Gustavo A Viera, CPA's Blog: October 2012

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2010-11-12 12:41:05 Categorized in Business Trends, Healthcare.gov – Helping you Find the Right Plan for Your Small Business

http://www.onlywire.com/r/107223419

How a Simple Business Plan can Get you from A to Z, and Navigate all Things In-Between

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2010-11-11 13:21:52 Categorized in Business Trends, How a Simple Business Plan can Get you from A to Z, and Navigate all Things In-Between

http://www.onlywire.com/r/107223305

New Rules for Collecting Sales Tax Over the Internet

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2010-11-10 13:40:09 Categorized in Tax, New Rules for Collecting Sales Tax Over the Internet

http://www.onlywire.com/r/107223298

Three Big Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Starting Businesses

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2010-11-09 22:16:33 Categorized in Business Trends, Three Big Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Starting Businesses

http://www.onlywire.com/r/107223285

5 Future Trends in Business Planning

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2010-10-25 19:27:29 Categorized in Business Trends,

http://www.onlywire.com/r/107223279

Friday, October 19, 2012

Incentives for Selling a Business ASAP

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2012-10-19 18:51:04 Categorized in Tax,

http://www.onlywire.com/r/106997724

Top 5 Reasons Clients Dump Their Accountants

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2012-10-19 18:27:57 Categorized in Business Trends,

http://www.onlywire.com/r/106995135

Accountant in Miami Can Get Taxpayers Penalty Relief

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2012-10-19 00:32:12 Categorized in Tax,

http://www.onlywire.com/r/106886326

Miami Accountants Must Consider Putting a Business Plan in Place

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2012-10-19 00:06:07 Categorized in Business Trends,

http://www.onlywire.com/r/106881113

Monday, October 15, 2012

Contadores en Miami - Contabilidad en Miami

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2012-10-14 12:47:43 Categorized in Accounting,

http://www.onlywire.com/r/106219565

Using the Cloud to Build Your Niche Miami Accounting Service

Article by Gustavo Viera at 2012-10-13 15:59:54 Categorized in Business Trends,

http://www.onlywire.com/r/106134071

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Small Business Branding 101

We’re constantly branding and marketing our Miami CPA Firm. In the world of small business marketing, certain terms are thrown around quite a bit – so much so that they become cliché rather than tenants of a solid strategy. You’ve heard them before, terms such as “think outside the box,” “something catchy” and maybe the phase “branding”. Despite its overuse at Monday morning meetings, it’s worth reexamining what branding is really about.

As a small business, never gloss over the power of branding. The reason is simple. Branding is the foundation for top-of mind-awareness. It’s the thing that allows customers to remember you despite their daily exposure to thousands of competing marketing messages.

So let’s start at the beginning. What is branding? Branding is simply the consistent means by which you communicate the services, products and ideals of your organization. It’s your identity—the DNA of your business. With proper implementation, branding will highlight key differences that separate you from other businesses in your city, sector and industry. This is vital for those who operate in highly-competitive arenas such as: retail, finance, automotive and so on.

Here are three simple concepts that can galvanize your branding strategy:

No. 1: Know your audience. Successful branding begins with the customer. The projection of your brand should be predicated on the needs, values and lifestyles of your collective audience. All too often companies possess “personalities” that are inconsistent with their customer base. So before launching into an ad campaign, do a little research. Ensure the projection of your company’s identity resonates.

No. 2: Having the right tools. Cramming more and more verbiage into your ads is not the solution for visibility. It’s going to take mnemonic tools to get things to stick. Here are some examples of things you can use to bolster your company’s brand: a jingle, logo, tagline, company colors, a mascot, spokesperson and so forth. Let’s be clear, using one of the previously mentioned items will not magically result in branding; you’ll most likely need several simultaneously. And most important, they will have to be used consistently.

No. 3: Commitment. This may seem like an easy one but you’d be surprised at how many businesses fail to solidify a brand due to a lack of consistency. This is the most critical concept for small business owners when evaluating branding.

