Accounting
The rise of the remote accounting firm partner
When Daren Daiga’s husband had to move to another state for his job, it looked at first like her time with CapinCrouse was over.
Daiga had worked for the Indianapolis-based firm since 2013, eventually growing into a valued senior tax manager who specialized in tax-exempt organizations. She liked the firm, the firm liked her — but then her husband’s job necessitated a move to Dayton, Ohio.
In other circumstances, Daiga would have had to start looking for work at firms in the Dayton area, but CapinCrouse was loath to let an experienced manager go and Daiga herself wasn’t keen on changing employers either. Eventually, they came to an agreement that allowed her to work as a fully remote senior manager, which she did for five years before finally being promoted to partner in 2022.
“To lose a manager who knows the work and who knows the training and who knows [how to] train people and have a big impact, that would have been difficult. … I love where I worked, so I could not imagine working anywhere else and since they were able to accommodate remote workers, even fully remote workers, well before COVID … we were able to make that transition,” she said.
Daiga is a remote partner, a designation becoming more common in the wake of the pandemic lockdowns. Like remote workers in general, remote partners at accounting firms are not necessarily new, but in recent years their numbers have certainly grown. While still rare compared to their onsite counterparts, the remote partner is no longer a novel curiosity but a key part of a changing professional landscape that, increasingly, extends beyond a firm’s local geography. Experts believe they make up about 5% of the total share of accounting firm partners; if one counts those who started as on-site partners and then went remote, the estimate grows to about 10-15%.
These leaders can be found all over the country, at firms big and small, working in a variety of different practice areas and possessed of a wide range of motivations for why they chose the path of the remote partner. Some, like Andrew Pitt, a Buffalo, New York-based tax partner with Los Angeles-headquartered Top 100 Firm GHJ, wanted to change firms and had some very specific needs that, in the end, could only be met by one over 3,000 miles away.
“I knew exactly what I was looking for, so I was targeting this specific position … In looking for firms, [a recruiter and I] decided to look outside Buffalo because we didn’t think we could find what we were looking for there,” he said, noting, “It really was the culture and diversity of leadership I was looking for.”
Tabatha Broussard, a Baton Rouge-based partner at Oklahoma-based Top 100 firm HoganTaylor, was also looking for a specific kind of practice. Having already been a partner at another firm for seven years, the shift to remote work during the lockdowns opened her eyes to the career possibilities. But she didn’t want to work remotely for just anyone— she specifically wanted a firm that matched her own expertise with the energy industry, and found that HoganTaylor was what she needed.
“I wanted the opportunity to work in the field I enjoy, which is the energy industry, and HT’s energy practice is impressively developed, stacked with exceptionally smart professionals serving exciting clients, so it was kind of like ‘check that mark right there,”’ she said.
For Vivian Gant, a partner at Florida-based De La Hoz, Perez & Barbeito, the reasons were more personal: two small children. Unlike other remote partners, she is not especially far from the office, just a half-hour drive, but the way her schedule worked with her family, it was much easier to go fully remote.
“[Younger people] maybe think public accounting is just going in and getting burnt out for a few years so it looks good on your resume, then work for a private company until you die; that is not necessarily what it can be, you can still be a mom, you can still do different things,” she said.
And sometimes people become remote partners without intending it. Tom Corfin, who lives in New Hampshire, was working at a firm in the Northeast when it was acquired in 2018 by Atlanta-based Top 100 Firm Aprio. Having already worked remotely for almost a decade prior, he was well positioned to be a leader when Aprio — which had already been supportive of remote work — leaned even harder into the position during the COVID lockdown. He was officially made partner at the beginning of January 2023. “Once the pandemic hit, I didn’t have to learn to be remote … It took me probably two solid years of figuring out how to turn the switch off, how to adjust internally, how to be outside the office, the whole mentality — most people had to figure this out during and after COVID, where I was already six years ahead of the curve,” he said.
The day to day
The remote partners we spoke with reported that, in terms of their day-to-day work, there are not that many differences between themselves and their onsite counterparts. More of their meetings are online versus in-person but much of the work is the same. This is because even on-site accountants are increasingly serving clients remotely, and even if they’re not, there is still a large degree of asynchronous communication (e.g., asking for and getting specific documentation) that generally does not require physical presence. For instance, Kevin Loiselle, a tax partner with Aprio based in the San Francisco area, noted that the firm’s German clients are handled out of the Atlanta office, which works with them remotely anyway.
