Who Keeps Clients . . . And How?

Answer: Service, service, service. Cost ranks second.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Landing a client is one thing — and not always an easy thing — but keeping a client is another.

A client is a valuable thing. In fact, Bay Street Group Research and Advisory Service estimates that three-quarters of CPAs typically keep a client at least five years. And one in three keeps clients an average of at least 10 years.

Not bad! Considering that half of the finance managers we’ve talked to wouldn’t recommend their CPA firm to their closest friends. The apparent stability of the client-auditor relationship is pretty impressive.

But the contradiction of statistics leaves us wondering whether a lot of clients wouldn’t mind hooking up with a new CPA firm. A lot of them complain about auditors who come in for the audit but never offer much else — no advice on how-to, no warnings of new accounting and taxation rules, no consultations on financial efficiency, no clues on how to run a better business. READ MORE →

CalPERS dumps Deloitte for local firm

Macias Gini & O’Connell LLP scores a coup, reports the Sacramento Business Journal.

The nation’s largest public pension fund, with $210 billion in assets switched from Deloitte, the world’s second-largest accounting firm, which had had the previous five-year audit contract. Macias Gini & O’Connell specializes in public-sector accounting and auditing and already audits dozens of public pension funds, including the Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System. The company is in its second year auditing the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, the nation’s second-largest public pension fund, with more than $140 billion in assets.
READ MORE →