Accounting
The 2024 Best Firms for Women: Freedom of choice
There are many different ways Accounting Today’s 2024 Best Firms for Women earned the honor of being among the top 10 most female-forward workplaces, but while the individual policies and programs they employ to effectively recruit, retain and advance women vary by practice, two stand out as critical for the highest-ranked firms: flexibility and mentorship.
Both strategies also empower female employees to make critical choices for their personal and professional success.
“Mentorship is so important — it’s just the be-all, end-all these days,” said April Miller, principal at Laurel, Maryland-based Bormel, Grice & Huyett PA, a Best Firm for Women for the third consecutive year, this year ranking No. 3. “So much more focus is on mentorship and training than ever before. It has a lot to do with retaining people and a lot to do with attracting people. Most people want to grow and advance, and we really want to foster that here. It’s more important than anything else.”
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Bormel, Grice & Huyett offers two types of mentors, Miller explained: “a mentor for learning, your work-side policies, procedures, technical help, as people advance and get more experience in the industry, and also a mentor whose primary focus is on career guidance.”
San Francisco-based Realize CPA, No. 5 among this year’s Best Firms for Women but also the highest ranked midsized firm on the list, shares those priorities, with managing partner Minerva Tottie crediting her female staff’s satisfaction to its strong mentorship program and flexible work culture.
All the Best Firms for Women are chosen from the members of Accounting Today’s annual Best Firms to Work For list, which is based on in-depth employee surveys. The Best Firms for Women, among other criteria, garnered positive survey responses from their female employees.
“Providing flexibility for women,” Tottie identified as one of Realize’s strengths. “We have a really strong mentorship program at Realize. Mentorship and flexibility. We usually get women fresh out of college, super eager and ambitious and ready to work. And then life happens: marriage, kids. Having mentors who can help guide them along the work side of things and different changes of life is really important, and we continue to provide that. We don’t want to get them discouraged. Accounting is a hard profession, with the hour requirements, especially on the tax side.”
The Best Firms for Women recognize that the profession’s current talent shortage makes these two principles more vital than ever. To combat the pipeline problem, they have also adjusted for the needs of younger candidates.
“Based on experience, education, and how they are brought in, we have a dedicated coaching and staff development plan that details expectations at each level,” shared Kayla Perry, firm administrator at Boise, Idaho-based B.A. Harris, No. 2 on this year’s list. “We make it clear to staff. This generation asks for complete clarity. They’re not a gray generation but black and white. We provide as much information as possible; the expectations of the next level up and so on. All expectations are provided to them even at an associate level, to see what it takes for a promotion to senior, to manager.”
At the Best Firms for Women, employees also have a choice in mentors and coaches.
“Good mentors, leaders who are also women, who have also been there, can provide guidance,” explained Tottie. “Oftentimes, myself as a partner, I’ll team up with another woman at a supervisor, manager level just so they can feel comfortable bringing up the types of issues they might not otherwise feel comfortable bringing up with men. Some women don’t care, and can be paired up with men or women. We are sensitive to what people need to get far in their career.”
“Any of the partners are always welcoming,” shared Miller. “Sometimes people don’t want to talk to partners, but have [a talk with] managers, principals or peers. There are different groups with different comfort levels of what they want to speak about.”
Bormel, Grice & Huyett also finds value in connecting female new hires with more senior women in the firm.
“We are respectful of the challenges some women face,” Miller said. “Not all women struggle with work-life balance but that is a thing, responsibility in the office plus family … We try to be respectful of women and men having the work-life balance everyone is talking about. Among new hires, we encourage setting up a meeting with a woman at the firm to talk about their experiences. We’ve found that to be really helpful to put candidates at ease.”
Flexibility at the forefront
Staff at all levels continue to value flexibility, both in work hours and location, and in career paths.
“We try to be very flexible to all staff,” said Megan Sunthimer, partner at No. 4-ranked firm C&D, based in Solvang, California. “We see that a lot with women who have kids, trying to be flexible with needs that parents in general have with young kids.”
All the Best Firms for Women stressed that their flexible work policies apply to men and women, with or without children, to maintain the ever-important work-life balance. But many firm leaders also acknowledge the extra burden that can fall on women.
