Accounting
Inside the 2024 Best Firms for Young Accountants
What’s the secret to recruiting and retaining the next generation of accountants?
It’s a combination of trust, flexibility and investment, according to the 2024 class of Best Firms for Young Accountants (see the list on page 10).
In a professional landscape stressed by an ongoing talent shortage, fostering an attractive firm culture where young talent wants to work and stay is more important than ever. That involves identifying their needs and wants, which differ from those of previous generations.
Young talent wants the opportunity to grow and to feel trusted by their firms, but they also value work-life balance. They want to feel fulfilled by their professional lives and still have the time to enjoy their personal lives.
While each of the Best Firms for Young Accountants takes its own approach to retaining talent, all of their efforts point to the shared themes of trust, flexibility and professional development.
“Basically anything that needs to cater to your life, we’re up for it because we want to keep our good people, and happy people make happy workers,” said talent and engagement coordinator Kendra Anderson at Rudler, a Fort Wright, Kentucky-based firm with more than 60 employees.
Establishing trust
In a shrinking talent market, the search for new talent is shifting further upstream in the pipeline. Many firms are extending internship offers to college students as young as sophomores and beginning outreach programs to high schools.
Building out a robust internship program is a great way to build for the future, according to Holly Feltenberger, director of talent acquisition and retention at McKonly & Asbury, a Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based firm with over 120 employees: “If you don’t have the students coming in to learn and grow, then you’re going to stagnate, and your employees are going to stagnate and they’re going to be, I think, unhappy.”
A student’s internship experience is crucial to their decision to stay at the firm. That means training them and trusting them with real work — not just having them push paper. “We expect you to do the same job,” Janice Snyder, assurance and HR partner at McKonly & Asbury, said. “We’re not putting on a show. We want you to know what it’s really like to work here.”
Meanwhile, Austin, Texas-based Maxwell Locke & Ritter focuses its recruiting efforts on experienced hires with five or more years of experience. By focusing on this demographic, new hires require less training than interns and can hit the ground running, clients are better served, engagement teams can be slimmer, and the firm experiences lower turnover.
One significant application of trust is remote work. At Maxwell Locke & Ritter, “We don’t have a policy. We basically tell people to work what’s best for them,” leading partner Kyle Park said. “We expect you to be available and accessible — not only to people inside the firm, but to your clients — and as long as you are, we don’t really care where you’re at. … We treat everyone as a professional. We’re not babysitting or hand-holding anyone.”
Of the firm’s 138 employees, roughly a third are remote and based outside the office’s locality, another third are remote and local, and the remaining third work a range of schedules from hybrid to fully in office.
Meanwhile, WilkinGuttenplan, based in East Brunswick, New Jersey, has employees working across 11 states. Of its 138 employees, “pretty much everybody” is remote unless they choose to work in the office, said talent acquisition and development manager Fatima Sabir.
“People have different obligations outside of work, so we want to make it easy for them,” Sabir said. “That correlates to working parents, but it doesn’t even have to be working parents — it could be anybody. You could be taking care of your own parents. You could have a dog. Whatever the case is, obviously we know these individuals are important to you, even pets.”
Susan Yohn, director of HR at Brown Plus, a 124-person firm in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, explained the benefits of allowing employees the freedom to work from home: “What it has allowed us to do is retain our team members. … We are able to look outside of our geographical region for talent. The talent shortage is real, so we’re able to bring in great talent from different locations.”
Transparent leadership and upper management is also crucial to fostering a culture of trust that retains young accountants. At Brown Plus, leadership is very visible: “For every new hire that comes in, we have a morning mixer for them where people can come down and talk to them and just say hi. We provide breakfast and just kind of get them more acquainted with people in the firm,” Yohn said.
There needs to be a consistent message between what people hear and what people see. Management must practice what they preach. That increases trust and, in turn, opens the door for candid conversations and feedback.
