Firm Management

CPA2Biz and the Information Technology Alliance (ITA), an independent professional association comprised of most of the nation's top 30 accounting firms, premier technology consultants, and leading technology vendors serving the accounting profession, today announced they will jointly host events on December 7-10 at the Gaylord National in Washington, D.C. CPA2Biz is the technology subsidiary of the American Institute of CPAs,

Economists liked the U.S. Labor Department's most recent report on the nation's job situation, cheered by news that payrolls expanded by 175,000 in February and unfazed by a slight rise in the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, from 6.6 percent.

2014 started off awesome with my annual pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas where future trends and bleeding edge products are announced.

Spending more time with clients reveals more service opportunities– leading your firm to higher growth. Yet you might spend more time than you’d like just managing your growing firm, trying to understand what’s really working and struggling to adapt as the business changes. Join me on one firm’s journey to address these challenges– and to put itself in a better position to serve clients.

Accountants tend to fall in the analytical-left brain-thinker camp. This makes it difficult for some practitioners to make the transition to right brain creative thinking when the time comes to get a marketing program up and running.

This year is a great year to watch for improvements in procedures and processes supported by maturing technology tools. We can look for revolutionary changes to make in our practices. However, evolutionary change can be taught and assimilated in day to day work.

A new class of “digital plumbing” applications are helping many firms and small businesses solve another seemingly “impossible” task – automated synchronization and universal exchange of data between applications written by different software publishers.

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen R. Covey, is a book that has had a profound impact on both my personal and professional life. Of the seven habits that Covey presents in the book, the second habit, “Begin with the end in mind,” is my favorite. This habit is directly connected to planning, because once we have the end in mind for how we want our firms and our lives to be, we must devise a plan, or a roadmap, to make it a reality.