CPA Success

Better learning through mobile

We know that mobile is hot. We learned that from Tomi Ahonen, who says mobile devices have become completely immersive gadgets that we simply can't live without.

We know that social learning is hot. We learned that from Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner. It's that notion that most of what we learn on a day-to-day basis comes not from the classroom, but from other people, in the form of questions and answers and advice delivered in the course of our day-to-day interactions.

Now, what happens when you combine the two?

That's where Clark Quinn comes in. The acclaimed author and thought leader says the real potential of mobile comes from extending the learning experience and supporting people in the moment -- giving them access to the right information wherever and whenever they need it.

"Informal learning is made up of two components," says Quinn, author of Designing mLearning: Tapping into the Mobile Revolution for Organizational Performance and co-author of Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games. "First, there's performance support -- the resources you need, the individual information access you get to help you. Then there's social learning, where you're connecting with other people who can help you, mentor you, collaborate with you to solve problems. Mobile provides both of those. It's a tool to access information and people whenever you need it, wherever you are."

Quinn calls that type of functionality "a total game-changer" -- or at least it will be when people start using it.

Beyond that? Quinn zeroes in on mass customization à la Netflix and  Amazon, but on a mobile scale.

"Knowing who you are and what you need to know and where you are and combining that with 'smart push' -- that's the opportunity that's on the table," he said. "In the next five years, I think we'll certainly see some experimentation (with creating extended learning experiences)."

That's groundbreaking stuff. Imagine leaving the classroom and continuing your education through the combined power of social learning and mobile devices.

Hear more of Quinn's thoughts in this MACPA interview, recorded during the 2011 NASBA CPE Conference in San Diego.

What do you think? Is education the next great mobile frontier?

This way to economic recovery ... or this way

All signs point to a strong recovery ... except those signs over there. They point to Armageddon.

In other words, it's business as usual on the economic front.

Here's proof -- two articles, published on successive days, citing separate economic reports.

The first, published on April 14 by the The Wall Street Journal, cites a Deloitte study in claiming that businesses won't hire until they see a jump in revenue of at least 20 percent -- even though corporate earnings have enjoyed double-digit growth over the past year and half.

"The quarterly survey ... found that nearly half of respondents would seriously consider adding employees if revenues rose 20 percent, but few would be moved by a 5 percent increase," writes The Journal's  Emily Chasan. "A 10 percent bump in revenue would only be a major hiring consideration for 11 percent of CFOs. Worse yet, perhaps, actual growth isn’t expected to reach such heights: Respondents estimate top line growth at North American companies will be just 8.2 percent this year."

But wait: The very next day, Business News Daily cited the American Express OPEN Spring Small Business Monitor while writing this: "Business owners are expecting to hire this year and make investments in capital improvements." For good measure, the article adds this: "Thirty-seven percent (of small business owners) expect to grow this year and 56 percent are willing to take a financial risk to do so."

Who's right?

Anyone have a coin? Heads, I win ...

The No. 1 question this week: Are you adding value?

This quote comes from an old article on the new economy from 1997:

"Added value = total value created with you in the game minus total value created without you in the game."

It is an article by Brandenburger and Nalebuff applying game theory to business, The Added-Value Theory of Business from Strategy+Business in 1997. It is worth a read.

It also presents a great question for all of us to contemplate and answer.

Are you adding value to the game?

If so, how?

Disaster defines what's important to us

One minute, we were hanging out on a Friday night -- doing dishes, watching TV, checking e-mail. Just living life, really.

The next, we were hearing tornado sirens, flipping to The Weather Channel, listening to damage reports ... and wondering if we were next.

We were fine, as it turns out. Others weren't. Missouri's Good Friday tornado ripped through Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, blowing out windows, showering travelers with glass, terrifying passengers who had already boarded their flights and had to wait helplessly while the twister shoved their planes around the tarmac.

They were the lucky ones. Just minutes earlier, the tornado had leveled entire neighborhoods, destroying homes and changing lives in an instant.

And that's the point. Life can change just like that. All of our grand plans and dreams for the future don't mean much when a tornado makes a beeline for your home.

"So what's your point?" you ask.

Just this: Get your priorities straight.

