About a month ago Maryland Association of CPAs blog CPA Success reported an interview with XBRL Intl. vice-chair Conor O’Kelly who had this to say about whether XBRL would be perceived as a burden or an opportunity for CPAs:
I think CPAs are going to be spending less time on low-value, manual process debts and re-keying, and more time on developing high-value intellectual insights — cultivating their client relationships and maximizing their added value and their value propositions for their clients.
Here at Rivet we agree – assuming that these CPAs have a capable XBRL analytics tool that is.
One area where CPAs may be able to add value especially for resource-constrained XBRL filers (is there any other?) is in peer group comparative analysis. Pumping out a report to clients on their relative performance within their peer group with some pithy analysis might be a good way to help to retain or regain clients. Or publishing a web page highlighting some kind of comparative ranking for specific measures within a specific a niche sector, a good way to market focused sector expertise via some fresh content every quarter.
Tags: CPA
