Annie Cushing is on a Mission to Rid the World of Ugly Data. Learn About Data Collection, Analytics, Technical SEO, Analysis, and Beautification. Annie Cushing, a Senior SEO at SEER Interactive, a Philadelphia-based online marketing agency, explains that “There comes a time in a marketer’s life when making pretty charts with a predefined dataset just doesn’t cut it. “And finding the sum and average of a column of data just doesn’t satisfy you anymore. Eventually — and it’s really inevitable — you will actually have to dive deep into the data and cull out a smaller dataset or manipulate it…
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Obama’s New Vision: No Further Increases in Tax Rates; Instead Focus on Eliminating Loopholes and Deductions And just last week all the pundits were saying any sort of serious budget deal was dead. Now, The New York Times, CBS News, and Washington Post/Associated Press report that president Barack Obama said future deals with Congress on the U.S. budget could set aside the option of raising tax rates and, instead, focus on eliminating tax loopholes and deductions to reduce the deficit. “I don’t think the issue right now is raising rates,” Obama said. Instead, a focus might be on mortgage interest…
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Firms Need to Update Technology, Use Social Media, and Hire Younger Advisors, Says Tom Nally of TD Ameritrade Institutional Rachel F. Elson at reports at Financial Planning: Advisory firms need to start hiring young financial advisers to attract and keep the business of Generation X and Y investors, who will have accumulated $28 trillion of personal wealth by 2018, up from $2 trillion in 2011, said Tom Nally, president of TD Ameritrade Institutional. A recent survey showed that, if given the chance, 86% of young investors would fire their parents’ financial adviser, he said. More:
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Cash Flow is the Most Important Financial Item for a Small Business Owners to Pay Attention To. Here’s How to Speed it Up. Cash flow–how cash flows through your organization from sale to invoice to receipt–is the lifeblood of a small company, writes Eric V. Holtzclaw at Inc.com. And speeding up your cash flow allows you to do more and gives your company more stability. Here are seven tips:
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For Nearly Five Decades, Securities Law Allowed Banks with Fewer than 300 Shareholders to “Deregister,” Now, Banks With Under 1200 Shareholders Can Do the Same Under Provisions of the JOBS Act Dina ElBoghdady reports some interesting news this week in the Washington Post: about 100 small banks have stopped reporting financial details about their operations to the SEC since the JOBS Act was enacted in April About 100 small banks have stopped reporting financial details about their operations (e.g., revenue, expenses, executive compensation and trends affecting their businesses, etc.).to the Securities and Exchange Commission since April, when a law was enacted that…
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On Marketing Mistakes Generally, Bad Marketing Messages in Particular, Social Networking, and More Geoffrey James at Inc.com writes: “A few months ago, I traded emails with best-selling author Seth Godin on the subject of marketing inside small businesses. The more I read over the interview, the more I realize that his advice is priceless.” Here’s an excerpt of the interview. Read the whole piece for the rest of Seth Godin’s answers to Geoffrey.
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Jewels from Seth Godin, Harvey Mackay, Tony Robbins, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and Others on Success, Vision, Health, and More This set of inspirational thoughts for the new year will galvanize you into action. “At the start of every year,” writes Geoffrey James, Sales Source columnist at Inc.com, “I create a list of quotes to guide and inspire me for the next 12 months. Here are the quotes I’ve selected for 2013.” Here are his first six. Read the full piece to find the others and see other Geoffrey James’ columns.
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Six Out of 10 Small-Business Owners Buy Business Benefits of Social Media; 41% Prefer LinkedIn; Only 3% Vouch for Twitter Not that that stopped Twitter from getting a $9B valuation this last week. Emily Maltby and Shira Ovide report that the Wall Street Journal and Vistage International recently surveyed 835 small business owners. Here are the results.
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Learn Best Practices, Changes in Schedule Cs and 1120s, How to Overcome Client Price-Sensitivity, Ways to Enhance Health and Energy, & More CPA Trendlines publishes its Top 10 most-read articles on tax season so far this year. More:
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There Are Different Standards. They Have Different Places in Various Appraisals. Here’s Why. Jim Hitchner considers various responses to the query: “When valuing an operating company, is it necessary to mention USPAP in addition to SSVS 1 when talking about the standards adhered to?” Good question. There were lots of answers from various valuators in a recent discussion. Here’s Jim’s take on it all.
