Wally was recommended to me by a friend, and this is the reason I was willing to overlook all of the red flags that started popping up as soon as we worked together. The first was when I faxed him over a group of W4's for new hires to begin payroll, and a day later he emailed me back and asked me to send them again. It's not a good sign if your accountant can't keep track of sensitive information you're sending them, and I regret not ending the relationship then. The clerical errors were constant, and he would need things emailed to him two or three times before he could get a hold of the fact they everything was in his inbox. Perhaps most frustrating, the man seems to be incapable of writing emails using complete sentences, which means they always needed more follow ups and phone conversations to clarify what he was asking about. Total waste of time, and a waste of the $1,000 retainer I paid him. The clerical errors continued to pile up until he messed up our first payroll, and I had to fire him. Not only did he send out payroll two days late, he completely neglected to mention this to me and let me find out on my own after my employees were all up in arms about their paychecks. When I asked him what had happened he said it was my fault for not sending him a form that they needed. The irony of course would be that Wally and I had spoken the Friday before the payroll was due, and he assured me that everything was good to go, and all I had to do was send him the hours by noon on Monday. He himself told me that all of the paperwork was set up, but it wasn't true and reflects how little knowledge he had of my account when he decided to have a phone meeting with me and give me false and incomplete information. I sent him the hours Sunday night, and never heard back from him until Tuesday afternoon about a missing form. I produced the form in a matter of minutes online, and never heard a peep from him that it would impact the arrival of the money to my employees.
When the money came four days late, he wouldn't take any responsibility for giving me incomplete information, nor would he apologize for lacking the basic courtesy to let me know that he had filed the paperwork late. Had Wally taken the time to act as a professional and review my account before taking a phone meeting with me to tell me everything was good to go, the problem could have been avoided. Had Wally taken the time to do the payroll on Monday morning, as he said he would do, her would have noticed the missing form and been able to get it back from me in time to avoid a screw up. However, Wally is lazy and disorganized and seems to procrastinate about things so instead of doing payroll in time to catch any errors, and keep things moving Wally waited until Tuesday afternoon to put in payroll. And then he had the gall to says that the reason things were going out late was because of a form that I got back to him in a less than five minutes once he made me aware of its existence.
If you are a busy business owner looking for someone you can hire to help you manage tax liabilities and streamline payroll. DO NOT HIRE WALLY. If you are looking for someone to gas light you and waste $1000 then Bottomn Line Accounting and Wally are a perfect match! He really knows how to waste time and waste money. read more