Things to remember:

• Don’t cancel ad placements if your phone doesn’t ring right away

• If your budget is limited, don’t “media hop”– stay with one thing

• If using a jingle, feature it everywhere (radio, TV, on‐hold, Web)

• Don’t change up your logo often

• When buying an ad ‐ budget for more than a couple of weeks

• Use your tagline every chance you get

All too often businesses “dabble” with ideas in full view of their audience with no real commitment to a core message or theme. It’s better to consistently run with an average commercial rather than sporadic airing of brilliant ads.

Gustavo A Viera CPA

Utilizing the Cloud to create Your Niche Miami accountants

It’s been fabulous to watch the discover the momentum that technology can deliver to their and their clients and I’m occasionallyasked what the most prosperous Miami accountants are doing with technology. In many cases, they’re utilizing cloud-based solutions to take expertise and industry focus to a whole new level.

The recipe is simple: Combine amazing, Web-based tools with a profound understanding of a client’s company operations and environment. Duplicate that success with similar companies, and your is primed for substantial growth.

The basic process and productivity improvements from Web-based tools are familiar to most practice leaders, even those Miami accountants who haven’t fully embraced the cloud. When taking a look at use of Web-based tools, always start with data that’s always accessible and can be updated immediately; the ability to create powerful, easily grasped financial reports; and the design of better capabilities for business continuity and catastrophe recovery, but these advantages are just the beginning.

While specialization can pose challenges, to do it spot on you have to completely reimagine the most helpful way to deliver results for your client, based on that specific vertical or sector. For instance, take the retail or tourist industry. What can Miami accountants do to drive efficiency and add value from the time a sale is rung up to the creation of detailed financial reports for the business owner? The ultimate goal is giving the client clear, insightful guidance on decisions that will shape his or her business.

For example, one of our partners has a substantial expertise delivering technology solutions for the restaurant industry. Recently it was able to develop a suite of cloud-based applications for a small Boston-based restaurant chain that wanted get access toto live financial data to guide expansion plans.

The restaurant’s finance and back-office proceduresweren’t supplying the results the company was looking for, so it turned to the firm’s business process outsourcing platform which incorporates tools such as Bill.com and Intacct to get better visibility into the restaurant chain’s financial situation and sharpen its planning and budgeting.

Since the engagement began, the business organisation has opened two new restaurants despite a shaky economy. But whether it’s the restaurant business or another industry, the idea is to create a technology-driven road map that other businesses in the same niche can use.

Remember, your isn’t just delivering an overview--you have to be well-versed in the finer details, too. You may need to know, for example, which point-of-sale devices are best for collecting data on retail sales. You also have to have a firm grasp of the standardized services you’ll need for the sector, and lay out premium rates for times when you have to deviate from those.

The goal is to create a standardized practice built around your niche, with pre-built templates so you can get clients up and running as quickly and efficiently as possible. As your business grows, the push toward standardization gives you economies of scale. But successful firms aren’t creating a cookie cutter approach, they’re using a well-designed blueprint that can be tweaked to best serve each client.

Simply speaking, the opportunities for specialization are limitless and there’s still time to stake out your territory, but it pays to learn from your early adopter rivals too.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Ten Ways to Improve Accounting Services in Miami

