Thursday, June 13th, 2013
AICPA PCPS 2013 Top Issues Survey
On Tuesday, the AICPA released the results of the 2013 CPA Firm Top Issues Survey.
I like the way they break it down by firm size:
- Sole practitioners
- Firms with 2-5 professionals
- Firms with 6-10 professionals
- Firms with 11-20 professionals
- Firms with 21 or more professionals
However, I actually don’t like the way they word it…. I believe everyone working inside a CPA firm is a professional. It is a professional services organization, so the firm administrator, marketing director, HR direction, technology team and admin team are all professionals to me.
I was not surprised to see that the competition for top talent is heating up again.
One surprising issue to me – at the top spot for large firms is Partner Unity & Accountability. I’m glad to see that firms are admitting it and hopefully dealing with it.
Sole Practitioners:
- Keeping up with changes and complexity of the tax laws
- Bringing in new clients
- Seasonality/workload compression
- Retention of current clients
- Cost and complexity of new federal and sate regulations
Firms with 2-5 Professionals:
- Keeping up with changes and complexity of the tax laws
- Succession planning
- Finding qualified staff (all levels)
- Bringing in new clients
- Seasonality/workload compression
Firms with 6-10 Professionals:
- Succession planning
- Finding qualified staff (all levels)
- Bringing in new clients
- Retaining qualified staff (all levels)
- Owner/partner accountability and unity
Firms with 11-20 Professionals:
- Bringing in new clients
- Finding qualified staff (all levels)
- Succession planning
- Retaining qualified staff (all levels)
- Retention of current clients.
Firms with more than 20 Professionals:
- Owner/partner accountability and unity
- Bringing in new clients
- Retaining qualified staff (all levels)
- Succession planning
- Finding qualified staff (all levels)
If you want to see a comparison of the 2013 findings with the 2011 findings (the last time the survey was conducted), you can find it here.
- "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."
