happy.” 

3. React to surprises with agility

Raise your hand if the phrase “in these uncertain times” makes you want to smash your TV with a sledgehammer, light it on fire, and write a passive-aggressive email to the manufacturer for creating a product that seems to utter that phrase roughly every 16 seconds. No, that’s just us? We’ll get help.

It might be annoying, but there’s a reason everyone’s talking about uncertainty. Even before COVID-19, sudden change was a hot topic in accounting, with nimble startups, cloud-based tools, and a move toward remote work creating disruption and unexpected results. The pandemic accelerated the pace of many of these disruptors while delivering a seemingly endless string of its own surprises—many of which have been costly for accounting firms and their clients.

More changes are coming, to be sure, and it’s impossible to be fully prepared for what the future might hold. But the accountants and firms that take this time to rethink their ability to react to surprises will position themselves for the best results moving forward.

Let’s venture outside the world of accounting for a moment and take a look at Regency, a supply company that saw demand for its products radically shift in response to COVID-19. Demand for certain products went down (like customized apparel and promotional items), while other products, like janitorial supplies, became vital for Regency’s onsite customers to stay in business.

Regency’s ability to pivot quickly and secure in-demand products was crucial to keeping its clients in business. The company needed to find ways to streamline administrative work, like bill paying and receiving payments, to improve its customers’ experience and increase their buying power.

By embracing value pricing and time-saving services like Melio, accountants and accounting firms can now offer their clients this kind of agility. You’ll have the time and resources to provide higher-quality service, helping your clients move where the market takes them and gain an advantage over their competitors.

Today, Regency uses Melio to automate check writing, onboard suppliers, and stock new supplies faster and with greater ease. With Melio helping it save time and quickly pivot to new supply demands, Regency has increased its overall revenue by 30%.

“I estimate that we save at least two hours a day just on the manual input of invoices details,” said Mason Sagan, founder of Regency.

Similarly, accountants have seen demand for various services change in response to COVID-19 and other disruptors. Solutions like Melio allow you to react to these changes swiftly, helping you continue to deliver awesome results for your clients—no matter how much their needs evolve.

Accounting awesomeness made easy

Make the value pricing era awesome for your accounting career or firm by putting time back in the day, onboarding clients faster, and improving business agility. Learn how unified digital payment solutions from Melio help you create more value for clients at Melio Accountants. 

Start using Melio today >

The post 3 Ways Accountants Can Get Awesome Results In the Value Pricing Era appeared first on Going Concern.

However ...

Even the most laser-focused, bottom-line-oriented accountant is missing something in his or her new pandemic work life. “Work hard, play hard” is now just “work hard alone in your apartment.” And in a lot of ways it kinda sucks. The energy isn’t the same. The competition isn’t as obvious; the drive wanes when it’s just you.

Working from home might not be ideal for future CPAs, but what can we do about it? 

The answer is, you have to do something. Accounting firms face the huge challenge right now of keeping talent. They can’t afford to have any more staff move on after they’ve gotten their CPAs. The office might have changed, but you still have to keep your talent happy.

The answer, according to experts at Dayshape, an AI-powered planning platform used by top 10 global firms, is to become a more sensitive, compassionate firm (Sensitive??? Stay with us. All will be explained.) while also delivering an office culture people actually like, making work the reward, and automating to make it all happen.  

When you put energy into all four of these strategies, you’ll create a firm that talent will be scrambling over themselves to be a part of. 

Let’s take a look at why these strategies are so important in our chaotic world. 

Get sensitive

Accounting firms aren’t well-known for their pronounced compassionate streak. 

Not saying accountants aren’t compassionate. It’s just that you might call it a latent tendency in an environment driven by bottom lines. That needs to change because everyone, and I mean everyone, is feeling fragile right now. Let that emotionally loaded word sink in a minute. 

Fragile? 

Who wants to think they’re fragile when they built their career around 14-hour days and all-nighters during busy season? Accountants are anything but fragile. 

Except that was before a pandemic forced us into home offices with no non-Zoom colleague interaction whatsoever. Now, we’re all a little bit fragile, including partners, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can create a strategy around it. 

A strategy could be as simple as asking, “How are you?” but going a little further, pressing after the typical “Fine” answer and letting your team know that they can tell you how they’re really doing.

If this sounds like an infantile strategy to retain talent, you’re thinking from the pre-pandemic mindset. In a pandemic mindset, you can’t underestimate the power of relating emotionally, because we’re all starved for connection right now. 

If you’re sitting in your apartment with your cat, staring at a screen all day, and someone asks with real curiosity how you’re doing, that jolt of warmth will stand in for the late-night pizza and coffee breaks. A little genuine human compassion goes a long way. 

Learn this valuable skill, make your firm known for it, and talent will lean in your direction because they won’t be able to help themselves. 

Nurture your office culture

Whether your office culture was legendary like at WeWork, or a fairly normal culture centered around impromptu singalongs of Toto’s 1982 pop classic “Africa” and an easygoing “ask anything” policy, no doubt you had at least some culture back at your brick-and-mortar office. A culture that’s been replaced by the incessant chirping of crickets as you sit in the blue glow of your screen entering figure after figure into endless spreadsheets. 

Instead of impromptu singalongs, office culture now has to be a little more planned. 

Keeping a dedicated “random” channel going with aimless chatter about everything from how funny clients can be on Zoom to the huge number of tax returns you snatched up on your last game of “Zombie Accountant” provides a good release from monotony. 

You might even find this random channel facilitates a broader conversation than what was possible in pre-COVID days when the chatter often occurred among the same people. Could the work-from-home culture actually be more inclusive, less cliquish than the pre-COVID office? Hey, why not? Accountants like silver linings as much as the next person.

Make work the reward

Because most of our hours on Earth are spent either sleeping or working, your talent needs to have happy feelings on their commute to the office. 

Of course, in COVID times, there’s no office and no commute so … what now? 

What’s the point of work? Money? Yes, duh! But there’s also that special something that gets the accountant’s heart involved. For many accountants, pre-pandemic, it was the fact that there was a home away from home with a culture that they could count on. Now that everybody’s actually home, something else has to spark that feeling. More than ever, that thing has to be the work itself. Not just the money (we already know how everyone feels about that) but the type of work.

Any CPA can tell you that certain projects grab us by the gonads more than others. Who in your firm likes to work for nonprofits? Who gets excited about seeing a brand-new startup on its way? Now is the time to focus on giving your talent the work that makes them wake up, take notice, and care. 

Fairer, better, more relevant projects for everyone, women and minorities included, is crucial at a time like this. The firms that are known for making tailored job assignments are the firms that will get and keep the talent. 

Automation

Automation can help you achieve all the above.

According to Andrew Bone, CEO and co-founder of Dayshape, there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to automation.

“People hear automation, and they worry about biases being reinforced. But automation in scheduling can actually take bias out of the equation by ensuring work is assigned based on predetermined criteria like skills, certifications, or independence requirements—not based on who you know or don’t,” he said.

Automation can help ensure that your talent is getting better, more relevant assignments that are spread out over the team, limiting burnout. Automation also frees up time by taking over repetitive tasks that don’t need human input and accomplishing other tasks like budget tracking more efficiently. 

This freed-up time can be used to check in more often with your team to make sure no one’s about to plunge off a cliff … or bolt to the cooler firm on the other side of the world.

Dayshape is an AI-powered planning platform helping professional services firms strike the right balance between profitability, client service, and staff happiness.

To learn more about how Dayshape can help your firm plan, manage, and adapt during our new WFH culture, visit Dayshape and be sure to sign up for their monthly newsletter.

The post Get Sensitive or Else: How to Keep Talent When the World’s Gone Crazy appeared first on Going Concern.

Some of the best accounting and finance talent had already gone remote, eschewing traditional work hours and stale coffee for the liberties of working from home through freelance and/or temporary gigs. And as businesses roll out their “return to the office” plans, other companies are leaning in entirely to the remote life, which will surely redefine what hiring needs and practices mean. 

These factors have created a challenging recruiting environment, forcing businesses to fight with competitors over an increasingly shrinking pool of accounting and finance talent.

But it’s possible to transform the gig/remote economy into an advantage for your company, harnessing it to actually improve the quality of accounting and finance work at your firm. You just need the right mindset—and the right partner.

Hire accounting and finance professionals faster and from a pre-vetted talent pool

Speed is often the most critical factor in accounting and finance recruiting. While, ideally, you want to acquire talent well before (or at the exact moment) you actually need it, even the most sophisticated talent pipeline and company timelines will frequently be thrown off course by unexpected events. 

When you sign a new client, they’ll want you to begin working for them immediately—and they don’t care that you’re still going through résumés to staff up or to replace workers who have left the company or are on leave.

The gig/remote economy offers the opportunity for you to sign talent faster—no protracted negotiations over salary and benefits, no fears that a competitor will snatch them away at the last moment—and put them to work when and for however long you need them. But it’s hard to do that on your own.

“You should be able to plug somebody in to play right off the bat,” added Alex Loewenstein, head of CPA practice at Paro. “So you’re billing hours to clients immediately, you’re not training them, onboarding them, taking resources away to get them up to speed.” 

Working with a partner like Paro, you can find and acquire top accounting and finance talent at lightning speed—improving your service quality while reducing the recruiting burden on your organization. 

“I’d say 60 to 70% of our clients hire the first person we introduce them to,” said Jon Repka, vice president of sales at Paro. “We can cut a ton of time out of your recruiting process, allowing you to get up and running with top-tier talent very quickly.”

Another advantage of the gig/remote economy is the ability to expand your talent search beyond the barriers of your region. Here again, Paro can help—leveraging its network of the best remote accounting and finance talent to find the right person for you, no matter where they work and live.

Build your business with better accounting talent and financial expertise

The gig/remote economy allows you to source and hire a better breed of accountants and finance professionals. Because today’s remote workers can take on multiple clients, you don’t have to worry as much about losing talent to your competitors—they can work with both of you. And even when you do lose out on talent, you have a larger pool from which to find replacements. 

But while there are great advantages to having faster access to a wider range of talent, the gig/remote economy has also compounded the complexity of vetting candidates. As the haystack continues to grow, finding that needle is only going to get harder.

Working with Paro makes that job much easier. When Paro says they’ll only offer you the best accounting and finance talent, they mean it—just 1.5% of applicants are accepted into their network. 

“Somebody comes in, they apply, we review their resume. If they pass that step, we give them a competency test to evaluate their financial knowledge. They get through that, they speak to a couple of our folks, we do reference checks, background checks, and give them something in terms of a simulation to present to our team. Only after all that will we add them to our network,” Loewenstein said.

Perhaps an even greater advantage of the gig/remote economy is that it allows you to go beyond just finding great talent, making it easier to find the right talent for your firm or for a particular client or project.

In addition to its intense personal vetting process, Paro uses a sophisticated AI system to match applicants to your needs, helping you find someone with the ideal blend of skills. 

“Our philosophy is, ‘Never say no.’ Whether that means you’ve got a new project you’ve never taken on before or a service line you’ve never explored, through Paro you’ll get the confidence of knowing we’ll always say, ‘Yes, we can get that for you,’” Repka said.

Create long-term relationships with freelance/temporary accounting and finance professionals

One of the greatest threats of the gig/remote economy is the loss of teamwork. With your accountants and finance professionals working far away from each other and often through temporary engagements, collaboration between them and with your permanent workforce is an ongoing challenge.

While its primary function is to match your firm up with the right talent, Paro also serves in a consultancy capacity that can help you mitigate these issues—or even head them off before they become prevalent.

“We’re not going to take your order. We’re going to help you figure out what you need,” Loewenstein said. “We’re going to look at the goals of your engagement and help you figure out who you should really be looking for and what price point you should consider. And we’re going to connect you with them. That precision helps to create longer-lasting, more effective relationships priced at market value.”

Through its advisory function and white-glove commitment to service, Paro consistently goes beyond one-time placements for a single job, with engagements often blossoming into long-term relationships of mutual benefit. And that helps keep teamwork and collaboration alive at your firm.

Partner with Paro and make the gig/remote economy work for you

By leveraging Paro’s network of top-tier remote accounting and finance professionals, you can take advantage of the positive aspects of the remote/gig economy while mitigating its risks and negative impacts.

Whether you need a temporary bump in expertise to handle an acquisition, assistance due to employee turnover, additional bookkeeping help because of seasonality, or something else entirely, Paro will work with you to accommodate your specific needs. For a single tax preparation job, full CFO leadership, and everything in-between, Paro has you covered.

Get the accounting and finance talent you need to consistently win in an inconsistent world—today and for years to come. Connect with Paro now.

Start now >

The post Finding the Best Accounting and Finance Talent In a Gig/Remote Work World appeared first on Going Concern.

Just imagine it! Working from home in your pajamas, setting your own hours, taking Netflix-and-nap breaks. No co-workers bugging you with stories of their latest golf triumphs—no sound at all, really, just silence and solitude and letting your personal hygiene slide …

… wait …

… OK, imagine all of that stuff, but for real and permanent, with no “return to office” plans hitting your inbox in a few weeks.

And the whole WFH thing is just an option, not a requirement, and you can really work from anywhere—which means you can travel. Oh, and imagine you’re getting to pick what you want to work on and who you want to work for, and you’re making more money than you do at your current job.

OK, that’s better.

That dream is a reality for many of the top-tier finance professionals providing freelance CFO leadership, controllership, accounting, bookkeeping, financial planning, analysis, and more as part of Paro’s freelance/temp placement network.

We know what you’re thinking: “I’ve looked into the freelance thing before, and it’s just not for me.” But Paro is different. In this article, we’ll show you how—and we’ll start by getting straight to the good stuff.

Find out what you’re really worth—and then earn it

Though he wasn’t exactly the greatest role model, a (fictional) clown once taught some bad guys a lesson by telling them, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” It wasn’t long after that he was sliding down a giant pile of cash. (Then some other stuff happened, but we don’t need to get into that.)

Unfortunately, many accounting and finance professionals don’t get paid anywhere near their real market value. If you’re not sure what your value should be, you can check the salary guide from Robert Half or various other calculators and resources online.

“I cut my teeth at a Big 4 firm,” said Jon Repka, vice president of sales at Paro. “I was told what I was worth, which was 15% of my bill rate at the time. But on an open marketplace, how much should a senior auditor with 15 years of experience go for on an hourly basis? A lot of people guess, some overbill—really, the vast majority underbill. But with Paro, you’ll know exactly what you’re worth, and we’ll do everything we can to get it for you.” 

Even if you’re one of those lucky so-and-sos who is actually getting paid what you’re worth, just think of how much more you could make by taking on the occasional high-paying freelance gig when times are slow?

The amount you earn will vary based on a number of factors, and Paro will help you identify accreditations or certain types of experience that will boost your rate. But here’s a general sense of what professionals in Paro’s network get paid, broken down by job title:

CPA Firm Support:

• CAS: up to $30/hr
• Tax preparation: up to $50/hr
• Prep and review: up to $60/hr
• Review: up to $75/hr

Small Business (SMB) Support:

• Bookkeeping/accounting: up to $40/hr
• Controller: up to $65/hr

Take the fear out of freelance

OK, so technically taking the “fear” out of “freelance” leaves you with “elnce,” but you get what we mean.

If you’ve never done it before, taking the plunge into the world of freelance accounting can be a bit frightening. But don’t worry—Paro takes care of all the scary stuff for you. And as a famous (fictional) sensei once said, “It’s OK to lose to an opponent. It’s never OK to lose to fear. Now go wax my car.”

For those of you who do have some freelance experience, you know you don’t always get a ton of choice in the companies you work for. Inevitably, you wind up dealing with people who aren’t your type (unless “people who take six months to pay your invoice” is your type). And sometimes you sign on for a job you thought you were qualified for—but when you get there, it turns out you’re in a bit over your head.

You won’t have to worry about any of that when you work with Paro. Paro has a sophisticated matching system that leverages years of expertise and artificial intelligence to help align your skills and interests with a client’s needs. 

“Paro has given me the platform to find clients that are a perfect match for my services,” said Kristie Woods, a CPA and member of Paro’s talent network. 

You’ll have the full freedom to set your own rate and hours, control the number of projects you work on at a time, and turn your availability off and on at your leisure. And once you’ve begun working with a client, you can rely on continuous support from the Paro Home Team. 

“Paro handles all of the marketing, billing, and collections for me, so I can fully focus on my clients’ accounting needs. They are great to work with,” Woods said.

Get your life back

A famous (fictional) teacher once told a student who got so caught up thinking about the future that he failed to continue standing on his head while telekinetically lifting some rocks and a robot, “Control, control, you must learn control!”

For accounting and finance professionals, control means recognizing when it’s time to put your nose to the grindstone—and when it’s time to work a little less and live a little more.

“Someone I talked to recently said, ‘When I was in public accounting, during busy season I used to drop my daughter off at school and I wouldn’t see her until the next day,’” said Alex Loewenstein, head of CPA practice at Paro. “One day her daughter said, ‘Mommy, why don’t I see you anymore?’ She left public accounting to spend more time with her family, but she’s still working with firms during the season because it’s great money.”

Teaming up with Paro gives you all that freedom and more. Want to work 60 hours a week and—unlike in public accounting—actually get rich doing it? No problem. Want to take a few jobs here and there and spend the rest of your time with family or video games? You got it. Need some time off to travel the world—or play video games even more? Paro has your back.

Perhaps most importantly, Paro gives you the freedom to work with the firms of your choice rather than for them. Through Paro’s white-labeling services, you’ll get the prestige of representing a big firm (or the comfort of representing a smaller one) but you’ll do it on your terms, picking the jobs and industries you want to work on while passing on the ones you don’t.

Paro can’t help you mentally project a hologram of yourself across the galaxy where you can fight your nephew in a duel that’s really just a distraction to give your friends time to escape from an assault by an evil empire—yet—but we still think the teacher we mentioned earlier would be impressed by you exercising that level of control.

What are you waiting for?

The potential to earn more money, work with better clients, get more freedom—there’s no downside to checking out Paro and applying to join their network. Go pay them a visit and see what they’re all about. 

As a famous (fictional) computer hacker said as he offered a newbie a choice between a red and a blue pill, “I’m trying to free your mind. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

So walk through it, already! Trust us on this one—that blue pill may look tempting, but it tastes like unpaid overtime. 

Learn more or join the Paro talent network >

The post Yes, You Can Make More Money as a Freelance Accountant or Finance Professional appeared first on Going Concern.

Here is the letter:

Integrity and honesty are the foundations of public accounting. With great trust, the public and the Securities and Exchange Commission rely upon the information provided by accounting firms. An accounting firm thus holds substantial responsibilities and obligations to society. Among hundreds of accounting firms, Ernst & Young is one of the biggest four.

But at this one of the hardest moments of our history, EY is not being honest to its employees. EY falsely framed all the separations that have happened during these two weeks as performance-based separations. This statement is not honest. A lot of the employees who are currently on “performance improvement programs” (PIP) have not been let go. A lot of the people who had good written feedback were fired without prior notice. Those unfortunate people will then bear the name of “underperformers” when they leave the firm. At this hardest moment, EY is sadly manipulating the public’s perception of its secretive layoff.

We are angry. We are angry because EY lied to its employees. If we take the following statement as true: “If an employee has serious performance issues, such employee is on a PIP,” then the statement that “if an employee is not on a PIP, such employee does not have serious performance issues” must be also true. Then, we are asking this question now: Why are the low performers on PIPs still with the firm while those employees with good reviews were let go? We need an answer.

If you cannot accept that an accounting firm can announce to the public that you are let go because your performance was significantly below your peers all of a sudden; if you cannot accept that EY is not cutting off the low performers on PIPs first; you should demand an explanation from EY because you could be the next victim.

We can never be satisfied as long as any one of these employees is the victim of EY’s dishonesty!

Related article:

Layoff Watch ’20: Apparently It’s Doomsday for Some at EY

The post An Open Letter to EY Management appeared first on Going Concern.

While the majority of the data collected from the survey pertains to flexible and remote work programs within accounting and consulting firms, this year ConvergenceCoaching has added questions to learn more about firms’ recent remote work shifts and what they project for remote and flexible work and service as they re-open their offices. This includes questions that refer to your practice before COVID-19, and others that ask you to imagine what might be different in the future based on your experiences during the pandemic.

ConvergenceCoaching is committed to helping firms succeed through the adoption of remote and flexible work. Part of their commitment is to study the accounting profession’s remote and flex progression, hence the reason why this survey was created.

The data from this survey will be summarized and used to identify trends that will be published in various publications and educational presentations. When you share your contact information, you will receive a copy of the survey results and could be contacted to clarify answers. ConvergenceCoaching will not disclose anything specific related to your firm’s participation in the survey without your explicit permission.

[Ed. note: This survey should be completed by accounting and consulting firms only and only one response per firm. Please respond only if you own or work within an accounting firm and coordinate between your managing partner, firm administrator/firm manager/COO, and HR professional to avoid duplicate submissions.]

The post How’s Your Remote Plan Going? What Worked and What Didn’t? It’s Time to Move Forward appeared first on Going Concern.

(By “dreams,” we’re speaking figuratively—we’re not talking about your recurring nightmare where your calculator chases you around a maze until you find a power pellet, which allows you to turn around and eat the calculator. You should probably see someone about that, BTW.)

Thankfully, there’s a new class of analytics platforms with digital transformation as their endgame that do a lot of that work for you, putting more time back in your day to do high-value tasks that move your firm forward and get you noticed.

