6 ways we’re working for our small firm members

Supporting your firm is a top priority here at the AICPA. That’s why we travel across the country, speak with practitioners at conferences and events, and gather feedback via email and phone — all to make sure we grasp the pressing issues for firms of your size.

With this knowledge, we develop tools and resources to help your practice run more smoothly. Below are six ways we’re championing you, our small firm members.

1. Navigating tax law changes. We know the past year hasn’t been easy, but we’re here to help. Looking for news, answers to common questions, guides or learning opportunities? You’ll find them and more on our Tax Reform Resource Center.

Developing a resilient staff who’s ready for anything

Five years ago, could you have predicted the challenges you and your team would face in 2019? And if you had a crystal ball, what challenges would you see approaching over the next five years? The AICPA’s Private Companies Practice Section (PCPS) team asked firms of all sizes to predict their top challenges between now and 2024 in the 2019 PCPS Firm Top Issues Survey. They say they’d be most affected by staffing, emerging technologies, competition, changing client needs and the regulatory environment within the next half-decade.

4 ways to get your firm beach-ready this summer

The coming of summer means longer, lazier days filled with outdoor fun. But once we’ve packed away the thick wool and sleek leather jackets that defined our winter existence, we’re often faced with an unpleasant truth: months of indoor living have left us feeling unprepared for outdoor activities like beach volleyball and surfing. And many times, a long winter may have left your firm a little out of shape, too.

Whether the barely managed chaos of tax season forced you to put off the exercises that would have helped keep your firm… well, firm, or the rapid approach of October has you procrastinating in getting to your firm’s self-care, summer is a perfect chance to get everything in shape and ready to show off.

Find value in what you love: One tax CPA’s value pricing story

In 2006, Dominique Molina, CPA, had a revelation: she was working too much.

It was busy season, and like many nights, she was working late from her home office. As the owner of a successful tax firm in San Diego, she felt a great pressure resting on her shoulders.

In a laser-focused, deadline-driven push to the end, her 3-year-old son put everything in perspective.

“My son came into my office and started to ask me a question,” Molina remembered. “But he stopped himself and said: ‘Never mind. I’ll go ask Dad.’ I was crushed.”

3 steps to reimagining your firm’s culture

Paid time off. Affordable health care plans. Employer-sponsored retirement funds. There’s a lot the modern worker evaluates when considering where they’ll spend their 40-plus hours a week. But more and more, potential employees are looking at another variable when choosing where to work: company culture.

According to a 2018 LinkedIn survey, 70 percent of professionals said they wouldn’t work at a leading company with an unhealthy culture.  

This makes sense to Rachel Montañez, a career coach, trainer and speaker who advises and writes on this exact topic. She said a company’s culture is created by the people who work there, and when staff members are stressed, there can be unexpected effects on culture.

Emotional rollercoaster: The psychology of starting a small firm or business

Do you feel destiny may be calling you to something? Perhaps you’re thinking about a long overdue job change. Maybe you’re being tapped for partner or you’re exploring starting that firm you’ve always wanted to build from the ground up. As you’d expect, starting a firm or any business comes with many intricacies. Some are big details, like funding and office space, and building the right client base. Other details can wait, yet are still important, like setting up utilities, registering with your federal, state and local governments and regulatory boards (if applicable) and marketing your business.

One thing you might not have considered as you think about branching out is your own mindset. What’s keeping you from moving forward? There’s a psychology to owning your own firm. Here, we explore emotions, from fear and uncertainty to courage and enthusiasm.

A recipe for success: Experiences to keep your clients coming back

You’re staying at a hotel in a city you’ve never visited before. After you check in and unpack your bags, you realize you’ve forgotten your pajamas and it’s too late to shop. You walk down to the lobby and mention your predicament to the front desk clerk. Sympathetically, she offers a solution. She tells you to have a seat and serves you a cup of hot tea and a perfectly warm and melty chocolate chip cookie. After just a few minutes, another staff member approaches you with a package of blue cotton pajamas. She explains they’re offered to you complementary for your stay.

Increasingly, consumers are valuing their overall customer experience much more than any tangible product or service they may receive. It’s what keeps them satisfied and coming back for more. You, too, have an opportunity to create exceptional and memorable experiences for your clients. What are you doing to keep them coming back for more? Here are three things to consider as you strive to go above and beyond for your clients:

What do your clients really want? Ask!

If you have a small firm, you know how much of your valuable time can be eaten up with things that don’t generate revenue, such as administrative duties and staffing headaches. So, the thought of doing one more thing might seem overwhelming. But what if it’s the one thing that catapults your practice to the next level?

