How a public accounting firm saved $70K in fractional tax expertise

About the Client

The client is an award-winning, 50-year-old CPA and financial advisory firm located in Chicago. They serve a wide array of industries from local government to not-for-profit to privately held and publicly traded companies.

The Challenge

As a partner at a well-established public accounting firm, the firm’s clients needed additional work performed. However, they could only take on as much work as staff hours enabled. But clients needed more work completed during busy season than the firm had available hours.

If they hired full-time employees, they would not have enough work for the rest of the year to justify the additional salaries and benefits. They could have hired contract professionals, but they risked compromising the firm’s reputation with a poor quality contractor that could take weeks to find, train, and on-board. Instead, they partnered with Paro, knowing the quality and skill of Paro’s network would form the pillars of an ongoing relationship.

The Solution

White Label Partnership

Partnerships with Paro allow financial services firms to accept jobs when their internal staff hours are filled, allowing companies to make a profit even though they appear to be at capacity. Instead of making the expensive choice of hiring a full-time individual during tax season who may not have enough work to do for the rest of the year, clients can partner with highly-vetted, fractional finance experts. Since the client firm was already at capacity, this additional work translates into pure profit for the firm.

Paro’s extensive network spans the country. This allows us to identify the perfect fit both in technical knowledge and software expertise for every client job. Clients don’t have to risk their firm’s reputation by compromising due to a lack of local talent. Since Paro’s proprietary matching algorithm looks at relevant experience as well as software expertise, clients are able to worry less about on-boarding times and focus more on driving immediate results.

Verified Pedigree

Exceptional skills always matter to Paro’s clients, but when a firm needs to hire outside talent to cover additional work, that skill matters even more. Because Paro’s network is highly-vetted and accepts only talent of preeminent caliber, the bulk of candidates have Big 4 accounting expertise. This candidate in particular previously worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers, but a large percentage of our talented experts have worked for top-tier public accounting firms like Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG, RSM International, and Grant Thornton.

When clients are concerned about on-boarding time, Paro can find one of these top tier candidates who is familiar with the software the firm is already using. Individuals in our network are proficient in multiple accounting software platforms. This allows us to filter by experience and software expertise so that the best candidates for the client are always put forward quickly.

Paro’s network isn’t easy to join. Our dedicated talent recruitment team takes each Paro candidate through a rigorous vetting process, including an interview, multi-step competency test, and a sample presentation. Only after successfully completing all of these steps do we accept talent into our network.

Turning Cost into Profit

For this particular job, our expert worked 380 hours over 2.5 months. For the firm, that meant zero wasted hours, 100% utilization, maximum profitability, and minimal margins. Because the firm was already at capacity with internal hours, this resulted in pure profit for them.

The Impact

Costs add up quickly. Hiring a new, full-time employee for a technically challenging, time-sensitive project during the busy season is difficult to justify. Especially when salary, benefits, training, hardware, and more raise that hiring expense to an average of $140,000 per employee, according to Robert Half.

By partnering with Paro, the client was able to hire a fractional tax expert for a quarter of the cost, saving over $70,000 in expenses. Paro identified the perfect candidate: someone who could handle tax preparation and review returns, including 1120s, 1040s, and 1120S. Security is critical when dealing with finances, so the candidate accessed the firm’s information through their secure virtual private network (VPN). Together, the firm and candidate executed on a digital process for future remote workers for the firm.