The solution is called analytic process automation (APA), and it marks the convergence of analytics, data science, and process automation.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some benefits of APA and show how they can ultimately have a positive impact on your career. Fair warning—when you finish this article, you’re really going to want to make sure your organization has APA. And, unfortunately, you can’t just pop into the digital app store of your choice and grab it for 99 cents (or free with ads).

So we strongly encourage you to share this article with your boss, or whomever makes software purchasing decisions at your firm. Tell them Going Concern sent you. It won’t help, but we’ll take any cheap plug we can get. 

(If your bosses aren’t big readers, just send them the link to this video that quickly explains APA.)

And while the bigwigs are being wowed by all the oohs and ahhs of APA, it’s never too early to start evangelizing the benefits of automated analytics to your fellow analysts and co-workers. There’s power in numbers—but we don’t have to tell you that. If you need help, use an Alteryx starter kit to get the rest of your team on board.

Start the day off right with accounting and financial insights

Many accounting and finance professionals start their workday off with a hearty breakfast (and sometimes lunch, and sometimes dinner) of searching for, putting together, and attempting to understand data. 

This is bad because, according to a stat we just made up, data is high in cholesterol and sodium, and is responsible for 48% of all paper cuts suffered in North America.

It’s also bad because, by the time you’ve got the insights you need to actually do the thing you were trying to do, you’ve received three more requests from various departments to perform additional tasks. And that means the next day is going to start the same way, with the ultimate result being either: a) you’ll miss every episode of Conan this week and still turn everything in late, or b) you’ll be calling your recruiter so often, you’ll need to put her on your family cellphone plan. 

APA simplifies analytics and data science, using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to allow accountants and finance professionals to start their days with the insights they need. It also enables you to more easily use data to forecast the future, rather than just report historical trends. 

With APA, you can quickly and easily retrieve actionable answers to the questions you now have to dig through data to find. And, often, the answers to questions you didn’t even know to ask will be there waiting for you when you need them, allowing you to jump straight into work that helps your firm increase revenue, reduce costs, and find opportunities for growth.

Alteryx—the pioneer of APA—offers an all-in-one platform that makes accessing these insights easy for everyone, democratizing analytics through simple interfaces that don’t require coding or developing algorithms.

Get faster, more accurate accounting and finance results through process automation

There is only one catch, and that is Catch-GC. (Short for “Going Concern.” And that’s cheap plug No. 2.)

Catch-GC is defined as follows:

• To be successful, accounting and finance professionals must complete their work quickly, which is sure to lead to errors.
• To be successful, accounting and finance professionals must complete their work without errors, which is sure to be slow.
• If the first two sound unfairly contradictory, that’s because they are.

Thankfully, the Alteryx APA platform optimizes and automates processes in ways that can finally solve Catch-GC, helping you perform tasks quickly AND with a low risk of errors. Alteryx APA creates a single, end-to-end flow of data between departments and teams, avoiding the stopgaps and errors associated with manual handoff. And it enables full transparency and traceability, so any errors that are made can be spotted and corrected long before they result in negative business impacts.

Many organizations are already realizing big gains in accounting and finance through the Alteryx APA platform:

• Siemens can now process 50 million rows of financial data in mere minutes.
• Chick-fil-A reduced time spent processing tax data for 1099-Ks from 10 hours to 10 seconds.
• Western Union can now derive essential customer insights from its financial data in hours instead of weeks.

Quickly and organically develop skills that today’s accounting and finance pros need

Here’s the worst kept secret in the business world: Employees hate (and, therefore, don’t get much out of) forced training.

Accounting and finance professionals are no exception. Sure, there may be the occasional program you get genuinely excited about. But, most of the time, your top priority is to get through the training as quickly as possible, so you can go back to doing your job. (“Actually learning something” is much further down the list, underneath “Remembering to DVR Judge Judy” and “Trying not to aggravate your carpal tunnel by clicking through the modules too quickly.”)

Using the Alteryx APA platform allows you to develop essential data and analytics skills naturally—no struggling to stay awake through training videos hosted by z-list actors required. If you are already familiar with using spreadsheets to do things like input data, this will be a breeze for you. 

Experience is the best teacher (besides Mr. Feeny), and Alteryx makes gaining that experience fast and easy. As you click through its intuitive interfaces, you’ll start to understand analytics on a deeper level than mandatory training programs can provide. 

Fueled by the thrill of solving problems quickly, you’ll discover tricks, shortcuts, and tips that you’ll want to share with co-workers. In turn, they’ll be sharing their own advice with you. Before long, pervasive learning will organically spread throughout your team and across your organization. You’ll depend less on IT and data specialists, and—often without realizing it—upskill yourself to find and use the insights you need to be more productive and effective at your job.

One of the Big 4 firms (we can’t tell you which one, but we’re betting there’s a 25% chance you can guess it) successfully upskilled 50,000 people using Alteryx APA—across accounting, finance, tax, audit, HR, and client service delivery.

Spread the word and get Alteryx APA at your firm

We warned you. You’ve made it to the end of the article, and now all you can think is, “How do I get me some of that sweet, sweet Alteryx APA?!” And with the ability to start your day with essential insights, automate processes so you can work faster and with fewer errors, and easily learn skills that can advance your career, no one can blame you.

You can get the ball rolling by sharing this article with your bosses, or by sending them a link to this video and/or this white paper that explains Alteryx APA in more depth. And for those raring to get their hands on automated analytics with the skills they already have, you can hook them up with a starter kit. 

Be sure to tell them that Alteryx APA delivers big ROI across top-line growth, bottom-line returns, efficiency gains, and perpetual upskilling of their workforce. And that thousands of companies globally use Alteryx APA to drive human-centered digital transformation.

If all else fails, just be frank. Let your bosses know that Alteryx APA is the ultimate solution for getting your head out of the data and enabling you to perform your job more effectively. (And you know it’s true because you read it on Going Concern. Cheap plug No. 3 achieved!)

Watch the video >

Get the white paper > 

The post Get Your Mind Out of the Data with Modern Analytics (So Your Accounting or Finance Career Can Take Off) appeared first on Going Concern.

But it’s not like you can just spend a summer at Camp Data and learn everything you need in a few months—while sharing spooky campfire tales about the spreadsheet with the hook for a hand.

(Side note: It’s not quite summer camp, but if you’re a new graduate or recently lost your job, you can apply for free access to data science and analytics training courses through the Advancing Data & Analytics Potential Together (ADAPT) program. S’mores not included.)

Becoming data-fluent will require you to shift the way you think about data, allowing you to have a bigger picture view of your work and its effect on the business. Then you’ll take your coveted spreadsheet skills and expand on them to learn modern analytics.

We searched high and low (mostly high, because it was “the floor is lava” day at the office) to find the most important data and analytics skills for accounting and finance professionals. Here’s our list—along with some advice on how to jumpstart your skill-building journey.

Build predictive model forecasting skills

Predictive analytics means taking historical data and analyzing it with algorithms or tools to make educated guesses about future events.

It’s not hard to see how this would be useful in the accounting and finance function, particularly when it comes to forecasts. The ability to accurately predict the outcomes of horse races and sporting events transformed Biff Tannen from a car-washin’, tracksuit-wearin’ loser into a casino-runnin’, hot tub-soakin’ fat cat who owned half of Hill Valley (it also turned him into a murderer, but let’s ignore that part for now). 

Unfortunately, most of us can’t rely on a future version of ourselves traveling back in time to give us a sports almanac that helps us cheat our way to fame and fortune. We have to make do with building and using forecasting models that can intelligently predict future market behavior.

And if you’re thinking your fond memories of model airplane club are going to help, you’re in for quite the shock. Depending on what you’re trying to predict, the method for creating your forecasting model will vary, but the process can generally be divided into three steps:

(WARNING: We’re about to get super technical here. If you start to get lost, feel free to skip to the next section. We promise not to tell.)

1. Transform “seasonal” data into “stationary” data. This essentially means removing any time elements that affect your data. For example, if you’re running a car dealership and your sales spike during the annual President’s Day sale (because buying a car is the best way to celebrate freedom, apparently), you might need to strip out that fluctuation in order to achieve stationary data. This step sometimes involves the use of linear regression.

2. Build a time-series model. This means first selecting the appropriate “base model” (options of which include the naive model, the moving average model, and the exponential smoothing model, which sounds like a list of people who routinely swipe left on our dating profiles). From there, you’ll probably need to implement an ARIMA model, which is an acronym for a bunch of words that we don’t understand, but hey, that’s why we’re giving you links.

3. Experiment with different models and determine which one is the most accurate. You’ll actually need to perform Step 2 multiple times, which will leave you holding several different time-series models. So the final step is to figure out which one of them works best and then put it into play. Perhaps the fastest and easiest way to do this is by calculating mean absolute percent error (MAPE), which you may actually remember from your college statistics courses. That six-figure tuition debt you racked up is now totally worth it.

If you’re thinking, “That sounds way too complicated and outside of my skill set,” then congrats, you’re reading the right article. No one said this stuff was easy—but it is way easier than you think and there’s training and technology available to help you come out on top.

Our friends at Alteryx can give you a huge assist, providing all kinds of educational resources and training courses. The Alteryx Designer Knowledgebase offers articles on forecasting models and many other topics, and experts regularly post informative blogs in the Alteryx Community that can be a great help.

Perform advanced revenue analytics

Accounting and finance professionals are using data and analytics tools to look at revenue in new ways—helping to create innovative strategies for increasing cash flow that both make the business stronger and increase their individual importance within the organization.

“Advanced revenue analytics” is a broad category that may encompass many different algorithms, models, and tools—so it’s pretty much impossible to explain “how to do it” within the confines of this article. (We might be able to explain it if we wrote a whole book on the topic, but we’re way too busy with our wildly unpopular fanfiction series about “What If Spider-Man Married Black Cat Instead of Mary Jane” to have time for that.)

What we can do here is show you some areas where advanced revenue analytics are currently being applied. From there, you can work backward to learn how to use analytics to perform each of these three tasks—or whatever revenue-related metric or forecast you want to create.

1. Smarter geographical pricing. If you work at a larger company that spans multiple regions or countries, you may have experienced the difficulties of setting appropriate prices in relation to geography. Advanced revenue analytics can help solve that problem, allowing you to dynamically adjust prices for different locations based on a wide variety of factors—and do so with minimal risk to profitability.

2. Data-driven promotions. It’s a given fact that promotions and marketing have the power to increase revenue. But, for most of human history, measuring the direct impact of a specific promotion or campaign has been the equivalent of playing “Guess Who?” blindfolded—you can’t be sure if you’re winning, and even if you are, you have no clue how you’re doing it. Advanced revenue analytics can bring more clarity to promotion and marketing metrics, allowing the business to examine the effect of certain strategies from a wide variety of angles—and then optimize campaigns accordingly.

3. Optimizing physical and digital shelf-space. Putting your best-selling products and services front and center is common sense in the business world, whether that means a supermarket giving Cap’n Crunch the most shelf space (even though Cinnamon Toast Crunch is so obviously superior) or a nerdy news site putting all the Star Wars articles above-the-fold. It’s often considered too dangerous to put newer or less-popular items in these coveted spaces—but advanced revenue analytics changes the equation. Using certain tools and algorithms, your organization can move its physical and digital products around and create small-scale tests to measure the change in revenue with little risk—or it can even go zero risk by running these tests in simulated environments.

Alteryx again offers many great resources on this and other related topics, helping you master a variety of advanced revenue analytics skills through training courses and content like this slide share on accelerating revenue growth.

(Extra credit) Learn basic SQL programming

Take a deep breath—you don’t need to learn code to use modern analytics. Today’s tools automate the gathering, prepping, blending, analyzing, and auditing of data for you, transforming what would’ve been hours and hours of coding work (not to mention hours of clumsy data manipulation using spreadsheets) into just a few clicks.

So we’re not suggesting that you join five poorly-groomed dudes to ignite a billion-dollar compression algorithm war in Silicon Valley. But picking up a basic understanding of SQL—the most popular language used to connect and facilitate communication between databases—will help you understand data better and do wonders for your career.

There are about a gazillion resources out there that can teach you basic SQL programming, so we won’t insult your Googling abilities by providing any links. But while you’re out there, can you do us a favor and figure out if most people pronounce it “es-cue-el” or “sequel?” We’re still working on our official stance, and we want to get to the point where we can be all militant and scornful about it like we are with GIF. (We won’t reveal our opinion outright, but know not to expect any Christmas jifts from us anytime soon.)

Taking the next step

Predictive model forecasting, advanced revenue analytics, and making the shift from spreadsheets to analytics workflows will put you way ahead of your accounting and finance peers—but in case that’s not enough homework for you, here are a few other skills you might want to look into:

• Cost optimization
• Real-time model development
• Data visualization

Throughout this article, we’ve talked about how Alteryx can help you build these skills and advance your career. But the best way to really get your data and analytics motor running is to encourage your organization to start using the Alteryx platform.

The Alteryx platform delivers end-to-end automation of analytics, machine learning, and data science processes, allowing you to learn data and analytics skills faster and then do more with your newfound abilities than you ever would’ve thought possible.

Be sure to take advantage of Alteryx’s full library of resources and apply for free access to training courses and more through the ADAPT program. To learn even more about how Alteryx can make your job easier and help you use data and analytics to take your career to the next level, check out these two webinars:

Webinar: Reshaping Demand Forecasts for the New Normal >

Webinar: Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Automation >

The post What Data and Analytics Skills Do You Need to Advance Your Accounting or Finance Career? appeared first on Going Concern.

All of these things were true at the end of 2019, and that was less than half a year ago. So why does it feel like another lifetime?

The events of the last few months have put us in a kind of time dilation bubble, where massive, transformative changes occur on a seemingly daily basis. As millions of us sheltered in place and social distanced, it felt like the world was on hold (a feeling compounded by the countless hours we spent actually on hold, gaining a growing but begrudging respect for the music of Kenny G.) 

Meanwhile, businesses scrambled to give us the tools we needed to continue to work, play, and not drive each other completely insane while at home. Many of these solutions had been in the works for years, but the time bubble drastically accelerated their development, rollout, and use. 

We’re now living in a world with many technologies that weren’t predicted to be available or prevalent until 2025.

We won’t pretend we’re smart enough to understand the full scope of this technology time warp nor its impact on accounting and finance. We’ll leave that to future scholars and the countless books they’re sure to write about this phenomenon, at least two of which are sure to be adapted into bad-but-somehow-irresistible Tom Cruise movies. 

But we are smart enough to look around the accounting and finance world and observe how some things are a lot different than we ever could have predicted at the start of 2020. Things like …

We got more done by not going to work

In a recent Gartner survey, 74% of CFOs said they planned to shift at least 5% of their employees to permanent remote work positions. Nearly 25% of them said they’d transition at least one out of five workers to full-time remote. 

So there’s a good chance your Spider-Man pajamas could become your official work uniform (just don’t wear the mask while you’re on video calls). But, if that happens, there’s an even better chance that you’ll be just as effective at your job, if not more. A recent study showed that overall U.S. worker productivity has gone up by 47% in 2020 compared to 2019. 

Within the finance function specifically, 90% of CFOs in the Gartner survey said they expected the increase in remote work to cause “minimal disruptions to their accounting close process, with almost all activities able to be executed off-site.” 

These stats certainly don’t “close the books” (see what we did there?) on the in-office/remote work productivity debate—an oft-cited study from 2012 showed that workers are more productive performing “dull” tasks in the office and “creative” tasks at home. But these numbers do, at the very least, help to dispel the terribly outdated “while the cat’s away” theory of work. 

It turns out, accountants and finance professionals are not children. You guys might eat ice cream for dinner, make some prank phone calls, and learn some naughty words staying up past your bedtime to watch Kimmel, but you don’t need a babysitter when it comes to doing your job. Whether you’re in your PJs and trading your favorite “Savage Challenge” videos with co-workers between tasks or in full suit-and-tie at the office, the math still comes out the same. 

We made smarter use of our data

For accounting and finance professionals, having fast access to the right data has always been critical. And, as the world has changed and grown more complex, it’s become even more essential for employers to provide you with tools that allow you to easily get the information you need when you need it (and the ability to write off your WoW subscription as a business expense).

So it’s no wonder that—even as overall IT budgets are shrinking—investments in analytics technologies are stable or going up. 

A pre-COVID IDC study revealed that advanced spreadsheet users spent 26 hours per week working in spreadsheets and wasted eight hours a week repeating the same data tasks. No wonder you guys drink so much Red Bull. 

While we don’t yet know the full effect of the time bubble and increased spending on analytics solutions, we do know that a new class of technology solutions is putting valuable insights at your fingertips while automating tedious data tasks. According to one report, using modern analytics allows you to complete financial forecasts 74% sooner, make decisions 25% faster, and improve financial report accuracy by 16%.

That’s a lot of time put back in your day. And time, as they say, is money—money you can spend on the things that really matter, like pre-ordering The Last of Us Part II. So, in a way, if your employers are using modern analytics solutions from companies like Alteryx, they are paying for your video game habits. (But you should try to expense them anyway and see how it goes.)

“Free” stopped being a four-letter word

Remember when encyclopedia sets cost $1,000? No? Man, you guys make us feel old.

For the first 50,000 years of human history (give or take), information and education were expensive products that only the wealthy elite could afford, akin to the contemporary trend of eating gold for no reason. In the U.S., the first free public school system and free public high school didn’t exist until 1837, and the federal Department of Education wasn’t founded until 1867. 

We still place a premium on education, demonstrated by the rising costs of college tuition (and, for those of us who study international relations by watching 90 Day Fiancé, by the rising costs of cable TV). 

But we’ve come a very long way. Today, if you can afford a high-speed internet connection or a local internet cafe, you can access a virtually unlimited and ever-expanding stack of information. And as ad- and user-supported sites like YouTube and Wikipedia have become more prevalent, the economic barriers to information have further deteriorated.

This was a trend we always expected would continue—but, again, the time bubble sped it up substantially, as a seemingly endless stream of paid services were put on discount or given away for free. 

Among the list of things that are now free:

• Library of kids’ shows from Amazon Video;
• Online streaming of select Broadway musicals;
• Tech support from Support.com;
• Social media marketing through Hootsuite;
• Daily virtual workout sessions from Planet Fitness;
• The Kahoot! virtual learning platform (free to schools until they reopen); and
• 450 courses from Ivy League schools.

Not to mention, Alteryx provided us with a bunch of those sweet, sweet data and analytics services for free or at discounted rates.

Training and skill-building became more essential (and more available)

With so many employees now working from home, businesses are looking harder at training programs to ensure their workers’ skills stay fresh—and companies that provide those services are responding by giving many of them away for free.

For example, through the Advancing Data & Analytics Potential Together (ADAPT) program, new graduates and unemployed data workers can get access to free data science and analytics learning courses, an Alteryx Designer license, a community of thousands of Alteryx users, and 1:1 virtual support from Alteryx associates.

Alteryx also offers webinars, ebooks, starter kits, and a wide variety of other resources that will help you learn to make smarter use of your data. Through the Alteryx Academy, you can participate in live, self-paced, predictive, classroom, and certification training courses. 

What will 2021 look like for accounting and financial professionals?

With so many uncertainties and the rapid pace of change, it’s hard to make any realistic long-term predictions about the future of accounting and finance. (Doc Brown, Professor Farnsworth, and Miss Cleo were all unavailable for comment.)

All we can say is that certain trends are probably going to continue—so imagine there’s a “more than likely” in front of all the following predictions (because we’re too lazy to type it over and over): 

• Companies will keep investing in cloud-based accounting and online client portals.
• More processes will become automated, allowing you to focus on higher-value work.
• Data and analytics skills will become increasingly valuable and sought-after.

To that last point, you might be wondering: What specific data and analytics skills do I need in order to stay relevant and competitive? That’s probably a topic for another article. In brief, however, businesses are looking for accounting and finance professionals with skills in:

• Predictive model forecasting
• Advanced revenue analytics
• Cost optimization
• SQL programming
• Real-time model development
• Data visualization

But don’t wait until 2021 or the next time warp scenario. Improving your data and analytics abilities can give your career a boost right now. Start working with companies like Alteryx, and build the skills you’ll need to stay relevant and competitive in the job market today. 

To learn more, register for The Role of Finance in the Digital World, a digital event sponsored by Alteryx and PwC. And check out the links below.

Access data and analytics resources >

Apply for free training through the ADAPT program >

The post How COVID-19 Warped Us Five Years Into the Future—And What That Means for Your Accounting or Finance Career appeared first on Going Concern.

We were hoping to ask Spreadsheets what really gets their wheel of death going—specifically, data management and analytics for tax, audit, office of finance, and accounting. But, just when it appeared that this dream had gone to the place where dreams go to die (aka the GC comments section), serendipity struck.

One of our writers was perusing a Saturday morning garage sale, when there they were. Hiding in the corner behind a dusty VCR and a heavily-bearded Jonathan Taylor Thomas, sorting through a bin of slap bracelets and fanny packs, there stood the ultimate obsolete relic of the 1990s: Spreadsheets, discovered at last.

(By the dubs, if you’ve got friends who are stuck in the past with retro analytics, you can earn enough cash to buy a portable CD player WITH skip protection by referring them to a modern platform.)

It took a good deal of cajoling, but our writer eventually convinced Spreadsheets to agree to an interview. (We won’t go into the entire sordid tale, but it involved a lot of complex formulas, a lengthy conversation with an animated paper clip, and a sizable donation to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.) What follows is the complete, unedited transcript of that conversation.

