YOUR LOCAL ACCOUNTING AND TAX EXPERTS

Last April, ARCC Consulting threw a party to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of its founding. Team members gathered with clients, some of whom have been with ARCC since the beginning, to mark 10 years of ARCC’s client focused, accounting services to individuals and businesses.

Before starting ARCC, Patel, a CPA who also holds an MBA, worked in corporate finance for large companies for almost two decades, but he decided he wanted to focus on small businesses, and he saw opportunities to help them with their accounting and tax challenges.

“I had a lot of people that I knew who were in small business and they weren’t receiving the level of expertise or skills that they needed from an accountant,” Patel says. “I decided to start the firm and focus on a variety of businesses and then we branched out into helping individuals as well.”

ARCC aims to educate its clients on a variety of different areas when it comes to the business, providing, advice on how to interpret their financials, taxes, and how to better operate their companies. If they’re successful, he says, ARCC is successful.

“We don’t specifically specialize in one particular industry. We actually have clients across all type of industries, technology, manufacturing, restaurants, hospitality, healthcare, dentistry, and retail,” says Patel. “What really differentiates us from the others is our customer engagement and customer service. We really go above and beyond for our clients.”

Patel says people have options when it comes to choosing an accountant. Cost may be a factor, but ultimately, it’s a business relationship so ARCC focuses on building relationships with its clients and meeting their specific needs, while educating the client on proper accounting and tax rules and regulations that need to be followed.

“We ask the detailed questions such as what their goals are. Whether it’s a business or individual, we really center on the tax side to help them reduce their tax liability and save them as much money as possible,” he says.

ARCC itself is growing. In 2018 it acquired an accounting firm and added another Lake Forest-based firm in 2020. Patel says the purpose of the acquisitions was to leverage the long-term relationship the firms had with local clients as well as clients nationwide.”

“The way the acquired firms ran their business was very much in line with how we ran our firm when it came to customer service, providing another level to clients that they desire and want,” he says. “We were strategic from an acquisition perspective, as we know the importance of having a local, goto accountant.”

The firm has built close ties to the Lake Forest community over the past five years and is deeply involved in the Lake Forest Day Foundation (a not-for-profit) where Patel sits on the board. With an office downtown, clients can easily schedule a ace-to-face meetings, and the firm is currently revamping its Website and social media platforms to communicate digitally and more efficiently with clients who prefer online engagement and less email communications.

A key value of ARCC is to maintain a diverse and highly trained employee base, and ARCC does not use freelancers to get the work done for clients. Eight full-time employees and two long-time seasonal employees focus solely on the accounting, payroll, business consulting, and tax needs of the firm’s customers.

“We do have quite a few current business clients who are located in downtown Lake Forest, and we really want to be the go-to firm for all the businesses downtown,” says Pam Dervetski, ARCC’s Vice President of Operations. “Some people don’t really know that we’re downtown, so being located downtown is a good opportunity for them to meet us and get to know us.”

Those who visit will learn that while accounting and taxes might be confusing and stressful for people, ARCC can reduce both.

“We always go above and beyond with the information and providing value to our clients with analysis and recommendations— things to do and things not to do,” Patel says. “We remain laser focused on customer service.”

For more information visit arccconsulting.com.