“One of our CPAs got a letter saying they’re short of credits needed for renewal but it doesn’t quite make sense to us. Can you help?”
Unfortunately, these emails are an increasingly common symptom of a deeper challenge that affects the entire professional licensing ecosystem in the accounting industry.
The many parties dealing with compliance, such as state boards, firms, content providers, and individual licensees, face similar challenges in trying to interpret established requirements.
This isn’t due to negligence or oversight. It’s simply a reality when dealing with such a layered regulatory environment like accounting.
What’s becoming increasingly clear through our team’s conversations and experiences working with almost 300 accounting firms and regulatory bodies is that everyone in the learning and compliance ecosystem benefits from having a bridge between them.
That’s exactly what we’ve built at LCvista, which offers CPE compliance tracking for all CPA state licenses, in addition to hundreds of other licenses and certifications related to the accounting industry.
The multi-state compliance challenge
For firms managing dozens or even hundreds of CPAs across multiple jurisdictions, inconsistencies create significant risk.
There’s a seemingly endless and continually-changing number of precise rules about what continuing education needs to be completed and when, and a miscalculation in credit requirements or a misinterpreted deadline leads to various consequences, possibly even impacting a professional’s or even firm’s ability to practice.
When firms and licensed professionals are on their own to navigate requirements, it’s only natural for discrepancies to emerge as a result.
Interpreting these requirements can be time-consuming and runs the risk of distracting licensees from their core work: focusing on their clients.
Unfortunately, these rules and regulation updates don’t happen all at once.
As Cindy Hessling, Compliance Success Manager at LCvista put it,
“State boards update their rules based on their legislative schedules. It’s not like the entire country updates their rules at the same time.”
Some states cap certain types of training. Others mandate specific ethics requirements. All have their own timelines, and that’s before we include federal regulatory requirements in the mix.
Pressures on the boards
State boards are under their own pressures.
They are managing thousands of professionals while juggling multiple responsibilities and sometimes issuing licenses to multiple different types of professionals (e.g. cosmetology and architecture and accounting).
“Boards are doing so many things,” Danielle Turner, Principal Compliance Expert at LCvista said. “Even if you have a board that’s focused on accountancy they still have so much that they need to tackle within just accountancy.”
During peak renewal seasons, boards are inundated with questions from licensees and firm administrators. Add to this their broad responsibilities, and the result can be overwhelming.
Creating a sustainable solution
LCvista strives to serve as an ecosystem where technology strengthens boards, professionals, and firms as well as the relationship between them.
To be clear: this isn’t advocating for replacing board authority or automating away human judgment. Instead, we envision an ecosystem where technology serves as a bridge between boards, firm professionals, and other regulatory bodies, ensuring consistent interpretation and application of requirements across the profession.
“What I like to say when talking with state accountancy board members about LCvista,” Danielle said, “is that ‘we are very entrenched in your rules, we understand them on a very deep level, we are already responsible for tracking for so many of your licensees in the state. We’re already helping firms and their professionals, and we believe that we can help you, too!’”
When technology partners enter the equation, it’s possible to make the process easier for every member of the compliance and L&D ecosystem.
Boards get help managing their workload and ensuring consistent rule application. Firms and professionals get clarity and confidence in their data.
For compliance professionals, the implications are especially significant.
Instead of maintaining separate tracking systems and relationships with each state board, firm professionals can work through a centralized platform that:
- Maintains up-to-date requirements for all state CPA licenses and related regulatory jurisdictions
- Allows CPAs and other professionals to track their certifications
- Provides consistent application of rules
- Automates credit tracking and requirement calculations
- Serves as an intermediary with state boards of accountancy
- Advocate with Boards for best practices to effectively support licensees and firm administration
As one board executive noted during a recent meeting, “We’re all working toward the same goal. We just need better tools to help us get there together.” The result of this collaboration is a more efficient, accurate, and sustainable approach to compliance management.
When boards, firms, professionals, and technology partners work together, they create something more valuable than just accurate record-keeping.
Boards can focus on their core regulatory responsibilities, firms can manage professional risks with confidence, and professionals can maintain their licenses without getting lost in administrative complexity when they leverage LCvista, an ecosystem that powers professional development for the accounting industry.
