How a 14-Person Firm Operates a Virtual Office

Source: Florida CPA Today

Mark Brechbill, Certified Public Accountants, in Stuart, Florida, has 14 people and is in its 13th year. For most of that time it has been a virtual firm.

The firm provides servers, voice mail, software, billings, and marketing for its employees.

The firm does have an office location for client meetings, file storage, etc.

Most of its people have personal circumstances that make it desirable to work in a virtual environment. Employees generally face a trade-off in which they give up some income in exchange for the flexibility of working at home. The sacrifice of income seems to come from the difficulty of being as productive at home as you can be in an office environment.

Brechbill learned early that you must give up some control to operate a virtual firm. On any given day he doesn’t know who’s working. You can’t be concerned about how much time an employee is spending on various tasks and when he or she is in a client’s office. So operating a virtual firm may not be appropriate for some people.

It’s important to hire people you can trust. Fortunately, CPAs are generally professional and trustworthy. They also must be self-motivated and happy to work alone.

The firm doesn’t use time sheets. Employees are paid a percentage of the fees they bill. Employees provide their own computers, phones, printers, etc. and in exchange receive a larger share of the amount they bill.

The firm uses an external voice mail system that transfers calls to employees’ extensions, usually their cell phones. Calls are required to be returned within a day. One employee lives in North Carolina and travels to the office 4 or 5 times a year.

The firm is now almost completely paperless, and files are accessible from anywhere.

For the complete article, click here and select The Virtual Office from the November/December 2007 issue.

From Florida CPA Today, Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Inc., P.O. Box 5437, Tallahassee, FL 32314, www.ficpa.org.