QuickBooks Connect 2015 starts on November 2. Accountant education is broken down into 3 groups. Here's what you need to know about the "Advisor Model" track on Monday, November 2.
Accountant Education, Advisor Model - Monday November 2
10:00am Advancing Your Tax Practice Part 1: Build, Jim Bourke
Tax professionals are exploring ways to save time, be more efficient and more profitable. This session will reveal new ways to streamline your workflow and automate your tax preparation processes. Discover existing and emerging technologies that can help you reduce data entry (and the time and errors that go along with it), enable more effective collaboration with your clients, and facilitate the real-time collecting and sharing of data.
After attending this in-depth session you will be able to:
- Increase Efficiency When Preparing Income Tax Returns for Clients who Use QuickBooks Online.
- Have More Confidence in the Numbers You Use to Prepare Your Clients’ Returns
- Leverage Collaborative Technologies to More Effectively Collect and Share Data
- Learn about New Technologies that Could Help Facilitate Tax Prep and Create a Firm of the Future.
10:00am In a World of Change, Creating the Firm and the Life You Want Remains a Matter of Choice, Darren Root
In this session, your instructor will inspire accounting professionals to create a business and a life they love by making the right choices and learning to adapt successfully to the constantly changing environment.
During this session you will:
- Understand why embracing changes in how you work and how you think is the only way to achieve long-term success in your firm while also living the life that you want.
- Learn how to transform your accounting firm and your life using proven techniques deployed by hundreds of CPA firms throughout the U.S.
- Sharpen your focus to create a business you love
- Address the pivotal question that accounting leaders need to answer: “What changes am I going to embrace in order to have both a thriving firm and the life that I want to live?"
1:30pm Advancing Your Tax Practice Part 2: Grow, Dawn Brolin
Accountants and tax pros are looking for ways to grow their client bases, expand their services, and strengthen their presence in the communities in which they live and work. During this session you will gain powerful insights into new and underserved markets that are ripe for business expansion opportunities. You will also discover ways to more effectively leverage social media, to strengthen your brand, and to build both local and national referral networks.
After attending this in-depth session you will be able to:
- Tap into underserved markets to sell more services
- Help clients achieve better financial outcomes and you as a tax pro to grow your practice
- Find new ways to network, build your brand, and grow your practice
- Drive awareness through online social channels and by building relationships with local and national organizations and trade associations.
1:30pm Here to There: The Accountant's Journey toward Professional Greatness, Michelle Long
Join Michelle Long for a session where we will be working on your business to help you achieve professional greatness. These sessions are packed with resources and tips you will be able to start implementing immediately. We will not just discuss theories; but we will do some exercises, learn about practical tips and resources to help you on the path to greatness. You’ll learn about Michelle’s “5 P’s to Professional Greatness: Planning, People, Processes, Product and Pricing”. During the sessions, Michelle will encourage facilitated discussions and Q&A throughout the sessions.
In this session, you will learn about:
- Planning - what is ‘There’ for you? What is your greatness?
- People– your team and clients including client evaluation and communicating expectations with clients.
- Processes – automating, streamlining and managing the workflow. We will discuss methods to improve efficiency and productivity, options available and specific tools or apps that can help.
- Product – your services and creating packages and a menu of services available.
- Pricing – your services and creating packages and a menu of services available.
1:30pm Work/Life Harmony (Part 1), Stacy Kildal
As professionals, we experience numerous challenges in fusing our many responsibilities and roles in a way that minimizes stress and maximizes personal fulfillment. The participants in this 2-part course will select the 4 challenges to explore during this "spontaneous" highly-interactive session and will work in teams to develop action plans to address these challenges.
This session is limited to 50 participants.
Learning Objectives:
- Gain an understanding of the challenges you (and your colleagues) face in successfully integrating your personal life and your business life
- Understand the process for creating an action plan to address your challenges
- Develop an action plan in the sessions to address specific challenges
3:30pm Advancing Your Tax Practice Part 3: Expand, Jim Bourke, Dave Williams and Michelle Page, Moderated by Gail Perry
Tax professionals and small business advisors must stay at the cusp of emerging legislative changes that could impact your clients’ tax strategies… or even the whole of the client’s business plan. In this session, leading tax and government experts will address the leading legislative and ruling changes that impact your clients, like: The Affordable Care Act (and the associated complexities it introduces in Tax Year 2014), legislative actions around cyber fraud, and much more. This session will also focus on lesser known tax credits (federal and state) to help you soften the tax impact for your clients.
After attending this in-depth session you will be able to:
- Achieve Greater Awareness and Knowledge of Emerging Legislatives Changes that Impact Your Clients’ Tax Strategies
- Build Competence and Expertise that Enables You to Counsel and Drive Client Decision Making
- Ensure Your Clients are Experiencing the Full Benefits of Available and Lesser Known Tax Credits that Could Result in More Favorable Tax Outcomes.
3:30pm Growth through Client Replication: The "Pumpkin Plan", Mike Michalowicz
There is a big lesson to be learned from farmers. Not the everyday guys, but those county fair geeks who grow one ton pumpkins. They hold the secret to explosive growth! In this presentation you will learn how, as an accountant, you can use the “pumpkin plan” to market and grow your firm.
During this session you will learn to:
- Identify the thing you do better than anyone else and focus all of your attention, money, and time on figuring out how to grow your company doing it.
- Determine which customers add the most value and provide the best opportunities for sustained growth.
- Discover the unfulfilled needs of your clients, innovate to make their wishes come true, and over deliver on every single promise.
3:30pm Work/Life Harmony (Part 2), Stacy Kildal
As professionals, we experience numerous challenges in fusing our many responsibilities and roles in a way that minimizes stress and maximizes personal fulfillment. The participants in this 2-part course will select the 4 challenges to explore during this "spontaneous" highly-interactive session and will work in teams to develop action plans to address these challenges.
This session is limited to 50 participants.
Learning Objectives:
- Gain an understanding of the challenges you (and your colleagues) face in successfully integrating your personal life and your business life
- Understand the process for creating an action plan to address your challenges
- Develop an action plan in the sessions to address specific challenges