“From personal experience, for quite a few really great female employees, different life things come up, particularly in the accounting industry, that can be pretty stressful at times with other commitments,” said Sunthimer. “They have decided, based off family dynamics and needs, the accounting industry in general: Is that where I want to be, in public accounting? That’s been a struggle in retention, specifically. Recruiting has been a tough few years with COVID and a lot less people entering the accounting industry.”
“Females are typically the default parent when it comes to children,” said Perry. “Whenever there are sick kids, the ability to work remotely at a moment’s notice, they need everyone to be super understanding. The leadership here is two-thirds women, and it really sets a good example for the rest of the staff, that there’s a place in leadership for women. And I think the partners here really empower women and hear them out. A great maternity leave policy also contributes to the satisfaction for women.”
The Best Firms for Women offer hybrid and remote work options, with C&D and Realize both calling for core hours for staff when everyone must be available, with flexibility outside those time frames.
B.A. Harris has also adjusted its mindset around long hours. “As a firm, over the past two years, we have reduced that expectation of hours worked,” said Perry. “It’s more about workload, the projects assigned to you, if you get them done … We allow everyone to set their own schedule, even during busy season. A lot work more, but that’s their decision. If they come in on a Saturday, we buy lunch, and it’s a casual environment with no dress code.”
B.A. Harris also closes the office on Fridays from May 1 through Labor Day to give staff three-day weekends to look forward to during the longer hours of busy season.
Realize recently “beefed up the head count so there is enough people to spread the work around, which is really helpful,” shared Tottie. “A new woman joined not too long ago, from out of state. She said, ‘That’s the best busy season I’ve ever had.’ It breeds loyalty, when you feel rested and good at work.”
Carving new paths
Employees also value choice in career paths, especially women juggling family commitments.
“Each family dynamic is different, each woman’s responsibilities are different,” said Sunthimer. “They might have kids, might be married, might not have a partner. Those hour commitments sometimes can be overwhelming, stressful. It’s OK to have different tracks available. Sometimes you get into public accounting and envision one track of how to move forward, but start to develop other paths. Maybe you have a staff person that can only work 40 hours a week and can’t do overtime. That doesn’t mean you can’t get to the next level. Have different paths available — do not stick to this is how it has always been done.”
Sunthimer and the female leaders at the other Best Firms for Women all have personal experience with these varied trajectories.
“My goal, ever since starting at C&D, was to eventually become partner,” Sunthimer shared. “When I moved to Indiana, I thought that might permanently derail that; we never had a remote partner before. It was a big step for them to take. They really value the experience I bring to the team. Two other employees, both employees working remotely before COVID, both female, they did want to retain them because they valued them so much. The retention of the other female employees is because the firm values everything they bring to the table. When you work for a firm that shows appreciation and values you, genuinely cares about you, as this firm does, it makes you want to stick around.”
Tottie can also relate, having worked at Realize since 2016.
“I absolutely did have mentors,” she recalled. “I have two kids. At one point [I thought] I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it. They allowed me to scale back my workload for a couple of years, which was hugely beneficial. They also reduced pay, and I’m OK with that if it meant I could stay in the game. When the kids were a little bit older, I came back little by little and was able to stay in it. I’m a partner now, and it’s an amazing career.”
“We’re just in general really focused on giving everyone the right guidance,” Tottie continued. “It’s such a great career if you can have, early on, someone to navigate through the challenges, to allow you to stay in the business, allow you to grow, allow you to have empathy skills for other women coming in and growing through the same challenges.”
One of Tottie’s colleagues benefited directly from Realize’s determination to retain the best talent.
“One woman had a baby and felt very strongly — she’s one of our superstars — that she wanted to take half a year off to be with the baby,” Tottie shared. “She’s so good we said, ‘OK. We’re here, we don’t want you to go anywhere, you’re on the partner track.’ It presents a challenge for us to allow that flexibility, but we know long term it’s the right thing to do, we’re in it for the long haul with them. They know that, and it helps a lot.”
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“Timing is everything.” We’ve heard this turn of phrase often in all sorts of scenarios. And if you have clients who are starting a new business or transitioning from a sole proprietorship or partnership to an LLC or corporation, it’s absolutely relevant!
Whether someone incorporates their business now as the year comes to a close or waits until the new year can affect their company in various ways. In this article, I’ll discuss those impacts and explain why some clients might find the option to do a delayed filing attractive.