Can spreadsheets keep up with the modern business world?

Going Concern: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Spreadsheets. We think it will mean a lot to our readers. But why has it taken you so long to come forward?

Spreadsheets: =SUM(declining employment+shame+was stuck on a floppy disk for 18 years).

GC: That’s hilarious, but please talk normally from now on. Our writers aren’t clever enough to keep that gimmick going for an entire article. 

S: =FINE. Er, sorry. Fine.

GC: Appreciate it. So let’s start with the big question and the main reason we’re here. Why does it take 10 or more clicks for tax, audit, office of finance, and accounting professionals to manage their data or get useful analytics out of you?

S: Where’d you hear that?

GC: The internet. The alley behind a high school gym. In the audience of a pro wrestling match. Pretty much everywhere.

S: <Sighs.> We suppose the larger problem really breaks down into five key issues. We’ll recite them for you, but when you publish this interview, would you mind putting them into a numbered list? That will make them easier to read and should improve SEO.

GC: Um, sure.

S: Oh, and separate it with a catchy subhead, something like …

Five reasons spreadsheets don’t get along with accounting and finance data

1. We don’t like blending different data types or data from multiple sources. We’re not the Dalai Lama—how do you expect us to keep the peace between data from Access, SQL, the cloud, social media, and other spreadsheets?

2. We can’t even get along with each other. If you’re trying to juggle cross-updating spreadsheets and tabs within spreadsheets linked by VLOOKUPs and other functions, you probably won’t like the results. But a #NAME? or two never hurt anyone, right?

3. We like our data “dirty.” When you bring us data that’s fraught with errors or is incomplete, we like to keep it that way. You can try to cleanse, restructure, and reformat the data all you want—but we’re not gonna make it easy on you.

4. We can only take so much automation. We like our capabilities like we like our sports cars—manual. We’re down for a little automation here and there, but only through a perfect macro or a bug-free Visual Basic script. And even then—much like with our classic car driving record—there’s gonna be a lot of crashes.

5. We don’t like making predictions. Every yoga retreat we’ve ever been told us to “stay in the present,” yet you guys keep asking us to deliver predictive insights. Make up your minds, people!

GC: Given all of that, does it surprise you that so many financial and accounting professionals are moving away from spreadsheets and embracing modern analytics platforms like Alteryx? 

S: It doesn’t surprise us, but it does hurt our feelings. We’re tried and mostly true, trusted and only a little bit busted! What do those solutions have that we don’t? Wait, that was a rhetorical question. Please don’t answer it. But if you really have to, we’d appreciate it if you didn’t call attention to it with another big, bold subhead, because that would be very …

What modern analytics platforms have that spreadsheets don’t

S: … rude. Ugh, nevermind. Go ahead, please—tell us what these tools have that we don’t. 

GC: For starters, modern analytics platforms are great at knocking down data silos. They make it much easier to build data sets—even if you’re working with different file formats, database connections, or cloud data stores. 

S: Um, silos are used to store grain. If you go knocking them all down with your fancy analytics machines, people won’t be able to eat. There’s a headline for your snarky little website, “Going Concern Promotes Silo Destruction; World Starves.” 

GC: Different kind of silo. And how’s this for snarky? Modern analytics platforms clean data quickly and, unlike spreadsheets, they do it with minimal risk to data integrity. In Alteryx, you can create new columns, remove rows and columns, and change data types with a single step—a step that applies instantly across your entire data set. 

S: Bah, instant this, instant that. Everyone’s in such a hurry these days! People should stop and smell the roses more.

GC: They might, if they weren’t so busy performing tedious, repetitive data tasks. Modern analytics platforms give you more time to smell whatever you want by letting you blend data however you’d like. And Alteryx tracks everything you do, making it easy to retrace your steps and undo anything, anytime.

S: Oh, because “undo” is such a new thing. It’s called Ctrl+Z. And, yes, it can undo ANYTHING, ANYTIME, too!

GC: Sure, if you realize you want to change something immediately. What if you want to change something you did five minutes ago—or five hours, or five weeks?

S: You just keep hammering Ctrl+Z until you get there!

GC: Great solution. Speaking of solutions, modern analytics platforms allow you to transform your data into insights and answers faster and in ways that reduce errors and risks. The Sort, Transpose, and Cross Tab Tools in Alteryx allow you to organize and pivot your data in many different directions automatically—so you can see the big picture quickly. No more pivot tables. 

S: We’ve been told we “can’t see the forest for the trees,” but have you ever looked at a tree? They’re very pretty.

GC: No argument here. There’s also no argument that writing and running formulas is much easier with a modern analytics platform. Using the Formula Tool in Alteryx, you can—with a single click—add a field to an input table or create or update data fields based on an expression or a data relationship.

S: Hey, we’ve been in a relationship with data longer than anyone!

GC: That explains a lot. Speaking of bad relationships …

S: Hey!

GC: … spreadsheets can summarize data with pivot tables, but the process is way too slow, and the results are often error-prone or limited in scope. Modern analytics platforms deliver multiple results and views automatically—allowing you to explore outliers, find patterns, and ask deeper questions as fast as you can think of them. 

Take your day back from spreadsheets with Alteryx

S: Fine. You win. We still have our uses, but in today’s world, data management and analytics are just too complex for us.

GC: Now you’re getting it. Spreadsheets will always have their place, but for repeatability, transparency, and drag-and-drop flexibility, a modern analytics platform is the only way to go. And for tax, audit, office of finance, and accounting professionals, there’s no better analytics platform than Alteryx. 

S: Oh, please tell us more.

GC: Gladly. With Alteryx, you can find profit-boosting insights faster, dig up answers to just about any question your co-workers or clients throw at you, and wow your bosses with deep, easy-to-digest visualizations.

Read the eBook, “A Radical Guide to Data Analytics Mastery,” and see how you can take back your day from tedious, repetitive data tasks now.

S: We’ll read it if you buy us a slap bracelet.

GC: Deal.

The post Exclusive Interview: Spreadsheets Reveal Why They’re Terrible at Tax, Audit, Finance, and Accounting Analytics appeared first on Going Concern.

Ten years from now, if you were to look back at your career like it was a superhero movie (and you will, of course—our Disney overlords will require it), everything before self-service analytics will probably look a lot like the first act: the beginning of the movie, where the hero is a good person with a good life—but something’s missing.

You’ll remember the introduction of self-service analytics as the kickoff of the second act—where the hero gains his or her powers and takes the first steps toward learning to use them to make the world a better place. And once you’ve mastered self-service analytics, that’s when you reach the third act—unleashing the potential that was inside you the whole time to take down the villain and save the world.

You might ask yourself how big a deal it really is to change the way you’ve always done things—sure, your data processes are full of duct tape and holes, but hey, they get the job done. But by relying on spreadsheets, you’re like Thor without Mjolnir or Iron Man without his suit. Self-service analytics isn’t just about boosting your day-to-day processes—it can spark an entire career transformation, completing your hero’s journey and giving you the rights to make the sequel however you want.

Enough set up—let’s dive into the three-act story of your accounting or finance career, with self-service analytics as the turning point.

Act I: Accounting without self-service analytics

If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re somewhat satisfied with your accounting or finance career. You might be like Peter Parker—the important people in your life love you and regularly praise you for your intelligence and accomplishments, but you still want more. Or maybe you’re even like Tony Stark—at the top of your field, appearing from the outside as the man or woman who has everything, but yet there’s still something missing.

That sense of dissatisfaction may be due in part to the large amounts of time you spend working with data. A study by IDC found that professionals who primarily use spreadsheets for data preparation and analysis spend 28 hours a week in spreadsheets, and waste eight hours a week performing redundant data tasks. Tax professionals may have it the worst—they spend more than half their workday gathering and preparing data.

You probably also get asked questions (usually by other departments) that you’re either not sure how to answer or you know that determining the answer won’t be worth the time it takes—20 hours of research and number crunching to give a salesperson a talking point he or she uses for 15 minutes in a presentation? No thanks.

So why is gathering and preparing data so inefficient for most accounting and finance professionals? The main culprit is data glut—most organizations have too much data spread across too many systems that don’t talk to each other, requiring manual intervention to put all the pieces together. Ninety-four percent of organizations have multiple data sources, and 60% have five or more.

Answering a simple question like, “How much money is our marketing campaign bringing in?” requires you to painstakingly pull structured data from countless spreadsheets and an alphabet soup of CRM, ERP, and other software platforms. But how often is all the data you need even where it’s supposed to be? You’ll probably also have to gather unstructured data from emails, memos, text messages, notes on the office fridge, etc.

If that weren’t enough, increasingly strict regulations and reporting requirements make your job even harder, necessitating new transparencies and redundancies that slow you down even more.

The time you spend gathering and preparing data for reviews, reconciliations, and analysis is holding your accounting or finance career back. You’ve proven that you’re worthy, so where’s your Mjolnir or your Green Lantern power ring that lets you achieve at the level you know you’re capable? Enter self-service analytics.

Act II: Self-service analytics for accounting and finance superpowers

This is it—your radioactive spider bite, your super-soldier serum, your gamma bomb that unleashes the beast inside you (except, you know, in a non-“Hulk-smash” kind of way.) Adopting self-service analytics is the beginning of your accounting or finance career’s second act—that critical moment when you gain the power to outwardly transform into the hero you’ve always been on the inside.

The right self-service analytics platform reduces grunt work, automatically gathering and blending data from every source. It pushes all data to a centralized database and plugs it into formulas that produce the insights you need, automatically and repeatably. Suddenly, performing reviews and reconciliations and generating reports are no longer journeys into “Excel hell”—they’re things that happen in the background, requiring minimal oversight or input.

With your focus shifted away from manual data tasks, you can win your day back and spend more time on the things that matter—like finding revenue and cost-cutting opportunities that will make you the office hero and push your career forward. Answering questions like, “How much money is our marketing campaign bringing in?” no longer causes you to break out in a cold sweat because you know determining the answer is as simple as pushing a button.

But gaining superpowers means so much more than just fixing your old problems. Imagine if Peter Parker’s story ended when he knocked out the school bully, Flash Thompson. No, gaining superpowers from self-service analytics will allow you to develop new abilities and proficiencies that will take your career even further.

With self-service analytics, you can develop more accurate and intricate forecast models, helping your business predict its financial future and take the right steps to improve it. You can look at the effect specific trends are having on your bottom line and determine the best ways to respond. 

You can find ways to optimize existing financial processes, eliminating waste and increasing margins. You can answer more complex questions like, “What would happen if we launched this product in these 50 stores across this geographic area?” allowing you to explore a wide variety of scenarios to discover opportunities your business doesn’t even know exist.

As your self-service analytics skills grow, you’ll likely discover abilities we can’t yet predict—like when Spider-Man realized that buzzing in his head was a sixth sense that could warn him of danger. Self-service analytics open so many possibilities that it’s impossible for us to account for them all now—but many of them are ones we’ve just discovered in the last few years, so it stands to reason that there are more out there waiting to be found.

Now this is where the story really starts to get good.

Act III: Transforming your career and your business with self-service analytics

You might be wondering why we keep referring to “self-service” analytics rather than just using the term on its own. That’s because we want to draw a distinction between complex analytics platforms that only data scientists can use and simplified solutions that allow accounting, finance, and every other business department to easily access the data and insights they need—without writing code or going back to school for IT certification.

A self-service analytics platform is just that—a platform on which all members of the business, regardless of technical sophistication, can create new data partnerships among IT, analytic teams, and lines of business. Whether you are an analyst or data scientist, you can solve even the most complex analytic business problems, with less time and effort, to drive business-changing outcomes across your organization.

Over time, the use of self-service analytics changes the culture at a business, enabling it to make more decisions based on data rather than gut instinct. Suddenly everyone is a data expert, and new ideas are coming from everywhere. HR finds a sales opportunity in Detroit the rest of the company missed. Marketing sees a way to streamline manufacturing and production. Accounting develops a killer PR strategy. With self-service analytics, the chains come off and the business can start succeeding at levels its founders could never have imagined.

And if you’re the one who championed self-service analytics at your business, a lot of the credit for that transformation will go to you. But even if it doesn’t, you’ll still gain specific accounting and finance advantages that will allow you to do and see more, faster and easier. Loki, Thanos, and all six versions of the Joker* don’t stand a chance.

Let’s take a look at one of these specific benefits across each of the accounting and finance disciplines:

• Tax: Self-service analytics enable tax professionals to easily and repeatedly perform correlation analyses to identify drivers of effective tax rates and disparities between statutory and effective rates.
• Audit: With self-service analytics, audit professionals can easily perform end-to-end process testing and control validations and identify high-risk patterns earlier.
• Finance and FP&A: Finance and FP&A professionals can use self-service analytics to more easily perform risk-weighted asset calculations for capital, interest rate risk modeling, sensitivity analysis, liquidity reporting, and compliance.
• Accounting: Self-service analytics enable accountants to create more transparency at review through automation in data extracts and accrual calculations and seamlessly pass accounting details through to the journal after approvals are made.

Supercharge your accounting or finance career with Alteryx

There are a lot of analytics platforms out there. So which one is the best for accelerating your accounting or finance career?

From an accounting and finance point of view, analytics platforms generally fall into one of two categories:

1. General-use products providing few-to-zero specific accounting/finance functions.
2. Traditional accounting software with some analytics capabilities shoehorned in but lacking the raw power of general solutions.

Only Alteryx gives you the best of both worlds—a superpowered, proven, self-service analytics platform that’s been specifically customized to automate and enhance the tasks and processes most critical to accounting and financial success. 

“When I use Alteryx, I feel like I just got the star power-up in Mario Kart,” said Jessica Chen, manager of marketing analytics at Alteryx.

This is your big hero moment—don’t let it pass you by. With Alteryx, you can finally free your workday from tedious, manual tasks and allow more time for the strategic analysis needed to unlock your superpowers and maximize the potential of your accounting or finance career.

Learn more about Alteryx >

* Yes, we’re aware the Joker has taken on dozens of incarnations across different media. We went with six because that’s the number of different ways he’s been portrayed on the big screen in feature-length films: by Cesar Romero in Batman: The Movie, Jack Nicholson in Batman, Mark Hamill (voice) in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Jared Leto in Suicide Squad, and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker.

The post How Self-Service Analytics Will Boost Your Accounting or Finance Career In 2020 appeared first on Going Concern.

Now by starting this article with that kind of strong, no-nonsense lead paragraph, we know we’re going to need at least one solid example to back it up. But as Confucius once famously said, “Why give one example when you can give five?” (Please don’t look that up.)

Here are five instances where modern analytics saved the day for professionals in accounting, tax, audit, and the office of finance.

1. Trinity Industries turns five months into five minutes

Trinity Industries, an industrial company, manages hundreds of thousands of rail cars from a fixed-asset tax reporting perspective. The company needs to regularly create reports on these assets for both executives and the IRS. To do this, the team previously utilized Excel spreadsheets in what became a tedious and version-control-issue-laden process—one that took about five months to complete.

Trinity Industries was able to shorten the time needed to complete that process to about five minutes. And no, the company didn’t use Hermione Granger’s time-turner necklace to do it—it used analytics. With the right analytics platform in place, Trinity Industries can now:

• Eliminate tedious manual work.
• Produce more trustworthy reports that result in fewer time-consuming questions.
• Give its tax office more time to do work that adds value to the business.

2. Aetna saves millions in potential overpayments

Internal audit processes at Aetna were slow and labor-intensive. But by adopting analytics tools, eliminating inefficiencies, and creating a “robot” that looks friendlier than H.E.R.B.I.E., the insurance giant successfully transformed the face of its internal audit department.

Today, Aetna performs continuous auditing through an automated end-to-end process review—a faster and more reliable method that has saved the company millions of dollars in potential claims overpayments. Other benefits include:

• Faster audits—audits are now completed five to eight days quicker than before.
• Visibility into data before the claims process even begins.
• Time savings for other departments through automatically generated self-service audit dashboards.

3. Cetera Financial sees the future

Creating accurate revenue and expense forecasts is hard. Like, taking down a boss in Dark Souls hard. At Cetera Financial, it requires combining data from assets, net flows, revenue, advisors, and market flow, then finding a way to analyze and extrapolate on that data to predict the future. When done manually, it’s a cumbersome, labor-intensive process—and the results aren’t always reliable.

But the team at Cetera found a way to largely eliminate manual steps and create scenario-based revenue and expense forecasts with maximum accuracy, reliability, and usability. How’d they do it? You guessed it—analytics. By pumping the data through an analytics platform, Cetera can now quickly create highly accurate and intuitive forecast dashboards. Cetera also used modern analytics to:

• Incorporate both internal key performance indicators and external drivers to refresh forecast scenarios automatically.
• Combine quantitative and qualitative data to identify holistic patterns.
• Leverage the vast capabilities of its analytics platform to strategically bring software and data together and create precision insights.

4. Thomson Reuters puts 24-30 hours back in the month

To perform its required month-end cost assurance process, Thomson Reuters had to run general ledger line item queries for six separate organizations, map in master data information, segregate the data by expense category, and create pivot tables in order to review for accuracy. This took about 24 to 30 hours to complete, occupying much of its controllership office’s time during those critical final days of each and every month.

The company used an analytics platform to create a repeatable workflow that automates much of this work. As a result, Thomson Reuters has given those 24 to 30 hours back to the workers in its controllership office, who we assume are using that time to find new financial opportunities for the company—because that’s totally what we’d do with the extra time. We definitely wouldn’t use it to search for continuity flaws in The Mandalorian so we can complain about them on Reddit.

Thomson Reuters continues to push the boundaries of modern analytics in ways such as:

• Ability to complete the monthly post-query process in just 24 minutes.
• Increased collaboration between the controllership and other departments.
• Plans to improve productivity for other internal teams, including finance, cash flow, master data, treasury, tax, and human resources.

5. Educational Media Foundation cuts costs by $500,000, aims for $2.2 million

Educational Media Foundation (EMF) is a nonprofit mostly known for broadcasting popular radio stations such as Air1 and K-LOVE. While the company has been rocking out with solid financials since 1981, the EMF team wasn’t exactly Jersey Shore-style fist-pumping for joy when regulatory changes caused its national Internet radio streaming costs to more than double—from less than $1 million to more than $2 million annually.

But we’d like to think the company let out a collective DJ Pauly D “Yeaaaaaaaah buddy!” when it discovered ways to reduce those costs through modern analytics. EMF learned that some of its regional streams were underutilized, while others exceeded their cost-effective limits. This and other analytics-derived insights led to 16 changes to systems, software, programming, and contracts. 

EMF reported that four of those changes led to $500,000 in savings through the second half of 2016. The company continues to use analytics to find more ways to cut costs, projecting that its efforts can ultimately save as much as $2.2 million a year.

Beyond cost-cutting measures, EMF used modern analytics to:

• Eliminate eight months of labor per year and fix more than 200 errors by better ensuring that taxes for its radio transmitters are filed for the proper jurisdictions.
• Reduce manual checks and restarts for its content delivery network.
• Provide better experiences for donors who give to the nonprofit multiple times.

Save the day and be the office hero with Alteryx

All the companies in our examples have one thing in common—they chose Alteryx as their analytics solution. But if you’re interested in seeing similar results at your business, you’ll quickly learn Alteryx is far from the only option on the table.

As you research these solutions, however, you’ll find that they fall into one of two categories:

1. General-use products providing few-to-zero specific accounting/finance functions.
2. Traditional accounting software with some analytics capabilities shoehorned in but lacking the raw power of general solutions.

Only Alteryx gives you the best of both worlds—a proven analytics platform that’s been specifically customized to automate and enhance the tasks and processes most critical to accounting and finance success. 

It’s time for analytics to save the day at your business. With Alteryx, you can finally free your organization from manual steps and allow more time for the strategic analysis needed to put your firm on top.

Learn more about Alteryx and start your free trial >

The post 5 Times Modern Analytics Saved the Day In Accounting and Finance appeared first on Going Concern.

We can, however, declare a winner in a different war, this time without the use of tongue-in-cheek parentheticals. In Chick-fil-A’s own private war against the complexities of the U.S. tax code, the Georgia-born chicken empire is emerging victorious—thanks in large part to a juicy analytics solution.

Among other accomplishments, Chick-fil-A employed analytics tools from Alteryx to reduce time spent processing tax data for 1099-Ks from 10 hours to 10 seconds. That means Chick-fil-A’s tax professionals (as will yours, if you follow the company’s example) have way more time to actually look through tax data and discover opportunities to increase revenue, widen margins, and reduce errors.

Alteryx is an ideal solution for organizations of every shape and size—combining the robust capabilities large enterprises require with the flexible pricing and ease-of-use needed by smaller companies. In the case of Chick-fil-A, Alteryx successfully manages the massive tax data flow of a fast-food empire. 

With more than 2,300 locations across 47 states (and Washington, DC) and a 2018 revenue of more than $10 billion, Chick-fil-A faces the stiff challenge of navigating thousands of sales tax jurisdictions.

Like many companies, Chick-fil-A’s tax department was spending about 80% of its time on data preparation, leaving little room for analysis or validation. A few years ago, Matt Burton, Chick-fil-A’s senior principal team leader of tax technology, inquired if there was a better way for the company to crunch tax data and take advantage of its data.

“I asked, ‘Instead of me having to run a SQL query over and over, is there some tool that would allow other individuals within the tax department to access that data?’” Burton said. 

