Chair's corner.

• Author: Murphy, Leslie

The majority of our members practicing in public accounting firms are working in smaller firms. Working to address the unique challenges facing small firms is among the AICPA's most important functions. I want to talk this month about some of the recent activities of the Institute's Private Companies Practice Section, our membership section devoted to the needs of all small firms. More than 6,000 firms are members.

I hope practitioners have familiarized themselves with one of the section's most important offerings, the PCPS Firm Practice Center (www.aicpa.org/pcps), an online resource that channels a host of news and information to enhance all aspects of practice. Although a portion of the site contains resources for all AICPA members, for a limited time all AICPA members have free access to every area of the site, including those normally reserved exclusively for PCPS members. Be sure to visit the Firm Practice Center and find out what it has to offer.

We have learned it's highly valuable for firms to know what they have in common with other practices, so PCPS regularly conducts research to gather comparative data on important practice management issues.

Results of the 2005 PCPS Survey of Top 5 Practice Management Issues will be out this spring. PCPS plans to use the data from this survey to tailor programs specifically for each category of firm.

The PCPS/TSCPA Management of ah Accounting Practice Survey is another source of valuable benchmarking information for practices. This survey provides comparative inter-firm data allowing partners to identify relative practice strengths and better understand the areas where they compare less favorably. Given the importance of the topic of staffing to respondents, PCPS has released extracts on this subject from the last survey, conducted in 2004. These extracts yield insights into trends in hours worked and billed, compensation, benefits and gender issues.

As I stated in my previous column, I am committed to helping the profession attract and retain young aspiring CPAs. So I'm happy to report that, to assist firms in this effort, PCPS has published a free white paper titled Best Practices in...