About
Marlene ran the small-business tax group at a six-office regional chain out of the Chippewa Valley from 2003 to 2014. Every January she lost sleep over the same math: 4,400 individual returns across six offices, nine full-time preparers, and three months to land the wall. She tried every fix the profession sold — the national staffing chains with the glossy brochures, the offshore review firms, the software that was supposed to "reduce preparer hours 40%" (it did not). The arrangement that actually worked was the one she kept quiet about: calling retired preparers she trusted and asking if they'd work January through April 15 for a flat weekly number.
In 2011 she quit the firm, took six of those preparers with her as the founding bench, and signed a handshake agreement with two regional chains she'd known for years. By the 2014 season the bench was 22. Today it's 38. It has not crossed 40 and will not. Past 40 the calibration week becomes unmanageable and the review log stops making sense, and the calibration week is the whole ballgame.
We moved into the current office above the hardware store in 2016. The bakery across the way closed in 2019. We still miss it.
Founder · Placement
Former staff auditor and tax manager (fourteen years at a regional firm, seven of those running the small-business tax group). Certified by exhaustion and coffee. Has been told she asks too many questions in intake meetings, which is probably why the matches work. Spends weekends restoring a 1973 Tartan 27 that keeps finding new ways to leak.
Research · Intake
Fifteen years in accounting operations — two stints as a staff accountant, then eight running the back office of a mid-sized ag-equipment distributor — before joining the practice in 2018. Runs the slow, careful part of the work: the phone calls where nothing is being sold, the follow-ups six months after a placement to see if it actually stuck. Keeps two houseplants alive, which is more than Marlene can say.
A seasonal bench is a real thing, not a euphemism. Most staffing firms calling themselves "seasonal" still want the firm on a year-round retainer. We do not. We bill for 18–22 weeks and go quiet the rest of the year, the same way the firms we work with go quiet.
Calibration week is where the season is won. A preparer who runs three sample returns against last year's archive and gets a 20-minute review from the firm's own reviewer is a preparer who closes the season clean. Skipping calibration is the single most expensive mistake a firm owner makes with us, and we say so in writing.
The firm owner writes the check. If the intake call is with an HR generalist, a PE portfolio operator, or a COO two layers removed from the prep floor, we wait until we can get the owner on the line. Nobody else has the standing to scope a busy-season deployment.
No conversion fee, ever. If a preparer and a firm decide to make it permanent after April 20, that's the firm's hire. We'd rather keep the preparer on the bench for next season, but we don't put a clause in the contract that says so.
Bench tenure tracked through the annual October roster-review. The 29% who rotate out each year mostly leave because they retired fully, a grandkid moved closer, or the knees gave up on the Grand Rapids drive. Every one of them still gets a Christmas card.