Who said bean counters aren’t risk takers? Not the accountants at Clayton, York & Hopp CPAs LLC.
In November 2009, two former Drury University classmates and their former accounting professor started the firm in the depths of one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression.
“Looking back, it was a risky move,” says partner Brittany Hopp, one of the Drury students.
On top of the economic strains, one of the partners was pregnant. “My husband said, ‘What are you thinking?’” recalls Kailey York, the other student who leaned on their Drury professor, Penny Clayton, to roll the dice on a business dream.
The move appears to be paying dividends.
Clayton, York & Hopp CPAs now handles 200 business and individual tax clients and 10 audit review clients from a shared office at 305 W. Commercial St. The partners experienced 40 percent revenue growth in 2012 and are expecting much of the same this year.
From BKD and KPMGYork, who with Hopp graduated with accounting degrees from Drury in 2008, worked at BKD LLP for two years specializing in the financial, health care and not-for-profit industries.
With a desire for more freedom and greater client interaction, York reached out to her former teacher.
“Penny stays in contact really well with her alums, so I went to her and said, ‘I need a change,’” York recalls. “We brainstormed some ideas and I said, ‘Let’s just start our own firm.’”
Clayton says she was intrigued because she already was handling a few accounting jobs on the side, and the move would allow her to refer potential clients to her business. York turned to another of Clayton’s star students, Hopp, to bring depth to the firm’s expertise. Hopp had worked for two years as an audit associate at one of the “big-four” national firms, KPMG LLP in New York, and completed a research position at the Financial Accounting Standards Board in Norwalk, Conn.
“It was kind of a perfect time for me because I was in a very corporate atmosphere,” Hopp says. “At Drury, I worked on the (Students in Free Enterprise) team with small businesses, and I knew I loved that. I got great experience from the corporate world, but I wanted to get back to the people side of things.”
Clayton, a Certified Fraud Examiner who specializes in fraud investigations when she is not teaching accounting courses at Drury, rounds out the company’s capabilities.
The fraud investigation work led Clayton to develop a relationship with one of the firm’s most recognizable clients. She has worked as an adviser for Branson crooner Andy Williams and assorted companies for years since she examined an issue of uneven books for Williams. Williams died in September, and today Clayton’s firm provides bookkeeping services for his estate, as well as his record company, Barnaby Records.
“I started working with him a few years ago, before we started the firm. Andy developed a trust relationship with me, and I sort of became a personal financial adviser,” Clayton says, adding she also has worked closely with Moon River Theatre and the Williams family, though York largely handles those connections today.
Other notable clients include former television anchor couple Joe and Christine Daues of Granolove and Nova Center of the Ozarks.
The accounting partners offer tax preparation, audits and reviews, fraud investigation, advisory services, payroll and financial statement preparation.
Nonprofit nicheYork says the company is slowly carving a niche within the nonprofit community, and the sector now accounts for nearly one-fourth of its revenues, which the partners declined to disclose.
“We haven’t specifically targeted them, but we’ve found that nonprofits have a hard time finding reasonably priced CPA firms,” York says, adding it held a seminar for nonprofits last year.
Kristin Walker, financial coordinator with The Summit Preparatory School of Southwest Missouri, says the school is one of the firm’s nonprofit clients. In addition to tax preparation, Clayton, York & Hopp CPAs serves about 10 audit clients, including Summit.
Walker says the school’s connection to the company was made through another Drury associate, Kelley Still, a former Summit Prep School board member and director of the Edward Jones Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Drury.
Walker says the school’s most recent audit in August was its cleanest yet, with no negative notes, due to the ongoing oversight of the firm.
“They are very thorough and make recommendations if we need to change anything,” she says, adding the partners helped influence the school’s financial policies by putting controls in place to prevent fraud. “It makes things pretty easy when it comes to tax time.”
Clayton, who holds a doctorate in accounting from Oklahoma State University and coordinates the accounting program at Drury, says several of the firm’s clients come from old Drury connections. The firm also draws from the best and brightest accounting students for internships. This tax season, four interns are busy completing returns in the shared office with walls adorned with art.
In September 2011, the firm moved into the open, brick-and-concrete space it occupies with The Vecino Group, 40 Digits and Burch Insurance from its former locale at Republic Road and Campbell Avenue. Landlord Burch Langston Co. LLC leases to the four companies and provides a shared secretary, kitchen, conference room, and paper shredding and cleaning services.
Clayton, York and Hopp are the firm’s only employees, though they expect to add another full-time staff member this year.
[[In-content Ad]]
