Exclusive information. Extraordinary insight. CPA Trendlines is the world’s only research and advisory service focused solely on the tax, accounting, and finance professions. We use a time-tested, quality-proven, proprietary blend of data, analysis, community, experience, and imagination to produce extraordinary value for our clients. Elite decision-makers from all over the world look to CPA Trendlines for trusted advice, bold insights, and confidential access to exclusive intelligence and decision support. You’ll stay more focused, save time, grow revenue in a fast-changing global digital environment, and sleep better at night. Guaranteed. Facts. Figures. Insights. Implications. Here you'll find the data and analysis you can use for your practice and your career, plus exclusive research, insights, and commentary on the most pressing issues and fastest-changing trends. We are dedicated to delivering the actionable intelligence that tax, accounting, and finance professionals need in order to identify and act on emerging issues and opportunities. We specialize in high-quality, concise executive briefings designed to help busy professionals improve their organizations, advance their careers, and enhance their lives. Our reports are relevant, timely, and to-the-point, providing the most essential information, and are digestible often in under an hour.
Many accounting graduates dream of joining large firms right out of college. That dream became a reality for Dustin Wheeler. However, it didn't last long.
"Right out of college, I moved to Las Vegas and got a job with the largest local firm," Wheeler explained. "And my job there was pretty much strictly tax."
"After a short stay there, I left for an opportunity with a smaller firm of about 16 people, which ...
Heather Smith has loved accounting since she was 14 and loves the flexibility the profession offers. Since the mid-2000s she has been one of the original cloud accounting nomads, with an accounting business that she says fits in a lovely Italian handbag.
In 2022, the ANISE Consulting founder based in Brisbane, Australia, demonstrated that nomadic lifestyle by attending all three live Xerocon events: London, New ...
Jackie Meyer is a fan of value pricing and niching your practice. Her favorite area is tax planning, which doesn’t require a huge investment of time to provide huge financial benefits for clients. Her own firm tripled revenues by focusing on tax planning. Firms that focus on low-volume, highly-niched areas solve several problems at once.
Dustin Verity admits to being cautious. He also admits to being a technophile.
In the latest episode of Transformation Talks, the CPA explained being conflicted between his obsession with playing with the latest technology and finding the right fit for his firm.
"I've always been interested in technology and, and you know, efficiencies," Verity said, always wanting to know how his firm could produce more and ...
“We’re ultimately in the people business. We’re in the relationship-building business. We just happen to do accounting.”
That's how Clayton Oates, the founder of QA Business, views the accounting profession.
Oates also believes accountants can choose whether they are playing a finite, zero-sum game with clients or the infinite game, which continues forever and results in an abundance forever mindset with clie...
Ron Baker has been on a crusade to transform accounting firms for decades, first by pushing us to kill the billable hour and to implement value pricing. Today, he’s advising accountants to switch to a radically different business model. His new book, co-authored with Paul Dunn, "Time’s Up! The Subscription Business Model for Professional Firms," explains the subscription model and why moving to this model aligns the values...
Randy Crabtree: Follow These 3 Rules to Keep Employees Happy
Kenji Kuramoto: Kill the 40-hr work week, online pricing and other archaic accounting etiquettes.
Chad Davis: You have an infinite canvas of opportunities to add more joy to your firm.
"...Clients who have started their own businesses are looking for a combination of “money, time and freedom.” However, Damery said, we’re selling them dashboards, KPIs and cash flow forecasting without explaining why that’s important and what that’s going to do for them. "Clients are looking for an advisor who's going to listen to me, understand my hopes, my fears, my vision, what the challenges are, and be able to be ther...
Erik Solbakken: Create a firm you'd love working in.
The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines
Erik Solbakken, a.k.a. “The Heavy Metal CPA,” is on a mission to free accountants from an oppressive business model. Solbakken spent 18 years working his way up to be a partner in a firm in Canada, but when the partnership fell apart, he was liberated to create a new kind of firm, where he and his staff n...
The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
Donny C. Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, is the founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC, a specialized CPA firm dedicated to helping small businesses and middle market organizations leverage strategic technologies, proactively manage their business and technical risks, and enable balanced organizational growth and development. Donny also works with larger organizatio...
The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines
Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).
Training can triumph over textbooks in the talent wars.
The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines
Mike Whitmire wants to transform the role of accountants in industry from mere counting beans (though that’s not a bad skill to have) to an operational role that leverages accountants’ knowledge of company finances and operations to drive efficiency throughout an entire organization.
Too busy? Raise your prices.
The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines
What do clients – or, as Ed Kless prefers, customers – want from their accountants? It’s not the tax return or the financial statement but the outcome for the customer, which is most often peace of mind.
To remain relevant in disruptions like online tax preparation and automated bookkeeping tech firms like Pilot...
The Disruptors: Billable Hours - Demeaning and Demoralizing or Useful Measurement?
With Liz Farr
More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/2022/10/25/seth-fineberg-your-classic-business-model-wont-allow-growth/
Career Reflections
With Amy Welch
After years in public accounting, Chris Ortega decided he wanted something different.
Armed with his MBA in corporate finance from the University of Indianapolis, as well as multiple years of experience, Ortega created Fresh FP&A to provide CFO services to companies, helping them transform their finance departments and businesses. And, while many business owners st...
Transformation Talks: Corporate social responsibility reporting all starts with transparency, and leaders should prioritize this, not just for communities but also for sustainability.
James Ross, the CSR leader at Buzzacott, a 500-person accounting firm based in London, talks to Donny Shimamoto, for the Center for Accounting Transformation. Published by CPA Trendlines.
Transformation Talks: A leader at one of the fastest growing firms in the country describes transforming his career, pros and cons of building versus buying and the four (or five) steps to becoming a consulting firm.
Transformation Talks
With Bill Penczak, Center for Accounting Transformation
More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/2022/09/28/rick-thisthe-four-or-five-steps-to-moving-into-the-consulting-busin...
The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
for CPA Trendlines
Any accountant who has ever met Hector Garcia will likely use the adjective ‘generous’ to describe him.
Since 2011, he’s been sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of QuickBooks on a YouTube channel that has generated millions of views. Because of that YouTube channel, he hasn’t printed business cards for two years.
In this discussion, he shares tips...
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
It’s a lighthearted nightmare in here, weirdos! Morbid is a true crime, creepy history and all things spooky podcast hosted by an autopsy technician and a hairstylist. Join us for a heavy dose of research with a dash of comedy thrown in for flavor.
My name is Jay Shetty, and my purpose is to make wisdom go viral. I’m fortunate to have fascinating conversations with the most insightful people in the world, and on my podcast, I’m sharing those conversation with you. New episodes Mondays and Fridays. Listen anywhere you get your podcasts, and please rate and review the podcast if you enjoy it. Live life today ON PURPOSE.