Don’t miss out on this great deal! In these video self-study courses, EA Vern Hoven discusses the current tax codes, cases and rulings affecting individual and business taxation. You can view the program at your own pace. You also get access to Vern’s comprehensive 2011-2012 Federal Tax Update manual containing hyperlinks to important rules and regs. Courses qualify for CPAs and EAs in all states.

Earn up to 26 CPE hours for only $199!

You get these 10 courses:

•  Individual & Employee Federal Tax Update (5 hours)
• Schedule C/F & General Business Federal Tax Update (5 hours)
• Estates, Trusts & Beneficiaries Federal Tax Update (2 hours)
• IRA & Individual Retirement Federal Tax Update (2 hours)
• IRS Practice & Procedures Federal Tax Update (2 hours)
• Limited Liability Company (LLC) & Partnership Federal Tax Update (2 hours)
• Payroll & Self-Employment Tax Federal Tax Update (2 hours)
• Real Estate & Investment Federal Tax Update (3 hours)
• Business Pension Plan & Issues Federal Tax Update (1 hour)
• C & S Corporate Federal Tax Update (2 hours)

Regularly priced at $299, you get instant access for only $199! You have up to one year to complete each course.

Hurry! This offer expires Friday, December 2 at midnight PST. Order your 2011-2012 Federal Tax Update Value Bundle today!

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Hey There!

Happy Thanksgiving from Emochila! With tax season right around the corner, online visibility is important.

One quick, free, and easy way to get positive buzz about your firm is to set up a Yelp profile.

Yelp collects and manages uncensored online reviews about your firm so that you can build an online reputation and internet users can see how great your firm is! Its quick and easy to set up a profile.

Here’s how:

1.     Visit www.yelp.com/signup. If you already have an account, you can log in here: https://www.yelp.com/login

2.     Check your email and confirm your Yelp account.

3.     Use Appman to sent out an E-Newsletter asking your clients for a review! Click here for help: http://help.emochila.com/entries/20179633-newsletter-tutorial-in-sitewizard

If you do create a Yelp profile and would like a link to your it on your website, let us know by emailing techteam@emochila.com.

As an effort to boost our online visibility, we’re offering $20 off your monthly fee (for this month only) to the first 50 clients who leave a review for Emochila!

To take advantage of this offer, please visit: http://www.yelp.com/biz/emochila-san-francisco-2, leave a review, and immediately email: sites@emochila.com with a link to your review. The first 50 verified reviews will immediately receive a $20 credit.

Yelp can also help improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is how you can lift your website up the rankings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing for the search terms that matter most to you and your firm. Now is the time to ramp up your SEO efforts because it takes between 3 and 4 months to see results.

SEO is a complicated subject, so to make things a little more clear, we are offering a FREE webinar to dispel some of the facts and fictions about what works and what doesn’t. We’ve pre-recorded the webinar, you can view it here: www.localseoroadmap.com

As always, if you have any suggestions or comments about our service, please feel free to contact us at: feedback@emochila.com

Thanks!

- The Emochila Team

Recently, your television or even Web page has probably been inundated with “bing.com” advertisements. The Bing search engine was Microsoft’s 2009 attempt to snatch a piece of Google’s pie, but has Google shared? Microsoft launched full-fledged marketing and partnership campaigns for their new search engine; for example, Bing is now the default search and map service on Blackberry devices.

Despite Microsoft’s efforts, comScore reports that Bing still holds a meager 13.9% of search engine market share. The almighty Google however has a firm grasp of over two-thirds market share, consistently around 65%. For this reason, so many corporations rely on Google as a primary marketing platform, thus the prevalent search engine optimization wars. Google remains the outright head honcho because they offer a dynamic array of services including mobile operating systems, e-mail, office suites, photo sharing, Internet phone service, and are even dabbling with solar power.

Simply put, Google is everywhere and they do everything well.  They are constantly unveiling sleek new products like the Google Goggles app for iPhones and Androids, which automatically opens an internet search (read: Google search) for any real-world object captured in your mobile device’s camera. I would highly recommend reading more about their long-run Android plan here: http://ti.me/jpxah2.

The search engine juggernaut has an uncanny knack for appealing to everyone’s inner geek with irresistible, lightning fast inventions. Everything aside, Google still dominates the search engine market essentially uncontested. They are constantly finding innovative ways to improve our Internet search experience, and Bing’s market entry only coerces further improvement.

