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.”
This story is part of
Accounting’s AI revolution not only continued into 2024 but actually seemed to accelerate, as it has now become near impossible to go to a conference, sit in a strategy meeting or even shop for new software without hearing those two famous letters, often preceded by the word “generative” and followed by the word “powered” or “driven.” This might seem rather strange, as around this time last year we were marveling at how far AI had come in such a short time, and yet at the end of 2024 we find ourselves in this place once more as the current generation of AI tools makes last year’s seem almost quaint.
This is why, in our second annual AI Thought Leaders Survey, we asked experts in the field what they thought of the past year. The field of AI is both vast and ever-changing, and we wanted to see what people deeply enmeshed in AI in accounting thought of all the changes they’ve seen this year.
Many noted that AI has gone from being a novelty or an experimental tool in many cases to being a practical, widely-adopted technology integral to daily operations. In this respect, even those who may not consider themselves tech-savvy are now using sophisticated AI tools that would have seemed like science fiction as little as ten years ago. Strategic decision-making, advanced analytics, and personalized client interactions are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to use cases for accountants.
“At the beginning of the year, AI in accounting felt like an emerging trend that many were watching from the sidelines,” said Kacee Johnson, vice president of strategy and innovation at CPA.com, talking about the noticeable shift since then. “It’s no longer just about automation; the conversations have evolved to exploring how AI can enhance advisory roles, improve decision-making, and solve capacity challenges. I’ve seen more professionals embracing AI as a tool they need to understand and leverage, not just something that might affect their work down the line.”
The speed at which AI has advanced this year impressed many, especially its generative capabilities and its application to data both structured and unstructured. In a short time it has transformed workflows, increased productivity, and uncovered new insights their human users had never considered. Meanwhile, the recent rollout of specialized AI agents capable of limited autonomy to handle complex tasks like fraud detection, tax analysis and data reconciliation tells them there’s still so much more to come.
“We have all seen AI advance significantly in the past year, especially in the area of automation of manual tasks. Think about areas like bill pay, invoicing, expense management, financial statement analysis, etc. AI is putting accountants into more strategic roles and getting them out of the trenches in doing the manual tasks. This past year I have seen a number of players in the tax space surface by leveraging AI. Although many of them still continue to be a work in progress, we are going to see AI totally change the tax space and eliminate the massive tech stacks that exist in many firms today,” said Jim Bourke, managing director of Withum’s advisory services.
Of course, all technologies have their risks and AI is no exception. Indeed, as the technology’s presence in firms grows, so too have the concerns about its use. Our experts cited security risks like data breaches and misuse of sensitive information by AI systems, and many were still worried about the accuracy of their outputs given the tendency to “hallucinate” (i.e. making stuff up). But they also raised broader ethical concerns, such as the perpetuation of bias as well as potential job displacement in the short term. Our experts didn’t think AI was going to wholesale replace accountants anytime soon, but some conceded that it would serve to disrupt job dynamics in certain parts of the profession.
“It’s poised to replace certain jobs or at least automate specific tasks within jobs. AI agents will influence particular roles, potentially altering the premium placed on certain skills, leading to some traditional jobs disappearing entirely,” said Prashant Ganti, head of product management in Zoho’s Finance and Operations business unit.
In this, the first of three parts, we look at what our experts—drawn from CPA firms, software vendors and academics all deeply involved in the field of artificial intelligence in the accounting world—thought of three questions:
* How has your perception or impression of AI in accounting changed from the beginning of this year to now?
* What scares you the most about AI today? What is your biggest concern?
* What’s impressed you the most about AI this year? What really got your attention? Both in terms of accounting and overall.
We’ll have more from our experts next week.
Technological competency and outdated provisions are two areas refreshed by
The proposed regulations, if finalized, would amend Circ. 230 “to account for changes in the law and the evolving nature of tax practice.” Among other changes, the proposed regs would remove or update the parts of Circ. 230 related to registered tax preparers and return preparation, as well as contingent fees to reflect changes in the law since the prior amendments to Circ. 230 in 2011 and 2014. The proposed regulations would also revise or eliminate other provisions that are out of date.
The regulations would affect registered tax return preparers, CPAs, Enrolled Agents, enrolled retirement plan agents, enrolled actuaries, Annual Filing Season Program participants, attorneys, appraisers and other practitioners. These regulations propose to:
- Eliminate provisions related to registered tax preparers;
- Classify the use of certain contingent fee arrangements by practitioners as disreputable conduct;
- Establish new standards for appraisals and the disqualification of appraisers;
- Provide rules related to appraisers, including the standards for disqualification; and,
- Update certain provisions.
Additionally, the proposed regulations would incorporate new provisions that require practitioners to maintain technological competency and would clarify some provisions, such as confirming that the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility retains jurisdiction over practitioners who have been suspended or disbarred from practice.
The proposed regs are slated for publication in the Federal Register on Dec. 26.
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