Great News to report.. Mark Bailey and Company has again been selected as one of the 2009 Best Accounting Firms to Work for. What makes our firm different and sets us apart? Our people.

Seems like a simple answer yet we truly have great people who have a passion for what they do. Employees who enjoy coming to work each day, are respected and know they are an integral part of the firm enable us to provide a work environment that sets us apart.

Last Fall I posted on the benefits of using Client Service Agreeents (CSAs).  One of the truly great benefits to your firm is obtaining concurrence with your client on a schedule of payments in advance of doing the work.  It is a practice management tool that is increasingly more important in our current economic environment.  But here’s the best part!

Recently members of our management team were reviewing software options for project management.  During a web presentation by our British friend and Verasage Senior Fellow, Paul Kennedy of O’Byrne and Kennedy of their software designed primarily for ‘pricing firms’  we were discussing CSAs.  Our document template is very similar to his, with one glaring exception.  Paul includes an automatic bank wiring authorization form.

By signing it the client instructs their bank to wire the agreed upon amounts on the agreed upon dates in advance or concurrently with the work being completed.  Simple, effective and brilliant.  While this works best for those of us who ‘price’, it has definite possibilities for you time sheet junkies as well.

Long known for our inability to communicate effectively either orally or verbally (yes there is a difference) as accountants we’ve found new facades to hide behind. Our communication with our clients is typically limited to brief general conversations, and written communications mandated by professional standards, such as engagement letters. The email / text message / voice mail have supplemented the traditional letter facilitating the anonymity so many in our profession seem to prefer, with the frequent result being misunderstanding or no understanding at all. Read more…

Just read Michelle Golden’s post on sending out mass mailings.  I thought it was very funny, and says so much about why we are so turned off by most of the mail we get today.

But most of all, I thought it also shows the value of criticism.  I read the other day, that the best thing you can hear as a company is a criticism, because that’s when you have the chance to improve.  If you never hear them, you can never get better. Read more…

I’ve posted frequently about the deleterious effect I believe time sheets have on professional knowledge workers and professional knowledge firms. Regardless of the origin, or the use for which they were originally intended they have become at once a measurement of productivity, value, worth and efficiency. And I don’t believe they do any of those things particularly well. Granted they can generate useful and important information for reactive decision making but the costs of that information to the culture of the user far outweigh any marginal benefit derived. They are a very efficient tool for micromanaging. There are other very efficient micromanagement tools as well. There are performance evaluations - which we’ve previously posted about. How about ‘checklists’? Read more…

Recently I was asked by a former tax partner of an international firm how we measured the productivity of our associates given that we no longer keep time sheets. Ignoring for the moment that Peter Block has already answered that question in his book The Answer to How is Yes, I have more than one issue with this question. Read more…

Recently, Bob Nugent the Chief Financial Officer for Scolari’s Markets, a chain retail grocer in Northern Nevada and one of our favorite and most valued clients, gave our firm a compliment that created a HSD for me. (HSD is the acronym for High Satisfaction Day – a phrase I first heard from author Ron Baker.) We had recently completed several projects for Scolari’s, which had involved several of our team members. Bob, not known for lavishing unsolicited praise in the thirty years I’ve known him, told me how impressed he was with the knowledge, professionalism and service level he had received from our associates. Read more…