The Brown Plus Emerging Professionals group facilitates just that. The group is comprised of employees with zero to seven years of experience. Together, they host volunteering and networking events, as well as lunch-and-learns. Once a year, BEP members present their feedback and concerns to the board and offer suggestions for improvement. “Last year, our paid parental leave policy paid for two weeks of paid leave, but they were looking to increase that. So we increased to three weeks of paid leave,” Yohn said.
Groups and committees such as these give young people a stake in the firm without being a stakeholder. Allowing them to contribute ideas and shape the firm fosters a sense of belonging.
Even something as simple as the dress code comes down to trust, too. The best firms all follow a “dress for your day” or “dress to your client” policy. So on days with no meetings, employees are welcome to wear jeans and sneakers, or even shorts and hoodies in some offices. On days they meet with clients, they’re expected to dress to the client’s standard.
“How someone is dressed doesn’t affect how they do their jobs,” McKonly & Asbury’s Snyder said. “When we go to our clients, we dress how they dress. If the client is in suits, we’re in suits. If our client wants us to wear jeans, then we’re going to wear jeans. We’re going to respect their wishes. But when someone’s in our office, it just doesn’t matter.”
Making the investment
Next-generation accountants want their firm to invest in them as much as they’re investing in the firm. That’s why the top Best Firms for Young Accountants all have professional development in common. That can look like reimbursements for continued education, CPE courses and tracking, CPA exam prep, days off for taking the exam, bonuses for passing, and support groups for those studying.
“There’s a lot more to development than just doing a job,” McKonly & Asbury’s Feltenberger said. “There’s a lot more relationally, there’s a lot more emotional intelligence that people have to develop … People don’t realize that.”
At her firm, that looks like interns being assigned a buddy when they start. This is the “baseline,” Feltenberger said. “When you don’t feel comfortable going to your supervisor or direct report, you can ask your buddy questions. You can be a little more open and honest and feel more comfortable.”
Everyone at the firm also receives a direct report — a manager who is personally invested in driving their career and works with partners and leaders to facilitate that employee’s growth — as well as a mentor, whom the employee chooses.
Keeping it real
The focus on mental wellness and enabling work-life balance is perhaps among the most important aspects of what makes these firms the best for young people, who simply want to be treated as human beings.
That means feeling heard and seen. “Bring it on. Tell us what you don’t like,” Snyder said. “I have meetings with younger staff and say, ‘Tell me something you think I don’t want to hear.'”
WilkinGuttenplan utilizes a commitment schedule basis rather than implementing across-the-board hours requirements. Accountants decide on a minimum target of hours worked (billable and nonbillable) that they want to meet through the year. “Do they want to just work that minimum target, or do they want to exceed that minimum target?” Sabir said. “We give them the opportunity to tell us what makes sense for them.”
There, accountants can start their day whenever it works best for them, whether that’s 8 a.m. or 11 p.m., and the firm encourages people to establish boundaries and push back if they are asked to work outside of their set schedule.
“That’s kind of our human approach to everything,” Sabir explained. “When we get on calls, we understand we’re all humans, and it’s a very comfortable environment where you can vocalize and have open communication, candid feedback, everybody truly just understands one another.”
At Rudler, Anderson finds unique ways to plan fun, de-stressing activities for both in-office and remote employees. “Anything that we do in office, I try to make a version of it that caters to the remote people,” she said.
During tax season, for example, they hire a massage company to come to the office, while remote workers get mailed an at-home spa kit. On Valentine’s Day, Anderson took inspiration from nostalgic elementary school years and had employees decorate tissue boxes to collect candy and cards. “Of course one of the guys had to do a beer box,” she joked. “We just try to keep it really lighthearted.”
“Whatever a person needs to flourish mentally, we really try to cater to that,” Anderson continued. “Burnout, we know that’s real. That’s why we do a lot of fun things throughout tax season, like the coffee carts, playing games, weekly bingo, massages.”
These firms also adhere to their core values and make tangible, consistent efforts to demonstrate them.
