CPAs Getting Optimistic

Source: CPA Trendlines

Following are excerpts from an August 3, 2009, blog post by Rick Telberg.

From a CPA in public accounting at a local firm, I'm hearing: "Our clients will be suffering a little bit longer." Her best advice: "Work hard … spend and invest wisely."

But another CPA, this one the owner of his own small firm, seems to sum up a lot of what I've been hearing lately. "Despite all the unstable aspects of the economy," he says, "I seem to sense a positive swing in the upcoming year."

Indeed, a survey of AICPA CPA Insider readers may be showing some signs of--if not outright optimism, then at least less gloom. The CPA Trendlines survey by Bay Street Group LLC for the AICPA appears to be tracking closely with other AICPA surveys of PCPS firm members and CPAs in business and industry.

"People are starting to buy and sell things again," said one hopeful sole practitioner based in (appropriately enough) Bountiful, Utah. "We can't stay down forever. We are going to cope and move on. People still have to live. We are all working to make things better. It is starting to show."

"I am by nature an optimistic person," says the head of a local firm in Atlanta. She believes "we have seen the worst of the economy. It will be a slow haul upward, but we are starting to see positive signs: less layoffs, more discretionary spending, more companies investing in their development and people."

She says there have been no layoffs at her firm. Her advice: This is a time to build the firm, invest in staff training and new software and get well positioned for the economic recovery. "Massive cost-cutting is shortsighted and can come back to haunt companies by being short-staffed, unable to meet demand and having to train new people."

To read the entire blog, click here.

From CPA Trendlines, http://cpatrendlines.com, "Accountants Tough Out the Recession," August 3, 2009.