Accounting
Founder Files: Stephen Buller broke the Big Four mold
While most accountants dread conducting on-site inventory observations — often considered one of the rote tasks shoved onto those at the bottom of the food chain — Stephen Buller loved them.
While working for a Big Four firm, he remembers going to a lumber yard in his home state of Washington for an inventory count. He recalls walking around the snowy fields in soaked sneakers and socks, looking every bit the ill-dressed, out-of-place accountant, but loving every moment of it.
“I really enjoyed those experiences because I got to see the nuts and bolts of the business,” Buller said. “I think a lot of what I’ve taken into my own business now is that numbers are just numbers. Is a million dollars a lot? I don’t know, what’s the context? Is this a good revenue number? Am I paying too much for payroll?”
“The numbers are not enough,” he said. “You have to have context in the business.”
It’s one of the reasons he was never content working at the Big Four. Buller wanted to spend his hours helping business owners put more money in their bank account, not telling the Securities and Exchange Commission that a company’s finances check out.
“I never felt much satisfaction from the actual work that was being accomplished, and maybe that has to do with the intangible nature of numbers,” he said. “The final delivery of a $100,000 audit is a single page, written up, signed by the partner that basically says, ‘We don’t find any problems with your finances.’ That’s just the industry — it’s not necessarily a criticism of that product.”
‘It was really painful for me’
Buller studied accounting at the University of Washington. He was a member of Beta Alpha Psi, the accounting and finance honors society. From his interactions with recruiters through the society, he interned at the Big Four firm before graduating with his master’s degree and joining full time. But it wasn’t what he expected.
“It was really painful for me,” he said.
Buller didn’t enjoy the number of hours spent behind a desk. While the firm had an efficient and detailed audit methodology, he felt as though seniors and managers were always creating more work — even after the job was done.
“There were a couple of people I worked with, supervisors and managers, who bucked this trend,” he said. “They were really focused on, ‘These are the things we need to get done, and when we get those done we’re done. We don’t have to work hours we don’t need to.'”
He said it boils down to the billable hours you can charge a client: “I got the sense that partners never wanted to report fewer hours because that might justify a cut in the fee.”
Buller felt his proposed ideas for improving processes were usually shut down before even being considered. “This isn’t necessarily a criticism directly of [the firm] but just of any very large organization,” he said, referencing the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality.
He also disliked the lack of work-life balance: “The overall perspective of the public accounting industry is that 45 to 50 hours a week is a break. That’s like vacation to them.”
Buller left the firm in 2010 after about three years. He jumped around a variety of tech companies, startups and public companies as an accountant and controller. Around the same time as leaving the Big Four firm, Buller took his first swing at building his own company. He dropped a few thousand dollars on setting up a website to start an e-commerce business selling self-defense and security products, like pepper spray and tasers. The venture was unprofitable and he jumped ship after one of his managers told him he needed more time before he’d be ready to run a business.
He finally started his own practice, Buller Accounting, in 2015 after acquiring a bookkeeping firm from a local tax accountant who was selling. Buller’s firm offers a variety of services including bookkeeping, in-house payroll and more. With his five employees, he manages about 50 clients, mostly small-business owners based in Washington State and the Northwest Coast.
‘We can do things differently’
Buller’s creed is that he can do things differently at his firm.
“I felt like at [the Big Four firm] I was not treated like a human being, with thoughts and feelings, good ideas and bad ideas, wants and dreams, and hopes and fears. I felt very much like I was a tool. I was meant to be used, and when my productivity or patience had run out I was to be discarded. And I think that is awful,” he said. “I think there are plenty of good things that I take from [the Big Four firm], and then there are things that I say we can do differently.”
But Buller isn’t trying to rebuild the wheel. One of the things that he carries on from his time in the Big Four is the mantra, “If it’s not documented, it’s not done.”
Oftentimes, a business owner hiring an accountant doesn’t necessarily care how the work gets done — just as long as it gets done. Problems usually don’t arise until someone is audited, it’s tax season, or they receive a surprise letter from the IRS. That’s why showing his work is so important.
“Everybody messes up from time to time, and we can do our best to build processes that avoid mistakes, but they will still happen,” Buller said. “And so our real goal should not necessarily be to ensure no mistakes ever happen, but to ensure we can support what we did and why we did it.”
Where Buller does diverge from big firms is in his pricing model. He explained, “For me running my business, a huge part of being successful is knowing how much revenue is going to come in, and how many expenses are going to go out.”