“We’re flexible. We’re very employee-friendly. By flexible, I mean in terms of working hours — where you work, how you work, that type of thing. Friendly, meaning we want you to live life outside of the office,” Maxwell Locke & Ritter’s Park said. “We have a saying that no success at work is worth failure at home, and you can interpret that however you want it to be.”
“We genuinely care about one another,” Holocombe added. “We care about each other as employees and coworkers, but we really care about each other as people.”
Top 10 Firm Baker Tilly announced plans to acquire West Virginia-based Hayflich CPAs PLLC, in its third deal this month.
Based in Huntington and founded in 1952, Hayflich provides audit, tax and advisory services, with specialties in the wholesale distribution, construction and manufacturing industries.
“Hayflich CPAs has built a strong reputation over its 70-year history, and we are excited to welcome their talented team to Baker Tilly,” said Fred Massanova, Baker Tilly’s chief growth officer, in a statement Thursday. “Together, we will create even greater opportunities for our clients and team members.”
Scott McDonald
The acquisition follows on the heels of Baker Tilly’s intention, announced earlier this month, to acquire both
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a result of its PE deal, Baker Tilly operates in the alternative practice structure that is common with those deals. As a result, the Hayflich deal will involve two acquisitions: Baker Tilly US LLP will acquire the firm’s attest assets, while Baker Tilly Advisory Group LP will acquire its nonattest assets.
“Joining Baker Tilly opens new opportunities for our clients and team members,” said Rob Fuller, managing partner of Hayflich CPAs, in a statement. “We are excited to bring our local expertise to a firm that values strong client relationships and forward-thinking solutions.”
Prior to taking on PE funding, in 2022, Baker Tilly merged in
Professional services solutions provider
The new solution is built around the results of an exhaustive study about the habits of highly effective rainmakers in partner-based businesses, which was eventually published in the
Rory Channer, founding partner of DCM Insights and one of the lead authors of the HBR study, said during his talk that, since the study was completed, he has been advising firms on how to encourage Activator behavior among their own staff, which he said has led to great improvements in business development.
Nuthawut – stock.adobe.com
Laura Saklad, vice president of Intapp’s legal industry group, said the DealCloud Activator solution is meant to encourage the same kinds of behavioral changes, but with AI-driven software versus a consulting engagement. The product, she said, is meant to address two challenges. One is how do leaders influence their professionals to adopt Activator behaviors when they cannot command or control them? The other is how can we give leaders the tools they need to monitor and adapt to AI in a way that works for their culture?
The answer to both, said Saklad, is a concept in behavioral science called “
“Nudges are embedded in the apps we use everyday, your phone may nudge you about your steps or to drink water or to stand up and get out of your seat and move around, whatever it is you are personally committed to you can use your apps and this technology to keep you true to your commitments. The approach focuses on encouraging small incremental improvements that add up over time, and given the size of the firms you all work in, even modest individual improvements can have a significant cumulative impact and that is what we’re going for. Our implementation is called Signals, it behaves like an assistant thinking of you and your practice 24 hours a day without having to go into a dashboard or tech app,” she said.
The solution interface features what is called an Activator Feed that is tailored specifically to the user. It appears similar to a social media feed, but instead of scrolling through posts about people’s dogs or their trip to Italy, users scroll through AI-produced reminders about current clients who could be proactively contacted to discuss a recent tax law change, or notes about changes in a company that night necessitate a talk. During her talk, her Activator Feed first reminded her of tips she received from a recent training session and the need to take quick action when she has time to spare, followed by a reminder to nurture her professional network by reaching out to a client who recently completed an M&A transaction so she can talk about how post-deal integration is going.
“Now, of course, this is good client service, but importantly, I know that clients often need compliance advice after closing these types of deals, and so it is certainly worth checking in to see if my firm can be a further assistance. And once I do that, I can schedule a meeting. I can record that that meeting took place, so I have that and I can reference it in the future,” she said.
The final item was to reminding her to take action to create new value for the firm. Specifically, the AI looked at historical data as well as information about her own work patterns to tell her that a partner at her firm has recently opened an IT engagement with a client she has been trying to figure out how to build a relationship with, which gives her an opportunity to expand the relationship further by offering other services.
