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Art of Accounting: Complaint about the price of my memoirs

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I received a complaint recently that my Memoirs of a CPA book is priced too high. The paperback edition is $24.95, the Kindle version is $5.99 and, if you have Kindle Unlimited, it’s free. Actually, I do not think the Kindle version or Kindle Unlimited is priced too high. As for the paperback version, I wonder how low it would need to be priced for that person to buy it.

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I buy a lot of books. My purchases are split between Kindle e-books and hard copies. I just bought a book titled Artemisia Gentileschi and the Business of Art for $65. Maybe that’s a lot to pay for a book about a woman who lived from about 1593 to 1654. A brief bio is that she was raped when she was 18 by a friend of her father and then at the trial underwent torture to prove that she was a virgin before she was raped. Anyway, she became very successful with her paintings, charged higher than standard prices and was a great marketer of her skills and her brand. This book is about how she ran the business of her art, an offbeat topic especially from a 17th century artist. I figure that if I get one idea from this book, it will be well worth the price.

At the same time, I know the value of my Memoirs book and cannot imagine any reader not getting a bunch of immediately usable ideas on how to make more money, run their practice better, provide clients with greater value, keep staff a little longer or have more fun. Perhaps I should have given the book away for free, only asking the reader to send me a check for what they think the value was to them. I think I’d then make way over a million bucks from this book!

The following are two short chapters from my book:

Being a sounding board to your clients

Entrepreneurs are the brightest, most focused, and most determined people I know. But it is also lonely for many of them.

There are few people they can trust, and sometimes they just need a sounding board of someone who won’t pass judgment but might point out inconsistencies or illogical conclusions. That is a role for CPAs and part of their trusted advisor position, and occasionally great things come out of it.

I have been in many meetings where the client did not want an opinion but needed to hear him or herself speak out loud to someone. CPAs are there for that. We listen, consider, sometimes prod, don’t pass judgment, and keep it confidential. We seem to know when clients want our advice — which is often — but we also know when to nod occasionally and be that sounding board. And sometimes opportunities arise!

One Friday morning, a client asked to see me. He owned a very large piece of land on an island in the Caribbean that his newly married fourth wife decided she wanted to develop. He wanted to see me so he could vent, rant and beg for a solution out of it.

In the course of his tirade, I latched onto something he said and suggested a plan that might make a lot of sense. I told him that upscale houses could be built just inside the perimeter, while the entire remaining inside portion of the property, which comprised over 75% of the area, could be donated to a wildlife preserve charity on that island. The tax deduction would be enormous because it would be based on the value created by the property sales and not his cost, plus he could add an easement restriction to the donation that prohibited any additional development on the property. The houses he built would have extended gigantic private beautiful “back yards,” increasing his selling price and allowing the client to get paid “twice” for his property — and become a philanthropist as well. It was a short meeting, about a half hour.

When I got back to my office, the client’s secretary called me. In the short time it took me to walk to my office, she arranged for me to fly to the island Monday morning, have a look around the property that afternoon, meet with an attorney, real estate agent and developer on Tuesday, have some follow-up and unrelated meetings Wednesday (that led to the client getting involved in more businesses on the island) and a return flight home early Thursday morning. That was the first of a number of visits by me to that island for the client.

The takeaway is that many times, CPAs help clients make lemonade out of lemons. But we have to be trusted, knowledgeable listeners and creative thinkers.

My boss hated the client

Early on, my boss took me to a client that I was to work on. He started to explain what needed to be done and what the client did, but then he said, “I hate this client — everything is always messed up, and nothing ever makes sense!” He also told me my work area would be in the factory. I would probably have to move a chair next to a carton that would serve as a desk, and he warned me the lighting wasn’t too good.

His remarks were like a kiss of death. For the next three or four months, I dreaded going to that client, always thinking how “messed up they were, and nothing ever made sense.” Then, it dawned on me that I was the person doing the work, and things were in order. The carton I worked on was a few feet from where the client packed his shipments. When he did, he always chatted with me about his business, customers, employees and pricing strategies.

He also told me things he liked to do, such as going to the opera (which I did too) and vacations he took or would like to take. The client also would buy me a sandwich to have lunch with him, and I became very friendly with him. And then I asked myself why I dreaded going there? I loved working there! It became my favorite client, that I eagerly looked forward to going to.

My boss’s idle remark prejudiced me against the client, and it took me months to get over it.

The takeaway for me was that when I would become a boss, I would only say great things about a client, influencing the staff to like the client and look forward to working with them. Negative remarks about a client never left my lips! Actually, negative remarks were never applicable — my clients were all great! My boss ingrained a negative perception about that client into me before I ever had a chance to form my opinion.

My book has 100 more chapters with similar ideas you could adopt.

Do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected] with your practice management questions or about engagements you might not be able to perform.

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Accounting

IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Accounting

Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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Accounting

At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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