Even Accounting Services Miami that have fine-tuned their staffs with the best and brightest CPA in Miami find a full plate of client work waiting as business picks up after a few slow years. For many Accounting Services in Miami, the challenge is best matching the CPA in Miami with the job requirement. An ideal match ensures the best possible client service, rewarding and challenging staff development, with efficient operations that yield higher profit for the Miami Accounting Firms. But imagine this scenario: You’ve proposed an engagement with a very specific client need: a mix of online and catalog sales all over the U.S. with the resulting mix of state sales tax liabilities. Laura is your Miami Accounting Firms staff’s true expert in this area and you’re counting on her expertise to turn a profit on this complicated job. However, because your job assignment and tracking system is the Staff Scheduler’s Excel spreadsheet, you can’t know Laura is already assigned to another job at the time you need her. David, who’s done something sort of like this once before says “I can handle it,” So the scheduling manager assigns him to your job instead. (Do you already know how this ends?)| David, in over his head, constantly calls Laura any time that he can reach her, distracting her from her own job and slowing down the work on yours. In the end, the job takes longer than planned, the client is frustrated with the delay, you’ve got accrued hours you won’t be able to bill, both David and Laura are annoyed by the situation for different reasons, and you’re left doing damage control. All simply because the assignment grid was locked away, unable to support your Miami Accounting Firms engagement-planning decisions. Why not avoid this kind of engagement nightmare? Build in staff planning and scheduling right from the beginning, during the proposal process. Think for a moment about the keys to getting the right person on the right job at the right time. Availability. Consider whether the person you need or want is even available. In the example above Laura would have breezed through that job but she was already booked on other work. At other times, the best person may be in CPE training, other professional development, or simply recharging away from the office. Any issues that impact staff availability need to be visible while you are planning your engagement. In today’s always-on, web-enabled and virtually mobile workforce, physical location is another important consideration in balancing workload. It’s common for multi-office Accounting Services to share staff between offices, either for volume of workload reasons or for special skill requirements as in our example. For this to work, of course, it’s critical that staff availability and skill inventories can be seen across all offices and not just where a person routinely works. Expertise. In our example, we needed very specific expertise. Not everyone is equally good at everything, so we want to maximize both efficiency and client satisfaction by getting the right person on the job. The hidden corollary to expertise is cost– people with advanced and specialized skills may be the more senior staff, commanding higher billing rates and salary costs. Protecting margin on the job means assigning the needed skills but not over staffing, especially if a lower rate general staff member would suffice. Of course, you might intentionally accept a lower level of efficiency (and net billings) on a given job so David could work and learn alongside Laura and begin to leverage that skill set to a broader base of staff. Balance. One of the great risks in making job assignments is always going to the people you have the most confidence in. We’ve all seen this syndrome at work: the best people get overloaded and the rest are underused. This is a risky strategy on both sides. The overloaded staff– the ones everyone wants on their job– risk burnout, while underutilized staff are frustrated by uneven workload and less challenging jobs. Both situations could lead to the loss of valuable staff if the overloaded ones look for relief and the under-utilized look for more challenging opportunities elsewhere. Transparency. Finally, resource planning is effective only if it’s transparent enough for anyone with need to see who’s available. Approaches lacking transparency are ripe for two adverse effects: silos of privileged information that only one or two “specialists” can view and interpret, or the aggressive partners gaming the system to get who they want for “their” jobs (regardless of internal cost) while other partners get what’s left over. Why Miami Accounting Firms Leaders Should Care Accounting Services in Miami leaders must please at least three constituencies: clients, owners, and staff. Clients want work done quickly ,accurately, and fairly priced. Owners want the Miami Accountants to be profitable. And perhaps the most complex of the three, staff members, want interesting and challenging work, with a chance to grow professionally while being recognized and compensated for their skills and expertise. Satisfying each of these groups requires that engagements be staffed with the right people, with the right skills, on the right job at the right time. In today’s competitive environment, managing these nuances with outdated, siloed approaches just isn’t going to work. Fortunately, modern resource planning approaches bring the transparency and control you need. The Resource Planning Solution A good resource planning approach can address all of the issues raised above. Properly deployed and utilized, it can become a profit