Digital CPA Conference 2018

The Supreme Court decision of South Dakota vs Wayfair has changed the landscape around sales & use tax, determining that states can broadly require businesses to collect and remit sales tax even if they lack physical presence in the state. In response, states are creating new regulations for sales tax that can impact any business that sell remotely. When you consider the thousands of state-level jurisdictions, as well as the volume of changing rates each year, it is easy to understand why this is so complex for your business clients. However, this creates an emerging business opportunity that is advisory in nature, profitable, and strategic for accounting firms. Drawing upon CPA.com’s expertise in helping firms build CAS practices, we have put together an interactive session designed to help firms begin to lay the foundation for a technology driven sales and use tax practice to take advantage of the transforming landscape and increasing client demand for guidance around sales & use tax compliance. During this 3-hour interactive, pre-conference workshop, we will dive into:

• The ramifications of the Wayfair ruling
  
• The landscape of Sales and Use Tax after the Wayfair Decision
  
• The beginnings on how to successfully build a Sales and Use Tax Compliance practice

Learning Objectives:

• Gain essential knowledge on the changing landscape of sales and use tax
  
• Learn of tools to begin building a growing practice area
  
• Hear how to start or grow sales and use tax compliance services
  

Barry C. Melancon, CPA, CGMA, CEO of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, will provide a professional issues update including an overview of the major forces driving change for the accounting profession.

Client Accounting Advisory Services (CAS) encompass a wide and varied spectrum of services. Many firms start by transforming traditional, after the fact accounting services to business process outsourcing (BPO), but how and what to include next can be a challenging decision. A panel of practitioners that have spanned the spectrum of CAS will share:

• How to differentiate the offering to clients
  
• Decision points to consider
  
• How to transition from 1 level of service to the next.

Bring your questions and join the conversation to clarify where you want your CAS practice in 1, 3, 5 years.

In this digital age of emerging technology, how is a practitioner to able to stay aware, have the best tools, and not constantly change your software? In this session, you will receive tactics for building a technology suite of software to gain standardization, integration and leverage powerful emerging solutions. Learn strategies to stay aware of new technology and how to find the right tool for your needs.

We’ve all heard about how data analytics are going to totally change the accounting profession.  Unfortunately, for most of us, we listen to the presentation about sweeping changes and then we go back to work doing what we’ve always done.  In this session, we’ll take you from the realm of the theoretical to the practical.  We’ll discuss specific steps you can take to begin adding data analytics capabilities to your existing practice and create new high-value service offerings.  We’ll cover the service offerings themselves, how to price engagements, and how to find the right talent to deliver something that is not part of the traditional accountant’s skillset.

Digital CPAs know the importance of being real advisors to their clients; they also know this requires additional skills. Not everyone in your firm may serve as advisors, but many just need to the tools to become one. Join this session to hear:

• How to identify staff with the potential
  
• Training to offer them to foster that potential
  
• How to define their role
  
• How to expectations change as they develop into advisors to clients.

Find the potential in your team, or staffing candidates, to help you deliver on the Trusted Business Advisor promise.

One of the biggest challenges is starting to charge clients for the free advice you have been providing. When you have been giving it away for free (be in in tax prep services, accounting or auditing) now it is time to charge for your worth. This conversation takes finesse to Differentiate the service, Internally and Externally. How do you get your clients that have benefited from this advice be your referral marketing.

Businesses have a need for a qualified CFO, yet not all can afford, or even find a quality candidate. This is where the opportunity exists for firms to market CFO Services, but...

• How do you describe this service? What might the deliverables look like?
  
• Which staff perform this engagement? How many hours do they need to commit?
  
• How do you make it scalable and repeatable to ensure your profitability?

Join this session to hear from a practitioner delivering these services and get the ideas on how to capitalize on the opportunity for your firm.

It is the year of major tax reform and your clients have a million questions. Don't give away the most valuable thing you do - advising! It’s time to make the transition from tax return preparation to future-facing advisory services, with the tax return as the bi-product. Set up your appointments differently, staff those appointments differently. Ask yourself: Is the fee you receive for the tax return or for the client’s engagement with you?

Learning Objectives:

1. Explore ways in which your tax expertise gives you the credibility to expand the financial discussion with clients

2. Learn how to use the tax return as a launching point for additional services

3. Learn how digital tools can open the door to a year-round relationship with your tax clients

We know the future includes harnessing the power of data analytics, but what tools exist to help us do that? This is an area of emerging applications and use cases. Join this session to get insight on what is available and ideas on ways to leverage them throughout your practice.

There are benefits as well as challenges to incorporating a remote workforce. Building and leading a virtual team requires a varied skill set and techniques. To prepare for your future readiness master a strategy for maintaining collaboration, knowledge sharing and firm culture while offering flexibility of schedules and work environments.

Dashboards help you to effectively communicate complex financial data into meaningful visualizations, revealing key performance indicators (KPIs) and insights to clients. Leaving accounting jargon behind, offering you customization, and standardization, of metrics and faster tracking of data making you more valuable to your clients. There are multiple tools and ways to build and leverage dashboards are part of your service; join this session to hear of options and get inspired on ways to put them to in your client interactions.

Today everyone needs systems and procedures in place to maintain cybersecurity. Firms are continually enhancing these procedures within their own firm, but many of your clients are not. In this session, hear a checklist of items you should be monitoring in your business, and how firms are turning this knowledge into reporting services for clients. Most security breaches are by the end user; learn of ways you can stay and help your clients' businesses.