Here is my wonderful and delightful experience with two um, biz professionals.

I hire Julia Fitzgerald CPA on recommendation from the SBDC. Julia Fitzgerald CPA is the most expensive CPA I have ever worked with but I am told that Julia Fitzgerald CPA provides excellent customer service and does more than just plug in the numbers. Not only do we not receive decent customer service we received back a tax return that we could not file.

When my husband went in to pick up our taxes the first week of April he was asked to pay in full before Julia Fitzgerald CPA would let him look at them.

When I looked at them some errors I found:

Julia Fitzgerald CPA had left out auto expenses insisting that leasing an auto didn't get a gas milage deduction. I had to write two emails to her explaining in detail that we weren't leasing our car as it was fully paid for.

Took our Fixed assets that we had section 129'd for the past 3 years and decided to start depreciating them without discussing this with us.

Some other minor stuff but no big deal.

Julia Fitzgerald CPA redid the taxes just in time for me to pick them up the day before our personal taxes were due. When I picked them up I was surprised to find our tax payment had increased rather than decreased as expected (as the auto milage was to have been added in.) There was no explanation as to why this should be and none of her staff could offer a satisfactory explanation. In fact, I was treated as though I was a rather bothersome person for even demanding an explanation. Julia Fitzgerald CPA sat in her glass office and refused to come out to offer what would have been a one minute explanation.

I left the office unable to file my taxes on time. I emailed asking Julia Fitzgerald CPA to please call me asap.

I received a return call 10 days later. Julia Fitzgerald CPA had added in A/P (we are on cash basis) rather than subtracted A/P and when Julia Fitzgerald CPA saw it Julia Fitzgerald CPA had to subtract it twice from expenses. Easy explanation. One minute. No big deal.

While doing our personal taxes my husband found a the Domestic Production Activity Deduction and since we do all our manufacturing in the US we thought this might be something we could take. It is fairly substantial at 6% of net income. When we asked Julia Fitzgerald CPA about it she said she did know about it and it would cost between $250 and $700 for her to do. No apology on Julia Fitzgerald CPA's oversight. Nope. Just an email detailing Julia Fitzgerald CPA charges.

When I took back the general ledger changes Julia Fitzgerald CPA had made and entered them into my own books I was expecting our books to match because when I passed off my books to Julia Fitzgerald CPA I made no further changes to them (learned my lesson on this from a past experience) until I received back Julia Fitzgerald CPA's changes. They did not match up. I called the office asking if perhaps they had not passed on the latest GLs to me or if there were additional changes made that were not on the paper they had given me. I was treated like a leper for asking. Wasting Julia Fitzgerald CPA's time. I was told that no, they had passed everything on and that it was an issue with my books but I could hire Julia Fitzgerald CPA to do our bookkeeping and make them match up.

Jim and I had pretty much decided not to give Julia Fitzgerald CPA another dime and at this point I just wanted some working books back as we had not done any bookkeeping since I sent her my books in Feb. and I needed to move on with a new accountant.

Julia Fitzgerald CPA's office told me I had to go through 1000s of GL entries to find out why it didn't match up. I spent an entire day doing this and I saw that that the books they used were not the same as the final one I had. I didn't know how this could have happened. I didn't necessarily think it was Julia Fitzgerald CPA fault but I needed help figuring out what had happened. I downloaded all the books from my email that I had sent Julia Fitzgerald CPA's office and none of them appeared to be the books that Julia Fitzgerald CPA's office had used. I emailed explaining my situation and asking them for the file they had used to do my taxes off of. Julia Fitzgerald CPA refused to even check out this possibility saying that Julia Fitzgerald CPA had used the final books I had sent. PERIOD. No help trying to figure out this issue. In fact Julia Fitzgerald CPA acted as though I was a pain in the ass (because I wasn't giving her any $) and how dare I ask her for the final file she had used to do our taxes off of. Julia Fitzgerald CPA did offer to send me over the final file they had completed but it would force me to upgrade my books to 2008. Plus, there were errors in the books they had used. Julia Fitzgerald CPA told me if I had given her the wrong books that I could pay $250 for an amendment to our taxes that had already been filed.

On and on and all I wanted was the original quickbooks file Julia Fitzgerald CPA had used to do my taxes off of. Julia Fitzgerald CPA wrote me back that she had wasted more than the average amount of time on my books and to not contact her anymore.

It gets even better.

During our initial meeting Julia Fitzgerald CPA suggested I get my corporate books in order. I thought this quite a good idea. Julia Fitzgerald CPA recommended her good friend Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts. I called Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts telling Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts I would love for him to look over my books. Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts called me back telling me Julia Fitzgerald CPA and Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts had had a talk about my company and that I needed to pay Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts to become an S Corp as I could not lease my building to babywit LLC. I told him that I was set up as a 2 member LLC filing with the government as an S corp. Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts told me that this was not legal and I needed to do the conversion so I agreed and sent Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts the payment for his services upfront as he demanded. I felt odd that Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts and Julia Fitzgerald CPA had had this discussion about what my business should do without me there but I trusted them. After a bit of back and forth with Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts the stuff Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts was saying just didn't sound right to me. I asked for more details as I wanted to understand why I had to be an S corp and that I was unhappy with the whole process of converting and wanted to make absolutely sure that I couldn't just stay a 2 member LLC. Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts told me that I should trust Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts. So, I tried really hard to (because I was on vacation and just didn't have time to do my own research) but it just didn't sound right.

I went back to Julia Fitzgerald CPA and asked her to confirm that this was true as I had read in Nolo Press LLC book that indeed a member could lease to an LLC.

Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts had already filed us as an S corp even after I had emailed saying I just wanted to make sure this is what we had to do.

Julia Fitzgerald CPA wrote a one line email back saying that indeed you can lease to a two member LLC. So, we never had to convert at all. I asked Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts to just refund me my funds for converting us to an S-corp as we did not want to go this route and he had misadvised us and to convert us back to an LLC and then we would hire him back to do look over our books as an LLC.

Today we got a check back from Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts for half the amount saying Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts was keeping the other half for filing us as an S-corp and for having to write so many emails justifying why Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts was converting us to an S-corp. So, now I have to pay a lawyer to fix the mess Phillip Greene from Innovative Investment Concepts made of our company. WOW.

So buyer beware.