How a Regional CPA and Business
Consulting Firm
Competes with the “Big Four”
By Joseph R. Coluzzi, CPA
Managing Principal
Margolis & Company P.C.
In an ever-changing and increasingly competitive marketplace, it is
imperative not only to perform as well as your competition – you
must surpass their efforts to stay on top. At Margolis & Company,
we are doing just that. Our firm participates in a comprehensive and
continuous plan to improve efficiency while enhancing client service
and quality.
As regional firm with over 50 professionals on staff, and specialists
in a number of areas, we’re big enough to handle all the
accounting, tax and expansion needs that our clients will face in the
foreseeable future. We’re also small enough that each
client is a significant and important one for our firm and receives the
attention that we believe is one of our strengths in how we serve our
clients. This is how we compete in our marketplace.
How do we surpass our competition?
How do we enhance the services we give our clients in a most sophisticated
way in order to streamline our processes while offering value-added services
that our clients need (and sometimes don’t even know it)? The answer
is clear: the use of technology. Margolis & Company
is the forerunner in achieving a balance between being the firm that
know you by name and can offer the most sophisticated financial
advisory services available.
Among the various value-added services that we provide our clients is
budgeting and forecasting. Using either Monthpro or Yearpro, the
firm’s proprietary software, we are able to produce company, divisional
or departmental budgets, or develop forecasts for new product lines,
acquisitions or special projects. We have used these products to
assist our clients in the budgeting process to enable them to determine
financing requirements and to perform “what if” analyses
which are especially useful during the current economic downturn.
Recently, we assisted a client who was interested in redeeming its preferred
stock and determining the effect on its cash flows for the next four
years. We provided detailed forecasted financial statements during that
period which the client will use to attract potential investors. Another
client was interested in starting a new business and we assisted in preparing
forecasted financial statements. We were able to determine that
the client would not have positive cash flows until year ten, which caused
the client to adjust his assumptions accordingly.
Another tool we use extensively is Financial Analyst and Forecast,
another one of the firm’s proprietary software products. This application
quickly and effectively provides extensive financial analysis of financial
statements. We use it to track current and long-term trends of operations
and key financial relationships of a client for a period of up to six
years and can compare those results to both forecasted results and to
industry standards. In this way, we are able to measure liquidity ratios,
profitability ratios, coverage ratios and activity ratios which are important
for such users as consultants, attorneys, financial analysts, credit
analysts and banks.
The efficiency and quality of the audits we perform for our clients
has increased dramatically due to our new Data Extraction Software.
This new software package allows the auditor to test 100% of
the records in any data file in less time than it takes to sample the
records manually, and exactly quantify errors rather than estimate errors.
It also increases the possibility of detecting misstatements and exceptions.
The software allows us to perform comparisons of information to other
files and analytical procedures.
Solutions to Your Real-Life Business and Management Problems
When you’re a client of Margolis & Company, you’re not
just getting routine accounting services; you are receiving solutions
to real-life business and management problems. We’re involved with
you and your company all year-round, not just at tax time. This helps
you and us both.
Additional Consulting Services
Additional consulting services that we offer include fraud audits (ex.
searching for fraudulent disbursements), identification of duplicate
payments, identifying accounts receivable with the highest carrying costs,
analyzing gross profit by product, salesperson, location, and identifying
overstocked inventory.
Tax Tool Kit
In our commitment to keeping up with the pace of the changes in technology,
we acknowledge that one key area for improvement is the preparation
of tax returns. Back at the beginning of the 2001 tax season, Margolis implemented
a new way for its clients to fill out their tax return. Clients of Margolis
can now file out the information for their return from the luxury of
their home or office using their computers and an Internet connection.
This project was a test pilot during 2001, but participation by our clients is growing each year.
This online feature is a product of Pro System FX and is called Tax
Notebook for the Internet. This product allows our clients
to provide us with their tax information at their leisure - from their
home or office. We can easily download the information into the tax
preparation software to review and print the returns. Since our tax
preparers do not have to key in all of the information that the client
sends to us, the process becomes more time efficient and thus ultimately
less expensive to our clients. Information can be input by the client
over a period of time, as it becomes available. The system monitors
their process and gives an indication of how much of their “tax
organizer” they have completed. All information that is inputted
is all in a secure environment so that the client need not
worry about someone else viewing his or her information.
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Margolis & Company is committed to producing quantum results for
our clients and is strongly devoted to adding value and eliminating efficiencies
in our clients’ business processes. As a result, we offer much
more for your dollars.
For more information about Margolis & Company’s software
products or services, please call me at (610) 667-6250, ext. #101.
I would be happy to discuss how we can help you achieve your business
goals.
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