One of Tony Ganze’s little pleasures in life is watching hot air balloons as they drift through the Napa Valley. Of course, he also loves the ocean and snow skiing, which is partly why he moved to California from the Midwest a couple of decades ago. Originally from Illinois and a graduate of Northern Illinois University, Tony had worked briefly at a regional firm near Chicago before feeling the call of the West — the mountains and the ocean, the opportunity to start fresh.
After riding out several acquisitions and mergers while with a Napa accounting
firm he had joined in the 1980s (and that eventually was being phased out by
KPMG), the CPA finally bought out the practice and renamed it Ganze
& Company (www.napacpa.com).
The practice offers general accounting, assurance and tax services, with specialties
in advisory services to real estate and construction entities. Tony also provides
educational seminars to real estate brokers.
Over the years, and with the help of partners Karen Stuart, Bill Suh and Jeremy
Witt, the practice has grown from four people to a full-time staff of 18 plus
interns from nearby Pacific Union College, and a very broad client base that
includes closely held entities with revenues ranging from $1 to $100M. The practice
has traditionally been an early adopter of accounting and workflow technologies,
including going completely paperless on its 1040 clients and using document
management software and saving documents into PDF. “Going paperless has
been less about the technology and more about retraining people and getting
them into the right mindset, and that means both our staff and our clients,”
Tony said. For the next tax season, the firm is considering more online services,
including using GoToMeeting Assist for write-up services, as opposed to needing
to transfer files on a disk or via e-mail.
Plus, all of the office’s 18 PC workstations have multi-screen monitors. The firm received a Productivity Score of 419, which underscores the firm’s excellent adaptation of technologies that enhance its productivity and efficiency. Accounting firms can get their score by taking the free Productivity Survey at www.cpatechadvisor.com/productivity.
One of Tony’s favorite technologies is a computer-based 10-key calculator from MoffSoft (www.moffsoft.com). He says that it’s a great program that even provides a savable and printable calculator tape, and includes built-in calculators, rate conversions and depreciation functions, and costs about $19.
Now that the firm is into its second year paperless, the workflow processes the practice has developed have resulted in a streamlined tax season where staff worked little on Saturdays and not on Sundays. Family members were also encouraged to come to the offices for a group dinner a few times per week, which hopefully relieved some of the stress during the season. Staff members also go on a retreat to Mendocino each year after tax season.
Tony notes that staffing has been one of the most challenging aspects to managing the practice, especially as the firm is trying to grow into higher level services. “Client growth is not our goal anymore. In fact, we probably turn away more clients than we accept,” he said. “What we want to do is provide top level clients with the level of service they need. If that actually means fewer clients, that’s okay, too. But the measuring stick is focused on quality.”
In the past 10 years, Ganze & Co. has developed a reputation as one of
the most respected accounting and tax firms in the region, and, in an era when
a few misdeeds have tarnished the accounting profession, that’s important
to Tony.
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