When you advertise your CPA firm website don’t discriminate against search engines because of their market share—it’s most beneficial to show your name at every available opportunity. Whether you’re brave and take on SEO by yourself or employ a CPA search engine optimization service, it is essential in today’s age that your firm achieves a high organic search ranking—from all engines.

With the latest security glitch occurring last week, Facebook once again found itself engulfed in controversy regarding its privacy policy and use of users’ data.  

We thought it was a good time to review steps that you can take to protect your privacy.  PC Mag recently published several tips:

1. Know the terms and know exactly who sees what

Go to your Privacy Settings/Personal Info and Posts under the Account tab. You’ll see options by each category, including Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, and Only Friends. 

2. Search - hide profile from Google

One of the easiest ways to keep a low profile on Facebook is to hide your profile from Google’s search engine. You can do this by going to Account/Privacy Settings/ Search and unchecking the Public Search Results box. This will remove your public preview from Google, Bing, and Yahoo Search returns. You can also prevent your profile from showing up on internal search from the same page. Emochila provides social media for accountants, and will help ensure your privacy is protected. 

3. Like Button and personalization - disable Facebook’s instant personalization

If you want to opt out of this, go to Account/Privacy Settings/Applications and Websites/Instant Personalization Pilot Program, click on the Edit Setting button, and uncheck the box.

4. Prevent people from tagging you in photos

Prevent friends from tagging you in photos and videos. You can do this by going to Account/Privacy Settings/Profile Information/Photos and Videos of Me and deselecting the Everyone default. The safest thing to do is to make them visible only to you (click Customize and choose Only Me) and then share images on a case by case basis. 

5. Set privacy for every photo album

Create a photo album and Facebook will automatically share it with Everyone. Even if all of your other albums are set to Only Friends or even Only Me, Facebook will allow everyone to see your photos unless you manually lock down each folder. You can do this when you create the folder: Just click on the drop down by Privacy and choose an option. Remember, you can use the Customize option to share albums with specific individuals only.

6. Hide contact info

As a general rule, you shouldn’t put any information on Facebook that you wouldn’t publish on the Internet. That could include your birthday, home address, and cell phone number. If you absolutely must share this info with friends, know how to keep it away from strangers. To do this you have to check two locations in the site. First, go to Account/Privacy Settings/Contact Information and decide who you want to see your IM Screen Name, Current Address, Website, etc. Then go to Account/Privacy Settings/Profile Information to control who can see your Bio, Birthday, Likes and Interests, etc. 

7. Delete facebook apps

Facebook announced that its app partners would be able to store your data indefinitely instead of having to re-request it every 24 hours.  Basically, once you opt in, Facebook apps have unlimited access to your profile.

By definition, cloud computing is web-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand.  Instead of having to buy, install, maintain and manage these resources on your own computer or device, you access and use them through a Web browser.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that it will make Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook and OneNote available online for free on June 15.  With these online apps, Microsoft will now compete directly with Google Apps.  Free (or inexpensive) Web-based office suites from Google, OpenOffice and Zoho have been attracting more and more small business owners recently.  Microsoft still handily dominates the office software market (94%), but this latest move does signify a nod toward the increasing popularity of cloud computing.

For CPAs and accountants who are running their own business, there are some benefits that result from moving to the cloud.  These include:

- Lower costs: Google Apps is free and Google also offers a premier edition for business at $50 per user per year. Microsoft has said that Office 2010 will range in price from a limited, free Web version supported by ads to a full-blown version that costs $500, both to be available to consumers in June. 

- Easy-to-use: you just log in, customize it, and start using the apps.  You do not need to install any software.

- Easy sharing of documents with customers and remote employees

- Able to access on mobile devices and iPad

- Better e-mail management and storage

Of course, there is also a learning curve and when you switch your office software, you will need to learn how to navigate and use this new set of tools.  It will take some time and patience. What are your thoughts?  Are you sticking with your current Microsoft Office software or is your head in the clouds?

When it comes time to establish a Web presence for your firm, one of the first decisions you will have to make is whether your site will be a template - one that has already been designed for use by multiple firms, or a custom design - something graphically unique to your practice. In this article we will examine the various factors to take into consideration when choosing which path to take.

