The Latest

FiveStar3 has acquired the Alliance of Professional Associations, a national association management company for accounting firms.

We all want to do more productive, efficient work.

Try this on for size. A new study shows that of some one million 401(k) portfolios, some 69 percent of participants have portfolios with inappropriate risk or diversification, 36 percent hold high concentrations of company stock, and 33 percent fail to contribute enough to receive the full company match. While groups of participants are taking full advantage of their 401(k) plans, participants with lower salaries, lower plan balances, and those closer to retirement tend to make the most costly mistakes.

Conferences set in Vegas aren’t all business. Anyone attending an accounting event out in Sin City can attest to seeing someone slip away from a session to ogle the never-ending entertainment easing out of all corners of The Strip. If they are hoping to network after hours, one of the ways to pin people down is to purchase them tickets to Cirque Du Soleil or a music concert. There’s nothing atypical about that. Business events in other cities across the nation have golf outings, and private comedy shows for registered guests to keep them interacting beyond the minimum CPE credit hours required. But there’s a point where perks blur the line between business and pleasure and create potentially uncomfortable scenarios. Several women—and interestingly enough, men—shared stories with me while at the AICPA Tech show in Vegas last week about one or more trips out there with a mixed group of colleagues. Ultimately, the groups attended dinner after the day’s classroom learning and the women were left lingering while the men went off in search of bare essentials. The women mostly laughed at the absurd excuses their male associates would make, as if they were in some secret club speaking a foreign language the females couldn’t possibly decipher. One man I spoke to about the imbalance immediately denied that the situation could be uncomfortable. But then he recalled a time in which after dinner, the men started acting strange and claimed they had to “go see customers.” The women expressed interest in coming along, but the men insisted that there was limited space, so they could not attend. As the group exited the restaurant, the men came up to him and quietly inquired whether he wanted to join them. “I thought there was limited space,” he said suspiciously. “We’re going to a strip club,” they whispered. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That’s understood. What bothers me about this scenario is that the women—supposedly equal to the men—were left out. It attests to a topic that I’ve written about before in this column and in Accounting Technology magazine, that women in male-dominated industries such as accounting and software continue to struggle to fit into the Boys Network. (See “Climbing to the Top” and “ Women on Top? ” ) How do people get ahead? It’s who you know. It’s also who you spend time with outside the office setting. Some women have advocated learning to play golf to hang with the boys, but I doubt most of those women would advocate a coed excursion to Sapphire or Scores. I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with a group of men—or women, for that matter—enjoying a little eye candy, even in mixed company with friends. But I’d sooner watch a dirty movie with my parents than be stuck in that situation with my male colleagues, and both sexes have admitted they would feel equally embarrassed. It doesn’t have to be a G-rated evening. Girls do wanna have fun, but perhaps it’s up to the men to ask the women in their firms what type of entertainment they are interested in and coming to a compromise that’s entertaining instead of awkward.

A judge has ruled against the Internal Revenue Service in a Freedom of Information Act case, telling the agency to stop defying her previous orders and turn over statistical information to an outside researcher.

A group of eight midsized CPA firms has banded together to offer cross-border tax services in an effort to compete with larger firms.

"Not everybody has to like me." This statement is a solution to the first of seven deadly sins of career management, as explained during a keynote at the Forum for Women in Accounting, a three-day confab that has attracted approximately 250 participants.

Cohen & Co. has acquired Mercurio & Bridgford, expanding the Ohio-based firm's presence in Florida.

A jury awarded investors approximately $58 million in a lawsuit against a former Oregon Republican Party chairman who was accused of defrauding three venture capital funds he founded, and the funds' now-defunct accounting firm, Arthur Andersen.

Small business owners are not optimistic about the current state of the economy, according to a new survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.