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CPA
Leadership Report |
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CPA Leadership Report is made possible by the generous support of the sponsoring companies. |
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Promoting Continuous Improvement in CPA Firm Leadership. |
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Doesn't That
Make You Mad? |
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It's a highly respectable profession. Your clients trust you, respect you
and consider you their most trusted advisor. They hold your integrity in
high esteem. Unfortunately, many vendors are either oblivious to this fact
or just insensitive to your professional pride.
These vendors bombard you constantly with offers of a paltry bounty for
referring your clients to them. The offers come from vendors of all types of
products and services—software developers, financial service providers,
payroll service bureaus, to name just a few. The "referral fees" typically
vary from a measly $25, up to a tiny 5-10% of the vendor's first-year
revenue stream. They get paid year after year, but you only get a small
one-time payout.
As if this isn't insulting enough to accounting professionals, many vendors
send press releases announcing their "referral fee" programs for accountants
to the outside world, going well beyond accounting trade publications.
Imagine how badly this kind of publicity could damage your professional
credibility. What would the reaction of a client who knows about a referral
program from a vendor be, even if you referred this client to a service
offered by that vendor without accepting any "referral fee?" |
AccountantsWorld believes that the whole issue of the "referral fee" is critical to the way people perceive our profession, and the way we perceive ourselves.What are your views? Do you find the offers for paltry bounties degrading to the accounting profession? Or are you comfortable with it? If you accept a referral fee, should you disclose it to your clients? If you don't disclose and the clients find out about it, could this cause problems or raise questions? The position of AccountantsWorld on this issue is unequivocal. Our mission is to create a partnership of mutual benefit with accounting professionals. In the true spirit of commitment to our members, we do not sell tax or accounting software, payroll services, or any other products or services directly to your clients. Instead, we provide you with all the tools and resources you need so you can offer more services to your clients profitably, grow your practice and enhance your client relationships.As Leonard Moniz, an independent accountant, puts it, "Ethics and good business sense are what we should be promoting, not the latest accounting package that will pay us pennies for the privilege of doing business with our clients..."
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