Top Firms Pay Better, Charge More

Source: CPA Trendlines

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article in CPA Trendlines.

The best firms, according to INSIDE Public Accounting, start paying more from the first day and from the bottom up. For instance, IPA's Best of the Best pay new graduates about $55,000, compared to $50,000 paid by their competitors – a 10 percent advantage that generally carries through every job level.

But the best also bill for the difference, starting with administrators, who get billed out at $102 per hour, compared with $85 at average firms – a 36 percent difference. Now that's leverage.

The best operate differently in other ways, too:

• They provide more benefits options,
• They budget 35 percent more for training, and
• They're raising rates about 3.9 percent, which is about 40 percent more aggressive than competitors.

For the complete article, read “No Surprise: The Best Firms Pay More.”

From CPA Trendlines, http://cpatrendlines.com, April 3, 2011.