“I think from a client perspective, it’s a lot of the same … Our German practice partners are based out of Atlanta and work primarily with contacts in Germany, so [the lead partner] is kind of in the same boat as me. She deals with calls primarily with clients around and in Germany,” he said, adding that his own client base primarily comes from Australia and New Zealand.
Daiga, from CapinCrouse, also said her day as a remote partner does not significantly differ from the day of an on-site one. The main difference is that, as a remote partner at a smaller firm, she does not have some of the office management responsibilities that others do. In fact, she is more struck by the differences between tax partners and audit partners than by remote versus onsite ones.
“Compared to the 20-plus audit partners, we have three tax partners, so not quite as many across the firm and clients. Because tax jobs are smaller jobs, you have more jobs you handle as a partner. But also audit partners who are on site may have some office management responsibilities I don’t have. … Otherwise, I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of difference,” she said.
Similarly, Gant, the DBP partner in Miami, said the main difference between being remote and being on-site as a partner is that it is easier to print things at the office. “The big thing there: I can print things. But that’s really the only difference. But I bought myself a big professional printer recently, so now I have that. There were also free sodas and coffee [at the office], but otherwise it was pretty much the same. I can do anything from my house that I can do from my office,” she said.
Remote partners raised similar points regarding partner meetings. None of them reported feeling especially left out of key communications and decisions among the firm leaders. Many said that this was because the partners would mostly meet online anyway, due to being dispersed among several offices. So while remote partners aren’t sitting in the conference room for partner meetings, neither are the on-site ones typically. Kimberly Hastings, a Colorado-based remote partner for LA-based HCVT, noted that this is largely due to the investment firms made in communications and collaboration technology.
“Technology is an amazing thing, so even when we have monthly partner meetings for various groups — I’m on multiple committees for the firm and I’m our practice lead — a lot of these calls are already happening via Teams or Zoom because you have people in different offices. So I work with partners out in Orange County, Encino, West LA, Westlake Village and southern Pasadena, so even if we were all in the office, we’d still be on Teams calls anyway since we all have different offices,” she said.
Not everything is exactly the same, though: Remote partners say they need to be more on top of maintaining connections than people who are in an office, seeing each other every day. Danielle McGee, a Michigan-based partner for Los Angeles-based Katz Cassidy, said that, as a remote leader who is responsible for managing remote staff, she needs to be more intentional in keeping contact with people, as there aren’t those serendipitous hallway moments in the office.
“Since I came on as a remote partner, we’ve hired a bunch of remote employees and now we have them in Nebraska, Colorado, Seattle and Texas. I tend to do a little more intentional outreach to them because I know if you don’t, it’s easy for someone to not feel connected. I probably do that more than the folks in the office,” she said, though she didn’t want to imply those on-site aren’t doing this as well. “They’re doing more outreach with folks in the office or folks who are local in LA.”
Hastings, the HCVT partner, raised a similar point, saying that as a remote partner she needs to be more proactive in maintaining communications than someone on site, though she also said on site partners also have to maintain contact with people too, so it’s not dramatically different.
“I do find I’m more intentional about connecting with my team because there isn’t seeing someone in the break room or scheduling a lunch. I didn’t want to lose that, because it’s really an amazing team and I want us to keep that … . But I’d hesitate to say that’s different from other partners since my team is spread out so much, so even if I were sitting in my office in Encino, I would still not be in the office with most people on most days,” she said.
Loiselle, the San Francisco-based Aprio partner, also said he had to slightly modify how he fulfills his staff development and coaching responsibilities, since he can’t be in the office all the time, focusing more on several large sessions a year versus lots of smaller day-to-day interactions.
“There is definitely a difference in terms of staff training and development because, obviously, I’m not in the office on a day-to-day basis where someone can just swing by and say, ‘I’ve got a question about this.’ … I do end up going to Atlanta several times a year to lead technical training for wider groups of people who all get together at our headquarters; that is one of the major differences I would see,” he said.
The future
The remote partner has gone from being almost unheard-of to appearing in firms across the country and, overall, those who currently occupy these positions see themselves as part of a wider trend. While technological enablement is one reason, another commonly mentioned factor is the talent shortage. More firms are experiencing difficulty finding qualified candidates in their local geographies, and so are increasingly opening their minds to remote workers who can be leaders in their organization.
