Category: Accounting
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QuickBooks accountant fees
Business owners using the world’s most popular small business accounting platform naturally want to know the price of professional support. While today’s online accounting significantly reduces the manual labor cost, these is always some requirement for skilled personal support. I am revisiting the topic now because I wonder about resetting my own fee structure: both…
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QuickBooks ProAdvisor Recertified
I am pleased to complete my QuickBooks ProAdvisor recertification.
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Reflections on the standard of professional skepticism
One of the very few things I personally dislike about being a CPA is a requirement known as “professional skepticism”. As much as my innate personality leads me to act in the role of an optimist, a cheerleader, supporter and an eternal promoter of general positive thoughts, the professional responsibility requires me to objectively weigh…
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Small Business Payroll Services
I see plenty of room for improvement is small business payroll processing. About 2 in 5 of all small businesses eventually wind up with problems and penalties due to payroll tax errors. The issue can usually be avoided by ensuring that service is provided by a reputable payroll service that is supervised by a responsible…
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Fiduciary Rule will shake up the financial services industry
Most of us in the financial services or advisory professions are generally aware of the impact of the “Fiduciary Rule”. But few, including myself, has any in-depth understanding of the scope of its impact. This well-written explanation of the fiduciary rule comes from a training material for financial service professionals. I added the emphasis. “In…
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AICPA praises small accounting firms
The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants published an article praising small CPA firms: “small firms serve their clients in ways that often go beyond the books. Small firm practitioners act as the volunteer treasurers of thousands of nonprofits, and lend a hand to a variety of religious organizations, community teams and clubs. Their practices…
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CPA-prepared financial statements
A question came up from a small nonprofit business client yesterday for the second time this month. The request was to produce a financial statement for the client’s Treasurer. I found myself thinking about the best words to use to clarify my position. I want to help by making this an easy and seamless process…
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CPA services for nonprofits: a comparison of service and cost
Nonprofit organizations in the United States are sometimes required to engage a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to prepare financial statements for presentation to state regulators and to the public. The specific requirement varies by state and depends primarily on the size of the nonprofit organization. Three levels of financial statement services offered by CPAs: Audits,…
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Sample Tax Services Agreement
This page is outdated. A more recent version is available: Sample accounting services engagement agreement 2021 Each year I’ve modified my tax services engagement agreement as circumstances and technologies change. This is the current version of the individual tax service engagement agreement. The primary goal of the engagement agreement remains the same: to document our mutual understanding…
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Income earned in multiple states creates tax filing difficulties
Income earned in multiple states can pose a serious problem at tax filing time. I borrowed this example from a tax professionals online post: “Client walks in a $10,000 W2 and has about 20 states on it, with between $150-$800 wages for each state, but zero withholdings in those states. Total AGI (self employed) is…