The "ADD" Accountant

Introducing Patrick Payroll

I am always wanting to give my clients more. It’s a curse, really. That being said, I am proud to share with you all the latest addition to the Patrick Accounting family of services, Patrick Payroll. As a local payroll partner, the Patrick Payroll staff will work hand-in-hand with businesses in order to implement a payroll solution that meets any and every unique need. Once in place, businesses will work with a dedicated payroll specialist throughout the payroll process to ensure continuity—reducing errors and saving time and money. We all could save a little time and money these days, right?

As part of the launch of Patrick Payroll, we have updated our advanced online client center within the Patrick Accounting website to include additional information such as new employee or changes to your employee forms, New Hire Packets, and Blank Payroll Forms.

Patrick Payroll will also provide optional services such as Pay-As-You-Go Workers Compensation, Direct Deposit Pay Cards, and Online Access to W-2s and Paystubs. To assist our very valued clients in gaining a well-rounded understanding of the additions, we will be providing a webinar to show-off these brand new features over the coming weeks.

We want to be the single source for your accounting needs, so a strategic move for us to better serve our clients was offering outsourced payroll. We want to provide maximum convenience and the best, most highly advanced technology—all your fingertips, simply and effectively.

What do you want out of your accounting firm?

Update from Gotomeeting-One word "AWESOME"

I received an email this week from gotomeeting that said...hey we have an update and now gotomeeting will integrate with your webcam..so being the geek I am i instantly went to the link for the update, downloaded, installed, and then tested to see if it would work....everything went off without a hitch with the exception that I did not have any web meetings scheduled....this is not uncommon but we do use gotomeeting for impromptu questions about 3-5 times per week so I was just waiting impatiently for the next opportunity to try out the new toy....

Well today, I got my wish...we were fortunate enough to have a web meeting scheduled with one of our tech savvy clients, Valeo Design and Marketing.  We both popped right on, we shared our webcam first, made sure we were good to go and then our clients shared his....presto it was if we had driven the 30 miles to see each other face to face...no traffic, no wasted time for either of us, and we were able to probably accomplish more while together as we both had access to every bit of information we needed.  Technology is pretty cool when it works!  The process could not have been easier.  I am excited about the possibilities of meeting more frequently wiht our clients and also not been chained to my desk either as I can be anywhere there is an internet connection and connect with our clients and office.  Many of you probably already realized we were on a virtual cloud server.  Now this is just one more step in the virtual world we can take....Like I said "AWESOME"

What keeps you up at night?

I recently read an Accounting Today article by Gary Boomer about CPA firm management.  He raised a great point that really got me thinking about my business.  What keeps me up at night?  I have a laundry list of items that keeps me up at night most however are unrelated to my business.  I thought it would be fun to list what keeps me up at night for everyone to see...

• Stupid tv programs like "House", or "NCIS"
• The client that no matter how many times we have asked for something never responds to our requests then asks when their tax return or financials are going to be finished
• A bowl of cereal (nothing better once everyone is asleep)
• The blown call in the 8th inning of a tied game which cost the Sox the game
• The client who complains that they owe a bunch of money with their tax return, but confirm for me that they did not make the estimates we asked them to
• When a client is wanting something we can't provide.
• Having to let a client go because they do not value what we are providing them
• Business cash flow!!!
• Personal cash flow!!!
• Non-productive employees
• My honey do list
• My kids going away to college
• My kids going off to kindergarten

All of this makes me wonder how I sleep at all!  How about you?

CPA Firm Consulting

So I am in the early stages of creating a CPA Firm consulting company.  I feel that although firms have access to an abundance of information a lot them do not know how to implement what they are being shown.  Unfortunately or not I have made a lot of mistakes along the way and have overcome a number of poor decisions that I would like my fellow firm owners to not repeat.  I also have a knack for taking a grain of information and snowballing that into a change that my firm has benefitted from.  I am interested in helping firms implement the change they want.  Some of the areas I am going to concentrate on are firm analytics and practice management, embracing the cloud, and understanding process.  I will keep everyone up to date on the developments.  Currently I am brainstorming over the service package and my deliverables. I also think this can only enhance my own firms processes as it allows me to be further exposed to other bright minds...More to come!