Template Website: Most Web developers that are specific to the accounting and tax industry provide new clients with several different “canned” site design options. Such an accountant website designs is the most economical; many providers and tax software include them at no additional cost to their Web services. Because they are pre-rendered, templates are typically the fastest and easiest sites to launch as well, as you merely have to choose one of the off-the-shelf options. Frequently, template sites do not include the ability to modify much, if any, of the header, button layout, detailed coloring, or width of the page. If the templates do allow changes, they are usually something relatively sophomoric like swapping out a general industry-specific photo. Therein lies the main disadvantage of a template in general: In order to appease the hundreds of firms which may be choosing the same template as you, there must be a somewhat vanilla standard.

Custom Website: Unlike the template, a custom designed CPA Web site gives you the option to graphically represent the unique professionalism of your firm. Among other things, a design specific to your practice allows you to include any existing logos, fonts, or color scheme that you may already include in your letterhead or business cards. Utilizing photos that are geographically specific (such as your hometown), imagery of your firm’s offices, or photos of you and staff, can immediately allow those visiting your page to recognize the pages as individual to you. Your Web site’s appearance is clearly the first thing that any visitor will see (for better or for worse) and therefore it may justify the custom design’s main disadvantage: Price. Because you are not choosing a “canned” design, it is more labor intensive. The key in this situation is to choose a Web designer who has shown prowess in working independently and formulating ideas for your firm’s custom look, in order to invoke “hand holding” on your end. Like so many other things in life, however, the more you put into the thought and layout of your accountant website design, the better you will find the final result. 

The diminishing cost of custom Web work over the last five years has brought prices to levels acceptable to small businesses. Hence in the accounting profession, the percentage of firms opting to have a custom-built Web site has increased steadily over the years. Many CPAs and accountants have expressed that the one-time cost of a custom site which they intend on keeping for several years has resulted in more than enough business to justify the work. On the other side of the coin, the caliber of template designs has also improved to keep abreast of graphic innovations, making them less “canned” than they have been in the past. Whatever route you go, simply be sure to carefully judge your public internet presence versus the depth of your change purse, and you will come out happy every time.

For many accountant professionals the idea of running a paperless office is actually a “paper tiger.” The belief is that too many aspects of the profession are based on “paper and pencil” techniques, and therefore, there are many accountants unwilling to make many changes in this arena. While understandable indeed, the basic ideas behind this concept are to lower costs, reduce the amount of clutter caused by papers, envelopes, and files, and generally streamline office efficiency. For example, many websites for accountants have fomented the paperless movement via CPA client portal tools. Here are some ideas that can get you started in helping to make your office life a little less cluttered and more organized.

A good place to start is investing in a scanner rather than a copy machine. This way, you can start to upload your incoming bills and documents into your computer system instead of continuously storing them in your file cabinet. Aside from the obvious cost and space savings of not having to purchase physical cabinets, when these documents are digitalized, they are much more readily available to your clients.  If you think about it logically, the time it takes to scan a document is basically the same time it takes to copy it anyhow!  

Another fantastic contributor to the fight against unnecessary paper use is obtaining a Web site. Choose a provider that specializes in offering accounting features to help organize your practice. Some of the functions of the Web site can allow you to upload and transfer client files through the site. This eliminates the need for faxing papers or having to make many copies for record keeping, and optimizing accounting document management. Your site provider might also offer an online storage system for archiving documents for you and your client.  

You can also incorporate an online billing method to help cut back costs with mailing and to ensure payments are made on time.  People have also used their Web site to replace physical brochures and flyers through the use of a CPA newsletter.  

It might seem difficult to believe all the benefits surrounding a “paperless office” truly related to the simple task of reducing paper. When you begin sifting through all the layers of a functioning accounting office, you realize the payoffs: No more rummaging through piles of paper, less time spent looking for bills or client documents, no more buying unnecessary amounts of office supplies, a much cleaner and efficient office atmosphere, and even benefit from online accounting marketing.

OK, so you’re going to purchase a domain name for your firm, whether it be for a Website presence, professional e-mail, or both.  This seems like a simple task that most people breeze over, but the reality is that it could be one of the most valuable choices you make regarding your firm’s online presence.

