The Competition Strategy of the Local Small-to-Medium Size CPA Firms and Book-keepers

• Main Authors: Ya-Shih Wang, 王雅施
• Other Authors: Yun-Sheng Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/57723829953188707567

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 高階經理人碩士在職專班 === 96 === The phenomenon that both competition and cooperation relation coexist between certified accounting firms and book-keepers is well acknowledged for a long time. The situation is even worse in local regions where their business areas overlap. The intensive competition inevitably led to the so called “low balling” (cutting prices strategy), which in turn will lower the profits and the service quality for both parties. This paper aims to develop the best fitting competition strategy for both the CPA firms and the book-keepers by deriving the “payoff matrix” from the game theory. The results indicate that by abandoning low balling strategy and by adopting the business segregation of “documents review” and “audit”, the CPA firms and book-keepers can both gain their due profit shares. Specifically, the book-keepers turn over the audit-needed clients to the CPA firms, and charge a fair amount of ‘brokerage fees’ will not lose business but gain their fair share of return. In practice, the reasonable brokerage fee must cover the costs and the 40% profit goal per year for the CPA firms. This paper considers both the 40%-per annum profit goal and the actual 2005-2007 audit data for a specific local CPA firm to set the standard for the brokerage fee. The result shows that 20％ of the audit fee can benefit both parties the most. In case the CPA firms also deprive the book-keeping business from the audit cases referred by the book-keepers, we suggest to establish a “punitive rule”, which charges 3 times of the audit fees from the CPA firms should the above-mentioned case occurs. The rule is set according to the civil law regulation. It is intended to maintain the mutual trust between the CPA firms and the book-keepers. Overall, the best strategy to maintain the profits for both the CPA firms and the book-keepers is to keep the ‘documents review’ and the ‘business registration’ business to the book-keepers, and the audit cases referred from the book-keepers to the CPA firms. This will ensure to reach the optimum condition of co-optition between the two parties.