It seems simple, he said, but it’s hard to do for many business owners who don’t know anything about accounting. For instance, when Buller tells a client they need to amend a filing, which may take a couple hours and result in an additional $500 added onto their bill, clients can feel blindsided.
So instead, Buller works with his clients for a couple of months to develop a thorough scope of what services they actually need, and then he quotes them a flat-rate fee. “If we do work outside of that scope, I do my best to tell the client ahead of time, ‘This is outside of scope, I think it’ll take about this much. Is that OK?’ And then anything that’s in scope that just happens to take us longer, then that’s on us.”
“So I just need to manage my hours very carefully and see what clients are consistently going over budget or under budget, and adjust accordingly,” he added.
For clients that consistently take him and his team less time than he has budgeted, he’ll voluntarily reach out and tell them he’s decreasing their bill by a certain amount. For clients that consistently take more time, he explains what he missed in the estimate that constitutes a higher bill, but he purposefully works on a month-to-month basis so as not to make clients feel as though they’re locked in to an unfavorable agreement.
Buller’s first piece advice, for young accountants especially, is the reminder, “You don’t know everything.”
“I think a really good way to start your career is to go to work in an industry that interests you. Work for a company, boss, team and people that you respect and enjoy,” he said.
He also does not recommend trying to start a business right out of college, warning that most people will lack the experience and knowledge necessary to do so effectively. “Instead, I would go to work for somebody who does what you want to do, learn as much as you can from them about what not to do and what to do, and then maybe move on to starting a business.”
And as someone who did not feel like he fit into the traditional accountant mold but loved the accounting itself, Buller emphasizes the broad scope for applying accounting skills: “Once you have that framework and you understand the debits and credits, the different accounts and how it all works, you can look at any business with a perceptive eye.”
“A lot of businesses come out of a couple of people working at some company, seeing the same complaint over and over again, and then saying, ‘Why don’t we start our own business and solve this problem?'” Buller said. “That’s the heart of entrepreneurship — seeing a problem and solving it — and people will pay you to do that.”
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Aiwyn, a provider of technology solutions for accountants and CPA firms, has closed a $113 million funding round.
The money will help the company continue its evolution from its original focus on payments and collections for accounting firms into a more comprehensive tool for practice management.
Among other things, that will include building a universal client experience portal, where accountants can access all of their engagements in one place.
The funding will also be used to accelerate product development on both the company’s practice management platform, and on a tax solution that it is working on.
“Aiwyn is committed to empowering CPA firms to elevate their operations and client relationships,” said chairman and CEO Justin Adams, in a statement. “With this investment, we are poised to redefine how firms manage their operations from the CRM to the general ledger, while setting a new benchmark for client experiences. For too long, firms have had to decide between a legacy vendor or modern point solutions. We are proud that Aiwyn is a trusted platform for CPA firms.”
The round was led by global investment firm KKR and Bessemer Venture Partners. KKR is funding this investment primarily from its Next Generation Technology III Fund.
“The accounting industry represents a large market that has long been served by legacy players. Aiwyn is solving a clear functionality gap in the market with a solution that is easily adopted and rapidly delivers tangible enhancements to the customer experience, most noticeably through significant reductions in days sales outstanding,” said Jackson Hart, a principal on KKR’s technology growth team, in a statement.
“Aiwyn’s product suite is already quite impressive, but the company is really just getting started on its quest to deliver compelling technology to the accounting industry,” added Bessemer partner Jeremy Levine, in a statement.
Cooley LLP served as legal advisor to Aiwyn; Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal advisor to KKR; and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP served as legal advisor to Bessemer.
Millions of Americans may see their Social Security benefits increase under a bill headed to President Joe Biden’s desk — though critics warn that the measure comes at the cost of pushing the fund further toward insolvency.
If signed by the president before the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, the law would boost Social Security payments to more than 2 million beneficiaries,
Those beneficiaries are mostly those who have received foreign pensions or government workers such as police officers, firefighters and teachers who contributed to a federal or state pension plan but didn’t pay Social Security taxes.
The legislation, called the Social Security Fairness Act, eliminates two formulas that reduced benefits for these workers who receive foreign and government pensions in addition to Social Security. Those provisions, known as the
Sponsors of the law say the old Congress over-corrected, and unfairly withheld earned benefits from retirees and their spouses.