I'm not talking about risk management or succession planning -- although, from a business perspective, those are important, too.

I'm talking about the really important stuff -- family, friends, the things we're really passionate about but put on hold so we can make a buck.

Coincidentally, just hours before the tornado tore a hole through Missouri, I watched this TED talk from Ric Elias, a passenger on Flight 1549, the plane that hit some birds and executed an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York City in January 2009. His message is too important to ignore -- and at 5 minutes long, the time is right, too. 

What are your priorities? In retrospect, are they the right priorities?

Are you ready for the 'extreme future?'

"We need to become 'change animals' and eat change for breakfast."

That was the opening line of the MACPA's first professional issues update (PIU) / town hall meeting of the year to a full house of CPAs at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater in Rockville.

According to Dr. Jim Canton, Ph.d, a leading futurist, author of The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the Next 20 Years, and head of the Institute for Global Futures, the extreme future looks like this:

1. Speed: The rate of change will be blinding, comprehensive in scope and touch every aspect of your life.
2. Complexity: A quantum leap in seemingly unrelated forces converging on everything.
3. Risk: New risks, higher risks, more risks.
4. Change: Drastic adjustments in your work, community and relationships, forcing you to adapt quickly to radical changes.
5. Surprise: Sometimes good, sometimes difficult to imagine, surprise will become a daily feature of your life.

An overwhelming majority of CPAs in the audience agreed. Then they weighed in with thoughts about the current state of te economy:

• Eight percent said we are in a strong recovery.
• Fifty-five percent said it is fragile but are cautiously optimistic.
• Thirty-three percent said the economy is very fragile and they are concerned.
• Five percent said businesses are struggling.

How do you survive and thrive in the extreme future? Dr. Canton recommends the following:

1. A future vision: A clear vision of where you are going.
2. A sound strategy to get you there.
3. Tools to help persuade key people. (We say, "Make your thinking visible to others.")
4. Effective execution.

Our I2A: Insight to Action Strategic Thinking System lines up well with Dr. Canton's recommendations.

It just so happens that the AICPA and the MACPA have tools to help you survive and thrive in the extreme future. I'm talking about the CPA Horizons 2025 project. Here are some resources to help you think about your own vision and strategy and help shape the vision for our profession at the same time.

• Global Forces video and trends research from leading futurists about business and the CPA profession.
• A brief survey about the CPA profession in 2025.
• National future forums -- interactive forums to discuss these future trends. They include special "Insights to Go worksheets" to help you jump start your thinking for your career, company, firm, or organization. The forums will be held on April 27 in Connecticut, May 3 in Dallas, May 4 in Chicago, and more. Getails here.
• MACPA future forums -- interactive forums all across Maryland to bring the CPA Horizons 2025 to Maryland CPAs (and four hours of free CPE!). See the schedule and register here.
• Maryland i2a Leadership Academy scheduled for Sept. 18-20 in Annapolis.

 Here is a copy of the slidedeck from yesterday's session:

MACPA PIU - Spring 2011

View more presentations from Tom Hood.

Here are a few of the resources we used in our session that may be useful:

• Grant Thornton study: The Evolving Accounting Talent Profile
• Intuit's Future 2020 Report (and interview by our own Bill Sheridan with Steve King of Emergent Research)
• Deloitte's Center for the Edge Shift Index: Measuring the forces of long-term change
• The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion

What's in the mail? Higher postage bills for businesses

Sent any business-related mailings lately? Notice anything different? Like a lighter wallet, perhaps?

The U.S. Postal Service has raised its rates by about 1.7 percent overall, with most of the higher rates impacting businesses. The increases are meant to boost the bottom line for the financially struggling USPS, but the Associated Press says the impact will be minimal.

"The post office has been struggling financially as the Internet siphons off a lot of letters, bills and payments that it used to handle. And that has been complicated by the nation's economic slump, which reduced advertising mail," the AP reports. "The agency lost $8.5 billion last year and the rate increases — estimated to bring in an added $340 million this fiscal year — won't make much of a dent in that. The Postal Service is limited to increases at or below the rate of inflation. A request to exceed that was rejected by the independent Postal Regulatory Commission. The post office, which is not subsidized by taxes, is appealing that ruling, but in the meantime is instituting this increase."