“It’s really exciting, because I would not have known this without this piece. I have not met him yet at his new firm, so now I can quickly send him an email or message and suggest that we collaborate on how we can expand the relationship and add more value for this. So that is a glimpse at how the activator experience for professionals can use nudge theory to provide timely, data driven insights that will help partners commit to consistent business development, connect with their professional networks and then create new opportunities for their firms and new greater value for their clients. That’s pretty cool,” she said.
The second problem—how can we give leaders the tools they need to monitor and adapt to AI in a way that works for their culture?—is also addressed through nudges, according to Saklad. The software allows firm management to monitor, fine tune and prioritize how Activator behaviors are deployed in their firm. She noted that managing partners often have had difficulty getting clear insight into how my partners spend their business development time, but technology now enables this level of oversight.
“[In this example] I am very focused on cross-selling, and I am able to see how my partners are engaged with cross-selling behavior and how they are improving over time… I can also see how much time my partners are spending on business development time versus billable work. And again, I can see it over time, and I can save by practice group. And then when I look at the details, I can say, for example, that right now my capital markets partners are not spending as much time on business development as some other groups. And I can make a note that when I next talk to the practice group leader, I can talk to her about how we can best support our partners and others. I can also drill down to see the daily and the weekly cadence of business development time,” she said.
It also has a heat map of which practice groups have the strongest adoption of the desired behaviors, and offers the ability to drill down and identify how specific individuals are performing.
“I can see which partners are doing well and reach out and give them a pat on the back. I can see which partners are slower to change and provide them with additional coaching. And lastly, the most exciting thing, is that the data provided in these dashboards allows me to connect Activator behaviors with revenue generation, and so I really can quantify for the first time the impact to the bottom line,” she said.
Intapp DealCloud Activator is currently only available for law firms, Tom Koehler, Intapp’s global managing principal for accounting and consulting, said in a later interview that there are plans to release versions for other professions, such as those in audit, advisory or tax in the future. He noted that it is not a matter of simply changing labels, as the specific type of nudges the software uses need to be particular to the profession. For instance, in countries that have mandatory audit partner rotation (done to preserve auditor independence), the software could nudge accountants on how to convert turnover into business opportunities.
“When you leave your client you have a lot of relationships. So how do you leverage that, then into business development, into cross selling, so you turn it into more of an asset,” he said.
While a specific date or timeframe was not mentioned for accountants, Kohler said that an accounting-focused version is “on our horizon as a next rollout.”
Checked out; nothing’s free; some days the Bear gets you; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Tualatin, Oregon: Businessman David Katz has been sentenced to four years in prison and three years of supervised release and ordered to repay tens of millions of dollars for conspiring to defraud the United States and filing false currency transaction reports.
From January 2014 through December 2017, Katz, president of Check Cash Pacific Inc., conspired with others in the construction industry to facilitate under-the-table payments to workers. Sham companies were created and used to cash more than $177 million in payroll checks at different Check Cash locations, with the cash then used to pay construction workers with no taxes withheld or reported to the IRS.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars of payroll checks were cashed daily and Katz was aware that at least one of his co-conspirators used a false name and Social Security number. Acting as compliance officer, Katz allowed hundreds of false regulatory reports to be filed knowing they contained the fake identity.
Katz received a 2% commission on each transaction, which, in total, amounted to more than $4 million. He and his co-conspirators prevented the IRS from collecting more than $44 million in payroll and income taxes.
Katz, found guilty in June, was also ordered to pay $44,877,254 in restitution to the IRS.
Trenton, New Jersey: CPA and tax preparer Ralph Anderson has been sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the promotion and sale of abusive syndicated conservation easement shelters.
He worked for accounting firms in New Jersey and New York. From around 2013 to 2019, he promoted and sold tax deductions to high-income clients in the form of units in illegal syndicated conservation easement tax shelters created by convicted co-conspirators Jack Fisher and James Sinnott.