“We talked about doing a client poll a million times, but never seemed to find the time,” explains Jim Davidson, CPA, of Davidson and Nick CPAs in Naples, Florida. “This past year we had a lot of new staff. We wanted to know what clients thought we did well, and what we didn’t.”

What Jim learned didn’t exactly surprise him, but it did give him some good ideas. After 30 years of practicing in a town known as a retirement mecca, it wasn’t a revelation to learn clients were looking for estate and trust planning. But Naples is nearly bursting with those services already. Surely his clients are getting them elsewhere?

3 ways small firms can turn challenges into opportunities

The thing I enjoy most in my role as Chair of the AICPA is the time I get to spend talking to members from across the profession about the issues most important to them. What’s clear to me is we’re all facing the same challenge of staying ahead in a fast-changing world. But we’re unique in how we confront this challenge.

This is especially true with small firms and sole practitioners, which play a powerful role as trusted advisers for their clients and communities. Firm owners wear many hats — human resources, business development, marketing and service providers. As the pace of change speeds up, it’s hard to manage the day-to-day and prepare for the future.

4 ways to strengthen culture in your firm

Fall has finally arrived. The change in season is the perfect time to evaluate your firm’s inner workings and maybe even switch up your routine. Are your staff and clients happy? Are you fostering a work environment where staff feel energized, supported and have growth opportunities available to them?

People need the right blend of opportunities, challenges and accomplishments to achieve optimal success. And when the environment is right, growth can flourish. We asked three successful firm leaders how they’ve nurtured their firm’s cultural climate. This is what they said:

1. Define your desired culture and core beliefs.

5 lessons learned from the closing of a historic candy company

NECCO Wafers are one of America’s most historic candies. Union soldiers carried them in the Civil War. Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan stocked them on his voyage to northern Greenland in 1913. The United States Army issued them to GIs in World War II. Generations of kids begged their parents for them at gas stations and checkout lines across the country.

After 170 years of operation, in May 2018, the bankruptcy court auctioned off the New England Confectionery Company’s (NECCO) assets. Round Hill Investments, of Greenwich, Conn., agreed to buy NECCO for $17.3 million. Though, just this week on July 24, 2018 and according to the Boston Globe, Round Hill abruptly shut down its operations and closed the doors at the Revere, Mass., candy factory. The company stated it had sold NECCO to another candy manufacturer but didn’t disclose the details. How could a company that survived catastrophic fires, wars, recessions, the Great Depression and so many other trials fail in today’s environment?

5 TV shows to teach your kids about business

Entrepreneur Mikaila Ulmer founded Me & the Bees Lemonade when she was just four years old. At age 12, Mikaila won funding from Shark Tank investor Daymond John. Now 13, her product line is available at Whole Foods Market stores. Mikaila represents a growing movement of young entrepreneurs throughout the country.

Children are watching their entrepreneurial parents every day and they’re picking up on best practices. Kids are much further ahead in their understanding of the business world than what we, as parents, realize.

You can help your kids get involved and start thinking about business. Here are five TV shows you can watch with your young children this summer. All shows are age appropriate and have an element of excitement to get your child’s business ideas flowing:

4 best practices for working from home

I’m more relaxed than I used to be. Some days you’ll find me working after midnight. Others I’m cranking out emails at 5 a.m. This year I’ve made it to all but one of my kids’ daytime events. I exercise more, too. If any of this sounds familiar, you might work from home like I do.

From a tech perspective, most professionals can do their jobs from home. But there’s far more to working from home than technology. If you work from home, are considering working from home or manage employees who work from home, I hope the following suggestions help you set up a strong work-from-home strategy.

Everyone fails: Here’s how to bounce back

Epic fail. We’ve all been there — set out to do something great, only to come up a little short of our expectations. But that’s when the real test happens. Do we choose to throw in the towel or do we push through and use our experience with failure as motivation?

Author J.K. Rowling, who experienced some disappointments before publishing her first blockbuster Harry Potter novel, said that “it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case, you fail by default.”

If you’re preparing to take the CPA exam, you may be wondering about the possibility of failure. Did you know a significant number of successful CPAs don’t actually pass the exam the first time around? In fact, an average of 50% of test takers fail at least one section. The average candidate sits six to seven times before passing all four sections. So, if you’ve had a setback in one or more parts of the exam — or are worried that you might — don’t stress. You’re not alone.

6 guilt-free food ideas for busy season

Snacks continually rank near the top of everyone’s favorite workplace perks. Having food available in the office during busy season is an even bigger plus. Celebrate World Health Day by offering healthy alternatives, because worrying about gaining weight or blowing up unhealthy indicators like blood pressure and LDL cholesterol is stress we just don’t need right now!