Burton’s colleague suggested analytics solutions from Alteryx, and the rest is history.

Today, Chick-fil-A’s tax department is much more agile and can adapt to changes quickly. In addition to 1099-K prep time going from 10 hours to 10 seconds, querying daily tax rates—a process which once required a staff of five to six people—is now performed daily by a single individual.

Chick-fil-A uses Alteryx to automate manual processes, put time back in tax professionals’ days, and improve overall business results. Let’s take a look at four key ingredients of Chick-fil-A’s recipe for tax success.

1) Blending tax data

Imagine standing at a Chick-fil-A counter and ordering a chocolate milkshake. You watch as the employee places the various ingredients into your cup—then gasp as he informs you that it will take about four hours to blend them all together.

That outcome would be unacceptable to just about any customer. Likewise, the amount of time it took Chick-fil-A’s tax team to prepare and blend 1099 data from various sources (AWS, spreadsheets, and Oracle ERP) was unacceptable to the company’s tax function.

To streamline the process, Chick-fil-A placed Alteryx analytics in the middle of its 1099 workflow. Now Alteryx quickly combines the data from the various sources—while also identifying components that are in one set and not another, which can alert the team to data errors they might otherwise never find. The platform then automatically formats, validates, and outputs the clean 1099 data onto a fresh spreadsheet.

The process is fast, efficient, and less error-prone than the methods Chick-fil-A used in the past. And the company’s tax team can now use the extra time to look through its data and identify opportunities for cutting costs and growing revenue. 

2) Running tax data simulations

Buttery buns and crunchy pickles will only get you so far. To maintain a successful business, Chick-fil-A must make decisions based on reliable, timely data. And that includes the ability to accurately simulate and forecast the tax implications of a decision before it’s made.

“Let’s say you want to simulate what the tax rate will look like in 300 different locations. With Alteryx, you can quickly do that,” Burton said.

Chick-fil-A uses Alteryx to transform tax rate data from a spreadsheet into an XML block. From there, the tax team can easily input the parameters of what they want to test, and Alteryx spits out an API call—a piece of code that requests data from another piece of software. That API call ultimately generates a new XML block that contains the results of the query.

“Alteryx gives you the ability to parse the XML so tax analysts can make sense of it,” Burton said. “You can even send various parts of the results directly into the workflows themselves.”

3) Deriving analytics from tax data

Data science doesn’t always move as smoothly as a Chick-fil-A drive-thru line. It can be easy to get “stuck in the data”—overwhelmed by the noise and unable to derive the insights you actually need.

Chick-fil-A uses Alteryx to avoid getting stuck, leveraging powerful analytics capabilities to uncover opportunities and errors within the company’s data in an automated fashion.

Blending data from multiple input files across databases, spreadsheets, and CSVs, Alteryx analyzes millions of transactions while automatically and dynamically updating certain parameters every day. The resulting analytics create all sorts of benefits for Chick-fil-A—and one of the most immediate is the ability to identify potential issues before tax returns are filed.

“If the system detects a potential problem, it will issue alert emails to various tax professionals. Everything is automated, so you don’t have to worry about it until you receive an alert,” Burton said.

4) Leveraging robotic process automation for tax

You didn’t think we’d get through this article without the robots taking over, did you?

Actually, while robotic process automation (RPA) can help with a lot of things, it turns out the machines need a good deal of help to do their jobs intelligently. So we’re probably safe from a self-aware uprising for the time being.

“You still have to get the data into Alteryx for it to consume,” Burton said. “So we looked into ways to automate that.”

Burton and his team use an RPA product called Blue Prism to automatically move data from the company’s ERP system and into Alteryx—eliminating the need for tax and data professionals to manually input the data and putting even more time back in their days. Alteryx processes the data quickly and effectively, then spits it back to Blue Prism, which sends emails to the parties who need to know what was done with the data—again saving time by eliminating manual steps.

“Alteryx is the brains of the workflow, and Blue Prism is the hands feeding in the information,” Burton said.

Win your own war against tax complexities with Alteryx

“Alteryx is a very unique tool and a fun tool to use because it’s not just necessarily focused on data,” Burton said. “Yes, data runs through it, but it also helps you improve your business processes. It helps you analyze your data and just kind of see into that data and make it a little bit clearer. I think of it as uncomplicating the complicated.”

Your business can also benefit from the powerful, proven Alteryx analytics platform. Unlike most other analytics providers, Alteryx offers solutions that have been specifically customized to automate and enhance the tax processes most critical to business success. 

Isn’t it time your company took a bite out of the complexities of the tax function? Alteryx frees your organization from manual steps, allowing more time for the strategic analysis needed to accelerate business outcomes and gain a delicious edge over the competition.

Learn more about Alteryx and start your free trial >

The post How Analytics and Chicken Sandwiches Can Put Time Back In Tax Professionals’ Days appeared first on Going Concern.

In the real world, getting bitten by a radioactive spider will probably just leave a nasty scar, and jumping into a gamma bomb blast to save the world’s most annoying teenager will definitely kill you. But that doesn’t mean superpowers don’t exist. 

With The Economist declaring that data has now replaced oil as the world’s most valuable resource, it’s time for accounting and finance professionals to start unlocking the great power (and, of course, great responsibility) of data and gain the capabilities they need to stay competitive.

Like Steve Rogers, you already have those abilities inside you. You just need a super soldier serum boost to unleash your full data potential.

So what is that secret formula? You’ve likely read countless articles about data literacy initiatives being the key to success in this new age. While data literacy is certainly important, it’s the superpower equivalent of Squirrel Girl’s ability to talk to and mobilize squirrels—useful, but not exactly world-shaking.

To become the hero the accounting and finance world needs, you’ll have to go beyond simple data literacy to achieve data domination. And the only way to do that is with the right analytics platform—one that empowers your organization to easily unleash the value of your data and grab your cape to analyze it, share it, and automate key tasks along the way. 

You’re probably thinking, “That all sounds great, but what exactly will these data superpowers allow my organization to do?” Let’s take a look at some specific benefits and use cases across tax, audit, finance, and general accounting—and show you what unlocking your inner data hero really looks like.

Data and analytics superpowers for tax professionals

Tax professionals spend more than 50% of their time gathering tax data and less than 30% on strategic tax analysis. If your organization could flip those numbers, you could transform tax data from a liability into a superpowered asset. When tax professionals dominate data, they can:

• Stop collecting data like an RPG character mining for XP: Reduce time spent manually gathering data, business and legal entity reconciliation, and tax reporting; increase time for higher-value work like performing multiple analyses of transactions.
• Become a data Mr. Clean without shaving your head: Easily clean data from any source, including multiple ERPs, consolidation systems, billing systems, commerce platforms, and more.
• Comply faster than a Star Trek Borg: Get a complete analytical view of audit processes across compliance, fraud detection and investigation, risk assessment, operational performance, and internal controls. 
• See flaws better than an Inhuman: Improve efficiency and accuracy to understand anomalies before and after meeting compliance requirements.
• Say “I know” more than Han Solo: Boost confidence in data integrity and in uniting all team members and decision makers around a single source of truth.

None of that happens if you stick with the spreadsheet ways of the past. The right analytics solution can evolve your process to visual, repeatable workflows. That means performing correlation analyses to identify drivers of effective tax rates and disparities between statutory and effective rates. And it means better forecasting of effective and cash taxes, determining optimal transfer pricing patterns, and conducting “what if” analyses ahead of M&As.

Data and analytics superpowers for audit professionals

Using spreadsheets for audits today is like trying to run Starcraft II on your old 386 PC—it just doesn’t work.

But with a modern, superpowered analytics platform, auditors can use intuitive, drag-and-drop interfaces to achieve data domination through experience and experimentation. Code-free and code-friendly platforms provide deeper understanding in the auditing process—no matter your analytics comfort level—and make it easier to identify anomalies and classify potential irregularities.

With data powered by self-service analytics, audit professionals can start to:

• See farther and wider than Heimdall: Easily perform end-to-end process testing and control validations.
• Cut costs like Edward Scissorhands: Lower existing and future audit costs through scheduling and automation of data collection, preparation, and analysis.
• Calculate risks more accurately than C-3PO: Produce earlier identification of high-risk patterns in spending, codes of conduct, and across a network of partners and suppliers. 

The right platform can also drive new capabilities like text analytics, which can recognize specific assets on printed balance sheets, or robotic process automation, which can reconcile balances in multiple sub-ledgers. 

Overall, using analytics in audit makes the process faster and cheaper while offering better coverage in testing. And the technology is only going to get better—constant evolution continues to push what’s possible with new artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques.

Data and analytics superpowers for finance professionals

At the risk of beating a dead spreadsheet, getting full visibility across key financial management systems just can’t happen with manual data processing. With spreadsheets, data remains static, siloed, and hard to manipulate, so achieving organization-wide data domination is less likely than Warner Bros. ever making a good Green Lantern movie.

To stay competitive in today’s financial world, you need to be able to access and blend all relevant financial data from your internal systems and those of partners and suppliers. That’s a lot easier and faster with superpowered analytics solutions that can bring together data from multiple accounting ledgers and consolidate it for statutory reporting and sub-ledger account analysis in an automated fashion. 

After just a bit of experimentation with the right analytics platform, finance professionals can learn to:

• Bring everything together better than Avengers: Endgame: Manage diverse and unstructured data sources to create high-quality reconciliations.
• Keep more robust records than the Jedi archives: Standardize master data records using fuzzy matching and pattern recognition.
• See the future better than Madame Web: More easily perform risk-weighted asset calculations for capital, interest rate risk modelling, sensitivity analysis, liquidity reporting, and compliance.

Data and analytics superpowers for accounting professionals

Quick, what’s the best superpower you could possibly have? Super strength? Not unless you want to crush your favorite co-worker’s ribs during your next celebratory chest bump. Flight? That’d be fun—until the bill for all the FAA violations you’ve committed comes due. 

No, the best superpower is the ability to manipulate time. Think about it: Put enough hours in the day and there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.

That’s exactly what the right analytics platform can do for accounting professionals. It gives you back the hundreds of hours you spend on manual data extraction and accrual calculations across multiple departments and inconsistent systems. 

With analytics, accountants can:

• Get better transparency than Sue Storm: Automation around data extracts and accrual calculations creates transparency at review, and analytic workflows also make it easier to document the steps in the process—should issues arise.
• Have better connections than Bezos or Gates: By having strong data connection options, accounting details can be seamlessly passed through to the journal after approvals are made.
• Be more consistent than Superman saving Lois Lane: Analytics drive consistency and accuracy, freeing you up to do more with your superpowers than you ever thought possible.

Get data superpowers in a box with Alteryx

As you research analytics solutions for your organization, you’ll find that they generally fall into one of two categories:

1. General use products providing few-to-zero specific accounting/finance functions.
2. Traditional accounting software with some analytics capabilities shoehorned in, but lacking the raw power of general solutions.

Only Alteryx gives you the best of both worlds—a superpowered, proven analytics platform that’s been specifically customized to automate and enhance the tasks and processes most critical to accounting and financial success. Alteryx is an ideal solution for organizations of every shape and size, combining the robust capabilities large enterprises require with the flexible pricing and ease-of-use needed by smaller companies.

It’s time to push data domination across your organization and evolve to heroic levels of tax, audit, finance, and accounting analytics. With Alteryx, you can finally free your organization from manual steps and allow more time for the strategic analysis needed to unlock your data superpowers and put your firm on top.

Learn more about Alteryx and start your free trial >

The post How Accounting and Finance Professionals Can Use Data to Gain Superpowers appeared first on Going Concern.

Yes, we are making this ask again, but we figured it’d been long enough that you wouldn’t mind. If you’ve taken it already, great! Share it with an accountant friend or colleague who’s suffering through their close RIGHT NOW. It’ll be cathartic for them and educational for us. Please and thank you.

Create your own user feedback survey

The post Reminder: Take This Survey About the Month-End Close appeared first on Going Concern.

It’s amazing how much time is wasted within accounting teams due to lack of standardized process, documentation, and reviews. Get your act together, help your team become more efficient, and get home in time for dinner with these five, simple strategies from FloQast co-founder and CEO, Mike Whitmire:

• Assessing the trial balance for completeness
• Standardizing templates with documentation
• Organizing documentation in a logical manner
• Tying out the trial balance consistently
• Centralizing reviews
• And much more!

Who doesn’t need more Excel skills, amirite? The webinar is available any time and is free.

And, while you’re at it, check out these additional resources from FloQast:

• Whitepaper: Increasing Accounting Efficiency Using Excel in Your Month-End Close
• Tools: Best Practice Excel Reconciliation Templates

Image: iStock/200degrees

The post Webinar: 5 Strategies for Streamlining Reconciliations in Excel appeared first on Going Concern.

Also, since you’ve all returned to everyday life, we hope you don’t mind taking this survey about your experiences with the month-end close. The survey is short, harmless and helps us out. Your participation is appreciated.

Create your own user feedback survey

Image: iStock/Andrew_Rybalko

The post Survey: What Are Your Experiences with the Month-End Close? appeared first on Going Concern.

Open Items will, of course, remain available for your questions and musings, we’ll be re-purposing some content, and GC contributors will be chipping in as well.

This is also the perfect opportunity to remind you to check out our new Gigs our new career center, with job listings from around the country.

And don’t forget to sign up for our daily newsletter and our job alerts for Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

Thanks for supporting Going Concern.

The post Programming Note appeared first on Going Concern.

• Facebook
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• Pinterest

And if none of those float your boat, just get us via email, with either the daily Accounting News Roundup or our job alerts from cities around the country.

Or if you want to bend our ears directly, send an email to editor@goingconcern.com.

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Double-o Gearty wraps things up with allocation and revenue recognition. Just watching him talk about this stuff makes you smarter. It might also help you fall asleep at night, so set it on a loop under your pillow if you’ve been lying awake at night.

Thanks for checking out our series with Tim Gearty. You can binge-watch it anytime on our YouTube channel.

The post Accounting for Stuff With Tim Gearty: Allocation and Revenue Recognition appeared first on Going Concern.

Position:

M&A Accounting Consultant

Location:

Vienna, Va.

Employer:

Pipaya

Requirements:

The position will be responsible for learning and performing sell side and buy side engagements as part of complete M&A lifecycle as well preparing and validating financial information during the due diligence process. Bachelor’s or Master’s in Accounting; CPA license or CPA candidate; 2-5 years working in client service, preferably at a Big 4 firm.

About:

Pipaya is a boutique accounting and advisory firm that provides expert M&A accounting and advisory services to middle‐market companies interested in buying, selling, or growing their businesses.

Check out this job description  for more information or share this job with someone you know who might be interested.

The post Featured Job of the Week: M&A Accounting Consultant with Pipaya in Vienna, Va. appeared first on Going Concern.

Also, this is a good time to remind everyone to check our new jobs and career page, Gigs. Skim through the current jobs listed and sign up to receive email alerts when new opportunities in Los Angeles, New York, and other select cities become available. If you have no idea what Gigs is, check out our announcement from a couple weeks back to learn more.

And if you’re an employer that’s interested in working with Gigs, get in touch with us to learn more. Okay? Okay. Good talk.

Create your survey with SurveyMonkey

The post Los Angeles Accountants, We Want to Hear From You appeared first on Going Concern.

Now, you might think you already know everything there is to know about transaction prices under the new revenue recognition rules. And, hey, you just might. But you don’t know them the way Tim Gearty does, and you sure don’t spit out mnemonics like it’s your job. It is Tim Gearty’s job. Literally. We’ve seen his contract, and the mnemonics clause runs three pages.

Get down on this revenue recognition wisdom. It will make you a better accountant.

Tim Gearty will return in Part IV of this series in the coming weeks. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to receive updates.

The post Accounting for Stuff With Tim Gearty: The Transaction Price Under the New Revenue Recognition Rules appeared first on Going Concern.

It’s a slow day out there as many of you prolong the long weekend. To keep everyone awake, we figured it was a good time to revisit the compensation discussions that are still going on:

• Deloitte
• EY
• Grant Thornton
• BDO
• PwC

KPMG remains the last major holdout. If you’re a Klynveldian anxious for a gab session about your compensation and have details to share, email us at tips@goingconcern.com.

The post Yakking All the Way to the Bank appeared first on Going Concern.

• They’re (ironically?) time-consuming to fill out
  They punish CPAs who work quickly, regardless of the value of your work
  They reward you for how long you work, rather than how much you actually produce

And as you’re well aware, timesheets make particularly little sense when performing fixed-fee audits. Tracking hours will have no effect on the economics or timing of the job, and can paradoxically reward workers who are the least efficient.

It’ll probably be a cold day in you-know-where before the Big 4 get rid of timesheets. Luckily, more progressive firms are moving away from the timesheet and toward value pricing—a model that compensates you for what you actually do, not how long it takes you to do it.

We found one such firm that’s looking to hire. They operate in Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida. They’re called Assurance Dimensions, and here’s what they’re all about:

• As we alluded to, they don’t require timesheets—no recording of hours in any way
• Compensation is market rate plus bonuses after busy season and 401(k) season; overall a very competitive compensation plan
• They are hiring a Senior and Staff in Jacksonville and a Senior in Tampa

If you like auditing, hate timesheets, and want the opportunity to make significantly more money than you would at a traditional firm, Assurance Dimensions might be the right place for you. Check out this job profile to learn more.

This is sponsored content brought to you by Assurance Dimensions and produced by Going Concern Studios.

The post Like Auditing But Hate Timesheets? This Florida Firm Wants You appeared first on Going Concern.

This time Lord Gearty covers the separation of performance obligations. So pay attention, you’ll learn something.

Stay tuned for more on the new revenue recognition rules from Tim Gearty and Going Concern in the coming weeks. And subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to receive updates.

The post Accounting for Stuff With Tim Gearty: Separation of Performance Obligations appeared first on Going Concern.

Going Concern has teamed up with CPA review legend Tim Gearty to present a series of videos to help educate you on the new revenue recognition rules without combing through the FASB website.

Not that you should ignore the FASB! They’re the ones in charge after all. But it never hurts to have a little Tim Gearty in your life.

Stay tuned for more on the new revenue recognition rules from Tim Gearty and Going Concern in the coming weeks. And subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to receive updates.

The post Accounting for Stuff With Tim Gearty: The New Revenue Recognition Rules appeared first on Going Concern.

• PwC
• BDO

If your firm is holding discussions about performance reviews and compensation adjustments this summer, email tips@goingconcern.com to share details or request a thread.

The post Wanna Talk About Money? appeared first on Going Concern.

Right now we now have hundreds of responses from people at large, mid-tier and small firms, spanning the full range of industries, experience and roles, all the way from staff and senior accountants to directors, CFOs and managing partners.

Every person who is eligible to participate and completes the survey will receive the final Accounting Salary Report for no charge.

Follow this link to take the survey or complete it below. And if you’ve already completed it, share it with a colleague. Thanks for your support!

The post The Window Is Closing: Take Going Concern’s Accounting Salary Survey appeared first on Going Concern.

It is time to assess where the accounting industry is headed with regard to compensation levels. This is your chance to see how your comp plan stacks up against the industry.

You are invited to participate in Going Concern’s first annual Accounting Salary Survey, which we are conducting to provide information to evaluate compensation, negotiate better job offers, and benchmark firm compensation practices.

Every person who is eligible to participate and completes the survey, will receive the final Accounting Salary Report for no charge.

Follow this link to participate in the Accounting Salary Survey or complete it below.

Then, please forward this post to friends and colleagues in accounting the because every additional response benefits all participants.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Survey

What is the purpose of the survey?

The purpose of this survey is to track key compensation trends and provide relevant benchmarks. The most reliable compensation information comes from professionals like you.

Will my responses and information be kept anonymous?

Yes, absolutely. As a participant in this survey, any information you provide will be held in the strictest confidence. Once the information is received, only aggregate data will be presented in the results. No identifying information will be revealed about individual respondents.

What will I receive for my participation?

All eligible participants receive a summary of the results.

Create your own user feedback survey

The post Take Going Concern’s Accounting Salary Survey appeared first on Going Concern.

The post Getting in Touch appeared first on Going Concern.

Position:

Healthcare Reimbursement Accountant

Location:

Memphis, TN

Employer:

HORNE LLP

Requirements:

2-5 years experience; bachelor’s or master’s degree; CPA license

HORNE is a decidedly different CPA and business advisory firm that is changing expectations about accounting. As a top 50 accounting firm, we are committed to being the best within our industry focus areas, and we pride ourselves equally on personal relationships with our clients. Our reputation is built upon thought leadership, and we will help you hone your own skills as a trailblazer. You will be a part of our close-knit team, bound by a daily obsession to serve clients by helping them achieve their business goals. Check out this Accountingfly post for more information or share this job with someone you know who might be interested.

Accountingfly’s Featured Job of the Week appears every Thursday. See all of the past featured jobs here.

The post Accountingfly Featured Job of the Week: Healthcare Reimbursement Accountant With HORNE LLP appeared first on Going Concern.

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Position:

Senior Tax Accountant

Location:

Springfield, IL

Employer:

Sikich LLP

Requirements:

2 – 5 years experience; bachelor’s degree; CPA of EA certification (or progress towards certification)

Your job, your community, your life–whether you’re just starting your career or have been working for 30 years, we want you to succeed and grow in all areas. That’s why Sikich provides a positive, recognition-focused and teamwork-oriented environment for our employees. We believe that our people are our greatest asset, and we work hard to ensure that all employees feel empowered, comfortable and valued in everything they do. Check out this Accountingfly post for more information or share this job with someone you know who might be interested.

