This article provided by Gary Boomer, CPA, of Boomer Consulting. Vision is important if your firm plans to grow and prosper. The large firms spend considerable resources on visioning and strategic planning. Building consensus and gaining input from staff, managers, and owners is important. Perhaps your firm is smaller and doesn’t feel it can spend the resources on strategic planning. Based upon what the well-managed firms do, at a minimum, your firm should have a one-page strategic plan with measurable goals.

Compliments of Robert Goldhaber, Esq. -Member of the National Network of Accountants’ Preferred Provider NetworkThe key to staying in business is receiving payment for the services you provide, and receiving that payment in a timely manner. In most instances, getting paid for services performed, or for goods sold, is not a problem. But what do you do when payments are not forthcoming? Do You Want to Do Business with this Customer?In reality, every businessperson should start thinking about being paid prior to performing any work or selling any goods.

When Accounting Firms Enter the World of Group InsurancePresented by Herbert LichtmanPresident and CEO, GroupWorksTuesday, February 13, 2001 4:00-5:00 p.m. ESTVisit the AccountingWEB Workshop Calendar for upcoming sessions.SummaryGroup insurance presents both great opportunities and great challenges for accounting firms.

If you're a self-employed accountant, you're doing your business a disservice if you haven't prepared a carefully thought-out and written business plan.Ugh, you're thinking. That's a lot of hard work, and I don't even know how to get started. Besides, my business has been rolling along fine without a hard-and-fast plan. The world's changing too fast anyway, right?

In continuing its redeliberations of the September 1999 proposed Statement, Business Combinations and Intangible Assets, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) tentatively decided at today’s public meeting to eliminate the pooling-of-interests (pooling) method of accounting for business combinations. All business combinations would be accounted for under a single method - the purchase method. The pooling method would be eliminated following issuance of a final Statement.

Using Industry Profiles for Sales Call Preparation, Business Valuations, Audits and More!Presented by Wil BrawleyVice President of Marketing for First Research and Michelle Golden, President of Golden Marketing Resources

Based on a new survey conducted by the Illinois CPA Society, 75 percent of more than 2,000 business executives have no objection to CPAs and lawyers working together as partners.Moreover, 85 percent said that they would not sever their relationship with a CPA who partnered with someone they did not know.

NEWS RELEASE: Financial Executives International (FEI), a professional association of 15,000 CFOs, controllers and treasurers, has identified the ten most critical financial reporting challenges facing public companies for the year 2001:Audit Committee Governance -- Fulfill new "independence," financial "expert" and financial "literacy" requirements for audit committees.

How to Use Online Tax Organizers in Your Tax PracticePresented by: Tim Lenneman, CPA of Global Tax NetworkThursday, December 14, 2000The AccountingWEB Workshop RoomTopics for this workshop included: What are online tax organizers? Functionality that is important when using an online tax organizer Security and privacy matters Benefits to using