Consider these tips for serving healthy snacks in your office this busy season:

1. Set up a snack box. Build your own snack box using a serving tray with drawer organizers or a large basket. You can pick these up at a neighborhood retailer or order them online. If you’re short on time, vendors such as Naturebox and Snack Box Pros (also available from Office Depot and Sam’s Club) offer pre-assembled healthy snack boxes or allow you to build your own from their menu (see healthy snack tips below for help with selections).

5 busy season food cravings and how to feed them properly

Suddenly, in the middle of a client meeting or complicated tax return, you want — no, need — chocolate, or maybe French fries and fried chicken. There’s no doubt food cravings grow under stress. But they can also hit when we feel good or for seemingly no reason at all.

These guilty pleasures can be a great morale booster during busy season. Yet too much indulgence can lead to unhealthy weight, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and a host of other health problems! Cravings can’t be eliminated entirely but knowing your triggers and developing strategies for feeding them in healthier ways can help.

4 steps to improve nonprofit functional expense reporting

Congress, the media, watchdog agencies and funders — almost everyone wants to know how nonprofits are using their scarce resources. They look at functional expenses to make that determination, so it’s important to present the most useful and transparent information possible.

To that end, FASB Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-14, Not-for-Profit Entities (Topic 958): Presentation of Financial Statements of Not-for-Profit Entities, requires not-for-profit entities to disclose their expenses by both functional and natural classification in one location. This ASU gives you good reason and opportunity to review your current classifications to determine if any changes need to be made as you prepare for implementation. ASU 2016-14 is effective for fiscal years beginning after Dec. 15, 2017.

How often does your nonprofit review its functional expense classifications? For most, it’s been a while. The following will walk nonprofit professionals through that process.

Switching to a C corp? Think twice about it.

Most people probably don't even know what toothpaste they buy; they just recognize the box on the shelf.

--Charles Duhigg

The recently enacted P.L. 115-97, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, will have a significant effect on tax planning for clients, but many CPAs are also investigating what it will mean to their own firms. Best to listen to the advice of American Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and best-selling author Charles Duhigg on the process; make sure you know what’s in the tax planning “box.”

10 tips to tackle the CPA Exam during busy season

If your time already seems extra valuable during busy season, try studying for the CPA Exam at the same time. Many do it, however, as they power forward to earn a credential that will significantly enhance their professional lives. If you’re about to jump into juggling the demands of busy season and test preparation, here are a few tips from CPAs I talked to who’ve been there, done that and earned their CPA.

1. Plan your time.

CPA Leighton Smith, who is a finance director at Microsoft, calculated the time he thought he’d need to study each quarter. He then tracked his actual weekly progress and made adjustments as needed. “I didn’t want to leave anything to chance,” he says.

2. Stretch the workday.

To keep on track, you’ll have to wake up early, get to bed late and study on the go. “When I took the metro to work in the morning, instead of reading or listening to music, I worked with flash cards that I had made the night before based on my reading,” says CPA Jeff Wilson, advanced QuickBook ProAdvisor at The W2 Group, LLC. During his 30-minute commute each way every day, CPA Caleb Bullock, business development manager at Somerset CPAs and Advisors, listened to lectures. “I did it every spare minute,” he says.

10 busy-season exercises CPAs can do at their desks

Busy season means tough choices—dividing daily life into essentials and non-essentials. Food: essential. Sleep: essential. You know exercise is important, but is it essential? Research shows that completely dropping your exercise routine for just a few weeks can put you at increased risk for a heart attack or stroke. But findings also show that even short periods of exercise can reduce those risks while boosting productivity and reducing stress. But how? If you don’t have time for a full routine at the gym or outside, deskercise!

5 items you need in your firm’s owners’ agreement

What’s in your owners’ agreement? I recommend creating these critical documents when the firm is first formed and updating them as needed. An effective agreement can enhance decision-making and productivity, and it’s also the foundation for a successful changeover to new internal ownership. Even in a merger or acquisition, the decisions set forth in an owners’ agreement can set the stage for a smoother and more rewarding transition. Here are some significant issues that should be addressed in any agreement.

Firm governance. When you establish policies on who will run the organization and how it will be run, it can enhance efficiency and profitability. No matter how independently each partner may handle his or her work, there are many advantages to having common agreement on some key issues, such as:

3 things more important than tax reform in 2018

Your phone’s already ringing. Clients want to know how the new tax law will impact them. This is understandable, but don’t worry if you aren’t ready to answer their questions just yet It’s a big law and the IRS has yet to provide even the most basic guidance. For most businesses, taxes aren’t the first thing to look at in 2018—in fact, taxes probably shouldn’t be your clients’ second or even third priority. During your client meetings consider tackling these other issues that haven’t made the 6 o’clock news.