“Talent is getting harder and harder to find in the accounting profession and the pipeline is shrinking and our clients are demanding more and more,” said Randy Nail, HoganTaylor’s CEO. “So we’ve got some good old supply and demand economics going on: Accounting firms need to serve their clients, and to do that you have to be open to finding talent in different places and figuring out how to make it work within their culture. We’re already doing that and will continue doing that, and I think other firms will as well.”
McGee raised a similar point by noting the declining number of accounting graduates but also added that there’s an increasing number of retirements in the field as well that is driving the greater acceptance of remote partners.
“Firms need to be open-minded to having employees that are remote. I think our field as a whole has to have trust in our employees to begin with. They have access to Social Security numbers and all sorts of personally identifiable information for our clients, so if we can trust our employees with that, we ought to be able to trust them to get their work done,” she said.
Facing a backlash from audit firms over its proposal to toughen the standards for failing to detect noncompliance with laws and regulations, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has decided to delay action on the standard this year.
The PCAOB
Earlier this week, the PCAOB issued
“Following the recent issuance of staff guidance, the PCAOB will not take additional action on NOCLAR this year,” said a PCAOB spokesperson. “We will continue engaging with stakeholders, including the SEC, as we determine potential next steps. As our process has demonstrated, the PCAOB is committed to listening to all stakeholders and getting it right.”
One reason for the change of plans is that the PCAOB anticipates changes in the regulatory environment under the Trump administration, especially in the Securities and Exchange Commission, which would have to approve the final standard before it could be adopted. The Trump administration is likely to replace SEC chairman Gary Gensler, who has spearheaded many of the increased regulatory efforts at the Commission and encouraged the PCAOB to update its older standards and take a tougher stance on enforcement and inspections. President-elect Trump, in contrast, has promised to eliminate regulations, and Gensler’s push for increased regulation has attracted the ire of many in the financial industry.
According to a person familiar with the PCAOB process, no further action is expected until further consultation with the SEC under the incoming administration can take place.
Questions have arisen over whether the PCAOB might decide to repropose the standard with modifications given the amount of opposition it has attracted. That is to be determined pending review of the comment letters that have been received, as well as a roundtable from earlier this year, along with responses from targeted inquiries from firms in their approach relating to NOCLAR.
PCAOB board members Christina Ho and George Botic were asked about the NOCLAR proposal on Wednesday at Financial Executives International’s Current Financial Reporting Insights Conference, and Ho acknowledged the pushback.
“We’ve heard strong opposition from the auditing profession, public companies, audit committees, investors, academics and others,” said Ho. “The PCAOB has received 189 individualized comments to date on that proposal. This proposal now has the third highest number of comment letters in the history of PCAOB. That did get a lot of attention. Commenters overwhelmingly called for a reproposal or withdrawal of the proposed standard so that that is definitely something that I am looking at a lot, and I also voted against the proposal. I have spoken to various stakeholders, including investors, audit committee chairs and members, and some preparers as well. The question I got asked repeatedly was, what problem is PCAOB trying to solve? And the people I spoke to believe that there have been improvements in financial reporting quality over the past 20 years, and that obviously is consistent with the
Botic noted that the proposal came before he joined the board, but he referred to the staff guidance that had been issued earlier in the week by the PCAOB on the existing requirements.
Last week, the PCAOB
The PCAOB expects it to remain on the docket for 2025 but doesn’t want to try to jam it through this year. However, the PCAOB announced Friday that it has scheduled an open board meeting next Thursday, Nov. 21, on
Accountants are increasingly being asked to deal with sustainability issues as more businesses are called upon by investors to report on how they are dealing with issues like climate change and carbon emissions.
This week, amid the United Nations COP29 climate change conference in Azerbaijan, business leaders have been playing a larger role, including fossil fuel companies, prompting an
ESG standard-setters have also been playing a role at COP, with groups like the Global Reporting Initiative and the Carbon Disclosure Project
Last month, the Institute of Management Accountants released a
“The main focus and the main attention right now in the ESG field is going to compliance, to the reporting parts,” said Brigitte de Graaff, who chaired the IMA committee that authored the report. “There are a lot of rules and regulations out there.”
