November 27
November 27, 2007November 29
November 29, 2007
Houma native Michael Bergeron was groomed for the accounting business.
His father Claude Bergeron owned and operated a certified accounting practice in Houma for more than 60 years.
“For me, this was a family thing,” he said. “During college I was majoring in finance, but my dad said I should become an accountant because there were more opportunities available for me. So I did a little homework and it turned out he was right.”
After graduating from Louisiana State University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, Bergeron started his career at a CPA firm in Baton Rouge in 1991. When he passed the uniform Certified Public Accountant Exam in 1992, he returned to his hometown to work for his father.
By 2005, Bergeron was ready to strike out on his own. He started his own CPA firm, Bergeron & Company, LLC, in Houma and Thibodaux. The company offers a number of professional services: financial statement preparation; tax return preparation; tax planning; sales tax consulting; audit representation; and prospective financial statements.
Bergeron initially worked mostly as an auditor but quickly moved into small business accounting, as well as the tax and consulting markets.
Auditing is just as complex as the tax area, he said.
“Auditing is a pretty specialized area and it has become highly specialized with investors investing in Enron and Worldcom,” he explained. “After those events (Enron and Worldcom’s downfall) took place, we’ve had a lot of after-effects that have trickled down to the small practice areas requiring auditors to pay close attention to the new audit rules.”
In Bergeron’s case, his auditing business was primarily used by larger institutions – banks, governments and school boards. Now he caters to small- and medium-sized businesses that have sales from $1.5 million to $30 million.
“My job is more related to getting a company to operate more efficiently and more profitably, creating more wealth for the owner as opposed to auditing,” he said. “I am more interested in what’s going to happen to the company now and in the future.”
As his client roster rose, Bergeron began working with business valuations because the client demand was extremely high. Business valuation is the process used to determine the economic value of an owner’s interest in a business.
It is often used in divorce litigation and to estimate the selling price of a business. It resolves disputes related to estate and gift taxation and to allocate the business purchase price among business assets, according to Bergeron.
“We use the concept for a host of reasons,” he said. “The most common area is when a couple owns a business and they get a divorce. One of the largest items of contention is the business, which is typically one of the largest assets owned by the community. The parties need assistance in determining its value.”
When an owner is selling his business or buying another business, the value must also be determined.
In 2005, Bergeron became a certified valuation analyst. The credentialing allows him to perform numerous valuation assignments for clients. He has also testified in federal and state courts on behalf of several local industries.
Like most industries, technology plays an increasing role in the accounting business. Bergeron said businesses are becoming more automated to meet customers’ needs. “Nowadays, accountants should be highly adaptable to that automation,” he said.
For his part, Bergeron hangs close to the cutting edge. In 2005, he created what he calls a “power account service line,” which basically offers clients a service to maintain their account information via computer.
And when a number of small businesses – without the budget to hire a degreed accountant – were using QuickBooks, Bergeron developed a system where he can duplicate his client’s QuickBooks files and store them on his server.
“Our clients have access to their files from their office desktops,” he said. “We process transactions with degreed accountants handling the data entry. Our clients always have accurate financial data.”