1. Everybody needs to fully reevaluate their accounting.

To start with, after two years of delays, US GAAP is undergoing its biggest changes in decades with implementation of FASB’s new revenue recognition and lease accounting standards. Aside from the high-profile changes for software providers, virtually every business in America that reports under US GAAP will see significant changes to their accounting for revenue recognition. Most of these businesses have leases to look at too.

Why you shouldn’t make a New Year’s resolution

Each year, millions of Americans lose an average of 20 pounds and learn a new language within a few months of making their New Year’s resolutions.

Wait, what? That’s not actually true. I can tell you what really happens: Every January 2, a slew of people show up at my gym and hog the treadmills. It is rather frustrating. Luckily, I know they’ll be gone in a few weeks. That’s because they are part of the 80% of Americans who abandon their resolutions by the second week of February.

There has to be a better way. What if instead, we set goals throughout the year, rather than all at once when the clock strikes midnight? We would be less likely to feel overwhelmed by our commitment to training for a marathon and writing a novel, so we’d have a better chance of getting something done. After doing some research, I found a few other tips to achieve those goals you set.

Be specific. Begin by writing down exactly what you want. We’d all like to be more successful or more fulfilled, but what exactly does that mean to you? Let’s say you’d like to raise your professional visibility. There are a number of ways you can do it, including getting further training that can make you more valuable to clients or your employers or becoming more involved in professional or community organizations. And remember this isn’t a once-a-year activity, since it’s good to set new goals as circumstances change and new opportunities pop up.

Secret Santa 101: Brush up on gift exchange game rules

The office tree has been trimmed, the halls have been decked and everyone is scrambling to get all of their end-of-year work done. But before you can leave the office for the holidays and officially begin the festivities, there’s one thing left to do: the office gift exchange.

More budget-friendly than your typical office party, a gift swap get-together might be the way to go. Consider these three gift giving games for your small firm’s holiday celebration. They will make everyone feel jolly and turn a potentially ho-hum gathering into a ho-ho-holiday team bonding experience.

Game: White Elephant  

How to Play: Have you ever looked at a gift someone just received with envy because you wished it had been given to you instead? With White Elephant—also known as Pirate Santa, Yankee Swap and Dirty Santa—you’re in luck. That coveted gift can be all yours.

5 ways to make the most of your small office space

Do you hit your daily step count just walking around the office looking for a quiet place to call a client? Or do you move files off the chair by your desk so you can talk with a co-worker? There are benefits to working in a small office space, like the camaraderie our office developed eating lunch in the combination kitchen/library/conference room, and any challenges can be offset with some adjustments. Here are some ideas for getting the most out of your limited office space.

1. Ask before you act:

Is your office a good place for valuable impromptu meetings? Does your staff feel it’s easy to concentrate? Does the lighting throughout your office allow for a good work experience? Is technology easily accessible? The best way to find out is by asking, either in an informal meeting or via a survey. Your plans to get the best use of limited office space won’t work if you don’t solve the problems that prevent staff from doing their best.

Why Pets Make the Best Coworkers

My dog Peaches, a cuddly beagle mix, is the love of my life. As with most pet owners, I spend a lot of time with my dog and miss her when I’m not at home. The days that I telecommute are often the highlight of my week because I can relish her company all day. Having a dog at home is beneficial in many ways:  I stand up and walk around more often, get outside for fresh air a few times a day and feel less stressed because I can give Peaches regular snuggles.

One of the benefits of being a CPA sole practitioner, or working for a firm that utilizes virtual offices, is that you can often work from home, allowing you to be with your pets all day. Some CPA firms even allow employees to bring their dogs to the office.

16 Work/Life Hacks for CPAs

As a CPA at a small firm, you’re constantly charged with finding the most efficient ways to get everything done and stay organized. From tracking mileage to arranging the supplies on your desk, the following low- and high-tech life hacks can help you make the most of your workday – so you can dedicate more time to what’s going on with your clients and less time to what’s going on with your desk and office space.

1. Gain an extra monitor through your iPhone or iPad using Duet Display. If you want to increase your productivity with an extra Mac or PC screen, you can multitask by using the Duet Display app, which allows you to use your iDevice as an extra monitor.

2. Organize cords with toilet paper rolls. Cords that you don’t use on a regular basis can be neatly stored away in empty toilet paper rolls placed in a shoebox.