April 16 doesn’t mean that we’re off for the rest of the year.....

Even after almost 15 years in public accounting, I am still surprised at the number of people out there who don’t really understand what we do. I am reminded of this each year when the calendar hits April 16 and I get questions from my friends asking what I’m going to do for the rest of the year. I always assure them that while the truly hectic time of the year has indeed passed, we still have plenty to do for the balance of the year.

I am convinced that many people see CPAs as either a branch of the IRS (!) or as just another version of the dime-a-dozen tax preparation services that seem to be on every corner. While some CPA firms may focus their efforts on tax preparation, the CPA in public practice generally does a lot more than simply prepare tax returns. In fact, tax preparation services accounted for only 37% of our firm’s total billings in 2009. That means that almost two thirds of what we do is not tax-related.

So what else keeps us busy? At the risk of making this sound like an advertisement, our firm offers a full range of accounting and financial support services. Here are some of the other things that keep us busy when it’s not tax season:

• We prepare audits of governmental, non-profit, and small for-profit entities.
• We prepare and process payroll and payroll tax reports for clients with employees.
• We offer traditional bookkeeping services for small business.
• We offer an “outsourced accounting department”. This involves keeping the books, invoicing, paying the bills, and providing management reports for small businesses.
• We provide QuickBooks consulting and training, as well as third party review and “clean up” services for QuickBooks users.
• We offer small business consulting services (entity selection, management planning, etc.)
• Working with strategic partnerships, we offer financial planning and legal resources.

As you can see, we are much more than just “the tax guys”. When you couple all of the above services with the ongoing tax planning and consulting and the returns that were extended, we plan to be busy all year long......