EXPLORING NEW NICHES p. 8
Now is a great time to investigate new practice areas
— if you’re willing to put in the work
HARDWARE MUST-HAVES p. 22
The tech tools and gadgets no successful
accountant can do without
accountingtoday.com
PAYROLL PACKAGES p. 24
We test-drive the gamut of payroll providers,
and find many of them going mobile
For the nation’s auditors, the
beginning of the 21st century was,
unfortunately, defined by mammoth accounting frauds such as
Enron, WorldCom, Qwest, Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac, and a searing lack of public confidence in the
auditing process in particular and
in the profession in general.
That, in turn, set the table for
sweeping and game-changing
measures such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a series of risk assessment standards and, most recently, the Dodd-Frank Financial
Reform Bill.
The snowballing amount of new
regulations, the increasing complexity of accounting standards,
stronger competition, the pressure
to reduce audit fees, peer review,
and the dangerous sophistication
of audit fraud have made it exponentially more difficult to successfully perform audit engagements.
Add to that the probability of
convergence of U.S. GAAP with
International Financial Reporting
The 21st
century
audit
See AUDIT on
35
BY BILL CARLINO
Scandals, new regs
and more complex
standards create
a new landscape
A smooth stArt SENSIBA SAN FILIPPO MAKES ONBOARDING AN ART See page 10
shake-up
in int’l tax
regulation
The increasing globalization of the economy
has made international tax issues more commonplace, even for smaller practitioners, since
any transaction that goes across an international
border has tax implications.
Significant pieces of legislation enacted dur-
ing the past year,
“It was a huge
year for develop-
ments on the in-
ternational scene,” said Harold Pskowski, manag-
ing editor for U.S. international tax publications at
BNA. “[ The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act]
in March, the foreign tax credit ‘splitter’ legisla-
tion in August, and now the Green Book propos-
See INTERNATIONAL on
37
BY ROGER RUSSELL
90
95
100
105
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Source: U. S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
OVER THERE
U.S. DIRECT INVESTMENT ABROAD,
2010, IN $BN
Keeping your firm competitive
Five experts share strategies for standing out from the crowd
What strategies enable a CPA
firm to not only remain competi-
tive, but also to differentiate its
people and service offerings from
legions of practices across the
country also looking to capture
greater market share and grow
their books of business?
social media
michelle Golden
President, Golden Practices
The sky is not falling. Your firm
needn’t use social media in order
to remain a viable business after
two or five years. That said, fore-
going use of these powerful com-
munications tools sooner rather
than later is comparable to hav-
ing postponed adopting e-mail for
business use.