Processes, Processes, Processes...

So now that the Red Sox are hot again and back in first I am ready to start posting again....sorry it took them so long!

At the office this week ( I just got back from a whole week vacation) we are working on documenting our processes and it got me to thinking. Why do we do things the way we do? The process of writing the process has identified a number of steps that if we were to simplify a couple of things internally or when we setup a new client that could save us consider amount of times every month. For us we work with about a 100 clients on a monthly basis. If we could just save 5 minutes per client per month that is 500 minutes....Damn! that is a full day of capacity we could find every month. It could be used for a new client, learning opportunities, training, whatever....even another day off. It made we think about all of our clients. I wonder if our clients are thinking about their processes and how they do things and how they could do things just a little more streamlined. One of the ideas I was thinking of is something we already do...we try to help our clients go paperless. Our whole office is paperless....in the accounting industry that is a truly difficult thing to say...we have tons of paper in our office, but it is short-lived there. We scan and send it back to our clients. Our clients have access to whatever info we have for them 24/7 online today. We can now help them with the process of taking even more of their office processes paperless. How much time could that save them? What would they do with all that new found time....

Do the Red Sox realize that spring training ends in March not April!

So after a month into the 2011 season, the Red Sox have not figured out where to bat Carl Crawford, the pitching has been HIGHLY inconsistent, El Guapo ( I mean Bobby Jenks) has not figured out how to pitch in the 6-8th innings, Pedroia is in a slump, Youk is in a slump, Drew is a in a slump (I think he has been a in a slump since we signed him, with the exception of 1 grand slam), crawford is hitting below .150, Varitek should have retired after 2007, and "Salty" can't seem to catch 60% of our pitching staff without them griping about it.

Let's hope that once April Showers end, the Sox bloom in May!

Patrick Accounting Opens New Office-Open House September 23rd

Come join us September 23rd from 4:30-6:00 as we celebrate our move into our new office.  We are currently having a referral contest.  The winners are to be selected at the open house.   The prizes are to include an IPAD, 32 inch television, and some great restaurant gift certificates....

It should be a great time and a wonderful way to break in the place as we celebrate....

Our new office address is 9045 Forest Centre Drive Ste 101 Germantown, TN  38138

the add accountant named #8 on top 100 accounting advice blog

Cool note of the day....The ADD accountant was names a top 100 accounting advice column (actually #8) by another blogger.

I will say that this may make me put more accounting stuff up here and less about the Red Sox..... na more sox.....

Patrick Accounting Named Small Practice-Accounting Firm of the Year

The Professional Association of Small Business Accountants (PASBA) held its fourth annual awards ceremony in Phoenix, AZ last week.  Four well-deserving members were honored with awards at the conference dinner party, held during the association’s 2010 Spring  Conference.  The recipients were chosen in three award categories in addition to the Spirit Award. 

 

Matthew Patrick, was chosen as the Small Practice recipient of the Association’s Firm of the Year award for his firm, Patrick Accounting and Tax Services, PLLC.  Mr. Patrick was nominated by the members of the association to receive this outstanding award that honors a member who has continuously developed and shared new and innovative ideas with the organization.  Mr. Patrick has been a member of PASBA for 4 years.

 

The Professional Association of Small Business Accountants represents Certified Public Accountants, Public Accountants, and Enrolled Agents who provide accounting services to small businesses throughout the United States.  Members of the Association have built a nationwide network of accountants to benefit small business clients across the country. Using the collective resources of this network, Association members offer their clients a level of service and expertise that individual practices are unable to rival.  For more information, visit www.pasba.org.

Quick Note on the New Health Care Bill...

Here is a great little synopsis of the new health care bill put together by the NFIB in how it affects small businesses....which I both serve and operate!  We are knee deep in tax season right now, but I am looking forward to researching this thing more post April 15th...

The Unaffordable Facts