The charitable deductions purchased by clients were derived from the donation of land with a conservation easement or the land itself to a charity, and the deductions were based on fraudulently inflated appraisals for the donated land. Anderson and the promoters promised clients “4.5 to 1” in deductions for every dollar paid into the shelter. In some instances, Anderson and his co-conspirators also instructed and caused clients to falsely backdate documents.
Each year from 2013 to 2019, Anderson and his co-conspirators assisted clients with claiming these false deductions on their returns. In total, Anderson assisted in preparing returns for clients that claimed more than $9.3 million in false charitable deductions based on backdated documents, which caused a tax loss to the United States of nearly $3 million.
Between approximately 2016 and 2019, Anderson earned more than $300,000 in commissions for promoting and selling illegal shelters to his clients. He also claimed false deductions for charitable contributions generated from the shelters that he received as “free units” on his own returns and fraudulently reduced his own taxes on his income from the scheme.
Anderson, who previously
The scheme resulted in more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent deductions and caused more than $400 million in tax loss to the IRS. Fisher and Sinnott were previously sentenced; nine additional defendants pleaded guilty to the scheme, including six CPAs, two attorneys and an appraiser.
Fitchburg, Massachusetts: Former Massachusetts State Senator Dean A. Tran has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release.
He concealed $54,700 of that consulting income on his 2021 federal income tax return, in addition to thousands of dollars that he concealed from the IRS while collecting rent from tenants who rented his local property from 2020 to 2022.
Tran was also ordered to pay $25,100 in restitution to the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance and $23,327 to the IRS, as well as a $7,500 fine and an assessment of $2,300.
Miami: A federal court has issued a permanent injunction against tax preparer Dieuseul Jean-Louis that bars him from preparing or assisting in preparing federal income tax returns, working for or having any ownership stake in any tax prep business, assisting others to set up business as a preparer, and transferring or assigning customer lists to any other person or entity.
Jean-Louis, d.b.a. DJL Multi-Services, prepared returns for clients that claimed, without clients’ knowledge, various false or fabricated deductions and credits, including false charitable and mortgage interest deductions, fake or inflated business expenses, and fraudulent claims for the Fuel Tax Credit and American Opportunity Credit. The complaint further alleged that Jean-Louis falsified clients’ income and filing statuses to increase the amount of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and that Jean-Louis has prepared thousands of returns for clients for more than a decade.
The complaint asserted that Jean-Louis furnished clients with copies of returns that were different from the returns filed with the IRS where the latter claimed a higher refund, which allowed Jean-Louis to retain the additional amount without clients’ knowledge.
The court also ordered Jean-Louis to disgorge $245,275 that he’d received from his tax prep business. He agreed to both the injunction and the disgorgement.
Rumford, Maine: Business owner Jeffrey Richard has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, for evading employment taxes.
Between 2013 and 2017, Richard attempted to evade employment withholding taxes owed by his company, Black Bear Industrial, by regularly using money from the business bank account to make business and personal purchases while making no payments toward Black Bear’s tax liability.
He also created two nominee companies and took steps to disguise his ownership of the companies, lying to an IRS officer that he had anything to do with one of them. The other company did business and had more than $174,000 of business income in 2017, but none of the money was used to pay the IRS. Richard never informed the IRS about the company, and the company never filed corporate or employment tax returns.
Richard, who pleaded guilty in 2023, was also ordered to pay $910,980.37 in restitution to the IRS.
Vancouver, Washington: Unlicensed tax preparer Saul Valdez, owner of a business that sought to assist immigrants with a variety of services, has been sentenced to nine months in prison and four months of home confinement for tax fraud.
He operated Conexion Latina and used such programs as TaxAct and TurboTax to prepare taxes. He led his immigrant clients to believe he was filling out their tax forms correctly. Instead, from 2016 through 2018, he inserted a variety of false deductions and expenses on returns.
For tax year 2017, he claimed false and fraudulent expenses, donations and credits on 36 returns, causing a tax loss of $54,045.
Valdez, who
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