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What common characteristic do many successful people in various fields of endeavor have in common? Recent research showed that it’s membership in a trade or professional association in their chosen field.The William E. Smith Institute for Association Research (funded by SmithBucklin) recently issued a report titled, “Where the Winners Meet — Why Happier, More Successful People Gravitate Toward Associations.”

The European Union is pressing the economic zone’s 27 different national securities regulators to ensure that financial data is reported under a single harmonized format.However, it’s been a slow build.

IRS IMPROVES ONLINE TAX TOOLSWashington, D.C. — The Internal Revenue Service has improved its online refund-tracking tool and tax information publication. The online version of Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax, now contains electronic links that allow users to navigate it more quickly. Both the downloadable PDF and HTML version contain more than 800 hyperlinks. The links allow users to jump immediately to other parts of the publication. The HTML version of Publication 17 on the IRS Web site, www.irs.gov, is also accessible to visually impaired taxpayers, in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

FASB TO DELAY FAIR VALUE EFFECTIVE DATE

By the time this column appears, CPAs everywhere are going to be tackling stacks of paperwork for income taxes. This will be true whether they are up to their necks in client returns, or struggling in an audit to reconcile book and tax income in Schedule M.With those pains in mind, it only makes sense that accountants would prefer GAAP accounting for income taxes to be relatively simple.

When it comes to financial or retirement planning or wealth management, no two clients are even remotely alike. Each comes with a different level of existing investments or retirement plans; each has different life goals and a different appetite for risk.Sorting out these variables in a basic analysis of the client’s position is the first step toward crafting a cohesive and effective plan. Unfortunately, no single software package or tool kit can easily handle the full range of analysis that may be required, so the planner will generally require several different kinds of tools.

AICPA RELEASES ADVISOR GUIDEThe American Institute of CPAs and Fiduciary360 have published the U.S. edition of a handbook for investment advisors. Prudent Practices for Investment Advisors identifies 23 practices for advisors to follow. The book helps them manage risk by providing a recommended “checklist” for carrying out investment decisions with prudence and due diligence. The book was reviewed and edited by the Fiduciary Task Force of the AICPA Personal Financial Planning Executive Committee.

Practice management, as an application, appears differently to different viewers. To some, practice management is all about revenue management. To others, it’s about time management, and to yet others, it’s about project management.Practice management encompasses all of these areas and more. At its most basic definition, practice management is about resource management. Every firm is constrained by the resources that it has available, including staff hours and availability, and economic factors. A good practice management system allows a firm to maximize the use of these resources through awareness of how staff time is employed, making sure that the right resources are applied to the right tasks, and that revenue is generated in a profitable manner and collected in an appropriate time.

SAGE RECOGNIZES RESELLERSSage Software named MIS Group as its overall business partner of the year for 2007 for North America. The Dallas-based group resells several of Sage’s products, including Sage MAS 90 ERP, MAS 200 ERP, MAS 500 ERP, Sage Timberline Office, Sage Master Builder, Sage SalesLogix, SageCRM, Sage Abra HRMS, Sage FAS Fixed Assets and Sage Timesheet.

Arthur Andersen was well known for its training program and facilities at St. Charles, Ill. While Accenture now trains at that site, the requirements and strategies for training are far different than those prevalent when most firm owners entered the profession. Time changes many things, but the urgency of instilling a training-learning culture within your firm has never been greater. Now is the time to act.I know your first reaction: “We’re not Accenture or a Big Four firm.” True. But you’re a professional services firm that competes for quality talent — and a learning culture is integral to sustained profitability and even existence in today’s economy. Small accounting firms compete in a knowledge-based business, and must understand the value of training and learning in good times as well as bad.