Do NOT hire this accounting company. I have had an absolute nightmare for the past 4 months and my business almost went under! I hired CAL Accounting to handle our bookkeeping, filing sales tax, payroll, and filing payroll tax. We hired them at the end of August 2022 because we wanted to support a local company. At the beginning of this year, 2023, I asked where our monthly P&L statements were as I had only received one. In January we were told that our 2022 taxes were going to be filed on time. It got to the end of March and I asked and was told they were almost done. In April I received a late penalty fee saying that our sales tax hadn't been filed. I called CAL Accounting and emailed trying to get answers. I was told Government sometimes falls behind and it was done. I then received late penalty notices saying that we hadn't paid our payroll tax. In mid-May I had over $24,000 come out of my account. I asked CAL Accounting what it was for and didn't receive an answer. So I had to call around and spend hours on the phone with different departments trying to figure out what was going on. The big withdrawal was for our April payroll tax. I then found out our 1st quarter payroll taxes were not paid and we owed over $62,000. We are not a big business so these were very high amounts for our company to have to deal with. When I finally got in touch with Chris he told me that because we wanted to pay our employees by bank deposit that it had to go through ADP and that ADP made an error in not filing our payroll taxes. I didn't pay ADP to file our taxes... I paid CAL Accounting to file our payroll taxes. CAL Accounting should have ensured that things were getting filed. I had not one but two penalties for our sales tax that I had to fill out a form to ask for relief due to our accounting company not filing. This has been an absolute nightmare. CAL Accounting invoices total over $15,000 for services. They deducted chunks from our bank account which didn't match invoices - they weren't done on a monthly basis. I had complained about that. Usually, a company sends you an invoice each month and that amount is withdrawn from your account or you pay it online. You also receive a P&L statement each month. I couldn't receive answers. CAL Accounting said that they turned everything over to our new accounting company yet there are no monthly P&L statements, besides the one. I was told by the new accounting company (H&R Block) that there were 30-50 transactions that were not categorized for every month in 2022. They have had to fix errors. Nothing had been done for 2023 yet it was on the last invoice that they gave to us. They have charges for work done but yet the work isn't done or wasn't handed over and we've paid for those services already. We are now having to pay another company money to fix all of this and get our 2022 taxes filed. I do 5 jobs in my business and this has taken up SO much of my time. I had to spreadsheet a lot of banking information as well as list all of our checks in a spreadsheet just to try and help the process with H&R Block so we can get filed. The lack of response from Chris Locke and his company just isn't acceptable. I was left in the dark about what was going on. There is no worse feeling that not knowing what is going on and trying to make sure that the money you owe the Government is getting paid!!!! It's a very scary feeling and our business really suffered because of all the mistakes and negligence. It used a lot of my time trying to fix everything. I was checking online for tax filings and was asking questions and was told everything was okay. Then I was asking again and nobody was answering the phone or emails for weeks!!! You hire a professional company because you want things done correctly and timely for your company. read more
