Touchdowns and Penalties: How Partners Score Wins

football

As featured in AccountingToday. The basics of running a CPA firm are indisputable: clients need to be served, billings and collections completed. For most accounting professionals, these activities are top of mind and top of the priority list, like a football team running plays in a game. But what sets outstanding firms — ones that achieve…

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SPECIAL REPORT – Partner Compensation: Why Accountability Matters

Special Report

By Kristen Rampe, CPA, and Dr. Christopher Harper, CPA, MBA, Assistant Professor of Accounting, Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University Partner compensation has been a dilemma ever since professionals began joining forces to earn revenue. Although a few firms have mastered this process, compensation mechanisms are more likely to create disappointment and…

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How Firms Are Compensating Their COOs

hand holding dollar signs and charts

More and more firms are exploring the benefits of adding a Chief Operating Officer (COO) to their leadership ranks. The COO role often encompasses strategic CPA firm leadership, holding partners accountable, making decisions in line with the firm’s strategy and overseeing all administrative functions. This position can significantly reduce the time client service partners spend…

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Takeaways from Busy Season 2024

Key takeaways

At a recent NextGen Roundtable meeting, we discussed the successes and challenges of busy season. This roundtable consisted of more than a dozen partners and partner candidates from small to mid-sized firms based in the US. In an initial poll, members rated this busy season from best to worst. Using a five-point scale, 33% of…

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Highlights of the 2023 Rosenberg MAP Survey

Survey cover

The Rosenberg Survey is compiled by The Growth Partnership. Charles Hylan, a partner at TGP, heads up their survey team. This is the 25th year of the survey, which reports on 2022 data. As always, “partner” means equity partners only. Percentage increases or decreases are based on data only for firms over $2M in revenue.…

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Credit Card Processing Fees: To Charge or Not to Charge

Credit card on a keyboard

Many CPA firms accept electronic payments. It is 2023, after all. If your firm has been accepting credit cards, you may wonder whether to charge the merchant or processing fees back to the client. There are two ways to tackle this: Build the processing fees into your pricing by adding your processing rate, usually around…

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Why Revenue Growth is Old School

growth on coins

Once upon a time, staff were abundant and CPA firms made plans to grow revenue every year. Life was good! Then one day, a staffing crisis hit our industry and took many of the staff away. Revenue growth became harder and harder without staff. Partners worked more and more hours until… “I can’t and won’t…

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Industry Trends and Takeaways from the 2022 Rosenberg Survey

2022 Rosenberg Survey cover

The 2022 Rosenberg Survey has been released, and, along with it, volumes of data on the CPA industry’s performance over the past year. The survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms. Here are the questions and our responses. How would you assess the last 12 months? Trends? Observations? Struggles?…

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Benchmarking Boosts Your Profits – How Do You Measure Up?

Benchmarking bubble.

The integrity of CPAs is consistently rated among the highest of all professionals. Primary reasons for this are dedication to client service, delivery of high-quality work and a high degree of technical excellence acquired from working with hundreds, if not thousands, of clients. Partners at many CPA firms pursue this dedication to the point of neglecting…

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