Accountingfly’s Featured Job of the Week appears every Thursday. See all of the past featured jobs here.

The post Accountingfly Featured Job of the Week: Senior Tax Accountant with Sikich appeared first on Going Concern.

I recently graduated with my masters and i’m a CPA candidate. I have a decision to make relatively quickly and i’m confounded. Both opportunities are really amazing, but i’m uncertain which route to take. Any sound advice is appreciated.

1. Offer from a top investment firm that relies more on my background and finance. This position would be contract and require relocation several states away. It does not offer health benefits, a relocation package, or the certainty of transitioning into a full-time position at the firm, but it is a foot in the door. This firm has brand recognition and if made a perm. employee, I could transfer into a department that would require my CPA. This position would not allow me to gain experience for the cpa and requires a 50-60 hour work week. Business casual attire, early start times to coordinate with New York, and if made perm salary is high.

2. 2nd offer is from a fortune 500 with locations worldwide. It would allow me to gain experience for my CPA experience requirement, but not much advancement. It appears you’d have to die before that happens. Not now, but certainly in the future, i’d like the opportunity to advance. I’m uncertain if i’ll have time to study as the required workweek, much like the firm, is around 50-to a more ideal 60 a week. Compensation is more than the contract position and allows for cash bonuses that are significantly higher than my contract offer. It does have a laidback work environment and flexible start times.

The post Two Choices – Advice? appeared first on Going Concern.

Hello Going Concern Community:

I hope everyone’s busy season is off to a great start. I’m aspiring to be a full time associate with a big four accounting firm. I went through all the motions in college (Beta Alpha Psi, accounting internships with local CPA firms, etc.) all while maintaining a competitive GPA (3.65). In my senior year I went through the interviewing process with a big four firm (Phone interview, office visit, etc.) and I was fortunate enough to be extended an internship offer.

It has now been one month since the internship began and I received a 3/5 for my first engagement. My in-charge said that my attitude was great but that I needed to pay more attention to detail because I made a few mistakes. I recently started my second engagement along with another intern, and clearly the other intern is a “star” because he gets most of the difficult assignments, while I get stuck with a lot of the “easy” tasks (Scanning, making copies, etc.). It is clear that my in-charge favors the other intern on this engagement – my in-charge won’t ever acknowledge my presence – and when he does it’s only when he needs me to make a copy or pick up dinner.

I feel left out of this engagement. I do not know what I am doing wrong. I come in with a good attitude, I pick up dinner for everyone, I ask lots of questions, I take notes, etc., yet I always end up doing the smaller and less important tasks while another intern gets to do all of the fun stuff.

I just don’t want to be the intern who didn’t t get a full time offer only because this in-charge does not like me. I know there has to be an underlying reason why he doesn’t like me but I can’t figure out what it is.

I’d appreciate any feedback. Thanks!

 

The post Big four wintern intern – am I ruining my changes for a FT offer? appeared first on Going Concern.

Position:

Senior Accountant

Location:

Portland, OR

Employer:

Perkins & Co

Requirements:

3+ years experience; bachelor’s degree; CPA license preferred

To work at Perkins & Co, you have to be damn good. And if you’re up to the challenge, we’ll be good to you. Some may think a job is just a job, but at Perkins & Co we believe in igniting possibilities by helping our employees develop careers that fulfill their ambitions. We hire great people and give them a great place to work. Our secret to keeping them around is a positive culture, strong community involvement and a dedication to getting better every day. Check out this Accountingfly post for more information or share this job with someone you know who might be interested.

Accountingfly’s Featured Job of the Week appears every Thursday. See all of the past featured jobs here.

The post Accountingfly Featured Job of the Week: Senior Accountant with Perkins & Co appeared first on Going Concern.

Questions:

It would be great if you guys could share some advice on these questions:

1) would it make sense for me to go back to audit based on my strengths/ career goals/ general outlook? am i insane for wanting to go back to the hell that is audit?

2) could I go back as seinor accountant given i’ve had 2.5 years in audit already and 2 years corporate tax?

3) would it be better to exit into another team within big 4? risk/ financial accounting advisory etc

Background: 

I was previously in financial services audit for 2.5 years before I decided to move into corporate tax as I felt I would be using my law degree (I studied accounting/ law for undegrad). Coming in I originally had plans to do tax planning / become a tax lawyer and work on tax structures but I have realised that that work is not as interesting as it sounds as in reality in involves reading alot of boring legal documents (i.e. tax treaties, case law, legislation, tax rulings….) and that work is left to very seinor people to do. I’ve realised that although accounting is important in tax, it is actually more about law.  I find accounting (i.e. financial reporting/ management accounting) to be much more easily understandable to me whilst I struggle to get through tax legislation. As a result I see myself more suited to become a finance director within asset management/ CFO / corporate finance professional rather than a tax director/ tax lawyer. I particularly find the hedge fund/ PE space quite interesting and see myself as an investment accountant.

I’ve listed out some pros and cons of tax over audit below, 

Pro

– Opportunity to add value to clients through saving tax as part of tax returns/ tax planning (however, I guess this is possible for the jobs that audit leads to?)

– scope to specialise and hence differentiate yourself in the market (however I’d argue this is possible in audit through knowledge of regulations)

– Potentially more interesting work through tax planning (however becoming more difficult through BEPS)

– generally less hours/ less travel/ less grunt work

– better treatment from clients (less of an issue if not considering audit long term)

– higher pay potentially if specialise in tax planning (debatable)

Cons

– limited exit opportunities beyond tax if within the field for more than a few years (less job security?).

– less opportunities to work abroad given that tax laws differ between countries

– less scope to move between firms given that there are less positions. I see tax as having less positions and less people applying, while finance manager jobs have more positions but more people applyinh. I’d prefer the later.

– highly paid jobs in tax planning may not be suited to my strengths given that I do not enjoy/ am not good at reading legal documents

– tax i say is very anti social and invovles minimal talking which I think is tortuing me

– im more naturally inclined to accounting and i find it more easier to understand

– increase in outsourcing of tax compliance work to india. Now i’m noticing more and more complex tax returns being completely shipped offshore.

Hopefully, I’ve gone through my thoughts on getting out of tax in logical manner.

Thanks again for any advice!

Cheers

The post Does it make sense to go back to audit from tax? appeared first on Going Concern.

Since the whole 2008 financial collapse debacle, accounting has become a popular choice for a second career by many people who realized that their first had them going nowhere. Deciding to change careers when you’ve been out of school for a number of years takes guts. For starters, it’s a confession of sorts. You’re more or less admitting that you made a mistake. Or for those of you that live by the Bob Ross ethos, it was a “happy accident.”

But really, even if the last five to ten years of your career been excellent life experience, how often do you hear someone say, “I sure enjoy my uncertain job prospects, lower-than-average salary, and two roommates. I’ll bet I can do this well into my late 30s!”

What’s that? Never heard anyone say that?

Look, it’s cool. People change careers all the time and although no really knows how many times you’ll shift gears, life has a funny way of forcing you down different paths. Plus, since you’ll spend a lot your life working — sorry for the reminder — keeping an open mind about your career is smart.

We know you probably have many questions about changing gears at this stage in your life and we’ve created this guide on accounting as a second career to hopefully answer all of them. We hope you’ll read the whole thing but because this article is long (you have a lot of questions after all), here are some handy shortcuts to specific topics we’ve covered:

• Why consider a second career in accounting?
• Do I have to be good with numbers to be an accountant?
• What are some necessary skills accountants should have?
• Myths you may have heard about accounting
• What it takes to build a career in accounting
• What kind of jobs are there in accounting?
• The most important question of all: how much can I expect to make as an accountant?

Without any further ado, let’s try to answer the question “is accounting right for you?” You being an adult with a couple (or perhaps many) years of job experience under your belt who is thinking about making the jump to accounting.

Why consider a second career in accounting?

Our guess is that you’re reading this post because you are interested in making accounting your second career and speaking entirely in generalities based on average outcome for all accounting graduates, that is a smart choice. Why? Well, there are all kinds of reasons including:

• Better than average pay (over a lifetime*, that is)
• The job outlook is good
• It provides you with a flexible and transferable skill set

Now you’re saying, “That’s great and all, but is a career in accounting right for me?” Good question. Let’s try to figure that out first.

A career in accounting gives you options

The good news about choosing accounting as a second career is that it gives you a lot of choices. The list of jobs that accountants can have is endless: auditors, tax professionals, consultants, managerial, cost, financial, analysts of all kinds, etc. Public companies, private companies, small, large, and everything in between. Any good business will need an accountant; someone has to count the money, after all. But there are so many ways to count (i.e. account) for it; that’s why accountants enjoy near full employment. Even with bleak predictions about robots taking all the accounting jobs by the year 20-whatever accountants will always be in demand, professional judgment and client service will be difficult to automate even for the advanced AI scientists of 2077.

Are you good with numbers?

Right! The counting/accounting. For those who haven’t picked up on it, we’ll explain — there are lots of numbers in accounting. I know, you’re floored. If you aren’t a fan of numbers then I suggest you stop reading here, click on the ‘X’ in corner of your screen, and see yourself out. No judgment. We’ll wait.

Okay, now that we’ve completed weed-out, round one, we need to proceed with weed-out round two.

Just how many numbers are we talking about here?

Liking numbers in a math kind of way is not the same thing as liking numbers in an accounting kind of way. Every accountant we have ever known (it’s a lot) has a calculator on their desk. Lots of accountants suck at math. Lots of accountants got into accounting because they suck at math. If you are good at math, by all means, study math, become an engineer, invent some stuff. The world needs you. The accounting profession does not, though you’re welcome anyway, far be it from any of us to gatekeep.

Liking numbers is essential for a career in accounting; reading balance sheets, income statements (aka P/Ls), cash flow statements, 1040s, 1065s, 1120s, ledgers, journal entries, SPREADSHEETS THAT EXTEND INTO INFINITY, internal reports that have made-up names; you’ll have to make sense of all of them.

“No problem,” you might say, “I’m up for the challenge. Accounting is the language of business and I want to speak it. Just so long as I don’t have to talk to anyone else.”

Oop. About that.

Accounting is the language of business and you will have to speak

Communicating with your co-workers, clients, regulators, and anyone else that you may come across during your career as an accountant may be the most crucial skill you’ll need. And lots of young accountants start their careers with severe lack of effective communications skills, particularly writing skills.

“But I’m getting into accounting because I don’t write good!” you might say.

Uh huh.

One of the biggest cliches in the accounting world today is the importance of communication. “As an accounting professional, you must be able to convey complex information in terms that everyone can understand.,” says the American Institute of CPAs (the AICPA, Benevolent Overlords of the profession in the United States). Nearly ten years ago when this post was first written, the Maryland Association of CPAs put communication at the top of their Top 5 skills CPAs need now list. Communication remains a necessary skill for CPAs today.

Professors in some of the top accounting programs across the country say what they keep hearing from accounting firm recruiters, year after year, is that candidates lack the communication skills necessary to excel. (Lowercase excel, uppercase Excel is an entirely separate issue and competency in it is also in high demand)

What does all this mean for you, the non-traditional accounting student, the person taking another lap on the career track? It’s an opportunity, naturally.

If you have real-world experience of any kind — in a business setting or otherwise — you have real-world communication experience. You’ve probably had to drop what you’re doing to put out five-alarm fires without starting more of them all while massaging egos and not hurting feelings. Sometimes this is done over email, sometimes over the phone, but it’s not the type of skill you learn in a college classroom.

One annoying trait among fresh-faced recruits is their tendency to show off their smarts. They try to do this by writing long, elaborate emails that explain things in excruciating detail. If you’ve had ANY job that relies on email to a significant degree, you know that NO ONE has time for that. If you don’t get what I’m driving at, then here’s the only post on email you’ll ever need to read.

Here’s a quick list of some other attributes that you see in a lot of successful accountants, according to people who talk about these things (or that MACPA skills list we just linked above):

• Flexibility
• Leadership
• Tech aptitude
• Entrepreneurship

Now that you have an idea what a career in accounting is, let’s debunk some popular myths about accountants.

Busting myths you’ve heard about a career in accounting

Myth #1: You prepare tax returns — NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. Taxes are a common career path for many, but there are plenty of accountants who would rather chew broken glass than work with taxes.

Myth #2: You follow the markets/You’re a personal finance/investment advisor — We aren’t sure how some people get the impression that accountants are market experts, but it’s a misapprehension made by many. It’s not a bad way for a CPA to differentiate him/herself once a business is built, but investments/personal finance advice is NOT a primary knowledge base for accountants. [Ed. note: since this article was published in 2013 client advisory services has become the hot new thing in accounting practices and does involve a little bit of this, we have the technology to make it a lot easier on the CPAs providing these services to clients though]

Myth #3: Locked in an office, working long hours with a bunch of introverted nerds, little contact with the outside world, and thankless work — You’re picturing characters from Office Space aren’t you? Some combination of a frumpy, middle aged guy trapped in a dark, dingy basement. Or painfully bored people in grey cube farms.

Actually, there is some of that… but don’t despair! Every company needs accountants which means there is a wide variety of work environments, people, industries, and exposure to different elements of business. Plus, lots of tasks performed are value-add so there are plenty of grateful moments with clients and co-workers (some of them show it in funny ways, though). If you’re an auditor you might even get sent on a fun inventory count! Or at least you’ll get to see a roadside motel in Omaha and count widgets in the client’s dark, dank warehouse.

Running away scared yet? No? Good. Hang in there. The hard part is next.

What it takes to build a career in accounting

Okay you know what a career in accounting is and what it isn’t. So what will it take?

First things first — if you don’t have a degree in accounting, it’s likely that you’ll need to get one. In some rare cases you might be able to talk yourself into an accounts receivable/payable role, but those positions have limited career growth and earning potential (and some are also ripe for being automated out of the hands of flesh-and-blood humans by technology). You want options, remember?

The good news is, accounting is a widely offered degree so you won’t have to go far to find a school that has an accounting program. And unlike law school, the school you choose makes little difference. If you get a four-year degree, you’ll have the necessary background to get many, many accounting jobs.

That said, many, many accounting jobs do require previous experience and many, many people get their start in a public accounting firm. The advantages to starting your Plan B career in a public accounting firm are numerous, but the short version is that it will expose you to a variety of businesses which will, in turn, allow you to pursue a path that is of interest to you. We cannot emphasize that point enough — a career in accounting gives you options. LOTS OF THEM. The best way to maximize those options, IMHO, is to start out in public accounting. This means that you should seriously consider obtaining your CPA designation and this means having 150 credit hours to your name to qualify for it. Since this is a second-career post hopefully that’s not a problem, but it’d be remiss of us not to mention it.

Do not misunderstand, we are not saying — WE ARE NOT SAYING — that you must start in public accounting to have successful career in accounting. You will, however, be exposed to a number of different businesses and you will have the opportunity to understand various aspects of their operations, particularly if you work at a smaller public accounting firm. And the good news is there are small public accounting firms all over this great land, virtually in every city, hamlet, village, and one-horse town. This means your local D-III school degree will be perfect for you if you want to stick around and serve the businesses in the area. With post-Covid remote work a thing nowadays, you don’t even have to live within convenient commuting distance to sign on at a public accounting firm; barring travel to the client site, in-office meetings, and perhaps the yearly holiday party, that is.

Okay, moving on.

What to expect in your accounting program

If you’re new to our website, you’ve probably taken a spin around and thought, “Wow, there are sure a lot of whiny twerps on this site,” and you’re right! Some people are unhappy, but if you were ask them they don’t know how good they have it. Many young accountants suffer from a paradox of choice. They run blindly into the arms of large public accounting firms after school because they are bombarded with messaging from parents, professors (especially professors), and the firms themselves that this is what they should do without contemplating really what they want to do with their versatile accounting degree.

Why am I telling you this? Think of it as a word of caution. Enrolling in an accounting program will mean that you will be SURROUNDED by earnest, wide-eyed overachievers that want nothing more than to land on the roster of one of the Best Places to Launch a Career or the firm perpetually sitting at the top of Vault prestige lists. They will irritate you. Every time they open their mouths you will want to crush their naivete with the scepter of experience and crush their ideal with tales of reality.

Resist this urge. Stay focused on your goals, whatever they may be for your accounting aspirations, and those grasshoppers will soon be a distant memory. Persist! Persevere! Public accounting! Wait, what?

Actually, accounting programs will test your resolve. You will hate certain classes (probably tax). You will hate certain teachers (probably Intermediate I). You will ask to yourself, on more than one occasion, “Jesus, what did I get myself into?” All of these things are perfectly normal.

One final thing to consider in your “Accounting Is My Plan B career” quest is that if you’re interested in starting at a Big 4 firm, then you’ll want to be sure that those firms recruit at your school of choice. They do not visit every campus so check with the professors at your prospective school to find out if the Big 4 recruit there. And if they do, check with your professors about campus events like Meet the Firms which is, as its name describes, an opportunity for the firms to meet you, for you to meet the firms, and for many handshakes to be exchanged in the process. These handshakes will come in handy (heh) later when it comes time for you to choose which firm you are going to bless with your wide-eyed, eager presence.

Moving on…oh, wait…yes, I see a hand. Go ahead, please.

“Uh, yeah. What’s a Big 4 firm?”

OH, RIGHT! Lots of new people. Sorry about that.

A Big 4 accounting firm is one of the following: Deloitte (aka Deloitte & Touche), EY (aka Ernst & Young), KPMG (aka The House of Klynveld), and PwC (aka PricewaterhouseCoopers).

These four firms…yes, another question?

“Uh, yeah. Isn’t KPMG a radio station west of the Mississippi River?”

No. I assure you, KPMG is not a radio station west of the Mississippi River.

We good? Great.

These four firms are widely accepted as the most prestigious in the accounting industry. They have hundreds of offices across the globe, employ 150k+ people each, and have rosters full of clients with the brand names you’ve all heard of. Their internship programs are some of the most coveted in the world, they pay their people quite well and offer generous benefits packages and attractive perks. [Ed. note: we aren’t sure how the previous sentence slipped through our rigorous editing process back when this article was written in 2013, pretty sure our editor was drunk for the entirety of that year. Low pay is one of the #1 reasons given for why young accountants are quitting their Big 4 jobs in droves during the Great Resignation of 2022. The trade-off for this is experience and a highly-marketable resume item that will always be attractive to employers, if you can make it in Big 4 you can make it anywhere.]

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, get over it because it’s unlikely that you’ll end up at one of these four firms. Why? Well, the short version is you’re old. The slightly longer and more PC version is your maturity and life experience to date isn’t a good fit with the rest of Big 4 recruits that would make up your starting class. Big 4 firms want to mold (read: chew up, spit out) young, distracted minds that will buy into their culture from the beginning. That’s a difficult thing to do with a person that has already made a run at the working world and might have a family and other responsibilities.

I do not want dissuade anyone reading this to completely dismiss the Big 4; by all means, if they recruit at your school, visit with them at Meet the Firms, interview with them on campus, and if you still like what you hear, go on the office visit and accept their offer if you get one. It may be for you. I just don’t think it’s all that common with Plan B accountants.

Up next: jobs!

What kind of accounting jobs are out there?

As we’ve already said, opportunities will abound in small public accounting firms. If you’re interested in small business, a small public accounting firm is a great place to get exposure to lots of them. Some of the businesses you work with will hand you receipts in shoebox. You will want to strangle them and set that shoebox on fire. You will use your communication skills mentioned many, many paragraphs ago to gently encourage the client to practice better recordkeeping.

Some of the businesses you work with will hand you meticulous reports and answer your questions clearly and concisely and you will want to run through brick walls for them. You might even want to go work for them. It’s not an uncommon path for many accounting professionals and it’s why I suggest starting out in public accounting.

If everything written here about public accounting sounds AWFUL and you get your degree and you are still convinced that you have zero interest in going that route, that’s okay. As we said before, your accounting career won’t be an utter failure if you skip public despite what your professors have said. There are plenty of  jobs out there that don’t require any public accounting experience or a CPA designation and pay well and will set you up for a nice career.

But know this — if you happen to be up against one other person for a promotion or as a candidate for a job that has a CPA and has public accounting experience, it’s unlikely you will be promoted or offered the job. On paper, you get beat every time. It’s as simple as that.

Compensation

FINALLY. The good stuff, right?
The good news is that you can expect to start your new accounting job with a decent salary. The most recent data from the BLS shows a mean annual wage of $71k. That will vary by geography, industry, and experience of course, so your keep your expectations realistic when you start out. Get some experience under your belt and the money will take care of itself. [Ed. note: although Big 4 compensation is a large negative for many early-career accountants as you may have heard or probably read elsewhere on this website, the data is correct in that lifetime salary potential for an accounting career is quite high and, as mentioned above, the profession is relatively recession-proof]

The experience you gain is priceless

Speaking of experience, this is really what a career in accounting is made of. Sure, you can get a great education, a couple degrees, and land an internship with a prestigious firm, but none of that guarantees a successful career. These things take time; one of the first partners a writer here worked for said, “You have to turn over a lot of rocks to get good in this business,” and that’s why pure smarts never wins out.

This isn’t like those cheapskates who email artists to create huge murals for them and say “pay? No, there’s no pay. But think about the experience!” You will also get paid, of course. But the experience, and especially the kind you are exposed to at large public accounting firms, will be critical to your future success. It can help you figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life (hopefully the last time you make such a decision considering you didn’t do so great the first time), or at least in what area you want to concentrate your rich bucket of CPA skills.