multiplier for your Miami Accountants. Key Attributes. Consider some of the capabilities you need for advanced resource planning. First, unlike a stand-alone spreadsheet or wall chart it should be universally available and visible across all departments or offices of the Miami Accountants, and accessible on mobile devices wherever a user might need information. It should provide a view of resources in three different contexts: Past, present, and future. The past context is important for insight into similar past engagements, showing assignment information along with financial history about utilization, billing, and ultimately realization on the job. The current context shows where and how staff is employed today so you can track progress against budgets and milestones and realign resources when necessary. Finally, the future context accounts for potential new work, “soft-booking” or reserving key resources at the time they will be needed. Savvier resource planning approaches even soft-book based on the probability of winning the business. If necessary, jobs might be rescheduled during the proposal process to take advantage of critical staff skills and availability. What to Look For. If you are thinking about improving your resource planning approach, here are some attributes to keep in mind. Concentrate on three basic concepts: Simple, Flexible, and Integrated. Simple. In a complex world, simple is good! The approach must be easy and straightforward, both for scheduling and for simple look-up tasks. Complexity leads to user-abandonment, and you’ll be back where you are today– with an “expert”operator building an information empire. Simplicity comes with efficiency, like pre-populated information or easy lookups. Be able to rapidly single out the time period, staff, or partner you want to examine. And make sure reports deliver critical information clearly and concisely, on-screen or in print. Flexible. Your Miami Accounting Service is unlike any other, so, make you’re your approach can consider variables which are important to you. Be able to define various attributes (skill level, niche specialty, billing tier, etc.) and assign them to staff as capabilities or to jobs as requirements. Be able to easily search across offices and departments for staff with selected attributes. You’ll probably want multiple levels of availability designation to tell at a glance if a staff member is definitely scheduled for a job, tentatively reserved for a pending job, away at training, or on some well-deserved personal time off. Connected. Your Miami Accounting Service’s resources are connected in some way to everything the Miami Accounting Service does, so your resource planning approach has to be equally well connected into the Miami Accounting Service’s operations– no stand-alone scheduling tools or custom designed spreadsheets! This is where the past, present, and future contexts discussed above can be realized and used! Allows planners to easily retrieve past engagements for their financial history and to see how the most profitable were organized. See into the future to know about proposed engagements, and the likelihood of winning these. You’ll also want to be able to see if staff members have been reserved against a specific need if and when an engagement bid is won. And, in the present world of ongoing work, recognize which jobs are nearing completion, running ahead, or lagging behind– to know if key staff might be released early, or retained longer than anticipated. These scenarios, of course, impact the availability of staff in both the near and far term. Only a completed connected planning approach can deliver the views you need to make planning both more streamlined and more reliable. Remember tools alone won’t solve your resource planning problems– along with technology comes the need for Miami Accounting Firm -wide policies and procedures which everyone must be expected to learn and follow. Software gives you capabilities; policies, procedures, and standards move you from capabilities to results! Next Steps | A Look Inside Perhaps by now you are thinking that your Miami Accounting Firm’s resource planning could use some improvement. Take a close look at how you are scheduling, planning, and managing your engagements today. What tools are you using? How accessible are they? Can everyone find what they need from the system on a self-service basis, or are you forced into reports run by a scheduling expert who is the only one who really understands the system? Does your system serve the entire Miami Accounting Firm, or is it used on a by-office or by-department basis? Does your current system make it easier or harder to get the right person on the right job at the right time? If after reviewing your current process you think resource planning can be improved, look for an approach that brings your Miami Accounting Firm the attributes of simplicity, flexibility, and connectivity that we’ve discussed here. In today’s competitive environment, your staff skills and expertise represent your most valuable asset. Make sure you are leveraging them to the fullest by getting the right person on the right job at the right time. Consider modern approaches to help you satisfy your three constituencies and enjoy the benefits of delighted clients, motivated and challenged staff, and increased profits for your Miami Accounting Firm. ShareThis TAGS: Accounting Service, accounting services, accounting services in miami, accounting services Miami, CPA, CPA in Miami Miami Accounting Firms, miami accountants, miami accounting, Miami Accounting Service CATEGORY: Business Trends