Here are the new rates, sent to MACPA Multimedia Manager Julia Delligatti by the folks at HBP Inc. Thanks, everyone!

• First-class postcard (up to 1 ounce): $0.29 each, up from $0.28
• First-class letter (up to 1 ounce): $0.44 each, unchanged
• First-class letter (more than 1 ounce, up to 2 ounces): $0.64 each, up from $0.61
• First-class flat (up to 1 ounce): $0.88 each, unchanged
• First-class flat (more than 1 ounce, up to 2 ounces): $1.08 each, up from $1.05
• Presorted first-class postcard (up to 1 ounce): $0.235 each, up from $0.230
• Presorted first-class letter (up to 1 ounce): $0.390 each, up from $0.382
• Presorted first-class letter (more than 1 ounce, up to 2 ounces): $0.515 each, up from $0.507
• Presorted first-class flat (up to 1 ounce): $0.725 each, unchanged
• Presorted first-class flat (more than 1 ounces, up to 2 ounces): $0.895 each, unchanged
• Presorted standard letter (up to 3.3 ounces): $0.273 each, up from $0.270
• Presorted standard flat (up to 3.3 ounces): $0.492 each, down from $0.496                     
• Non-profit standard letter (up to 3.3 ounces): $0.168 each, down from $0.169
• Non-profit standard flat (up to 3.3 ounces): $0.355 each, down from $0.362
• Bound, printed matter parcel, Zone 8 (up to 1 pound): $2.89 each, up from $2.88

Smile -- tax season's over! And you're not in these photos!

The extended 2011 edition of tax season has come to an end. So grab the nearest hammock, crack open a cold one and gaze upon someone else's tax season misery, courtesy of this Slate "Tax Day" photo gallery.

My favorite: James Dean kickin' back with his accountant, circa 1955. Priceless.

If you like to close out tax season with a bit more action, check out this offer from the folks at Vail Mountain:

Whatever you do to celebrate the end of tax season, make it memorable. Nice job, everyone!

If you're not thinking about mobile, you're a relic.

"Once technology becomes ubiquitous," the saying goes, "it also becomes invisible."

The risk, of course, is that we'll end up ignoring it at the same time.

Think about it: We all have mobile phones, but how many of us look at those devices and think, "Here's something that's changing the world?"

Right ... none of us. Instead, we're thinking, "Here's my phone." And that's if we're thinking of them at all.

What we're missing is downright revolutionary, says Tomi Ahonen.

Consider this: There are 5.2 billion mobile devices out there right now. That's more than the number of televisions, PCs and Internet users combined. Heck, it's more than the total number of toothbrushes being used today.

"But it's not just the size. It is also how addicted we are to this technology," says Ahonen, one of the world's top thought leaders on mobile trends and strategies and the keynote speaker at the 2011 DigitalNow Conference in Orlando. "The average person looks at his mobile phone 150 times per day. That means for every waking hour, you are looking at that phone once every six and a half minutes. It's not just a wide reaching technology. It is now a completely immersive technology that we cannot live without."

What keeps us glued to these devices?

• Try 350,000 iPhone apps and 250,000 Android apps.
• Try text messages. Texting is the most popular form of communication among teen-agers today, with the average teen sending more than 100 texts each day.
• Try e-mail, video, music, podcasts, and just about everything else the mobile web offers.
• Try GPS, the most reliable way of getting where you need to go today.
• Try mobile payment options, which are replacing cash, checks and credit cards.

Yet so many of us don't really see mobile as the life-altering resource that it is. Why? It's ubiquitous -- and therefore, invisible.

It's time to see mobile devices for what they are -- revolutionary.

Think about what the world will look like in 10 years. According to Ahonen, today's most expensive, cutting-edge smartphones will cost about $10 to make in 2020. Logically, then, in fewer than 10 years, everyone will have a smartphone. That means everything we've traditionally done on a PC or laptop will soon be done on mobile devices.

Is your business ready for that movement?

"What happens (with mobile technology) in the next five years?" Ahonen asks. "We'll see something as big as the social networking revolution. Something similar will come in this decade that no futurist could have imagined, and it will shake up the world at least as much as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube have.

