I own and operate three restaurants in a small mountain town in CA. I was introduced to Swick & Associated when I bought into one of those restaurants. At first introduction the owner and name sake, Eric Swick, made it sound as if the transition from one bookkeeper/ accounting firm to them was seamless and painless. I decided to hire them to handle payroll, bookkeeping and accounting for my flagship restaurant. Initially I was excited to make the switch. I remember one phone call in particular that made me feel otherwise. It was a phone call between several members of the team at Swick. I was already being billed for their services and had asked if there was anything that I needed to do to finalize the transition. Eric assured me that everything was all set. Then other people jumped in. There was still a lot of information that was needed to finalize the transition. At that point I should've realized there was a real disconnect in the organization. I appealed to Eric to try and recoup some of the monthly fee that I had already paid due to the fact that the company was not ready to start their services. Eric agreed that I should see a refund of 50% for that month. I felt ok with that. However, what I saw was a 50% increase in my monthly charge with no explanation. My bill went from $795/ month to $1196/month.
Part of the agreement between our businesses was that Swick would provide monthly financials for me to review. Profit and loss statements, General ledgers, Statements of Cash Flow and things of that nature. Three months into our relationship I still hadn't received anything. When I brought it to their attention they jumped on it and sent me something. Unfortunately it was wrong. What do I mean by that? Well for 5 years I was running certain Cost of Goods and upon quickly looking at the financials I was given, it was easy for me to see that those numbers were different from what I had been operating. I keep track of everything on separate spreadsheets so it was easy for me to compare. This is when Traci Sailor, the Vice President, jumped in. She reassured me that she would handle everything. She worked for a few weeks to correct things. She did find that many invoices were either double entered or coded to the incorrect account. She was able to make a few corrections but still not able to fix everything. When I asked her about the things that were still incorrect she suggested that I was incorrectly doing the bookkeeping for 5 years. I had a hard time believing that.
There were also several issues with their payroll services. One issue in particular stands out was the time they paid a past employee that hadn't been employed for almost a year. How did that happen? Every pay period you send them payroll reports. They ran payroll off of those reports. This one particular time they did something wrong and paid an employee that wasn't on the payroll report and didn't pay one that was. We were able to solve the issue but it was a unnecessary headache.
I could list other issues but I think the message is clear. I received poor service and there seems to be a disconnect or lack of care somewhere in the organization. I eventually decided to part ways with Swick & Associated Inc. I would not recommend their services in any capacity nor would I ever use them again. read more