Business formation timing considerations
First things first, let’s discuss the three timing options business owners have when forming an LLC or corporation — midyear, end of year or January 1 (a.k.a., the start of the new year).
Midyear
Registering a business entity with a midyear effective date means the company will be subject to all the tax and reporting requirements associated with their LLC or corporation for that year. And existing businesses that switch to an LLC or corporation mid-year must submit two sets of income tax returns: one for the business structure it operated as during the months before its incorporation date and another set for the remainder of the year when it operated as an LLC or corporation.
End of year
December is an extremely hectic month for Secretary of State offices across the country, which can create a backlog of filings and potentially result in an effective date a month or more into the new year. Typically, states must receive and process an entity’s registration form before it’s considered effective. So, even if someone requests an effective date in December or on January 1, the actual effective date might be later if the state is unable to process the registration before the requested effective date. In other words, states generally do not make effective dates retroactive.
January 1
A January 1 effective date has some perks. It gives the LLC or corporation a clean start — e.g., existing businesses only have one set of tax forms for the tax year vs. the two required if switching entity types midyear. Also, in states that levy LLC franchise taxes, an LLC that files with an effective date of January 1 would not have to pay those fees for the previous year. For example, if a business files its LLC formation paperwork in November 2024 but requests an effective date in January 2025, the LLC won’t have to pay a state franchise tax for 2024. Likewise, the LLC or corporation’s other corporate formalities kick in for that year rather than for the year before.
How to ensure a January 1 effective date
Typically, a business registration filing will be effective on the date the state processes the forms. The processing time may vary between just a few days to several weeks, with expedited filings completed in five to ten business days.
A delayed filing, however, gives business owners some control over when their corporation or LLC goes into effect. In states that allow delayed effective dates, business owners can submit their formation paperwork in advance and set a future date for when they want their entity to be officially registered. Different states have different rules for when they’ll accept a delayed filing.
For example, here are several states’ requirements for how far in advance business owners may request a delayed effective date:
- Alabama – Up to 90 days before the requested effective date;
- California – Up to 90 days before the requested effective date (note that in California, LLCs and corporations that submit their formation paperwork after December 18 will be considered to be in business effective January 1 the next year, provided they do not conduct business between December 18 and December 31 of the current year);
- Florida – Up to 90 days before the requested effective date;
- Illinois – Up to 60 days before the requested effective date;
- Pennsylvania – Up to 90 days before the requested effective date;
- Rhode Island – Up to 90 days before the requested effective date;
- Texas – Up to 90 days before the requested effective date;
- Virginia – Up to 15 days before the requested effective date.
The below states do NOT allow delayed effective dates:
- Alaska
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- Nevada
- New Jersey
How can your clients request a delayed filing?
As your client or their representative completes the forms to establish their LLC or corporation, they should consider their desired effective date and make sure they submit their delayed filing within the state’s acceptable time frame. For instance, if someone wants to form an LLC in Rhode Island with an effective date of January 1, 2025, they can submit their delayed filing as early as Oct. 2, 2024. The company’s Articles of Organization (LLC) or Articles of Incorporation (corporation) should reflect the desired effective date. If the state doesn’t have a designated field on its form to request an effective date, your client can add a provision to request a specific date (if the state will allow it).
Is a delayed filing for everyone?
Whether a delayed filing makes sense for a client depends on their situation. As we discussed, submitting business formation paperwork before the end of this year to request a January 1 effective date next year can make tax filing time less cumbersome and potentially avoid some extra compliance fees. But sometimes, a delayed filing won’t be the way to go. For example, some consultants or other professionals may not want to wait that far in the future to get their entity up and running because they need an earlier effective date to secure a significant client.
Final thoughts
Delayed filings provide business owners with control over the official registration date of their business entities. By filing business formation ahead of time and requesting a delayed effective date of January 1, business owners may avoid potential paperwork processing backlogs at the state and eliminate extra paperwork at tax filing time. Moreover, it enables entrepreneurs to file their registration forms before the end of the current year for the following year without being on the hook to pay certain fees (like an LLC franchise tax) and submit certain reports (like annual reports) for the year when the registration forms were filed because the entity was not yet effective then.