"Sitting in the middle of it all, though, will be that mobile device in our pocket. It will be eating the lion's share of that opportunity."

Watch my post-DigitalNow interview with Ahonen in its entirety, then tell us: How prepared are you to ride the mobile wave?

1099 expansion officially dead

Well, that's that.

President Obama has signed into law a measure that repeals those onerous and expanded Form 1099 reporting requirements that were included in the 2010 health care reform law. The move came shortly after Congress voted to repeal the unpopular requirements.

The Journal of Accountancy offers the key details:

"In March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PL 111-148) (part of the health care reform legislation) expanded the 1099 reporting requirements to include all payments from businesses aggregating $600 or more in a calendar year to a single payee, including corporations (other than a payee that is a tax-exempt corporation), and to include payments made for property, starting with payments in 2012. The 1099 Act repeals the expansion to payees that include corporations by removing IRC § 6041(i). It repeals the expansion to cover payments for property by removing the language 'amounts in consideration for property,' and 'gross proceeds' from section 6041(a). The act also removes IRC § 6041(j), which granted the Treasury secretary authority to issue regulations under section 6041, including 'rules to prevent duplicative reporting of transactions.' These changes are effective for payments made after Dec. 31, 2011 (when the new rules were to take effect), and they revert those portions of section 6041 to how they were before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."

The JofA continues:

"As a result of the repeal, the 1099 reporting rules continue unchanged: Namely, under IRC § 6041(a), 'All persons engaged in a trade or business and making payment in the course of such trade or business to another person' of $600 or more must report the amount and the name and address of the recipient to the IRS and to the recipient. The Code applies this requirement to payments of 'rent, salaries, wages, premiums, annuities, compensations, remunerations, emoluments, or other fixed or determinable gains, profits, and income,' and the Treasury regulations add, 'commissions, fees, and other forms of compensation for services rendered aggregating $600 or more' as well as interest (including original issue discount), royalties and pensions (Treas. Reg. § 1.6041-1(a)(1)(i)).

"This required information must be reported each calendar year for payments made during that calendar year."

That was a nice effort from Team CPA on this one. Kudos to all who helped beat back yet another round of bad legislation.

Why XBRL? Easy -- more time for clients

I've got good news and bad news when it comes to XBRL.

First, the bad news. Those of you who have pulled the covers over your head and taken a wake-me-when-it's-over approach can forget it. XBRL is real, and it's here to stay.

In the United States alone, all public companies will be required to file their financial statements via XBRL by the end of the year, and really, we're scrambling to keep up with the rest of the world. There are major adoption initiatives under way in Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Japan, China, India, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, just to name a few. The U.S. has plenty of company.

Now, the good news. If you're a CPA, you don't need to know much about XBRL at all.

That's Conor O'Kelly's opinion, anyway, and he should know. He's vice chair of XBRL International.

"CPAs don't need to learn the technology, the semantics and the architecture behind (XBRL), but they do need to understand what it means for process enhancement and information," O'Kelly said in a recent Skype interview, which came on the heels of a web-based presentation to students at Salisbury University. "The impacts are reasonably predictable: Lower cost of production; lower cost of access, use and analysis of data; more timely data; and more time available for analysis."

Sounds great, but at the end of the day, what does that mean?

"I think CPAs are going to be spending less time on low-value, manual process debts and re-keying, and more time on developing high-value intellectual insights -- cultivating their client relationships and maximizing their added value and their value propositions for their clients," O'Kelly said.

Less time on stupid stuff and more time on serving clients, building relationships and being a trusted advisor? That should be music to everyone's ears.

Bring it on, XBRL.

Listen to my interview with O'Kelly in its entirety. Our CPA Spotlight podcasts are also available here or by searching for "CPA Spotlight" in iTunes. 

Want to learn more?
You'll hear the latest news from the XBRL front in these upcoming MACPA programs:

• June 3: Maryland CPA Summit
• Spring professional issues updates: April 21, Rockville | April 29, Towson | April 29, webcast | May 11, webcast | May 18, webcast | June 6, webcast | June 17, webcast
• Jan. 13, Towson: XBRL and the New Era in Financial Reporting: Moving Beyond Theory