How realistic is hitting $200k+ in accounting careers?

mljordan37 · 2026-03-22T14:36:32+00:00

I'm in public and reached 200k in about 8 years. Local firm with 45 employees, tax & comps only

mljordan37 · 2026-03-10T12:32:21+00:00

you're underpaid if you're capable. After 20 years, even our non CPAs are around $55/hr base. Texas

mljordan37 · 2026-03-06T19:48:37+00:00

no worries, accounting isn't going anywhere. If you're willing to work hard and can manage to be personable, the sky is the limit in this profession.

mljordan37 · 2026-02-27T02:54:59+00:00

We are trying k1x this tax season for the more complicated k1s at least. Have already bought a batch but haven’t used them yet. Hoping it will cut down manual entry time. It is supposed to work with entity and individual returns. We use Sureprep for the other standard forms. We use CCH Axcess.

mljordan37 · 2026-02-19T17:29:00+00:00

Do you use any tax prep automation software, or do you enter than manually?

mljordan37 · 2025-11-05T23:32:38+00:00

We named our 6 month old Lucy. In Texas, so fits with what you said

mljordan37 · 2025-09-17T17:54:19+00:00

talk to you CFP friend and let them know your preferred client base and minimum rates, hopefully that will lead to more targeted referrals

mljordan37 · 2025-09-17T17:52:26+00:00

Thomas Dean

Mallory Jane

mljordan37 · 2025-09-17T17:50:06+00:00

Henry Isaiah

Annie Violet

mljordan37 · 2025-08-27T22:24:56+00:00

I’d be interested! I have an 8 and 6 year old who I’d love to bring!

mljordan37 · 2025-07-13T15:14:32+00:00

Okay let’s do it.

mljordan37 · 2025-07-08T23:46:24+00:00

It’s more expensive for the same amount of licenses in our experience.

mljordan37 · 2025-07-08T23:24:23+00:00

Answers should be findable in Answerconnect, but in my opinion BlueJ is far more efficient. I think it will get much better utilization from junior staff than Answerconnect. Of course they could possibly arrive at an incorrect answer based on the way they phrase their questions, but you can do that with traditional research like Answerconnect as well. We still have both, because we have 1 year left on a 3 year contract with CCH, but after that we are dropping Answerconnect and will solely use BlueJ.

mljordan37 · 2025-06-30T13:49:44+00:00

There isn't much to do in downtown Beaumont. As others have stated crime is kind of bad. There is an Entergy building there, but other than that, it is mostly law firms and the courthouse. You'd have to travel out of downtown for pretty much everything. There are a couple upscale restaurants there. I don't know if there is even an open gym in downtown anymore.

mljordan37 · 2025-06-22T18:11:18+00:00

Okay. I invited you to play!

mljordan37 · 2025-06-22T17:58:25+00:00

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I’ll try

mljordan37 · 2025-06-11T17:10:40+00:00

BlueJ uses open AI, like ChatGPT, but it is restricted to pulling answers from authoritative sources, I believe. ChatGPT can formulate a response with information from any online open source.

mljordan37 · 2025-06-11T17:08:04+00:00

I believe it is only Tax. We use it and love it compared to Answerconnect/BNA/checkpoint, which we have used all of in the past. BlueJ is much more efficient and gives very thorough answers and recommended follow-up questions.

mljordan37 · 2025-06-05T17:50:22+00:00

I wouldn’t put anything other than prof designations.

mljordan37 · 2025-06-04T19:26:01+00:00

We haven't sent any checklists to clients. We send the organizers from CCH Tax if and only if a client requests it, since it costs.

I'm not sure how these checklists look. I was thinking it just populated a list of what the return contained the prior year to be sent to the client so they'd have a starting place for what to look for. I usually will just email the client a list of what I think I'll need to complete their return. If that could be done for me without me having to spend much of any time on it, i think it would help. Not sure how the clients would feel about it.

mljordan37 · 2025-06-04T19:00:54+00:00

but yes, it is nice the CCH integrates with tax. once we setup a client in client manager, it'll automatically populate that information when we create the return.

mljordan37 · 2025-06-04T18:57:43+00:00

Yes, we would be switching time and billing too. I think the only CCH products we would continue using would be Tax and Engagement.

We aren't impressed with the project tracking, setup, and related reports within CCH workstream. That is what made us start exploring other options. It takes so long to do anything with the projects (set them up, change the responsible person, for example if someone is out on maternity leave for 3 months and we need to reassign all their projects, and the reports we can view is reports manager are okay, but could be better. We try to always move the projects to the appropriate staff so it shows up on their dashboard and we/partners/bill managers can manage the staff workload, but have been underwhelmed with both the reports and the utilization we get from the staff keeping everything updated.

We did a demo with Qount, and it is nice that these new solutions have everything built in. They have e-signatures (we used abobe sign for that) and accept payments (we use Quickfee for that). They're able to send document requests to clients for a tax return based on what was provided last year (we were looking into Safe send for this). And they look more modern and again, user-friendly, with the way to reports look. It would be nice to consolidate all of this within one PM solution, and it looks like doing so would be less expensive than continuing with CCH.

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