For right now, those rules and regulations are mostly voluntary in the U.S., especially with the
“In Europe, of course, there is not a lot of voluntary reporting for the larger companies anymore, but it’s all mandatory with a huge amount of data points and aspects that they need to report, so there’s a lot of focus right now on how to comply with these rules and regulations,” said de Graaff. “However, there’s also a lot of discussion going on about whether it should be about compliance. What’s the reason for reporting all these aspects? For us what was really important was that there is a lot of opportunity for management accountants to work with this kind of information.”
She sees value beyond purely disclosing ESG information. “If you use this information, and you integrate this in your organization, there’s much more value that you can get out of it, and it’s also much more part of what kind of value you are creating as an organization, and it’s much more aligned with what you were doing,” said de Graaff.
The report discusses the benefits of the information, and how management accountants can play an important role. “You can use and integrate this in your FP&A and your planning processes,” said de Graaff. “You can integrate this kind of information in your strategy, something that management accountants are very well equipped for, but also to track performance and see how you’re actually achieving your goals, not only on financial aspects, but also on these nonfinancial aspects that are much broader than the E, S and G factors.”
The report discusses how to go beyond the generic environmental, social and governance parts of ESG to understand how they relate to a business’s core operations and make it more sustainable.
Management accountants can even get involved in areas such as biodiversity. “Even though, as a management accountant, you might not be an expert on marine biology and what the impact of your organization is underwater, you are able to tell what are the checks that have been performed on this,” said de Graaf. “Is this a common standard? Is this information that is consistently being monitored throughout the organization? Or is it different and what are the benchmarks? What are the other standards? These kinds of processes are something that management accountants are well aware of, and how they can check the quality of this information without being a subject matter expert on every broad aspect that may entail in this ESG journey that an organization is on.”
ESG can become part of the other work that management accountants are already involved in performing for their organizations.
“Ultimately there are a lot of competencies that management accountants were already doing in their organization, and ESG might sometimes seem unrelated, but it basically ties in into the competencies that we already know,” said de Graaff. “I hope that with this report, we can also show that the competencies that we are so familiar with, that we’ve been dealing with other strands of financial information, that you can basically also use these competencies in the ESG arena. Even though there’s a lot that seems very new, if you are aware of how you can tie that in, you can use the skills that you already have, the skill set that you have as a management accountant, to really improve your risk management processes, your business acumen, your operational decision making, etc. I hope that with this publication, we can also take away a little bit of the big fear that might be around a huge topic, as ESG is now. This is actually just a very interesting and exciting way to look at this kind of information, and we are very well equipped to help organizations navigating through this changing ESG regulation world.”
If you work at a startup company or have startup clients, you know all too well that cash can be tight and hiring and retaining top talent is a challenge.
In response many startups turn to equity compensation to attract and retain top talent without breaking the budget on salaries and benefits. Stock-based compensation also ties employees to the company’s success as they essentially become owners. Employees will theoretically work harder and think twice before leaving if they have a chance to earn a substantial windfall in exchange for taking a below-market starting salary.
Great. But founders and their financial teams must remember that equity compensation is not free — it’s a form of deferred compensation that must be treated as an expense. As such, equity compensation has strict rules and regulations for employers and employees to follow, especially regarding taxes.
Even with substantial financial backing, many private/early-stage companies do not have enough resources to handle complex GAAP accounting and financial reporting for SBC awards. This can be problematic since larger investors or banks typically want a third party to sign off on the accuracy of the startup’s financials. They want assurances that the company is not doing anything fraudulent or failing to follow GAAP guidance. Also, being careless with SBC in your company’s early years can make it very costly and time-consuming to change from non-GAAP to GAAP standards as you prepare for an IPO, sale or other exit.
Setting the table
One of the top requirements is to determine fair market value for the company’s stock through a 409(a) valuation, which is required for tax compliance and necessary before optioning or issuing stocks. Typically, startups will need to undergo the 409(a) valuation once per year and any time after they raise funding. Companies should also provide reasonable guidance to employees about the tax consequences of various types of equity compensation. That’s very important since some employees, particularly young workers, have never received equity compensation before. When restricted stock awards provide ownership interest upon vesting, the 83(b) election allows these awards to be taxed at the grant date based on their FMV — even if they have not fully vested. By making an irrevocable 83(b) election within 30 days of the RSA grant, employees recognize taxable income immediately without waiting for vesting. This strategy can be beneficial if the stock’s value is expected to rise, since it minimizes ordinary income and maximizes capital gains upon sale. However, employees and their advisors should be cautious because taxes paid via this election are non-refundable if the RSA does not vest, or if its value declines. Generally, paying tax upfront is advantageous when the stock’s value is lower.