Getting that experience can be fun! No, really, building your knowledge around this stuff can be interesting; the key being you have to find what you like and stick to it. A lot of people bounce around, wanting to try different things, but if you have a knack for something and you enjoy it, don’t mess around. Dig in and in a few short years (and long busy seasons), people will be coming to you because you’re the expert. I know, it’s a scary thought.

What are accounting jobs like?

Generally speaking, public accounting jobs are deadline driven. Whether you’re working in audit, tax, advisory, or any of the derivatives of those main areas, your engagements/assignments will have deadlines attached to them. Deadlines are usually a driver of stress, so manage yours — deadlines, stress — well and you’ll be fine. Manage them poorly and you’ll drive yourself crazy.

If you’re more interested in an industry job (that is to say companies not accounting firms), the same can be true with the month-end closing of the books being a monthly routine as the name suggests. Depending on the size of your company, you could be responsible for one or many aspects of keeping the books. The advantage to a small company is that you’ll learn more, faster; often trial by fire. In a large company, you’ll be given a narrower set of responsibilities, often with explicit instructions. If you prove capable, you might earn more responsibility. Either way…yay?

Popular certifications for accountants other than CPA and other considerations

There are a few other nuances to accounting careers that you should know about:

1. Professional Designations There are numerous certifications out there that are a great way to differentiate yourself from your peers and earn more money. Of course there’s the most popular for accountants, the CPA, but some others to familiarize yourself with as you progress in your career include: Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Management Accountant (CMA); Certified Financial Planner (CFP); Certified Internal Auditor (CIA); Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA); Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA); Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA).

2. Non-accounting experience Were you a mechanic? An engineer? An artist or musician? All of these professions can be enhanced with a background in accounting. If you were one of these or had another occupation but wanted the stability of an accounting career, the good news is that you can couple that expertise with a prior passion that can lead to…

3. Entrepreneurship Accountants are trained to understanding how capital moves in and out and around a company. This makes for a great background for those looking to broaden for prior professional pursuits or anyone that simply wants to own their business. Nowadays quite a few accountants, many of them friends of Going Concern, have taken everything they learned at Big 4 firms and applied it to starting tech firms that serve accountants, perhaps taking some aspect of their former job and automating it to take it off some poor Big 4 auditor’s plate. For anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit, a foundation in accounting can ensure a strong foundation for whatever business they decide to venture into.

So there you have it. Our guide for becoming an accountant for people who don’t want to be what they are right now. They only thing left to do is get off the Internet and make it happen. OH LOOK, KITTENS!

Sorry! Did we mention that it’s extremely important to focus? If you have any problems or other questions, we’re here for you. Reach out any time no matter your issue and we’ll do our best. Good luck.

*the first few years at a Big 4 firm can be rough salary-wise. This eventually does pay off once you have that coveted Big 4 resume item stamped on your CV for all of eternity.

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You may have noticed a little warning from your browsers this morning concerning GC having a little malware. Google sent us a little heads up earlier this morning confirming the issue, so it’s just not you! They have various theories behind this including the site being “compromised” (I think that’s a nice way of saying “hacked”) but Adrienne is convinced that I brought something back from the red light district.

ANYWAY, right now all theories are on the table for investigation but I assure you, our team of tech-savvy youth are on the case as we…er…speak. The Internet is a crazy place so things like this are bound to happen once in a full moon on 11/11/11, so we ask that everyone please bear with us while we sort things out. We’ll keep you updated as things progress.

Thanks for your continued support of Going Concern.

UPDATE: Due to our difficulties, we’ll be skipping the Daily Grind today, so sorry if that’s the only thing that gets you out of bed in the morning. We’ll also refrain from posting until the issues have been fixed. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter where we’ll be wreaking havoc and giving you updates.

The post A Little Housekeeping appeared first on Going Concern.

During my summer internship at an accounting firm I noticed each night as I was heading out the door with my managers that two of our team members stayed behind and continued working.

I admired but internally questioned their dedication. After the pattern ensued for several days, I asked one of the individuals why she felt the need to stay behind every day when we had already reached our daily milestones. She explained that she was preparing to take portions of the CPA exam, and that there was no other available time besides weekends to study. I wished her well (she did eventually pass).

Her actions/dedication left an indelible impression on me, and as I entered my senior year in college I rearranged my class and personal schedules to allow myself time to study for the CPA exam so that I could take the test prior to beginning full-time employment.

Pursuing this and other certifications has made a positive impact on my career. I thus offer three tips for how to effectively study for professional accounting certifications while working:

Tip 1: Get Certified Prior to Starting Your Job
If I could pass along one piece of advice to young professionals considering an employer-required certification it would be this: If you have time between graduating college and beginning work, put 100 percent of your efforts into completing that certification prior to starting your job. Yes, it makes for a miserable summer wherein your best friends are exam prep instructors (Peter Olinto, anyone?), but in the end this method is the much preferred alternative to studying after a long day of work for months on end.

What should you do, however, if you have no such break between college and full-time work, or you are studying for an additional certification later in your career while working full-time? I fell into this latter category while working toward the CMA, which I had known since college that I wanted to take as soon as things settled down after beginning work at an accounting firm.

Tip 2: Gain Buy-in from Your Employer
After examining my schedule, I determined the most favorable times to study for and schedule the various sections of the CMA exam. Then, I spoke with my teams at work to gain their buy-in (my managers were fully supportive), and I scheduled my exams well in advance while keeping in mind client demands and team requirements. Saturdays always fill up first at testing centers, so schedule as far in advance as you can.

Tip 3: Build Studying Time Into Your Daily Schedule
Additionally, I took a day off from work prior to each exam date to have adequate time to study – though I didn’t plan on studying everything on that one day or just on Saturdays. I knew that I needed to study – at least a little bit – every day to most thoroughly prepare for the exam.

After considering my daily schedule, it was clear that the time I had the most control over was early in the morning. I decided to wake up an hour earlier each day for the three to four weeks prior to the exam to review material and churn through practice questions (which I believe is one of the most effective methods to prepare for these exams). Then on Saturdays I studied longer and more in-depth.

I took Sundays off from studying to allow things to settle in my mind while spending a day with my family. In the end, my efforts paid off. I passed each section and after finishing the experience requirement, I was a CMA.

The post Three Tips to Help Make Studying for the CPA Exam While Working Less Awful appeared first on Going Concern.

I was having a discussion with a colleague concerning the Excel skills in industry versus public accounting. We agreed that, generally speaking and based on surveys of class participants in our respective Excel CPE classes, industry users are more advanced than public accounting users. Within public accounting, regional firm users are more advanced than local and Big 4 users. Why is that?

We had one computer for about 150 professional staff when I started out in Big 8 public accounting oh so long ago. Back then we were the cutting edge in spreadsheet use. We were consulting with our clients on how to use Visicalc to increase productivity and reduce errors. So how did the Big 4 apparently slide to the bottom of the scale?

Theory number one holds that the Big 4 does all their training from within. They take someone who has perceived advanced skills, and use that person to teach everyone else what they know. The problem is that the in-house trainer may not know some of the advanced features in Excel that would be useful to the group. The trainer may only know slightly more than everyone else. My own experience with selling Excel to a Big 4 firm is that they feel it would be nice to know more about Excel, but it’s not imperative to the job. Rather it is better to focus CPE resources on IFRS or the latest tax code changes.

Theory number two says that associates in the Big 4 are focused in on their in-house proprietary audit software which doesn’t allow incorporating new ideas into the audit process like pivot tables or form control objects. Stick to the audit program because there is no room in the budget to experiment with Excel.

Now that I’m done ragging on the Excel skill level in the Big 4 remember I said at the beginning of the post “generally speaking” and I know there are excellent Excel users in the Big 4. I just haven’t met them yet.

The post Do Regional Firm Accountants Have Better Excel Skills Than Their Big 4 Counterparts? appeared first on Going Concern.

Dear Donut,

Our relationship goes back a long way. I feel like you’ve become a big part of me. You used to be such a treat, but now, I fear you’ve become a bad habit. Three-thirty in the afternoon rolls around and suddenly you’re there, demanding my attention. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

I don’t know how to say this without hurting your feelings, but let’s face it. You lied to me. You were supposed to be a snack, a burst of energy, a friend to carry me through until dinner. But that’s not what happened. Sure, the anticipation of meeting you was exquisite. Your softness against my lips. Your sweet taste . . .

But I digress. The sad thing was that after all that foreplay, you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain. After you were gone, I felt tired, not energized. In fact, worse than if I hadn’t had you at all. I put up with it for a while, but it has gone too far. This relationship has to end.

I’m sorry if I’ve never mentioned this before. I know you mean well. I appreciate the kind thought, but no, I really don’t think there’s anything you can do. No, another layer of frosting isn’t going to make a difference. Really. Yes, a fruit filling might make you more romantic, but that just doesn’t deal with the issue. We just weren’t made for each other.

Well, I wasn’t going to mention this to you, but yes, there is someone else. She’s from a different country. No, not Danish! She goes down smooth and gives me lasting energy. No, this isn’t about liking salty more than sweet. Besides, she’s a lot less salty now, more earthy, I’d say. She’s a vegetable juice.

No need to get personal! Vegetables may not be sexy, but they’re smart, and I have come to appreciate how much I like that. You know, I thought you would be a difficult habit to give up, but it turned out that you were easy to replace with something smart. Look, let’s not part as enemies. You’re sweet. You’re fun, particularly when you’re fresh. And we have known each other a long time. Can’t we just be friends?

Bill

The post Area Accountant Breaks Up with Donut appeared first on Going Concern.

If you know an accounting student, or if you are an accounting student, get busy and get writing. The deadline for the AccountingWEB Accounting Student Scholarship is midnight Thursday, March 31.

The clock is ticking, but there is still a window of opportunity for accounting students to compose an essay of no more than 500 words with the topic, “There’s an App for That.” Essays will be judged on creativity, innovation, quality of writing, structure, logic, and, where applicable, sources and research.

Participation in the AccountingWEB Accounting Student Scholarship program is open to U.S., Canadian, and Mexican citizens who are students attending colleges, universities, and professional schools of accounting in North America. Students applying for the AccountingWEB Accounting Student Scholarship must have already completed at least one semester or two trimesters of full-time college and must be declared accounting majors, effective for the fall of 2011. Both undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to enter.

The scholarship is a $1,000 one-time award, payable to the educational institution where winning students are in attendance as full-time students, have a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.5 on a 4.0 scale, or the equivalent, and who are declared accounting majors. Transcripts are required as evidence of this status. More details and a link to the online application are available in the Scholarship Rules.

Students can submit their application online or by U.S. mail. All applications must be postmarked or submitted by midnight Eastern time, March 31, 2011.

Click here to forward this message to your favorite accounting student!

The post Attention Accounting Students Interested in Free Money appeared first on Going Concern.

In balancing our national budget, Obama and Congress are focusing on the wrong side of the financial equation. The projected deficit in 2011 is $1.65 trillion; however, the whole non-defense discretionary spending budget in 2010 was $477 billion. Even if all non-defense discretionary spending were eliminated, there would still remain a deficit of over $1.1 trillion. The math is clear that Congress cannot eliminate deficit spending by budget cuts. Taxes will need to be raised.

Some of the cuts that President Obama is proposing in his budget include $300 million for community block grants, $2.35 billion for low income home energy assistance program, and $400 billion from a five-year domestic spending freeze, as well as reductions in pell grants, graduate school loans, community access, etc. But all of these cuts do not come close to offsetting the lost revenues from the extension of the tax cuts to the rich.

A pattern has emerged in Obama’s dealings with the Republicans. Obama agreed with the Republican argument to give tax cuts to the rich to help the economy. Now he is proposing to cut programs for the middle class and the poor to balance the budget. In doing such, Obama is moving the political fulcrum to the right. His approach of pre-emptively offering something—whether it be tax cuts for the rich or budget cuts affecting the poor and middle class—instead of negotiating a quid pro quo, is effectively pushing the Republicans further to the right, seeing the prospect of gaining even more ground.

Although compromise is demanded in politics, leadership cannot be defined by compromise alone. There are principles worth fighting for; and leaders must be willing to mobilize public opinion in support of those principles. Since our political system is rigged because of campaign finance and lobbying, a leader professing change and reform needs to present a different narrative to the populace. Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt recognized the value of the bully pulpit. Despite his rhetorical skills, Obama has failed to do so. His posture of appeasement will in all likelihood allow the Republicans to balance the budget on the backs of the working class and low income Americans to the benefit of Wall Streeters and Multinational Corporations, who offshore jobs, brought about the financial crisis, and robbed trillions from the American people. Since Obama is seeking re-election in 2012, and is charting his own course, he will not lead the American people to the Promised Land.

America needs major tax reform. The extension of tax cuts to people who need them the least was the last thing Congress needed to do. Some Democrats want to cut $40 billion in subsidies to the oil companies for five years; however, Republicans refuse to cut these subsidies to the oil companies, preferring to cut programs for the poor and middle class. Moreover, in spite of two wars costing $120 billion per year and an inflation adjusted military budget larger than those in the Bush years and the Cold War, neither party desires to cut military spending, which constitutes 58% of the discretionary spending budget.

Reform will never come from Congress nor a President like Obama. It will require people outside of Washington working with allies inside Congress in order to stop this disconnect between what is transpiring in Washington and what this country needs. It will require people coming together as they did in Egypt in a pro-democracy movement. The question is, can and will the people of America come together before it is too late.

The post More Appeasement in Obama’s Proposed Budget appeared first on Going Concern.

Looking for love in all the wrong places? Many workers turn to the once taboo office pool in search of companionship, and the search appears to be paying off. More than a third of workers (37 percent) say they have dated someone they worked with over their career; 18 percent report dating co-workers at least twice in their career. Additionally, 30 percent report they went on to marry a person they dated in the office. This is according to CareerBuilder’s annual office romance survey of more than 3,900 workers. Of those who have dated in the workplace, one-in-ten say they have dated someone at work within the last year.

Some workers are dating those above them on the office ladder. When it comes to dating higher ups, women were more likely than men to date someone above them in their company’s hierarchy. One third of women said they have dated someone who holds a higher position in their organization; 20 percent of men report they have done the same.

“Workplace relationships no longer carry the stigma they once did, as 65 percent of workers said they aren’t keeping their romance a secret. However, it is the responsibility of the individuals to understand company policy and make sure they adhere to it,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. “Especially in this economy, workers are spending more time in the office, and the lines between working and socializing are being crossed. Workers need to keep it professional under all circumstances, though, to ensure that the quality of their work is not negatively impacted.”

Some workplace relationships may have their beginnings in current workplace crushes. Eight percent of workers currently work with someone whom they would like to date, with more men (11 percent) than women (4 percent) reporting they would like to do so.

Twelve percent of workers reported that their relationships started when they ran into each other outside of work. Some other situations where Cupid’s arrow flew between co-workers include:

• Happy hour
• Lunch
• Working late at the office
• Company holiday party
• Business trip

Haefner offers the following tips for workers who may want to spark a workplace romance:

• Know your company’s policy on office dating: While some companies may have a formal policy, others may not have anything at all. Make sure both parties in the relationship are aware of potential rules or consequences.
• Social media – office relationship friend or foe?: Before you start posting pictures and status updates about your newfound coupledom, it may be better to inform your co-workers or boss in person. That way, there is less chance for gossip or speculation.
• Keep the relationship out of the office: Do your best to maintain professionalism and not let the dating issues affect your performance or others on the job.

The survey also showed the repercussions of workplace romance, with 6 percent of workers saying they have left a job due to an office romance.

The post Will You Find Love This Busy Season? appeared first on Going Concern.

During the tax season of 1995-1996, Norm Lorch was not feeling well. He had a sore throat, but told himself it would go away. In any case, he did not have time to go to a doctor.

Lorch is principal of Owings Mills, Maryland-based Norman J. Lorch, Chartered, a firm that assists contractors, accountants, and attorneys in areas unique to government contracts.

Eventually, he spoke with a doctor on the phone who prescribed antibiotics – two weeks on and off – but he still did not feel much better. At one point, Lorch passed out, but he told himself that he had tripped on something, picked himself up, and went back to work.

While attending an American Bar Association conference, Lorch met a friend who would be conducting the session he was planning to attend. The friend told him in “pretty clear English” how he looked and said he needed to see a doctor. Lorch said no, but the friend insisted, saying that if Lorch didn’t call a doctor, he would stop the session.

Lorch set up an appointment for the next day. The doctor’s diagnosis was strep throat and made an appointment with a cardiologist for the following Monday. At first Lorch said “No, I have to go to Chicago,” but eventually he acquiesced. The strep had settled in Lorch’s aortic valve and destroyed it, causing congestive heart failure. He was given three to five days to live if he did not have immediate surgery.

“This is a crazy profession. Accountants are nuts. We work ourselves to death. I had allowed my clients to be the most important thing in my life. I didn’t listen to anybody,” Lorch told AccountingWEB.

“Making a few bucks less won’t kill you. When you are tired, quit. When you don’t feel good, stop working. Yes, some clients may leave, but they are going to find someone else if you die,” he said.

“I made a lot of money that year and eventually earned a penalty for underpayment of estimated taxes. I called the Internal Revenue Service to explain, spoke with a supervisor, and she said, ‘if you receive another penalty notice have them contact me.’

“Now, my priorities are my health and my family. My daughter had to leave college during her exams because of my medical condition, and I nearly missed her graduation. My clients can wait, and those that can’t wait can go. When you remember what comes first, everything else will fall in line,” Lorch said.

“When I teach, I tell everybody about this and what stress can do to your health because if I can help one person, it is worth it. I persuaded the moderator at an AICPA tax conference to allow me to speak to a group of 50 or 60 people when I wasn’t scheduled. As we were leaving, one man said, ‘Thank you very much. I am going to the hospital,’ Lorch said.

Since his illness, Lorch has lost weight and is careful what he eats. He walks five to seven days a week for one and a half miles. When he doesn’t feel well, he calls his doctor.

A specialist in financial oversight, compensation, and administration of U.S. government prime contracts and subcontracts, Lorch travels at least 50 percent of his working hours, but now plans travel with his health in mind. “I try to extend the hours, spreading two days of work over three.”

Earlier:
BKD Partner Found Dead at His Office

The post More Proof That Busy Season Could Kill You appeared first on Going Concern.

With no place to work in the office of the housing authority of a major city, the audit team was provided tables and chairs in the hallway of a renovated apartment building that connected the swinging front door with the elevators. In the middle of winter in a city located on a bay, the wind swept into the hallway driving temperatures to near freezing. Clothed in parkas, scarves, wool hats and gloves, the audit team struggled through the engagement.

Auditing rural hospitals, CPA firm personnel were ordinarily assigned to a patient room for workspace since there was no room for them in the hospital office. This year there were no patient rooms available so they were assigned to the morgue! Steel tables and high stools were their accommodations. Formaldehyde, dead bodies draped in sheets and the medical examiner’s buzz saw greeted them each day.

The auditors of a plumbing contractor were assigned a dark, damp room in the basement for workspace. The room was two flights of stairs and several hundred yards from the accounting office.

Two auditors were assigned workspace at a desk adjacent to and facing the controller. The controller smoked, they didn’t.

I could relate more true stories on and I suspect you could add your experiences to this list of inadequate fieldwork workspace. Here are some obvious questions:

1. Did any of these scenarios increase time charges on the engagements?
2. Who had responsibility to correct or prevent these circumstances?
3. When should corrective action be taken?
4. What actions should have been taken?

Question 1: Of course time charges were increased! The auditors of the housing authority said the audit required almost twice the amount of time it should have. The hospital auditors lost numerous hours going for fresh air and to the restroom to vomit! Going back and forth to the accounting office wasted enormous amounts of time, although the team did lose weight. Not only was the health of the non-smokers impaired, they wasted time leaving the room to discuss audit issues and securing all working papers and electronic equipment every time they left the room.

Question 2: The in-charge accountants on these engagements had responsibility to run the fieldwork but their “stick” wasn’t big enough to get the managements to change their workspace. It was the engagement leaders’ responsibility to speak with managements to correct the situations.

Question 3: If the workspace could not be improved internally, a nearby motel room, a recreation vehicle parked outside a client’s facility or an electronic air filer could be remedies. The cost of these alternatives is likely far less than the unbillable wasted time.

Question 4: This is a planning activity! Proper workspace should be arranged by the engagement leader before the fieldwork begins. Engagement profits can be increased considerably by using foresight and arranging for proper workspace!

The post Nightmare Audit Rooms Have Their Consequences appeared first on Going Concern.

Although the future of the controversial Cap-and-Trade bill is in limbo, particularly with a new Congress that might not be as anxious to pass the legislation as the previous group of legislators, many companies have already begun measuring and reporting carbon emissions. California and New Mexico aren’t waiting for federal legislation and are initiating their own statewide cap and trade system. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cooperative effort among 10 states in the Northeast, is helping to develop and implement a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Other areas of the country are in various stages of regional carbon trading programs.

According to a recent report in the Fast Company Expert Blog, “An overwhelming majority of Fortune 500 companies now voluntarily measure, manage, and publicly disclose their carbon emissions.” This provides an exciting opportunity for accountants to provide an important service in the growing area of carbon accounting.

