What an accounting firm site has to get right

Board rules and conduct standards

Each state board of accounting licenses people and firms and sets rules about names, titles and advertising.

A conduct framework sits alongside, including a rule against ads that is false, misleading or deceptive.

Both reach a website, and the state rules are the ones that vary, so read your own board's rules.

Both reach a website, and the state rules are the ones that vary, so read your own board's requirements rather than a summary written for somewhere else.

The two layers catch different things. A state board cares about names, designations and who may call themselves what; the conduct framework cares about whether the advertising is misleading at all.

Using the designation correctly

The CPA designation belongs to licensed people, and using it to describe a firm usually depends on the firm's own registration.

A firm with one licensed partner and four unlicensed staff needs care in how it describes the team collectively.

Non licensed staff should be described accurately. Our accountants is a claim when some of them are not.

Describe non-licensed staff accurately. Our accountants is a claim when some of them are not, and it is the sort of detail a board notices.

Firm names

Many states regulate firm naming, including the use of terms suggesting a partnership or a specializm that does not exist.

Trading names and marketing brands can trigger registration rules that the marketing decision did not anticipate.

Check before launching a new brand, not after the signage arrives.

Check before the signage, the domain and the letterhead are ordered. Discovering a naming restriction after the brand is printed is an expensive way to learn it.

Tax content ages badly

Thresholds, rates and deadlines change every year, and a page from three years ago still reads as current to a visitor.

Date every piece of tax content and say which tax year it refers to, in the visible text rather than only in the markup.

Review the set each season. A stale figure on a professional site is the clearest possible signal about attention to detail.

Keep a list of every page carrying a number or a deadline. That list is the review, and without it the review never quite happens.

• Rates and thresholds
• Filing deadlines
• Contribution and allowance limits
• Anything naming a tax year
• References to a rule that has since changed
• Screenshots of forms that get reissued annually

Results and savings claims

Saved our clients thousands is an outcome claim that depends entirely on circumstances, and it is the phrase most likely to be challenged.

Describe the service instead. A structured review of prior year returns is checkable. A promised saving is not.

The same caution applies to anything implying a certain outcome with a tax authority.

Describe the service instead of the outcome, which is the general rule set out in honest claims.

Confidentiality and client names

Client client privacy is a duty, and a case study or a client logo is a disclosure of the relationship.

Get written agreement before naming anybody, and keep it. Some clients will agree to a description without a name.

The same applies to reviews, where a quote can identify a client even without naming them.

A quote can identify a client even without naming them, which is worth reading for before publishing a testimonial.

What the builder covers

Pages here are written from a talk about your firm, and the builder refuses promised savings and assured outcomes.

Every page passes a check that runs before anything publishes, validated against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards.

It does not know your state board's rules on firm names or which staff hold a licence. Nothing here is legal advice.

Nothing here is legal advice, and the one thing worth repeating is that a tax page carrying last year's threshold is a confident wrong answer given to somebody who trusted you.

Attest work and independence

If your firm performs attest work, independence rules shape what you may say about client relationships and what services you may advertise together.

Marketing pages that bundle advisory and attest services can imply an arrangement that would not be permitted.

This is worth a read by whoever owns independence in the firm before a services page goes live.