As we get closer to the dreaded day taxes are due, it can be harder and harder for CPAs to get clients attention and get the right answers to the questions you need immediate answers for. Here are three ways to get your clients to...
Tax Season can feel very, very stressful. It's the highpoint of your year, and by far the most work. At the end of the day though, these are feeling you create in yourself. If you want out of the rat race, quit running like one. Here...
One of the biggest problems we see in fellow CPA firms is when the owners try to do too much work themselves. This leads to more stress and longer days and less profit for your firm. The answer is obvious: Delegating. Unfortunately it can be...
Doubtlessly you’ve heard stories of famous people sleeping only a few hours per night on a regular basis. While even I have had to go with little sleep during stretches of tax season before we built Clarity, these stories are mostly myth according to Matthew...
If you believe accounting industry pundits, artificial intelligence and blockchain will decimate accounting firms the way an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs. But paleontologists don’t think dinosaurs really went extinct. They survived as today’s birds. In the next 10 years, or sooner, accounting and tax...
Your next role as CEO is reviewer. There are two types of review: primary and secondary. Depending on the size of your firm, you may only have primary reviews. If your firm consists of you and a preparer, you won’t have a second level of review....
Let’s talk about assigning staff to projects. Understand that this discussion will mean nothing the first two weeks of April, when you may be assigning the family dog to some returns. And that makes perfect sense in those circumstances. I’ve done worse. Who knew that goldfish...
Poor scheduling isn’t the only way WIP gets out of control. Clients cause WIP to grow by not answering questions or approving drafts on a timely basis Do you think you can’t control client behavior? Think again. Clients are as trainable as the average Jack Russell terrier,...
How do you train up newly-hired tax preparers? Hint: Don't start with taxes. Having standardized processes is key. Teaching processes is much easier than teaching tax return preparation. Learning your processes teaches tax return preparation if your processes are well defined. Much of tax preparation is data entry-oriented....
Let’s talk about assigning staff to projects. Understand that this discussion will mean nothing the first two weeks of April, when you may be assigning the family dog to some returns. And that makes perfect sense in those circumstances. I’ve done worse. Who knew that goldfish...