Using a Dashboard to Drive the CPA Firm

Source: CPA Practice Management Forum

Like the dashboard in your car, a business dashboard will tell you whether your CPA firm is functioning well. For example, billable hours in a CPA firm typically average 1700 per professional. If your firm is generating less than your desired standard, you must either attract more clients, increase billings to existing clients, cut staff, or cut costs in other ways.

A dashboard and a program of periodic “flash reports” can help determine whether client service is efficient, or whether receivables are being collected as promptly as they should.

If your flash reports are generated timely and deal with key performance drivers, you should be able to adjust work flow or scheduling to improve operating results.

All that is required is to provide your bookkeeping department with data needed to produce summary information in either a print- or Web-based report. Five to 10 key performance indicators are all that should be tracked.

This article was prepared by Alan G. Badey, co-managing partner of the White Plains, New York, office of Citrin Cooperman & Company, LLP. Contact Badey at [email protected] or John Bryan at [email protected], 914-949-2990.

From CPA Practice Management Forum, CCH Incorporated, 800-449-8114, February 2007, p. 12.