A recent article published by the GreenBiz Group, a media company that reports on sustainability, points to a shortage of greenhouse gas (GHG) professionals who can measure, report, and verify emissions. Results of a recent survey of greenhouse gas professionals show that “Most respondents believe GHG auditing has insufficient oversight.”

Gillian Marks, principal at The Climate Advisor, speaking last fall at the American Women’s Society of Certified Public Accountants/American Society of Women Accountants Joint National Conference (JNC) in Nashville, TN, spoke of President Obama’s Executive Order signed in October, 2009, requiring Federal agencies to set a greenhouse gas emission target for the year 2020 with specific energy, water, and waste reduction targets that must be included in the overall plan. The Executive Order requires agencies to measure, manage, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions with a commitment to leading by example.

Lynne McIntosh, president of Excellerate Energy LLC, joined Marks on the podium at the JNC and emphasized the opportunity for accountants to add carbon accounting services to their practice. She suggested that revenue generated by providing carbon accounting services could reach $7 to $9 billion by 2012.

“Just because carbon cap and trade legislation didn’t make it through the Senate, it doesn’t mean this stuff is dead,” said Paul Baier, vice president of sustainability consulting at Groom Energy, an energy consulting and design firm, in an article that appeared in TheStreet.com.

To assist companies with the mission of measuring carbon usage, a new crop of software programs called enterprise carbon accounting (ECA) is showing “explosive growth” according to market research performed by Groom Energy. Groom maintains a vendor list of software companies providing GHG, Carbon, and ECA software programs – so far there are 75 companies on the list. Groom predicts that the purchases of ECA software will increase 600% over the next year.

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued guidance requiring public companies to warn investors of risks that climate change could pose to their business.

Accountants have a two-fold purpose with regard to carbon accounting. Not only are the accounting firms setting goals for themselves, but accountants are primed to serve as advisors to clients who are ready to get busy with carbon accounting. Taking sensible steps toward conserving energy is the starting point – an obvious one because it can save a company money. Moving into the field of carbon accounting, where carbon emissions are actually charted and measured is the direction in which we all are headed. Getting ahead start today could position accountants for a lucrative career move.

The post Are Carbon Accounting Services the Next Hot Career Path? appeared first on Going Concern.

For those of you unfamiliar with the history of World War II, Neville Chamberlain was the prime minister of Great Britain just prior to the advent of World War II. He is most remembered for his “Munich Agreement“, in which he deeded over Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany with Germany’s promise that it would not pursue further aggression. Of course, this was making a deal with the devil; Adolf Hitler was Satan incarnate, for certain. Consequently, his name has become the emodiment of total naivete, if not utter stupidity and idiocy. You cannot make a deal with the devil. Shown here in the picture to the right is Neville Chamberlin upon his return from Munich in 1938 after meeting with Adolf Hitler with the scrap of paper that was to “ensure peace in our time”; the paper was signed by Hitler.

The question now is whether Barack Obama is another Neville Chamberlain. Obama is supporting the tax cuts for the rich, claiming that unless we agree to these demands by the Republicans, our economy may dip back into recession, as Chamberlain asserted that unless England and Europe gave Nazi Germany Czechoslovakia, that a war with Germany might occur. Whether you are for the tax cuts or against the tax cuts, the majority of Americans were surprised, if not flabbergasted, by Obama’s immediate acquiescence to Republican demands for inclusion of the rich in the tax cuts, including a very generous exemption from estate taxes: under the plan, as much as $10 million may be exempt from any estate tax, with the estate tax rate on any excess being reduced from 55% to 35%!

Certainly, Barack Obama is no Winston Churchill. Maybe he does his fighting only on a basketball court; however, he certainly did not fight the good fight before conceding to the Republican demands, merely accepting in return a 13 month extension of unemployment benefits for 2 million Americans, a reduction in payroll taxes, and an extension of a grab bag of tax credits for college tuition and other items. Like Chamberlain, who only received Hilter’s signature on a scrap of paper promising never to go to war again with England, Obama got very little in return for the big gift to the rich and privileged.

A recent CBS poll found 70% of Americans were not in favor of these tax cuts for the rich—resulting in huge deficits of $700 billion dollars—when our national debt is already $14 trillion. Many feel that no tax cuts would have been preferable to this agreement, since no deal would spare us from an additional $980 billion of debt.

Obama is justifying these tax cuts through a fear tactic: unless we give the rich these tax cuts, our country may lapse back into another recession.

Dear President Obama: for your information, we are still in this recession. And in 2012, we will still be in this recession in terms of unemployment. Jobs have been going overseas for years now and with the further consolidations of mega-size corporations, more layoffs are looming. Of course, the unemployment numbers will become meaningless since after a certain period of time, the long-term unemployed are no longer included in the current rate of unemployment.

After hearing Harvard’s Larry Sumners endorsement of these tax cuts for the rich and his prediction of another recession if they are not enacted, I suspect that President Obama may still be listening to the counsel of his former Economic Advisor. Consequently, I am not surprised by Obama’s use of fear tactics today to drum support for these tax cuts for the rich.

If this is the kind of way Obama negotiates with Republicans over tax cuts for the rich, imagine how he would negotiate with the Iranians and North Korea? LOL! And then imagine how Hillary Clinton would have negotiated if she had been elected President of the United States. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it’s deja vu [Neville Chamberlain] all over again.

The post Obama’s Appeasement on Tax Cuts appeared first on Going Concern.

Consumers with a bone to pick with the Internal Revenue Service have the opportunity to share their experiences. Originally designed as an IRS profile database, IRSDoghouse.com has evolved into a free and anonymous Web site where anyone can rate – negatively or positively – their personal and professional experiences with IRS employees.

The IRS certainly holds the tax-paying public to task and now is the time for practitioners and other tax-paying individuals to reward or bite back, according to the site’s creators. Ratings are based on dog bones, with a single dog bone rating as the least favorable; five dog bones is the best rating.

People share personal experiences and can post information about the IRS employee, including whether the employee was helpful, clueless, difficult to work with, or knowledgeable. Reviews allow for character descriptions and other details. In the characteristic section, one reviewer explained that this IRS employee has been a government employee too long. She was clueless, difficult to work with, and would be fired if she worked in the private sector. The IRS employee received one dog bone.

On the other hand, a positive review of five bones reported that the IRS employee was able to negotiate, was fair, helpful, intelligent, and interacted with him in a kind, courteous, and professional manner. This IRS employee demonstrated positive communication skills and a pleasant attitude. He was a pleasure to work with and gave the benefit of the doubt to the practitioner/taxpayer. He also allowed ample time to comply with requests. “This is one of the good guys in the IRS,” the rater said.

The Web site provides people with IRS complaints a safe and anonymous place to vent or to share feel-good stories. And, if people don’t wish to post any comments at all, they can still read about practitioners’ and other tax payer experiences to know what they might be up against.

The site is free to use and is monitored for extreme profanity, hateful comments, and threats, which are removed. The administrator of this site has the authority to remove any posting that is not deemed appropriate.

The post Just So You’re Aware: Your Experience with IRS Can Now Be Rated on a Scale of One to Five Dog Bones appeared first on Going Concern.

The first person you have to manage every day is you. You want to be in a strong position at work. You want to take charge of your role in every relationship with every boss. It’s just that there are so many factors beyond your control at work.

I’ve done hundreds of focus groups with thousands of people around one very simple question: What gets in the way of your success at work? Like clockwork, nine out of 10 responses are factors that are totally beyond the control of the individual.

What gets in the way of your success?

• Company policies, rules, regulations, corporate culture, standard operating procedures
• The way things have always been done around here.
• There is too much work and not enough time.
• There are too many low-priority activities that take me away from my most important tasks and responsibilities.
• There is a lot of conflict between and among employees, which creates a stressful, negative mood.
• Resources are limited and sometimes I don’t have the people, materials, and tools that I need to do the job.
• There is no clear chain of command in this organization.
• I answer to too many different people.
• My various bosses each have different standards of performance and conduct.
• My various bosses each tell me conflicting things about what should take priority.
• My various bosses each tell me conflicting things about rules and policies.
• Some bosses yell and scream and make things difficult.
• Sometimes bosses don’t make time for me one-on-one, some bosses don’t make expectations clear, and some don’t keep track of performance.

Sound familiar? There are so many factors beyond your control.

But you control you. You control your own thoughts, words, and actions. You control your attitude, commitment, time, effort, and your ideas. You are responsible for playing your role to the best of your ability every day at work. So be powerful. Focus on what you can control: You.

First, make sure that the first person you are managing every day is you. Make sure you are taking good care of you outside of work so that you are bringing your very best to work every day. Arrive a little early. Stay a little late.

And while you are at work, you need to be all about the work. Your work, that is. Focus on playing the role assigned to you before you ever try to reach beyond that role. Focus on your tasks, your responsibilities, your projects. Focus on doing them very well, very fast, all day long.

The post Stop Worrying About Things You Can’t Control appeared first on Going Concern.

A.O. Scott, currently movie critic for The New York Times, wrote a column in the Times‘ Week in Review (May 9. 2010) titled. “Gen X Has a Midlife Crisis.” He used film references such as “The Big Chill” for Baby Boomers and the recent “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “Greenberg” for Gen X (his generation). He also references “The Ask,” a novel relating to Gen Xers as fodder for his view.

Scott characterizes Gen X as over-educated, insecure, coming of age in the late 80s and early 90s. He also ascribes to Gen Xers the phrases: “consumerist banality,” “the attempt to camouflage sincere confusion with winking insouciance,” “the obsession with generalizing a personal experience,” “we did what we could: the slogan of the underachiever, the excuse maker, the loser.” (Is his language off-putting to you too?)

I think it is unfair to characterize a whole generation this way, Further, there are big differences between the older and younger halves of the Gen X cohort (1962-1978) as there are with the Boomer generation, and my guess is that Scott is referring mostly to the Xers on the older end.

Yet the arts reflect the culture the artists are observing, so what do the patterns and kernels of truth in the films, books, etc, tell us? What will engage members of that generation to be the leaders and achievers they need to be?

Some speculation:

* More than other generations, Gen X may blame Boomers for blocking their opportunity and their underachieving. Unlike Gen Y/Millennials, they are not typically optimistic about their future at times of economic setbacks, and they don’t expect help.

* Gen Xers don’t look to others (older or younger) to explain their confusion or uncertainty.

* Gen Xers have a harder time trusting than other generations, having seen how the workplace social contract broke down for their parents and has never been particularly welcoming to them. In the workplace, they typically do not and will not place a premium on helping others and “making your fellow players look great” (as stated in the most important rule of improv performance).

* Materialism is evident. They outdo the Boomers in pursuit of luxury brands and symbols.

* Gen Xers (and Gen Y too) want freedom as represented by time, rewards in money and time, and to decide how to spend their time. The aspiration is “The Four-Hour Work-Week.” They were the first generation to see technology enable that. They work hard to create flexibility at an early age rather than waiting to achieve seniority and retirement. Gen Y is even more adamant about flexibility.

* Xers are resourceful personally (though not necessarily in groups), yet often feel like losers.

* Gen Y trusts group consensus or group determined “truth.” They expect help and resent Gen Xers who don’t specify expectations and don’t give them guidance, and call them spoiled, entitled, and over-protected. If not addressed in an enlightened way, this tension doesn’t portend well for long-tern engagement and productivity in the workplace as we know it.

Since Gen Xers, for a short time at least, are the next generation of leaders we all must look to, how can they capitalize on the strengths of their generation – which are often overlooked? And how can all the generations support them in using those strengths such as: self-sufficiency, desire for flexibility, results-orientation, entrepreneurial attitude, getting the job done wherever and however they choose, and belief in merit-based rewards to change deficient and debilitating business models for the better in a global context?

This is an important topic for future discussion and needs to start with a sincere expression of respect and candid dialogue in a non-threatening environment.

© Phyllis Weiss Haserot, 2010. All rights reserved.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot is the president of Practice Development Counsel, a business development and organizational effectiveness consulting and coaching firm she founded over 20 years, with a special focus is on the profitability of improving inter-generational relations and transitioning planning for baby boomer senior partners (www.nextgeneration-nextdestination.com). Phyllis is the author of The Rainmaking Machine and The Marketer’s Handbook of Tips & Checklists (both West 2010). pwhaserot@pdcounsel.com. URL: www.pdcounsel.com.

The post Is the Gen X Mid-life Crisis Upon Us? appeared first on Going Concern.

A few years ago we were members of Affilica – an international association of accounting and legal firms, who had a global presence, but not in North America. This was a particular concern because we specialise in helping US companies enter the UK market as their entry into Europe, and are seeking an alliance with a group that has a substantial North American membership.

But we are having trouble finding the right group.

Yes – we are members of BritishAmerican Business Inc, and do get referrals from the UK Trade & Industry, and from the UK /US Advisory Network, and from firms of CPA’s in the US who may not have in-house international expertise (Kevin Beare is an Associate member of the MSCPA), but we are growing and can see the mutual benefits of belonging to an international association.

We recently enquired about membership of CPAAI. To our surprise they said that our niche practice was considered too small.

However they were unable to say what size criteria a firm providing complementary services to their members needed to be.

We currently receive referrals from all 4 of the Big 4 firms, because they recognise that our total outsourced accounting and UK payroll service complements their own higher value services. We also get similar referrals from second tier firms. We do not have Chinese walls whereby one Partner does the accounting and tax and another partner does the audit of that work. For true independence and to enable us to act as trusted advisor to our clients we gave up our audit registration.

That is the background to this request.

Have other firms come across these difficulties?

Suggestions and advice regarding other suitable groups to join would be welcome.

The post Can We Get a Recommendation for an International Accounting Group Up in Here? appeared first on Going Concern.

As professionals, we face this more often than we like. It makes us uncomfortable. It stirs up lots of emotions and feelings. It distracts us and can make us significantly less productive. What is this thing? It is workplace confrontation. As much as we may try to avoid it, or pretend it does not exist, workplace confrontation is real and as professionals, we need to know how to deal with it effectively.

In our digital and global world, workplace confrontation increasingly takes place through e-mail. I suspect this is occurring for two reasons:

1) It is easier to hide behind a digital cloak and say things you would not otherwise say to someone’s face in an e-mail, and

2) In a global world, people may not have the opportunity to talk face-to-face with many of their co-workers.

Even though confrontation has gone digital, it does not mean dealing with it becomes less important or easier. If anything, dealing with it becomes more important and difficult.

To shed some light on how to deal with this issue, I will give you an example of a conflict I faced recently via e-mail with a coworker who worked in a different state and who I had never met. My coworker was upset that I had sent him an incomplete reconciliation and felt I was trying to hand work off to him. He was not subtle in his feelings. In my initial e-mail, I had been kind in explaining that I was only trying to meet a deadline and the reconciliation was incomplete due to information lacking on his end. I asked if there was a justifiable reason for the information to be lacking. Because I knew my coworker was extremely organized, I had no reason to believe that he had overtly not done his job. What I did next is what I think will help you the next time you face workplace confrontation.

Upon receiving his angry e-mail, I stepped back from the situation so that I would not respond rashly. I then took the e-mail to my supervisor for guidance on how he thought I should respond. I incorporated his advice and wrote an e-mail that spoke to the facts and ignored all emotion from my coworker’s e-mail. By doing this, we exchanged a few more e-mails that ultimately allowed us both to learn about some weak links in our process that we were able to shore up.

I do not claim to be an expert on workplace confrontation, but I do believe the above tactics work in diffusing confrontation, whether face-to-face, on the phone, or through e-mail. The most important thing to keep in mind when responding to your coworkers is to try to understand where they are coming from and then shape your response in a way that either makes them see you are on the same team and/or how they stand to benefit if they step back and work through the problem in a constructive manner.

In my situation, I met my coworker face-to-face for the first time a few weeks after our confrontation, and we had an extremely productive week of work together. Our relationship has strengthened through this confrontation and we can now move forward working productively with each other. I welcome your comments on what you have done to diffuse workplace confrontation. What tactics have worked well for you? Not so well?

The post How Do You Handle Workplace Confrontations? appeared first on Going Concern.

The holidays: a nice, quiet time of year to enjoy with friends and family, while methodically preparing for the upcoming year and a busy tax season. The only problem is very few of us can afford to take off six weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year, let alone reduce our contact with customers and clients.

We interviewed a number of CPA firm leaders, from sole proprietors to partners at large firms, to get their take, advice, and best practices on how to best spend time during the holiday season, while effectively planning for the upcoming year.

Communicate and get face time with clients

The welcome lack of immediate deadlines and calm before the tax season storm provides a great opportunity to get in touch with your clients.

“Every year I tell my clients that the holiday season coincides with the upcoming tax season, and that it’s a good time to get in touch and see where things are financially,” said Mark Eiger, CPA, a New Jersey-based accountant. “One thing you don’t want after Christmas is an April 15th surprise!”

Gail Rosen, CPA, recommends an e-mail communication.

“During my downtime, I like to use the software package Constant Contact to send e-mail updates to clients, contacts, and friends. For example, one update every tax practitioner should consider sending this year is a reminder to their clients that they only have until December 31 to do a Roth conversion without income limits and with the option of spreading the income over two years for tax purposes,” Rosen said.

“The last issue you want is clients who are upset that you haven’t informed them of all their options – and the deadline now has passed. I find that when I send this e-mail update, many people reply back. This exchange creates business opportunities I otherwise would not have had,” she said.

Michael Cecere, a partner at Gray, Gray & Gray LLP, hits the road to get some face time with his clients.

“The holidays can actually be a pretty intense time period with a lot of face-to-face meetings,” Cecere said. “It’s a bittersweet time because we’re busy now, and busy after!”

Stay aggressive on business development

‘Tis a great season to be focused on marketing and networking, recommended James Guarino, a partner at Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico, LLP. “This time of the year, we’re always meeting with clients and networking with our contacts, getting out into the public, and letting people know that we’re available if and when we’re needed.”

Cecere agrees. “The business development element never stops – it can’t take a back seat. We continue to attend networking events, conferences, seminars, and set up meetings. In addition, more companies are back to hosting holiday parties, so we’re becoming busier attending our clients’ parties.”

Self-improvement, continuing education

Most accountants agreed that the relative calm of the holiday season provides a good opportunity for conducting evaluations, performance reviews, and catching up on continuing education.

“We’re continually educating our staff, so at the end of the year, we conduct a lot of in-house training,” Guarino said. “We want to familiarize them with the software and tax systems they’ll use during the upcoming tax season.”

His firm, and others we spoke with, also dedicates a significant portion of time during November and December to evaluations and performance reviews.

Review of tax law

Guarino’s team also makes it a point to review current-year tax law and proposed tax law. “Clients want to know how to improve their tax situation – both for current and future years,” he said.

Steven J. Elliott, tax director at Schwartz & Company, LLP, does the same, saving “time for major tax planning opportunities for both business and individual clients in order to best advise them about year-end tax payments and other planning items, such as minimum IRA/retirement distributions, Roth IRAs, stock trading activity, and more.”

Recharge your batteries

Historically, the holiday season was a time to enjoy with loved ones, and generally chill out a bit; but that’s easier said than done in 2010.

“It’s tougher to disconnect now than ever before,” said Cecere. “Times have changed now that we’re plugged into e-mail 24/7. It’s a never-ending cycle because you’re always connected; the higher up the ladder you go, the greater pressure you’re under to respond quickly.”

Guarino’s firm makes it a top priority to remove as many obstacles as it can to enable employees to recharge their batteries. From October 15 until the beginning of December, they make it a point to take time off to reenergize.

Elliott agrees with this strategy. “Best of all, it’s a time when more family time/vacation can take place in and around the special projects. We need this time to recharge the batteries for the next busy season. And, although it is usually a quieter time, there is always something to do!”

How do you handle customer and client activity during the holidays, and what does your firm do to renew and energize its employees? Send me a note and I’ll tweet your responses on the Chrometa blog.

About the author:
Brett Owens is CEO and co-founder of Chrometa, a Sacramento, CA-based provider of time-management software that accurately records and reports back how you spend your time. Previously marketed to only the legal community, Chrometa is branching out to accounting prospects. Gains include the ability to discover previously undocumented billable time, saving time on billing reconciliation and improving personal productivity. Owens is also a blogger and founder at ContraryInvesting.com, as well as a regular contributor to two leading financial media sites, SeekingAlpha.com and Minyanville.

The post How CPAs Keep the Holiday Season Productive appeared first on Going Concern.

Many people who advocate online networking do so in a generic way that can be a turn-off. They may argue that the same principles apply regardless of our business or professional activities. However it’s long been my experience that accountants are special and need to be addressed differently.

Despite my views about some other online social media, I actively encourage accountants to register on LinkedIn – even if they intend doing nothing else there. In my view it’s the only online networking site where you can benefit from simply having a decent profile online.

Generally, online networking can only work if you are active and netWORK. This is also true of LinkedIn but, unlike the other sites, it is the only one that people use as a directory to search for someone like you.

This passive approach to LinkedIn may not produce as good results for those who make more active use of its facilities. But for most accountants, it’s better than nothing.

I recently caught up with Mark Perl, one of the UK’s leading LinkedIn advocates and trainers. He also understands accountants and promotes the site as the one place where we should all manage our professional reputations online.

At a bare minimum, Perl thinks all practitioners should complete a LinkedIn profile to help them be found and to optimise their search engine visibility. At its best, the site enables individuals to showcase their specific expertise to attract clients. Perl goes further and claims it is also the most effective business development and client retention resource currently available. Mark Perl and I each have detailed profiles on LinkedIn as do an increasing number of accountants in practice.