Five things that founders and financial teams often overlook regarding equity compensation
1. Being too generous: Founders might want to understand various types of share-based payment awards, such as stock options, restricted stock awards, restricted stock units, etc., that best align with the company’s expected growth and strategies. They might unintentionally give out too many shares in employee equity plans without taking into account long-term equity dilution. Without careful planning, founders could inadvertently allow employees to receive more financial benefits than the company planned for in a liquidity event. Also, the founders might not have enough shares to give up in later rounds of financing.
2. Vesting criteria too easy to meet: Share-based payment awards come with various vesting conditions, with a plain vanilla plan being a four-year service vesting requirement without other performance conditions or without taking market conditions into account. Founders and their financial teams may want to provide employees with additional conditions if the vesting conditions are easy to achieve. Otherwise, key employees might leave the company much sooner than expected. I’ve found over my career that the easier the vesting conditions, the less motivation employees tend to have to perform at a high level and attrition rates rise.
3. Vesting criteria too aggressive: Conversely, if the employer wants to make vesting more stringent or restrictive, it can add conditions such as EBITDA targets or IPO/change in control, which are considered performance conditions, or multiple of invested capital, which is a market condition. Stock-based compensation awards serve as incentives. Vesting conditions should be challenging enough to drive employees toward meaningful, but not unrealistic, achievement. If vesting goals are set too high, the awards may lose their motivational effect, working against their primary purpose of aligning employee efforts with company success.
4. Inconsistent record keeping: The executive team sometimes underestimates the amount of effort required to maintain legal documents, the cap table, vesting and exercising schedules. Good recordkeeping is crucial when the company goes through financial statement audits or financial due diligence. Without proper recordkeeping, financial statement audits and due diligence processes can be significantly prolonged. This can trigger higher audit and diligence fees, delays in closing the transaction, and even risking deal termination or substantial penalties (see the cautionary tale below).
5. Tax implications: The founders might overlook potential implications of income taxes and payroll taxes varying depending on the types of awards. Understanding the main differences between incentive stock options and non-qualified stock options is essential when creating equity incentive plans.
Accounting challenges regarding common forms of equity compensation
Startups frequently use equity compensation (e.g., stock options, restricted stock units, etc.), but many fail to grasp its accounting complexities. ASC 718 requires companies to recognize the FMV of these awards as an expense. Complexities arise with performance-based or market-based conditions, which require careful classification and tracking. Accountants must ensure that awards (liability or equity) are properly classified and they must monitor modifications that could lead to additional expenses.
Misclassifying these instruments above can result in misstated financial statements, which is especially problematic during audits or liquidity events (e.g., M&A, IPO). Failing to account properly for embedded derivatives or misclassifying equity and liabilities can lead to noncompliance with GAAP, potential penalties and loss of investor confidence.
Cautionary tale
One of our startup clients initiated their first financial statement audit to prepare for a Series A capital raise. They expected to complete the audit within eight to ten weeks, which is typical for companies with adequate staffing and strong internal controls. However, the audit dragged on for over a year due to significant recordkeeping issues. The company lacked a cap table, despite issuing multiple classes of preferred equity, stock options, restricted stock units, restricted stock awards, convertible debt, SAFEs and warrants. Some equity awards had even been granted without board approval. Reconstructing the cap table required extensive time from the management team, causing substantial delays.
After completing the cap table, the company engaged a third-party consultant to determine the appropriate accounting treatment for these equity instruments under ASC 718, ASC 480 and ASC 815 — a process that took additional weeks. In the tighter capital environment of 2022 to 2024 marked by higher interest rates, the company ultimately failed to secure the necessary working capital to sustain operations. Furthermore, due to poor recordkeeping, the company was required to amend prior-year tax returns, resulting in hefty penalties.
This case underscores the importance of maintaining accurate records and clear internal controls to avoid costly delays and risks during audits and capital-raising efforts.
Equity compensation is one of the most important tools startups have for preserving cash flow and retaining top talent. As a CPA, you play a critical advisory role in ensuring the company accounts for these instruments correctly, reducing the risk of costly restatements and ensuring compliance during future liquidity events. The startup culture runs fast and furious with constant pivots and reiterations. Don’t let proper treatment of equity compensation get lost in all the excitement. That’s where you come in.
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