AS QUOTED
“Copying the competition ensures that one will not achieve a competitive advantage.”

—Strategic Planning—Why Plans Fail and What You Can Do About It by Keith A. Fryw Hill

SIGN OF THE TIMES
Need a Hand?
ole practitioners tearing their hair out as April 15 approaches can Google virtual assistants (VAs) and find cyberoffice help for all types of support services. Paid hourly or on retainer, a VA can manage your Web site, assist with newsletter development, schedule and confirm appointments or even produce and submit client extensions and estimated (ES) payment forms. Phoenix-based VA Amber Miller says, “Tax-season overload can clog CPAs’ daily business operations, but a qualified VA can help them manage despite the paper tornado.” She’s at www.smarttofinish.com. Another site, www.theoutsourcedoffice.com, promises all its VAs are “homegrown in the United States.”

NUMEROLOGY
Are You Entrepreneur Material?
Do you have what it takes to go it alone in business? If these characteristics match your own, then you could be ready to open your own firm.

1 | You think positively. Entrepreneurs are consistently faced with obstacles—and optimism helps overcome them.

2 | You see the world as abundant and providing. If you lose money, you know you can create it again. If a deal falls through, you believe a better one is coming soon. This mentality lessens fear and allows more opportunities to come to you.

3 | You avoid complacency at all cost. Having your own firm means constantly figuring out what you can do to grow, and then doing it. You’re a person who’s always thinking ahead and moving forward.

4 | You think big. You picture your success on a large scale, then figure out how to get there.

5 | You are practical. Successful people are realistic. You spend within your limits and calculate risk. You know when to let a sinking boat go. You find the balance between taking a risk and realistically assessing future repercussions.

6 | You are not put off by failure. You know failure is inevitable on the road to success. Instead of wasting your time beating yourself up over mistakes, you use the new knowledge you’ve gained to attain future successes.

7 | You are persistent. You’re determined to keep at something until you figure out how to make it happen.

Source: Amy Sorkin Kurland, an advertising and marketing collateral specialist in Venice, Calif., www.amyswords.com, 2006.

SURVEY SAVVY
Facing the Facts on Fraud
ricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2005 “Global Economic Crime Survey” of more than 3,600 executives in 34 countries found that 45% of companies were victims of fraud—up 8 percentage points from 2003 (www.pwcglobal.com/gx/eng/cfr/gecs/). Losses for all respondents exceeded $2 billion, with larger companies reporting the greatest number of incidents.

Upon discovering fraud, 81% of companies launched internal investigations and informed their boards of directors. In financial misrepresentation cases, 89% of companies investigated, but only 84% of them informed their boards and only half told their audit committees. Surprisingly, despite the growing risk, only 21% of respondents expected to be fraud victims in the next five years.

NUMEROLOGY Are Your Clients Bad at Budgeting? hile seven out of ten Americans have a household budget, nearly half of those had trouble sticking to it or had completely given up trying to follow it. The best way to get back on track? Put away those credit cards! Source: FindLaw.com Household Budget Survey, 2005.

NUMEROLOGY
The Road to Bankruptcy
o you and your clients have enough disability insurance? Most people buy insurance to protect their lives, their homes and their cars, but too many put disability insurance at the bottom of the list.

A study of bankruptcy filings by Harvard University revealed that medical disability led to nearly half of the 1.458 million bankruptcy filings in 2001. According to Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, a good education, decent job and health insurance are “no guarantee a person won’t be wiped out by an illness or accident.”

The 2005 Harvard research parallels the findings of an earlier Housing and Home Finance Agency study that found 48% of home foreclosures were the result of disability while only 3% resulted from the homeowner’s death. Combine that with the fact that one out of seven people who are between the ages of 35 and 65 can expect to become disabled for five years or longer and disability insurance becomes just as important as any other coverage. CPAs who are self-employed are particularly at risk, since there may be nobody to carry on their practice if they become disabled.

BUSINESS TRENDS Living Abroad—It’s Not Just the Money orty percent of accountants living abroad said “lifestyle” was the main impetus for deciding to relocate, according to Think Global Recruitment’s 2005 annual survey. Other motivational factors included financial benefits, work experience, weather and developing language skills.

GOLDEN BUSINESS IDEA
Think Marketing
lthough a business doesn’t usually expect its accountants to give marketing advice, there are some areas in which number-oriented CPAs can provide some very useful counsel.

For example, CPAs can track the source of sales leads; if more leads come from the sales staff rather than from marketing, that’s often a sign the marketing program is not effective in pulling in live leads. Or, if the marketing department regularly uses deep price discounts as a sales strategy, the accounting department can prepare breakeven analyses to demonstrate how that strategy affects the bottom line. Using a steady stream of gimmicks to boost sales simply trains customers to wait for the next gimmick before placing their order.

—Stanley Zarowin

BUSINESS TRENDS
Time for a Change
HR managers, beware! You’ll be seeing more open positions in your companies’ futures. Of more than 100 employees interviewed in a 2005 Yahoo! HotJobs survey (http://hotjobs.yahoo.com), 40% planned to start new job searches this year, and 21% were already on the prowl. Almost all were looking for better pay or benefits (96%), but 44% just wanted a better chance at career growth.