Why?  First of all, this domain name is most likely going to reflect your firm online and through e-mail for the remainder of its existence.  As a domain name “ages” (that is, the longer is has been purchased and active) it gains valuable page rankings in search engines.  Just as importantly, your employees and clients become accustomed to this domain name.  It saves in people’s address books, people begin to place that domain in “safe sender” lists in their Outlook, and passive Web browsers remember the domain if they have seen it a few times and are contemplating your services.  All of a sudden, domain name purchases are not such a trivial matter!  At Emochila, a service offering comprehensive CPA site solutions, will provide domain name consultation to help your firm choose the best domain name for your specific needs.

Here are three tips on how to choose a domain name, and why it’s important: 

1.      It may go without saying, but a domain name should be relevant to the business name.  If the name of the firm is John Smith CPA, it does not make a lot of sense to have a domain name that strays too far.  While www.johnlikesgolf.com may be reflective of the business owner, it is not necessarily relevant to the business.  Unless of course John does accounting exclusively for country clubs.

2.      Keep it short and sweet and easy to type.  A long domain name, apart from being difficult to type, can be difficult to remember.  In the event of a long firm name, it is best to eschew hyphens and ampersands for first initials and professional affiliations.  If, for example, the name of the firm is Smith, Smith & Doe, LLC, it does not make a lot of sense to have a domain name such as,www.smithsmithanddoellc.com; rather choose www.ssdllc.com.  It’s a good idea, especially with abbreviations, to include potential keywords that are relevant to your practice.  Ideal abbreviations to include in your domain name are any professional affiliations such as:  CPA(s), EA, PC, or LLC.  This way, you’re somewhat telling the story of your practice upon first glance.

3.      Think about potential search engine words.  This is probably one of the most important aspects for those firms looking to market to new clients rather than providing services for existing clients.  Which is a potential client more likely to seek in a search engine: accounting in (your town), or your firm name?  Well, if they don’t know your firm exists, they’re not going to choose your firm name, are they?!  Consider domain names like www.yourtowncpa.com or www.cpastate.com rather than www.yourfirmname.com as you will reap the search engine rewards of the former. Your firm will have a stronger presence in organic search results, which helps optimize your CPA firm marketing.

A excellent (and oft-forgotten) marketing tool is client testimonials.  A testimonial is when a person who has used your services gives you feedback that you can share with others. Client testimonials demonstrate the value of your firm to visitors to your site. It is typically one of the top pages viewed on websites and, for this reason, can be incredibly powerful.

With the rise of companies like Yelp, users are relying on other customers and clients feedback to help them make decisions.  Choosing an accountant is a very important personal decision and a client testimonial page can bolster the trust of prospective clients. 

Emochila makes it easy to request, approve, and post testimonials to your site.  They are seasoned veterans in accountant firm marketing and will provide you with many other strategies besides testimonials.  If you are just starting out, here is a rundown of steps:

- Go to AppMan and choose the eNewsletter icon.

- Choose our preloaded Client Testimonials template or customize your own.

- Click send to your client list and watch the positive feedback roll in.

- You will find any “new” or “pending” testimonials in the Testimonial page in AppMan where you can approve or deny the submission.

- Click approve and the testimonial automatically publishes to your website!

Note: if you do not have a testimonial page set up, call us at 866-340-5652 and our tech team can get that up and running asap!

Most people have heard about Google’s Campus, the Silicon Valley giant’s headquarters complete with gourmet cafeterias and fitness centers.  But other smaller companies are getting creative and offering fun perks to keep their employees happy.  Inc. Magazine recently published an article entitled “10 Perks We Love.”

Out of the top 10, here are our favorites:  

- Van Meter Industrial, a distributor of automation and electrical products, awards points for activities such as participating in its Biggest Loser contest and walking campaigns. Employees redeem points for personal fitness items, such as running shoes, golf clubs, and jogging strollers.

- LoadSpring Solutions, an enterprise software company, believes people grow by experiencing other cultures. Employees who travel abroad for vacation receive up to $5,000 and an extra week off to expand their horizons.

- McGraw Wentworth, a provider of group benefits, offers on-site pickups and return of clothes that need laundering.

- Patagonia, the outdoor-apparel maker, gives employees two weeks of full-paid leave to work for the green nonprofit of their choice.

- Fentress Architects invites employees’ relatives to participate in some of the evening and weekend classes offered through its in-house education program.

For the full article, go to: http://www.inc.com/ss/10-perks-we-love