A board chair - and an institute - devoted to service.

Robert Israeloff characterizes himself as fanatical about giving personal attention to clients of his 13-partner CPA firms, Israeloff, Trattner & Co., headquartered in Valley Stream, New York. "My clients know I really care," he says. In approaching his post as the new chair of the board of the American Institute of CPAs, he is committed to letting practitioners know he and the Institute care about members and their problems.

An outspoken activist who has a strong interest in solving CPAs' practical problems, he has set several priorities for his chairmanship, all of which relate to helping Institute members get more from their professional activities and from the AICPA.

PRACTICE CONCERNS

As an advocate for smaller firms, Israeloff has set his sights on what he believes are two of the most pressing problems for local practitioners. First and foremost is the burden of work-load compression.

"I want to give the fight to ease workload compression the same emphasis we have given tort reform, which will remain at the highest level of importance for the Institute," he explains. "CPAs cannot go on if three-quarters of their work falls in three or four months of the year. We are going to marshal all available resources to change the law to allow natural business years for companies."

Israeloff's sense of urgency is fueled by feedback from members and by his own experiences. "In our firm, we used to do over 250 fiscal-year closings, which represented about 40% of our corporate or partnership tax returns," he says. "Today, less than 10 have retained fiscal years by paying their section 444 tax, so we've taken 250 other closings and thrown them into a period when we're already overworked."

A change in the fiscal year rules would benefit CPAs, but he points out that it would make good business sense for others, too. "Many businesses should have natural business years--the best example is department stores and other retailers. For them, January 31 is the best time to close their books: The holiday season is behind them and their inventories are at their lowest levels."

"We will make a full-court press" on this issue, he vows, envisioning a well-de-signed campaign similar to the one waged in favor of tort reform, in which members take part in a grass-roots program to contact their legislators and the Institute uses its own resources to bring attention to the need for change.

"This is the number-one practice problem for local practitioners," he says. "It may not be solved in this year, but I hope people can look back and say, 'At least he helped to push this issue toward a solution.'"

Another pressing issue he hopes to address is standards overload. His special interest is in the many local CPA firms that render controllership services for their clients. In Israeloff's own firm, which caters mostly to small, family-owned companies, 95% of the clientele don't have a chief financial officer. "They have a bookkeeping staff and us," he says. "We render services along the lines of what a chief financial officer does for a major company, including preparing monthly or quarterly financial reports for internal use. These are management tools; they're not created for outsiders." Currently, such reports must be prepared in compliance with AICPA standards--which are promulgated for outside users--which Israeloff believes is inappropriate. "A non-CPA can provide all these services and not have to cope with all these standards; I want our members to be able to do that, too."

He is quick to add that the quality of practitioners' work will remain the same. "This is not to say we'll practice at a substandard level, but we should be able to prepare internal reports without having to comply with standards created for reports that serve different purposes."

He has asked Wanda Lorenz, incoming chair of the accounting and review services committee, and Joseph Puleo, chair of the management consulting services executive committee, to help in resolving the issue. He personally advocates returning to the internal-use statements used 25 years ago. "I think this actually would lower practitioners' liability exposure if the statements were clearly marked and the matter was documented in an engagement letter," he says. That's because it would place obvious limits on the intended users of such financial information.

MEMBER SERVICE

Another of Israeloff's goals is to make the AICPA more user-friendly. "The perception among a lot of the members is that it's a big, bureaucratic organization that doesn't cater to their needs, and I want to change that," he says. As an active member who has been the chair of the AICPA private companies practice executive committee and served on the Institute's governing council, SEC practice section executive committee and strategic planning committee, among others, Israeloff has heard many pleas from other CPAs to make member services more accessible and to make the Institute itself more approachable.

One step in that process is a planned member outreach facilitator program that would match every member with a senior Institute staff person. When a CPA needs help, he or she will have the name of someone in the Institute who will be available to steer the member in the right direction. "Every AICPA member will be on a firstname basis with someone who will be his or her personal facilitator when he or she has questions or can't get through to a certain person," he explains. In addition, each Institute staff person will be asked to call each of the members to whom they are assigned once a year to offer help or listen to suggestions. "It may be a 30-second phone call or a 5-minute phone call," Israeloff says, but it at least will demonstrate the organization's interest in members' concerns.

"I want members to know whom to go to if they've got a question. And, if they have a practice problem they don't feel is being addressed, I want them to feel they can tell the staff person assigned to them. That staff person may not be able to solve their problem, but he or she can listen patiently and say, 'I've got the person who can call you back and help you with your problem.'"

