The 7 Biggest Financial Mistakes Businesses Make  Running a business should earn you an honorary degree given all you will learn, writes Brian Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of Sageworks, over at Inc.    We live and we learn. In the time it’s taken me to build two companies, I have learned and more importantly, lived, these mistakes. I hope these pieces of advice can help both aspiring and existing entrepre ...

Cut Down on Email, Increase Your Biz Dev So advise Bret Owens and Dan Markovitz at AccountingToday: Too many CPAs begin the day reading through their email inbox. No doubt, reputations depend on near instantaneous client service. But let's face it—if the only value you're providing for your client is rapid response, you'll eventually be replaced by someone in Mumbai, Shenzhen or some other time zone who can ...

Hey There, Bob Posen! Steven Zelin, aka "The Singing CPA," and Edith Orenstein, Accounting WEB blogger for Financial Executives International (FEI), have teamed up to create a music video celebrating the third anniversary of the Security and Exchange Commission's (SEC)Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting chaired by Robert C. (Bob) Pozen, senior financial lecturer at Harvard University. ...

Alphabet Soup AccountingToday's Danielle Lee writes that "A growing roster of professional designations fosters credential-mania," among CPAs, and devotes an article to surveying some of the most popular credentials today, including those from NACVA: The CVA. The National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts' CVA credential does require a CPA license, along with coursework and an exam. Establishe ...

Why Most Investors Don't Measure Returns Correctly At the NY Times Bucks: Making the Most of Your Money blog, Carl Richards opines: There’s an old saying that you should take a look at your checkbook and your calendar to see what you really value as opposed to what you say you value, because the calendar and the checkbook never lie. Dollars and cents are easy to count in the checkbook. Happiness, on the oth ...

Lawyers and Accountants Once Put Integrity First So asserts Mark W. Everson, commissioner of the IRS from 2003 to 2007, in an opinion piece for the Sunday NY Times: Three or four decades ago, investors and regulators could rely on these professionals to provide a check on corporate risk-taking. But over time, attorneys and auditors came to see their practices not as independent firms that strengthen the int ...

No Parties After IFRS Adoption in Canada When measuring the costs of IFRS implementation, there are the not-at-all trivial costs of changing accounting methods.  But there are also opportunity costs of spending time becoming IFRS compliant that you could have spent doing something other things. "The greater cost has really been the diversion of intellectual capital during this time period from doing more pr ...

More Feedback: Editor: I read the May 2011 QuickRead – “Tips for Valuators” concerning stub years. I have run into this issue several times and I have seen it misapplied many times and I am glad you wrote about the topic. I noticed two points in the article that I believe need further clarification. The first thing that I noticed in the article is that the PV factors need to be modified as well if you are d ...

LinkedIn Features Booming CVA/AVA Activity Have you visited LinkedIn lately?  The NACVA AVA/CVA Certification group as of this writing has 935 members.  Follow the link and join in the conversation! This year is NACVA's 20th Anniversary.  What milestones do you remember being a part of?   QuickRead's Conversations with the Masters staff is preparing for an interview with Shannon Pratt.  Do you have question ...

Lending Improves The Wall Street Journal reports that Small Business Lending Has Improved. A Braun Research survey performed for Capital One Bank found 85% of owners polled in March said they’re able to access the financing they need, up seven percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2010 and 15 percentage points from a year ago. . . . but Owners Fear Economic Uncertainty Economic Uncertainty, Spending ...