Perl comments, “When you know how to use LinkedIn well, you’ll save yourself a ton of time. You’ll walk through open doors instead of making cold calls, you’ll enhance your personal reputation, and the profile of your practice, you’ll access outstanding information and opportunities that you would previously have missed and, ultimately, you’ll increase your revenue.”

I’ve previously identified five ways that accountants can benefit simply from establishing their profile properly on LinkedIn. There are numerous other ways in which you can benefit further if you are proactive on the site. For example, Perl encourages accountants to use their LinkedIn profile and the answers section to set out their specific areas of expertise. He points out that this offers an opportunity to differentiate your firm’s particular values and virtues.

LinkedIn now has over 75 million business people as members and during March this year UK membership rose above 4 million.

For accountants who are keen to grow their practices this is a veritable goldmine of prospects. “The Advanced Search capability within LinkedIn can uncover all the business leads you’ll ever need, within your geographic location, within the specific sectors that are of interest to you, within companies of the size you prefer to approach and with the very name and job title of the decision maker you wish to engage with,” says Mark Perl.

I think he’s also right that LinkedIn is “unsurpassed” for business development. If used properly, it can be far more effective at generating leads than spammy old direct mail/email campaigns and cold-call telesales drives.

Share your thoughts on this topic in the Accounting forum on our sister site, USBusinessForums.

The post How Accountants Can Best Utilize LinkedIn appeared first on Going Concern.

CCH’s new application, CCH Mobile, is an extension of CCH’s IntelliConnect tax research platform and makes CCH’s content and tools available via BlackBerry and iPhone.

More than 1,000 professionals attending the 2010 CCH User Conference from November 7-10 in Grande Lakes, Orlando, will preview CCH Mobile. The new app is the latest offering from CCH designed to ensure that CCH resources will be with professionals wherever they choose to work.

“We’re providing an advantage for any professional who needs to conduct business beyond the boundaries of their office,” said Mike Sabbatis, CCH president and CEO. “And while that’s just about everyone, only CCH IntelliConnect customers will have the ability to conduct research on CCH’s premier content from the palm of their hand – anytime, anywhere.”

With CCH Mobile, tax and accounting professionals can access answers and tools on the spot – when meeting in person with clients at remote locations, or whenever they need content quickly, according to the company.

A limited-time free version of CCH Mobile is available. All current IntelliConnect subscribers can download the debut of CCH Mobile at no charge and all CCH User Conference attendees also have access to a preview version of this portable tax research tool.

After downloading the CCH Mobile app to a smart phone, users of the complimentary introductory release will have access to:

• Customized Tax Tracker News
• Primary materials including Internal Revenue Code and Regulations
• Tax tools and calculators
• Smart Charts (depending on IntelliConnect subscription level)

Following the introductory period through mid-2011, additional subscription packages will be offered to suit subscribers’ specific research needs.

Click here for more information and to view a demonstration of CCH Mobile.

About CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business:
CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, is a global provider of tax, accounting and audit information, software, and services. It has served tax, accounting, and business professionals since 1913. Among its market-leading solutions are The ProSystem fx Suite, CorpSystem, CCH IntelliConnect, Accounting Research Manager, and the U.S. Master Tax Guide. CCH is based in Riverwoods, Illinois. Wolters Kluwer is a global information services company. Wolters Kluwer is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. Its shares are quoted on Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices.

The post Accounting Tech: CCH Mobile Brings Tax Research to BlackBerry, iPhone appeared first on Going Concern.

Microsoft is beta testing a new subscription-based product called Office 365 that includes the following applications: Microsoft Office Professional Plus (Microsoft’s flagship productivity suite, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other applications); Microsoft Exchange Online (e-mail, mobile access, contacts, anti-virus, and anti-spam); Microsoft Sharepoint Online (collaboration tool for building public or team-based Web sites); and Microsoft Lync Online (an instant messaging and online meeting tool).

In 2011, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will join the above offerings. This is not Microsoft’s first foray into Cloud-based apps. Anyone with a free SkyDrive account can use the Office Web Apps (browser-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and store up to 25 GB of documents online. Further, Microsoft has been offering subscription plans for the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite that has offered a similar mix of communication products sans Microsoft Office.

Anyone interested can sign up for the beta of either the Small Business or Enterprise versions of the program. Those who are accepted into the beta program receive the desktop version of Office 2010 Professional Plus, along with online access to Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. Once Office 365 leaves beta, the service should be of particular interest to small business owners.

Exchange and SharePoint typically require dedicated servers, which in turn require specialized information technology expertise. These cloud-based versions will enable just about any business to take advantage of these powerful applications for e-mail, group calendaring, and collaboration.

The Small Business plan will cost $6/user/month for 1 to 25 users and will include:

• Office Web Apps
• Exchange Online, including 25 GB mailboxes, and the ability to send 25 MB attachments
• SharePoint Online
• Lync Online
• Support provided via a moderated community forum

The Enterprise plan will cost $24/user/month and will include:

• Office Professional desktop software
• Office Web Apps
• Exchange Online, including 25 GB mailboxes, and the ability to send 25 MB attachments
• Sharepoint Online, including Forms, Access, Visio, and Excel services
• Lync Online
• 24/7 IT-level phone support
• Financially-backed 99.9% uptime service, or, in other words, downtime of less than 9 hours per year

Larger businesses also will be able to subscribe to a kiosk plan that starts at $2/user/month to offer e-mail, SharePoint sites, and Office Web Apps to workers without dedicated computers. An Office 365 for education will be available in the future to help educational institutions provide services to students without maintaining servers.

Many businesses aren’t yet comfortable with having mission-critical applications and data residing in the Cloud, but this combination of low cost and high flexibility might cause skeptics to pause and consider the possibilities.

About the author:
David Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm. Contact David at david@acctadv.com.

The post If Only Clippy Was Here to See This: Microsoft Office Moves to the Cloud appeared first on Going Concern.

We all have to lie from time to time as we go through life. Sometimes it’s to protect ourselves, sometimes to protect others. We even grade them – the fib, white lie, the lie of concealment, the misleading lie, and the business lie.

Does the lie have a place in life, or should we all be absolutely honest with each other all the time, about everything? I feel sure we could spend many hours debating the pros and cons of lying including many moral issues.

There are in fact a number of good reasons why we have to lie. To tell the truth might be unnecessarily hurtful. Telling the white lie, when you decide to tell a colleague how good they look when they return to the office having spent a small fortune on clothes or a new hairstyle is probably the right thing to do. Spoiling someone’s day unnecessarily is difficult to justify. It is also worth bearing in mind that it is just your opinion. Everyone else may disagree with you.

Lying in business is another matter

In business it is a matter of day-to-day necessity to lie or conceal a wide variety of issues. In certain cases to tell the truth might even be illegal. For example, when one company is having secret talks to purchase another, the stock market price of their shares could be affected if they told other people in advance of the acquisition. If asked a direct question relating to a potential acquisition and they had answered it honestly, they may have given someone the opportunity to purchase stocks in advance and make money from the information, thus breaking the law with regard to insider trading.

In deciding to lie to someone, we try to convince them of the accuracy of the information by reinforcing the statements with body language signals.

Look me in the eye

One of the most obvious mistakes is deliberately looking someone straight in the eye when lying. The origins of this emanate from the challenging statement we heard as children “look me in the eye and tell me that you know nothing about what happened.” This might be accurate with children, teenagers, and young adults as they do tend to look down or away when concealing the truth. In order to counteract this they are advised to look people in the eye to prove the truth of their words.

As we get older we believe that looking people in the eye when lying will help us look more convincing. We compound the mistake by staring without blinking and adopting a solid posture whilst the statement is being said.

Even though they are not sure why, it tends to give the game away to the majority of people because instinct tells us that something is wrong and we become suspicious about what we are hearing. We don’t know what it is, but we just know it feels wrong.

Constricting pupils

There is also the issue of the eyes. You may be the best liar in the world, but you cannot prevent your eyes constricting when you lie. A good negotiator will always make best use of the light, so he can see your eyes but you can’t see his!

A few things to bear in mind

1. Don’t look directly into the pupils of the person you’re lying to, look at the whole face.
2. Maintain eye contact for 75% of the time (the average for most people).
3. Be aware that the voice usually goes flat when you are lying. In trying to lie convincingly we control pitch and resonance, believing it will sound more convincing. Often, each word is clipped in an attempt to be precise. Changes in the voice coupled with a look directly into the eyes will cause doubt.
4. Next is body posture, whether standing or sitting.

In an effort to conceal the truth when a lie is being told the body generally becomes more solid or rigid. This is made more difficult because only you know what your body language is like when you tell the truth and you must make sure you don’t change it when lying. If you are an animated person who looks at people 75% of the time, then don’t alter your habits, do not increase the eye stare, or reduce body movement or sound firmer with your words. People will not always be sure you are lying, but they can tell something has changed.

Another difficult area to control when lying is the hands. Some people fidget with their hands and arms (especially when caught off guard with a question they did not expect.) One second the hands are in pockets and then out and this may get repeated several times.

Blushing and nose blushing

The skin gets warmer when someone is feeling awkward. This is because blood vessels in and around the nose and face are irritated when you exaggerate or lie. The only way to make the irritation to go away is to rub or lightly touch the tingling and offending areas of the face.

We have carried out a number of body language experiments in this area and discovered that 90% of those observing hand-to-face contact thought that something was wrong and they became cautious of what was being said. To anyone who understands body language it is a giveaway. Therefore if you cannot learn to leave the offending areas alone, stick to telling the truth.

Who are the best liars?

Politicians have to be good at lying because journalists will never stop asking awkward questions that will give them tomorrow’s headline. Unlike many of us, they have learned to adapt. By giving a much longer answer and explanation than necessary, a politician telling the lie avoids being asked a follow up question and hopes the reporter has either forgotten his original question or gives up.

One of the contracts I have is to analyse public figures and I sometimes have to spend weeks or months studying before I can be sure of a politician’s gestures that tell if they are concealing the truth.

About the author:
Peter Clayton is a leading body language expert, speaker, and trainer as well as a consultant for the BBC and ITV. He writes for a wide range of national papers and magazines and is a specialist consultant to other speakers, leading businesses, celebrities and politicians. For more information, visit his Web site: www.peterclayton.com.

This article originally appeared on our sister Web site, AccountingWEB.co.uk.

The post How to Improve Your Business Lying appeared first on Going Concern.

There’s nothing better than a warm referral – and most CPAs are always on the hunt for new sources. One great potential lead source that is often overlooked is the attorney who practices in areas that are complementary to your expertise.

“I find that networking with attorneys is one of those few win-win opportunities for both of us,” said Steven J. Elliott, tax director at Schwartz & Co, LLP. “There are often many referral opportunities for work that the other professional provides.”

Elliott believes the attorney benefits in two ways. First, he benefits by making a known referral; second, by receiving referrals regarding a need for an attorney related to his area of practice.

Sound’s like a great win-win, so I interviewed a number of CPAs who have been successful in working with attorneys in order to learn about their best practices for developing meaningful, productive, mutually beneficial relationships.

How to build, cultivate relationships with attorneys

Howard Grobstein, a partner and leader of Forensic Services group in Crowe Horwath’s Audit and Financial Advisory practice, believes that best practices to build relationships with attorneys for business development involves two main components.

“First and foremost is providing high-quality work and exceptional service,” said Grobstein. “Attorneys have different styles and expectations, so CPAs should listen to what the attorney needs. They need to make sure they can present their expertise in a style that will be acceptable to the attorney and only take on those engagements where they can meet expectations, and perform with high quality and efficiency. My practice has developed because I make sure that I can do the project based on how that specific attorney works.

Importance of building strong, genuine relationships

Many CPAs agree that strong relationships are the real key – it’s better to have a smaller number of close relationships, than a larger network that is loosely tied together.

Jacob Renick, chair of the New York State Society of CPAs Litigation Services Committee, elaborated: “You can’t expect attorneys to send you business unless you have a very strong relationship with them. It has to be a one-to-one relationship. You’re better off having relationships with five attorneys rather than 30, if you have deep and solid relationships with those five.”

Mark Eiger, CPA, a New Jersey-based accountant, agreed: “The best way to strengthen the relationship between accountants and attorneys is to actually build a relationship. It takes time to develop quality referral partners. You’ll have more of an appreciation for the person’s work and capabilities if you get to know that person personally.”

What attorneys want

Renick emphasizes that attorneys are looking for someone to be honest with them, and to share their expertise and knowledge.

“If you don’t have the expertise, refer them to someone who has it,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to refer somebody – if you’re good, they’re going to use you. In addition, keep them up to date with respect to your expertise. For example, share recent changes you’ve become aware of, and give them a heads-up of what’s coming down the pike.”

Connect with attorneys who share similar interests, beliefs

Most CPAs I spoke with agreed that you’ll do best by connecting with like-minded attorneys. Michael D. Greaney, CPA, MBA, got a referral to a client by being in the same choir with an attorney. He talked to the attorney about law topics he had expertise in and figured out the two of them had a similar orientation toward the law.

“What clinched the referral is that it turned out that we share a natural law orientation from the Aristotelian perspective,” Greaney said. “An attorney will not feel comfortable referring a client to someone whom he or she thinks will not have the client’s best interests at heart, which means thinking along the same general lines as the attorney in ethical matters.”

Focus on serving the attorney’s best interest

Rob Siddoway with Cambridge Financial believes the No. 1 must-ask question to an attorney is: “What are the characteristics of your ideal client?” He then advises that CPAs do their best to find an ideal client for the attorney and make the introduction.

“After you have had a few lunches and sent a client or two to the attorney, set an appointment to explain what you do, the relationships you are seeking, and let them know what your ideal client looks like,” Siddoway said. “The focus is to give, give, and give some more without the expectation of anything coming back to you. The results of doing this are not mere referrals, but strong recommendations that generally lead to very good clients. There are those who understand giving first. You will quickly learn who the givers are, but always make it a point to give first and you will be successful.”

Good ways to initially strike up relationships with attorneys

Gail Rosen, CPA, recommended you do their taxes!

“The best way to get referrals from attorneys is to be the CPA who does the attorney’s tax return – then they do not forget you,” she said. “Attorneys have unique tax returns that include the tax treatment of costs recovered. If you learn about these tax laws, you will be in a better position to get attorneys as clients.”

Howard M. Rosen, a CPA with Conner Ash P.C., holds internal marketing events, where his firm invites a law firm to come to its office.

“We put together three or four 4-minute presentations on subjects the attorneys would not necessarily think of when they think about CPA firms,” he said. “If the attorneys are estate and probate specialists, we talk about how we can assist to ensure trusts are funded and that the plans make sense after time due to asset growth. If they are litigators, we talk about how we can help them build damage claims from business interruption, breach of contract, and so on. It’s unique, it’s fun, and it gets us business.”

John Sensiba, managing partner at Sensiba San Filippo LLP, believes the first thing you should do is find out who your clients are working with in order to get on the same page, and make sure the advice your client is receiving is consistent. This, incidentally, provides a good opportunity to meet and connect with their attorney.

Sensiba’s firm also has had great success hosting events for law firms at his office. These typically consist of 10-minute presentations from 5 to 7 p.m. about what the firm does and why it is different. He’s found that law firms generally are eager to attend; in the current economy, law firms also are very open to events that could potentially generate new business.

Howard Grobstein has had success getting involved in organizations that include attorneys with similar practices. For example, he became a member of the California Receivers Forum, and soon after became an officer and ultimately the co-chair. He followed the same track with the Los Angeles Bankruptcy Forum, and is positioned to take on additional roles within the organization.

“These types of organizations provide me with opportunities to attend educational, social, and networking events with attorneys who may need CPA consultants for their work. The goal is to develop a genuine relationship that runs beyond work.”

American Association of Attorney-Certified Public Accountants

The AAA-CPA is an organization of dually licensed attorney-CPAs, highly recommended by Tom Simeone, a partner at Simeone & Miller LLP. Simeone, a practicing trial lawyer and a dually licensed professional in his own right, has found this organization to be a great resource for connecting with new colleagues on the other side of the fence. The AAA-CPA offers a number of networking and referral opportunities for its members, and Simeone considers this to be his top source for generating new referrals.

Consider focusing on your niche practice

Andrew Schwartz, CPA, of Schwartz & Schwartz P.C., networks specifically with attorneys who practice in the health care field where 90 percent of his client base is located.

“We have the most success dealing with attorneys who also have a niche practice within health care,” said Schwartz. “We feel comfortable referring our clients to an attorney with a health care niche, knowing they will get timely advice and information.

“These attorneys know that they can refer their health care clients to us, and feel confident that we have dealt with other clients in a similar situation,” said Schwartz. “Our clients are happy that neither my firm nor the attorney is learning on their dime, so the common niche is the basis for the most productive relationships my firm has with a handful of the lawyers in the Boston area.”

Pay attention to estate attorneys (Hint: most Americans don’t have a will)

Kelley Long, CPA recommends connecting with estate attorneys, in particular, because they have more ongoing relationships with their clients.

“I’ve found estate attorneys to be easier to get to know – and easier to refer my clients to as well,” Long said. “Most of them do not have a will in place, and they are usually eager to speak with an estate planning attorney.”

Estate planning attorney Brian Raftery, a partner with Herrick, Feinstein LLP, works closely with several CPAs himself and concurs that the majority of Americans do not have a will in place. He tries to refer his clients to CPAs if he sees a need for professional tax assistance.

“I always look for issues my clients face that can potentially be resolved if the proper professional is brought into place,” said Raftery, who often spots obvious opportunities when his high net-worth clients are filing their own tax returns via TurboTax.

“When I see an opportunity, I try to match up my clients not only with the appropriate skill need, but also I do my best to ensure a proper personality fit.” As a result, Raftery concurs with his fellow CPAs in the need to not only align professional goals, but also personal beliefs and philosophies.

What to do when you get a referral

This is another area where everyone we spoke with agreed emphatically – go above and beyond the call of duty when you receive a referral.

Joe Epps, of Epps CPA Consulting, cited this as his top piece of advice: “You’ve got to give top quality service. It’s extremely important to do a very professional job when you do get a referral.”

Renick agreed – and adds that if you don’t have the expertise, or are conflicted out of the engagement, you should refer someone. “Don’t be afraid to refer somebody. If you’re good, they’re going to use you.”

About the author:
Brett Owens is CEO and co-founder of Chrometa, a Sacramento, CA-based provider of time-tracking software that records activity in real time. Previously marketed to only the legal community, Chrometa is branching out to accounting prospects. Gains include the ability to discover previously undocumented billable time, saving time on billing reconciliation and improving personal productivity. Owens also is a blogger and founder at ContraryInvesting.com, as well as a regular contributor to two leading financial media sites, SeekingAlpha.com and Minyanville.

The post Turns Out, CPAs Making Nice with Lawyers Is a Good Business Practice appeared first on Going Concern.

Would you like to be more appreciated by your boss? Feel more comfortable approaching him or her with requests? Stop worrying about what he thinks of you? Why not do something about it?

As with any human relationship, your behavior and attitude can make a difference in your relationship with your boss. If you want a different type of relationship with him, start behaving differently and results will follow.

First, be conscious of the type of relationship you’re going for – you don’t want to build a connection that’s too friendly or intimate; keep it professional but rewarding.

“The ideal boss-employee relationship is one of trust and respect where both individuals work as a team to achieve the goals of the company,” said Deborah Millhouse, president of CEO Inc., which specializes in direct hire placement, temporary staffing, and human capital services. “The employee should be supportive of the needs and requirements of the boss so that the boss can reach the goals and complete the job with success.”

Millhouse offers five tips for building a better relationship with your boss:

1. Make a genuine effort to learn about him or her. “Understand your boss’s personality style and communicate with him in an effective way that supports his temperament,” Millhouse said. “Ask good questions about his or her goals, and then support them.”

2. Check your bad mood at the door. “Attitude is more important than aptitude,” Millhouse said. “Be full of energy and ready to try anything.”

3. Use good manners. Just like your mom taught you, simple courtesies like saying please and thank you can go a long way. Also, “deliver results without being asked or prompted a million times,” Millhouse said.

4. Communicate openly and clearly. Don’t be stingy with your ideas; contribute good ideas to the team and you’ll be appreciated. Also, “speak up, be accurate, clear, and to the point; don’t play the cloaking game,” Millhouse said. No boss wants to spend time trying to figure out what you meant by what you said – just say what you mean in a polite, clear way.

5. Take initiative. Don’t always wait to be told what to do; when you see something that needs to be done, just do it. “Set good goals,” Millhouse said. And then, “do what you say you will do.”

If your boss is particularly difficult, improving your relationship with him might take more time. View it as a challenge and make an ongoing effort to make improvements.

“Most difficult relationships lack trust, so building trust is the first step,” Millhouse said. “Trust is achieved through understanding and communicating effectively with each other. With a boss who is especially difficult, the employee can attempt to improve relations with efforts to open the lines of communications.”

About the author:
Nancy Mann Jackson is an award-winning journalist and corporate communicator who writes regularly about small business, parenting, and workplace issues. Since 2001, she has worked as a freelance writer and has written hundreds of articles for publications including Working Mother, CNNMoney.com, Entrepreneur.com, and MyBusiness. She also writes and edits annual reports, blogs, and newsletters for companies in industries including finance, technology, and construction. Jackson also is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Reprinted with permission from glassdoor.com.

The post Five Ways to Communicate Better with the Boss appeared first on Going Concern.