Israeloff also thinks members want to know the AICPA is spending their money wisely. Having spent five years on the AICPA finance committee, he knows the Institute can't continue to add worthwhile new programs without deleting some, so he and Eric Schindler, the finance committee chair, have asked the Institute staff to prepare what he calls a top 10 list of projects or activities that have outlived their usefulness. His intention is not to reduce member services but to find out which budget items have become less important to CPAs and use the resulting savings to serve the profession better.

Such outreach and reassessment efforts are vital to the Institute's survival, Israeloff believes. "If we don't cater to our members, we're going to lose them, especially as other organizations pop up in different disciplines related to accounting. We must make them feel they're wanted and that the staff works for them. The staff can't be perceived as distant from members' problems," he says.

Another part of his outreach program will focus on younger CPAs. Since a growing portion of the membership is under 35, he would like to engage these practitioners in the organization and its activities. One possibility being considered is a committee made up exclusively of younger members.

THE RIGHT IMAGE

Another important goal of Israeloff's term will be to refine and enhance the image of CPAs as the public's trusted financial professionals. "The public knows when they need surgery, they go to a doctor," he notes. "We want the public to know that for anything to do with finances, business or individual, the CPA is the person to turn to."

He plans to support a major external public relations program designed to craft a message that will convey this image. "It's vital to position the CPA as someone who's very important in our society," he says.

"I don't think the public really knows what the CPA does and stands for. We're not just people with green eyeshades who play with numbers; we're advisers, advocates, auditors."

Israeloff also would like to see the profession become more involved in public issues. "We have to speak out as an Institute. We have to be willing to take a stand," he believes. He thinks the profession can make a unique contribution when finances are involved. "We have something to contribute to public debate--we can analyze the options. We don't have to be for or against." He cites the health care debate and the baseball strike as two of the kinds of areas in which the Institute might offer the profession's expertise to help clarify the financial issues for the public. "We have to find a way to be seen as a valuable resource to the public in these kinds of debates."

A CHANGING PROFESSION

Israeloff also supports two AICPA projects that are on the cutting edge of change--the special committee on financial reporting (the Jenkins committee) and the management accounting division's benchmarking project.

"I was a member of the Jenkins committee, which produced an excellent document, and I believe we can't afford to have three years of hard work put on the shelf. The Institute has appointed a follow-up coordinating committee that has been charged with ensuring that the various standard-setting bodies examine the Jenkins committee recommendations. In addition, a new special committee on audit assurance (the Elliott committee) has been formed to review the current state of auditing and attestation. I'm going to make sure that both the coordinating committee and Elliott committee get all the support they need. I'll also contact the standard-setting bodies to make sure they put the Jenkins committee recommendations on their agendas."

The project is important to Israeloff because it addresses the profession's very purpose. "If we don't make financial reporting more relevant, we won't have a product to offer. If people can turn to computers for instant information, what do we need an accountant's report for? We have to make those reports more relevant, which is the crux of the Jenkins committee report."

Israeloff says the benchmarking project has revealed startling insights into change in management accounting. "Industry members must be aware that their area is going to undergo a revolution," he says. "The computer is lowering the cost of processing a transaction so radically that if finance departments don't change, they'll face the same decline in jobs that many firms have faced." Israeloff intends to support the Institute's bencharking efforts and ensure industry members know about the results.

A HANDS-ON APPROACH

As a practitioner, Israeloff has a simple philosophy. "If the client believes you care, you're going to keep that client. My stock in trade is that I can be anywhere in the country or the world and anyone who calls will get a call back from me within a few hours."

"Make clients feel you'll go through a brick wall for them," he advises. "Make each client feel he or she is your most important client--that you care, you're involved, you're interested."

Israeloff started his career with Arthur Young right after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1959. Two years later, his father, a sole practitioner, was ill for several months, so Israeloff took a leave of absence to help maintain his practice and never went back. The firm today has 65 professionals, with one office in New York City and two in suburban Long Island. Shortly after joining his father, Israeloff had his first success in merging with another firm, retaining 100% of a bookkeeping business's clients by making personal contact with each one. "I found that complete strangers could come in and hold onto a practice by offering personal service," he remembers. "That taught me I could grow this way." He has made 50 separate acquisitions or mergers since 1962.

Committed to service in his personal life as well, he is involved in Jewish philanthropies and has served as treasurer of his hometown, among other activities. He clearly means to make a difference.

"I want people to look back and say, 'Bob Israeloff was not a shrinking violet,'" he says. "'He went out and fought to make his agenda a reality.'"