Top Line

TOP TEN
Financial Lessons Learned
This Hurricane Season

1. If your home or office was destroyed and your bills paid late, call your creditors before they call you. Check your credit report to ensure that late payments due to catastrophe are not reflected.

2. Avoid the temptation to run up huge credit card bills, assuming insurance will cover everything.

3. Stash some cash at home and at work in case ATMs and credit cards go out with the lights.

4. Make contributions to qualified charitable organizations rather than directly to individuals, so you get the tax deduction.

5. Review your own and your clients disaster preparedness. Update wills. Consider flood, buy-sell and business-continuation insurance. Review emergency procedures at home and work. Refresh the manuals, water and batteries you put together 10 years ago.

6. Back up your records and photos regularly and send them to your sister in Kansas.

7. Keep a prepaid phone card and a telephone with a land line at home and at work.

8. Plan an escape route. Keep a pair of comfortable shoes in the office and fill up your cars gas tank at the first hint of trouble.

9. Film your possessions to back up insurance claims.

10. Your Blackberry may be dead and your records destroyed, so keep a list of important numbers, contacts and documents and where they are located.

Source: Meloni Hallock, CPA/PFS, CEO of Acacia Wealth Advisors, LLC, Los Angeles.

SURVEY SAVVY
Tech Taboos

Although e-mail and instant messages (IMs) are the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence, few companies consider the risks associated with them. In fact, according to a 2004 survey, one in five U.S. companies has had employee e-mails subpoenaed in lawsuits or regulatory investigations and 13% have battled workplace lawsuits triggered by employee e-mail.

What to do? Every firm should have a written policy explaining which e-mails and IMs employees should retain, as 41% of the surveyed organizations have done. You also should conduct e-mail policy training classes that explain what kind of content could conceivably damage a company in court.

Source: The American Management Association, www.amanet.org, and the ePolicy Institute, http://epolicyinstitute.com.

GOLDEN BUSINESS IDEAS
When to Be Credit Wary

When a company asks for credit, be cautious if it

Has stopped obtaining audited financial statements and now prepares only reviews or unaudited or compiled statements.

Presents financial statements that show profits, but doesnt present a cash-flow statement.

Shows large amounts of due to or due from its owners in its business records. Thats a sign the owners are using the business as a personal bank or the business is borrowing from the owners because it cant get credit anywhere else.

Stanley Zarowin

I.Q. TEST
(Innocuous Question)

Whats My Line?
Yes, these could have been your ancestors clients. Can you identify these jobs?

1. Beadle
2. Arkwright
3. Pedlar
4. Farrier
5. Publican

Robert Lester Porter, CPA

SURVEY SAVVY
Higher Pay = Longer Commute
How far would you travel for a high-paying job? Executives at the top of the pay scale have much longer commutes than the majority of U.S. workers, averaging 42.3 minutes compared with a national average of 24.3 minutes for rank-and-file employees. Part of the reason for this may be highly compensated workers can afford to live wherever they want.

For many executives, commuting time is a serious concern. Some 78% of respondents to a survey by TheLadders.com said they would make a career decision based on commute time. This is likely to be especially true in cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphiawhere average commute times approach one hour.

Cars are still the preferred method of travel78% of those polled said they drive to work. Mass transit was a distant second at only 13%. Others walk, bicycle or even fly to reach the office.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES
The Tale of the Two Accountants

Looking for a little stocking stuffer this Christmas? Metis Group, the New York accounting firm, likely would suggest one of the mystery novels its partners have published this year.

Having two writers among the firms nine partners is pure coincidence, says Jerry Eitelthe result of a merger that brought him and fellow CPA-cum-novelist Jim Weikert together. His recently published Trail of Light tells the tale of a crooked college adviser who makes a shady living promising rich parents to get their academically challenged teenagers into top universitiesuntil he meets his match in a mobster who demands real results.

Eitel earned a degree in creative writing before deciding on a career in accounting, and still finds fiction a fine way to unwind during tax season. He scribbles his tales of mobsters and murders in tony townslike the one hes headed home toon the back of financial statements during his hour-long commute. Then he types them up and edits them from 6:00 to 7:00 every morning without fail before catching the 7:23 to Penn Station.

Despite the light touch, Eitels writing echoes the moral foundation of his professional work. Im trying to be a serious novelist, kind of in the style of Elmore Leonard, he says. The book definitely has a moral. Its entertainment thats trying to say something.

Cheryl Rosen

HOME FRONT
A Solid Pact?

Every home renovation contract should include
Contractor information such as name, address, phone numbers and license number.
A list of what exactly will and will not be done.
All materials, sizes, colors and other specifications.
A dated copy of all drawings and diagrams. Changes to such documents should be initialed and dated by all parties.
Start and finish dates.
Times work will commence and end each day.
How change orders will be handled.
A one-year warranty.
A binding arbitration clause.
A statement about how the contract can be canceled.
A statement that the contractor will provide affidavits of final release, final payment or final lien waivers from all subcontractors and suppliers.
Proof the contractor checked with local building codes.

Source: Adapted from Remodel or Move? Make the Right Decision by Dan Fritschen, ABCD Publishing LLC, 2005.

FBI Exec Named Best Government CPA

Grant D. Ashley, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executive assistant director and CPA, right, accepts the 2005 AICPA Outstanding CPA in Government Award from William F. Ezzell, a Deloitte & Touche partner and former AICPA chairman, at the Institutes 22nd annual National Governmental Accounting and Auditing Update Conference in Washington, D.C., in August. Ashley, the FBIs highest-ranking CPA, has enhanced its financial management operations, forged a collaborative relationship with the AICPAespecially with respect to financial fraud detection and preventionand increased the bureaus recruitment of CPAs.

BOOKMARKS

Client Seduction: A Step-by-Step Lead Generation System for Professional and Technology Service Firms

By Henry DeVries and Denise Bryson
130 pages; paperback
AuthorHouse; 2004

This useful little book breaks marketing into bite-size chunks. The authors describe principles, objectives, steps and delivery methods for wooing the business you want to attract.