As with all business concerns with legal and financial ramifications, your clients should seek expert professional guidance when considering whether a delayed filing will be advantageous for them. That’s where your expertise can make a tremendous difference! And for any questions beyond the scope of the matters you’re licensed to address, please direct your clients to the appropriate resources.
Within SAP Fieldglass, Joule can recommend best-fit templates to generate job postings and statements of work with prefilled information such as the start date and the number of skilled workers needed. Joule embedded across the SAP Business Network can analyze, categorize and transform unstructured invoice rejection errors into structured, actionable insights to reduce the cost of resolving exceptions. Further planned capacities will eventually help match suppliers with new business opportunities. Within SAP Ariba, Joule will enable users to create RFPs and request help with routine inquiries and surface risks. These capabilities will also provide buying recommendations along with supplier summaries from different data sources. In addition, a sustainability scorecard from SAP Ariba helps customers make decisions that align with their organizations’ environmental, social and governance objectives.
Overall, Joule will manage 80% of the most frequently performed tasks in the SAP Ariba portfolio of intelligent spend management and business network solutions.
Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
During his presentation yesterday at SAP Spend Connect Live, Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer for intelligent spend and business network at SAP, noted that the company has accounted for people’s concerns regarding security and privacy.
“SAP is dedicated to delivering best-in-class solutions infused with AI, empowering you to prioritize strategic initiatives over mundane tasks,” he said during his keynote. “We understand and hear the concerns surrounding data security when implementing AI, which is why we have made no compromises in ensuring our AI capabilities set the standard for compliance. From third-party advisory boards to adhering to the
Beyond Joule’s integration into the wider portfolio of SAP products, he also announced the upcoming release of the SAP Ariba Intake Management solution, designed to address how businesses handle employee requests and process orchestration, starting with procurement. It provides employees with a single place to go for procurement inquiries and visibility on their status. The solution collects employee requests, orchestrates processes across landscapes and applications, and provides visibility on status while shielding employees from process complexity. SAP plans to make SAP Ariba Intake Management available in the first quarter of 2025.
Swaminathan also announced that SAP Business Network will launch a new promote subscription in the first quarter with value-added features to help suppliers differentiate themselves, attract new buyers and grow their businesses. Swaminathan said the subscription will give suppliers recommendations to improve discoverability, advanced search results, supplier profile verification and network catalog APIs. With the help of generative AI tools, suppliers can load their full suite of offerings into the network catalog faster and with enhanced product descriptions and summaries. The new promote subscription will help suppliers identify sales opportunities based on regional search data and use advanced insights to track business growth on the network.
He also announced a new analytics add-on with AI capabilities for SAP Fieldglass solutions, which helps procurement, vendor management and HR professionals to implement agile multichannel talent strategies. The analytics add-on for SAP Fieldglass solutions lets users review performance against over 50 external workforce key performance indicators; access global market intelligence including rates, talent supply and demand, and time-to-hire trends; and track sustainability initiatives such as spend with diverse suppliers and worker health and safety, while observing cost overruns, worker fatigue, and on- and offboarding compliance.
“With SAP Business AI as the foundation of our intelligent products, customers can improve productivity and gain insights from their spend data no matter where it sits,” said Swaminathan. “Whether it is managing cost, mitigating risk or supporting scope three emission reduction, SAP empowers companies with the right solutions for agile and effective spend management and supply chain functions.”
The Internal Revenue Service says it has processing underway on some 400,000 claims for the Employee Retention Credit, representing about $10 billion of eligible claims.
Work on the claims for small businesses and others is ongoing as the agency continues to wade through claims from the complex — and at times misused — pandemic-era credit. A significant number of the ERC claims came in during what the IRS calls “a period of aggressive marketing” by promoters, leading to a large percentage of improper, ineligible claims.
“In recent weeks, the IRS has made substantial progress in separating eligible claims from the wave of ineligible claims that have come in,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a statement, “and we continue working to refine our models to identify more eligible claims.”
The claims being processed include eligible and ineligible claims, with most being processed for approval. Checks are being mailed for eligible claims with refunds.
The ERC program increasingly became the target of aggressive marketing well after the pandemic ended. Some promoter groups called the credit by another name, such as a grant, business stimulus payment, government relief or other names. The IRS is continuing to work denials of improper claims, intensifying audits and investigating potential fraud and abuse.
Last month, the agency opened a
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