Steve began his career in 1996 with a large regional accounting firm in Northern California. He became the first Junior Accountant to be promoted to Senior Accountant after only two short years of service in the firm’s then 40+ year history. Steve accomplished this by demonstrating an ability to learn and apply highly technical skills in a short period of time, and to lead and direct in order to achieve maximum results in an efficient manner. For example, Steve developed an electronic template that bridged the firms working trial balance software with Microsoft Excel; this reduced the time to prepare client financial statements by over 75% and eliminating input errors.

Steve stepped into the controllership position with a closely held, local manufacturing company that employed over 200 people and had annual sales of $20+ million in two separate divisions in 1999. Steve’s milestones included: Steve, working with the owners & CEO, was able to turn the business around to break-even within six months, improve cash flow management, and produce a record profit of nearly $1.8 Million the next fiscal year. Steve upgraded the company’s general ledger accounting and financial reporting systems reducing monthly closing cycle time from 16 days to 8 days enabling rapid management decision making. Steve was also a key contributor to the replacement of the company’s out-dated and inefficient manual job cost system with an organization-wide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Job Cost Production Management System using a Direct Machine Interface Technology to provide Real-Time Job cost and production data which resulted in the reduction of material waste by over 25% and production lead times by nearly 50%. This dramatic improvement in profitability and value allowed the owners to sell the company four years later in 2002 to a large national corporation. Steve successfully led the company through the acquisition and merger and stayed on with the acquiring company for two more years.

In 2006 Steve ventured back into public accounting. A significant area where Steve has helped his clients is to take advantage of tax savings they did not know were available to them. In some cases this has resulted in large refunds of previously paid taxes. For example, one of Steve’s manufacturing clients was able to take advantage of Federal Research and Development Tax Credits resulting in a tax savings of nearly $80,000, and California Enterprise Zone Tax Credits resulting in tax savings of over $200,000. In another case Steve assisted a client in amending 3 years of tax returns to claim available depreciation expenses resulting in a refund of over $120,000 in previously paid taxes and generating a future tax benefit valued at nearly $1 million.