Taking Back Control of our Accounting Engagements
Aside from the fact that I'm feeling a bit cloudy myself today due to a)the snow cloud that has taken up residence over my house, and b)a healthy dose of cold medicine that I took last night, it's reasonable to say that we should all be feeling cloudy these days, and in a good way. As Amy Vetter explains in her post on Taking Back Control of our Accounting Engagements, working with our clients in the Cloud gives us the opportunity to become so much more than the end-of-the-year accountant.
Using Cloud computing to its full potential, and I'm sure we're only scratching the surface of that concept, means you can have an ongoing and much more robust relationship with your clients and do so more efficiently than ever before. The most important thing to remember is that, if you don't engage with your clients in the Cloud, someone else will. So when you ask yourself where you expect to be in five years, if the answer is "still in business" – then it's time to start floating in the clouds.
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Perry is a CPA and a former senior tax accountant with Big Four firm Deloitte. She maintains a small tax practice, she is a personal finance instructor, and the author of thirty books, including Surviving Financial Downsizing: A Practical Guide to Living Well on Less Income (Adams Media); QuickBooks on Demand (Que); Excel 2007 Macros Made Easy (McGraw Hill); The Complete Idiot's Guide to Doing Your Income Taxes (Alpha/MacMillan); and, most recently, Mint.com for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons). In addition, she is a former columnist for the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News daily newspapers.
Perry is a nationally recognized speaker who advises public accountants on using Internet tools to improve their accounting practices. She also taught a college-level introductory accounting class and was on staff at the Indiana CPA Society as a computer applications instructor. For five years, she was a contributing editor for Accounting Today magazine before taking over the helm at AccountingWEB.
Perry is a graduate of Indiana University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She returned to school to study accounting at Illinois State University, passed the CPA exam (in one sitting!), and worked for Deloitte in the Chicago tax department.
Gail has been named one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Accounting by CPA Practice Advisor magazine and the American Society of Women Accountants.