While the White House hasn’t said whether Biden would sign the bill, it passed both chambers with bipartisan majorities:
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would hasten Social Security’s insolvency — now projected to come by 2034 — by
The Senate rejected an amendment from Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, that would have pushed back the retirement age to 70. Only three senators supported the amendment.
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Firms that hire experienced people do not usually get what they expect or are paying for. Here is a template to help you maximize your investment in such people.
Usually, but not always, experienced people leave a job because they are not growing in their experience. Yet many firms hire these people expecting to capitalize on their “experience.” This makes no sense and seems to be illogical. However, it happens all the time. The following is a template to assist you in getting what you need or think you are getting.
Salary level: The salary you will be paying will be the market rate. Not much higher or much lower, so regardless of what you are getting from your new employee, get over it! You will not be overpaying. You might not be getting what you think you are paying for, but you will be paying the market rate for that person.
Profile of new hire: You hired someone who has been specializing in the area that you hired them for. You also hired someone that probably had three or four jobs previously, with the last one or two (or more) in that specialization. What you do not know is the depth of their experience, how well they managed their workload or the people reporting to them, and what desire they have to grow further. If they had that desire, and they weren’t growing, then they “wasted” time in their growth trajectory trying to decide when they should leave. Further, their impression of their experience will not be the same as your expectations of their experience. Get over it!
Experience: I can almost guarantee that the new hire will not be able to perform at the level you expect them to, and my advice is to get over it. What you need to do is to evaluate their experience and figure out where they stand on the curve line of the scale that you expect. Not where you want them to be, but where they actually are. Once you figure that out, start your training and mentoring and everything else you do to move that staff person forward at the level they are at on your scale.
Getting what you are paying for: You will be not getting what you really need, but what the market has available. And whatever that is, you will likely be better off with that person than without that person, if you do not screw it up.
How to not screw it up: Do not give them work that you know they could not handle without training, supervising and being watched over closely. Start off with pretty easy work at a higher level, not the lower levels, and see how they do. Use that to guide you in where they need to go to help you. Go easy, but do it with steady forward movements. But do it slowly and deliberately. Consider your investment in a long-term relationship with that manager-level person. If they are the right person, it will become evident within a couple of months. If they’re not the right person, get rid of them quickly (see next item).
Hire carefully, but fire quickly: I know of a very successful practice that used a headhunter for staffing and was provided with a two-month guarantee, so their timetable was seven weeks. I know this because someone who left me for a higher-level position called and asked me if he could have his job back seven weeks after he left. That person was not growing with me (for various reasons that I am not getting into now) and I told him so. We liked him and explained a program that we developed to have him grow sufficiently. He immediately started to look for a job, which he got. His job was filled by us with a three-year level staff person we hired out of school and who was ready to be moved up to that position. We did not miss a beat. That shows you how “valuable” he was to us, and how invaluable he was to his next employer.
Be nice: It’s probably not all their own fault they haven’t grown. I’m sure the firms they worked at contributed immensely to that lack of growth. Be nice. Do not tell them how you feel about where you think they are on your scale of development or what your current expectations are. Just focus on using them to move you forward by helping them grow. Compliment them frequently and never disparage them. Be nice!
The past, present and future: Their lack of experience is in the past and is the present situation. Fuggeddaboudit! You hired this person so you could move your practice forward into the future. Focus on that future and getting there as easily as you can. You can do it with this person if you do not over-anticipate their ability or over-expect their output and production.
Natural tendency: A natural tendency is to be upset with them and then to use them as best you can to clean up past due work, move things out and work on slightly higher lower-level engagements. You won’t be anxious to have them train anyone so they will become lone rangers. That is not how you will be able to grow and you will doom yourself to restart with someone very similar when that person leaves “because they are not getting good experience.” And then you will start over with someone who is a mirror image of the person who just left you. Your efforts become dissipated replacing someone who left rather than concentrate on nurturing staff so they will grow and stay.
Set expectations to a lower level: When they start, do not expect more of them than is realistic. If you get more than you expect, you will be happy. If you get less than you expect, you will be miserable and probably make them, and everyone else around you, miserable. You can’t lose with lower expectations and might lose with the higher expectations. Choose can’t lose instead of might lose.
The above is not really a template, but if I added three lines to each item and asked you to write what you think or will do and perhaps include a chart (for No. 3 above), it will be a template. Figure it out for yourself, but if you believe I make sense and you are stuck in a can’t win position unless you face reality, then get over it and make the best of it to move forward. And I just showed you how to approach that.
Do not hesitate to contact me at
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