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You Can Now Follow the IRS on Twitter, Like it on Facebook, View Updates on YouTube, and Connect on LinkedIn Michael Cohn at Accounting Today reports at the Internal Revenue Service has joined the popular microblogging service Tumblr, expanding the IRS’s array of social media networks.
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Considering Technology, Integration, and the Future Clint Boulton at the WSJ CIO Journal reports: Research in Motion Ltd. Wednesday [tomorrow] is introducing two smartphones based on its new BlackBerry 10 operating system software, giving CIOs yet another platform to consider supporting at a time when consumers are bringing in their own smartphones to use at work. CIOs are skeptical about the uncertainty surrounding RIM’s ability to continue to compete against Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which, thanks in large part to the BYOD phenomenon, have eroded the Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone maker’s share of the corporate market for mobile…
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The Wall Street Journal Recounts What the IRS Advises: Moves to Make as April Grows Near April deadlines may not be that far way, but some Americans still haven’t even rounded up their W2s, the Wall Street Journal noted in a (just-before-deadline) filing last year. Acknowledging the tax procrastination is a national pastime, the Internal Revenue Service issued some tips and a series of videos to help last-minute filers avoid the common blunders that could delay their returns. Here is a look at the most common errors:
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Sweet Tax Deductions for Individuals That Often Get Forgotten With October 15 behind us and April 15 still comfortably far away, it’s a good time to start boning up on ways to save your clients money once things start getting serious. With that in mind, Bankrate.com identified 10 great deductions that individual taxpayers should use – but often forget. Accounting Today passes on the good news. Here’s the list:
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Put on a Celebratory Launch Party, Tell Success Stories, Adopt a Mantra, and Realize: This is What You’ve Studied and Worked for Throughout Your Career! Let’s face it, writes Tracy Warren at AICPA Insights . Tax time has had a bit of a bad rap for years. You know, talk of never ending piles of work and dreaded long hours. Bah-humbug! Blame it on Ebenezer Scrooge, if you will. But this year it’s time to start anew. Scrooge was simply a curmudgeonly character created by Charles Dickens to tell a story not cast a dark, lingering shadow over tax time.…
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The accounting rulemakers said they are seeking more feedback about whether groups of companies could phase in IFRS and how investors are dealing with the two sets of accounting rules currently existing in the United States. Emily Chasen at WSJ CFO Report writes [trial subscription required] that accounting rulemakers in the U.S. and abroad are calling for collaboration even as U.S. regulators have so far refused to take a clear position on whether they should adopt international accounting rules. But that lack of guidance makes the timing and nature of such cooperation uncertain, the heads of the U.S. and international accounting…
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Plus: A Black Box that Performs Business Valuations for Privately Held Companies? The Scenario Might Not Be as Far-Fetched as You Think Not too long ago I had lunch w/a senior valuation guy, someone who’s made his living in the field for some 30 years, and was there almost from the first days The National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA) was formed and Shannon Pratt began publishing his first books. His thesis? On the horizon are electrical cars that drive themselves; computers that calculate things in miliseconds that third graders used to be taught to manually construct…
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Solid revenue growth last year following strong performance in 2010 and 2011 after a severe revenue decline in 2009 Michael Cohn at Accounting Today reports this growth according to a newly published analysis. The report, from the social networking forum Big4.com, analyzed the 2012 financial performance of Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. It found that after a strong 2011, fiscal year 2012 saw increases in revenue for all four firms, with revenues increasing between 1.4 percent and 7.8 percent from 2011, as firms leveraged the global economic recovery, improved equity markets, liquid credit conditions, stricter regulations, globalization and…
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Consider Lifetime Client Value, Cost of Client Acquisition, and Retention Rate Is your CPA firm making the most of current relationships and doing all it can to expand into new ones? While there are many metrics CPA firms use to evaluate quantitative performance, AICPA Insights suggests 12 metrics than can provide more qualitative feedback. These metrics can help CPA firms measure their reach with clients and provide insight into how well processes already in place are helping to identify opportunities with clients.
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IFRS Foundation Trustee: Don’t Wave White Flag on Cooperation Global accounting standard setters acknowledge that completion of the convergence projects is unlikely to happen in the near term, but progress can still be made to closely align International Financial Reporting Standards and U.S. GAAP, the Journal of Accountancy reports. Here’s more: