CPA Cafe: January 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Learn to Triage Your Workload

Now that busy season has started, CPAs are practicing the yearly ritual of cramming untold amounts of work into their days. Finding the time to get your tasks done isn’t always easy or conducive to employee sanity.

So how do you prioritize your tasks to make sure the most important ones get done? Leadership expert Michael Hyatt has a six-step method:

Acknowledge you can’t do it all
Accept the fact some things won’t get done at all
Practice workload triage
Categorize your tasks by priority
Practice intentional neglect
Do the next most important thing next

This method won’t work for everyone — CPAs can’t let some clients slide during tax season. But is it effective in eliminating some less-important tasks from your workload? What methods do you use to ensure everything gets done?

Friday, January 27, 2012

Session Video Update with Emily Walker

VSCPA Government Affairs Director Emily Walker has been in downtown Richmond working to get the VSCPA's tax conformity and confidential financial information bills through the General Assembly. She gave updates on both bills, as well as others dealing with public procurement and licensing issues, on Friday. Watch the video to learn how those bills are progressing, and stay tuned to the CPA Cafe and other VSCPA communications for further updates.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Trusted Advisor: Damon DeSue, CPA

Damon DeSue, CPA, has spent much of his adult life looking for home after moving from coast to coast as a child with a Navy father. He’s found a personal home in Virginia and a professional match at Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., where he serves as income tax director.

“I wanted to give my kids something I didn’t have,” DeSue said. “I wanted them to be in one place and be able to establish those relationships with people.”

Through his professional moves, DeSue has maintained his membership in state CPA societies, particularly the VSCPA. Now he's putting his stamp on the Society as the 2011–2012 chair of the VSCPA Board of Directors.

Today, nearly half of VSCPA members work in business, industry, government and education; DeSue is no exception. While he spent the formative years of his professional career in public accounting, he hopes to use his position and rise within the VSCPA to attract even more members from business and industry.

“Hopefully, we can establish a more direct tie-in to the value of the membership — not only how it applies to public practice, but to our members in business and industry,” he said.

The VSCPA has plenty to offer members working outside of public accounting, and DeSue wants to educate those CPAs on the value of membership.

“Primarily, it’s the professional development opportunities,” he said. “…When you’re in public accounting, you have chances to work on communication and public speaking skills. That only happens at a certain pace when you’re in industry. When you take it back, you’re really enhanced to contribute to your employer.”

Adding more members with a background like his own, DeSue says, can help the VSCPA ensure that it serves the needs of all CPAs in Virginia in the years to come.

DeSue had been a member of the Illinois CPA Society after moving to Chicago with his job at KPMG. He set his sights on a move back to Virginia and landed a job at Cherry, Bekaert & Holland, LLP, before moving to Dollar Tree in 2006.

He joined the VSCPA in late 2001 and didn’t waste much time getting involved. He joined his first committee, the Tax Appeals Task Force, in 2004, and kept coming back for more work.

“Some of it is a function of the work I was doing. I was specializing in state and local tax at the time,” DeSue said. “Issues in Virginia that were impacting local taxpayers were near and dear to my heart. It was a connection to my work that kept me involved.”

Committee memberships dot DeSue’s VSCPA history: Young Professionals Task Force, Speakers Bureau, Tax Advisory Committee, CPA/PAC Board of Trustees, Virginia Department of Taxation Task Force, State Apportionment and Legislative and Regulatory Task Force, among others, before his term as the Board’s chair-elect last year. His heavy involvement in VSCPA activities made him a perfect choice to take the reins.

“It just sort of was a natural progression from being involved with the task forces to learning more and more about what the organization was about,” he said.

DeSue pegs the beginning of his interest in the accounting profession at 12 years old, following a school event. From that point, every school decision he made came with an eye on his future career.
“I was living in California at the time and we had a career day,” he said. “A person brought some articles about what it was to be an accountant and the demographics of it and who was following that career path. I’d always liked math, so I just carried on with that.”

DeSue moved with his family from Virginia to California as his father, Anthony, went to different bases. He attended East Carolina University for his bachelor’s degree before getting his master’s from the University of Georgia.

He stayed in Georgia to work for ZF Industries, an automotive manufacturer. He moved to Atlanta, then Chicago, after taking a job at KPMG, then found his ticket back to Virginia with Cherry, Bekaert & Holland.

DeSue took the reins of the Board in the midst of a struggling economy. His company is dealing with the downturn as well, and the chain of discount stores is poised to capitalize on Americans’ increased frugality.

“Given today’s economy, we are positioned well enough to provide value for just about anyone,” DeSue said. “Anyone can walk into our stores.”

DeSue often finds himself giving financial advice to friends and acquaintances in his personal life. He says his status as a CPA gives his tips added weight.

“People are looking for people who are financially savvy and know how these kinds of things work,” he said. “People are looking to CPAs to help them with the challenges they face financially.”

Monday, January 23, 2012

Refine Your Networking Skills to Advance Your Career

Networking can help workers in any business, not just CPAs. Even if networking doesn’t result in an immediate job, the contacts you make can pay dividends down the road. At the CPA2Biz Career Insider, Debra Feldman offers four steps to becoming a better networker.

Feldman's four steps are:

Establish strategic and personal networking expectations
Set networking goals and objectives
Target networking efforts to maximize results
Use time judiciously and be respectful of others

For more networking tips, check out some other resources:

How to Network: For Introverts (Business Pundit)
Five Networking Tips for Wallflowers (Dumb Little Man)
7 Deadly Sins of Networking, and How to Avoid Them (Shine)

Friday, January 20, 2012

VSCPA Session Update with Emily Walker

VSCPA Government Affairs Director Emily Walker has been in downtown Richmond working to get the VSCPA's tax conformity and confidential financial information bills through the General Assembly. She gave updates on both bills on Thursday. Watch the video to learn how those bills are progressing, and stay tuned to the CPA Cafe and other VSCPA communications for further updates.

Monday, January 16, 2012

CPA Assembly Day Is Nearly Here!

Tomorrow, the VSCPA will hold CPA Assembly Day, where CPAs can take a firsthand look at the Virginia legislative process. VSCPA members will meet with legislators to discuss top issues affecting the CPA profession and observe the General Assembly in session. This year, the VSCPA is fighting for a quick resolution to tax conformity, as well as a bill that would close a loophole in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that allows private citizens to request records from the Virginia Board of Accountancy (VBOA) that contain personal and private financial information after a VBOA enforcement investigation is closed.

If you're not going in person, you can still participate virtually! We've drafted a sample email outlining the VSCPA's top issues that you can quickly personalize and send to your legislator. Click here (DOC) to make sure your voice is heard.

Thanks to all members who are participating in CPA Assembly Day, whether in person or via email. Your passion for the CPA profession is what allows us to continue protecting your interests in Richmond and Washington!

Friday, January 13, 2012

Public Access: April Gunn Revamps APA Processes

Eight years into her tenure, the fingerprints of April Gunn, CPA, are all over multiple processes at the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts (APA). In 2006, she was promoted to Director of Data Analysis, putting her in charge of Commonwealth Data Point, Virginia’s public database of financial information. But that was just the start.

In the summer of 2009, Gunn (right) was tasked with overhauling the District Court audit process. Her efforts now save audit staff more than 5,000 hours per year.

“One of my staff and I literally sat down and walked through what they did, how we could make it better and how we could save time,” she said. “One of the things I would say is that we were both fresh to the entire judicial side of things. While it’s nice to have people who have done things forever, we were both fresh and could take a completely new look.”

Her efforts have helped the Auditor of Public Accounts in its role as a watchdog over government spending. Commonwealth Data Point allows citizens to access financial information about every state agency and how it spends money, down to specific vendors used by each agency.

“We serve as the General Assembly’s eyes and ears to monitor how state agencies and institutions spend their money,” Gunn said. “We are able to increase efficiency in the Commonwealth by providing an independent, unbiased view of any state process that we choose to review.”

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Average Starting Salary Up for College Class of 2011

According to the Winter 2012 Salary Survey report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the college Class of 2011 earned a higher average starting salary than the Class of 2010.

Overall, graduates who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 began their first post-college job with an average salary of $41,701, a 2.3 percent increase over the average salary for the Class of 2010. Average salaries grew across several concentrations, albeit modestly for most.

Graduates in engineering and computer science had the highest overall average starting salary, while the latter saw the largest overall increase from 2010 at 4.1 percent.

The average starting salary for 2011 computer science graduates was $60,594, more than $2,000 more than the Class of 2010. Engineering graduates had the highest overall average starting salary at $61,872.

Class of 2011 business graduates, including accounting majors, saw their average starting salary increase to $48,144, a 3.8 percent increase.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

How to Reduce Stress in the New Year

Overloaded with work after the holiday break? If you are, you’re not alone. Many workers report a feeling of anxiety when they return to work after New Year’s. Some workplace productivity experts have advice for how to minimize that feeling.

At SmartPros, Jason Womack has several tips for overcoming that feeling of unease. “Most of your dread doesn’t come from the work itself — it comes from how you think about the work,” he says. Here are Womack’s tips for getting a handle on your 2012 workload:

Delete and recycle to make room for new work
Block out your time and focus on your most important tasks
Change how you manage your email
Maintain work/life balance by keeping work out of parts of your routine where it shouldn’t intrude
Be prepared to accomplish small tasks in your down time
Identify distractions that can torpedo your productivity
Divide your projects into manageable pieces
Organize your to-do list by verbs used to manage your productivity
Assess your performance each week
Forecast your future to organize your goals and accomplishments

For a more specific method of de-cluttering your life, check out Drew Olanoff’s tips at The Next Web. He offers several ways to organize your inbox with the goal of having ZERO unread emails.

Do you have any tried-and-true methods of decreasing stress and increasing productivity? Sound off in the comments.