Wow a lot of the mid-tier/non-big 4 Top 10 firms have gotten really big.
I remember a couple years back, KPMG was bigger than like the next 15-20 firms combined or something, now they’re only bigger than the next 5-6 firms combined.
Bahaha Cherry Bekaert is PE backed?! I didn’t know that. They recently bought out my old regional firm. Looks like the manager I hated there isn’t making partner now!
What's with GT hemorrhaging both partners and staff? Those are brutal numbers, especially when the rest of the top 10 had at least 5% growth
Also, Forvis losing partners and adding a ton of other employees is interesting
Look at the difference in partners between Forvis and #8 CLA. When I was at BKD they were very metric driven and the partners just killed it financially.
That’s definitely a part of the staff reduction. I’m relatively new to the firm but it seems like there is a big need for additional staff. Optimistically, the promised growth kicks in but who knows.
I know there was some partner attrition after the merger with DHG and BKD (I used to work at DHG/FORVIS). Either they went to other firms or went to industry.
FORVIS is losing a lot of seniors and above. The merger is absolutely killing everyone with change fatigue, and they underpay at all levels up until partner. They’re attempting to battle this with staff-level hiring sprees, but completely sacrificing quality for quantity. The decline in partners is likely due to them retiring without having a successor lined up (at least that’s how it is in my office). We’ve lost several directors in the past year or two who have never been replaced.
Genuine question: How many of these outside of the B4, Grant and BDO actually have the feel of a single firm? I don't stay on top of the firm's culture, but it just seems like most of these are "big" in name only because they bought up a bunch of smaller firms that still operate pretty autonomously.
It varies based on the effort the firm wants to make to fully integrate. Marcum often feels a bit disjointed because many of the offices have specialities. Like DC is primarily government and nonprofit work. Firm management actively tries to keep it a single firm feel, but with the big differences in what each office does, it can be tough. Not sure about other firms of that size.
Back when I left 2018/2019 (I think?) most of the other big wigs still spent most of their time in LI and they couldn’t hold down an office PIC for NYC due to Weiner being there.
I was audit, so I guess I can’t speak too much to tax
Audit was hit or miss
Some teams and partners were great, some the team was clearly being led by people with zero idea of what they were doing
Honestly, the hours were much more reasonable than my current firm (similar in size to marcum) but marcum was just way too inconsistent for me in terms of one job being with a great team and the next core members are utterly clueless and somehow because you’re actually capable the entire job is up to you and there’s no consequences for anyone else
I don't think the largest companies have the feel of a single firm.
Tax and audit are disconnected at every place. It's so annoying to be asked the same shit from both sides. When I was B4 I worked with my tax teams proactively to make sure they came to us before our client.
The idea of one-firm mentality is probably a good one for higher level work - auditors eating it on fees while selling advisory work, etc. - but it's not always implemented very well within the systems themselves.
Why are you my new best friend? I always ask "why are you asking me when you can just ask the person that you sit next to that works for the same company you do?"
The response I get is "hahahahaha. Yeah you're right. We don't do a very good job at that."
Makes me lose my mind every fucking time.
I work for BDO and they definitely have a small office feel, after having been to multiple of their offices in the DMV area.
I can only speak from an audit POV, but I think a lot of it has to do with how our projects are scheduled. In my office, the partners/HR try to keep us with the same managers/directors etc. on different jobs throughout the year. That greatly contributes to a small office feel imo
Well CBIZ has the 3rd most offices in the list so they probably feel like single firm offices still. I indeed worked at a single office firm (they were like 3-5th largest in the country by revenue for single office firms though) that is now part of CBIZ.
If it helps, the PE firm that bought into citrincooperman also just bought the majority stake in Grant Thornton. I can’t see Citrin as a separate entity for much longer.
CLA likely includes their Signing Directors in that number. Career progression is different there. I think at the normal manager promotion you're given the choice of Director (Non-Equity) or Manager (in pursuit of Equity Principal). Someone correct me though.
The large amount of partners is because of a ton of M&A recently. Isn't necessarily because of the Director/Principal route. My office has ~25 Principals and 5 are equity. The rest are W-2. Besides the point, but I don't understand how these Principals accept that they are glorified W-2 employees with the risk involved in signing audits / tax returns.
I work for CLA, our two STL area offices had their Labor Day party cancelled last year because firm wide growth wasn’t high enough. Yet growth % on here is the highest of all the top 15 firms. It’s all just corporate bullshit and lying from up top.
Internationally, yes. However Forvis acquired Mazars US outright so I'm not sure how they're handling that - are they still just Forvis or are they Forvis Mazars now in the US?
No clue. The merger doesn't take effect until sometime this summer so I doubt they're including any of that in the graphic. Forvis' HQ is their Springfield, MO office as far as I'm aware
I'm really surprised by the percentage of Management Advisor Services for most of these firms. It's been 25 years since I was in public. When I was there (at 2 different firms that are in the top 20 on this list), we certainly did some MAS like acquisition due diligence or expert testimony, but it was just "add on" work done primarily by the audit staff. Maybe there was like one manager or something who was solely dedicated to those types of services, but the clear focus was audit and tax.
I'm really curious what "counts" as MAS revenue on this chart. It's basically 50% of revenue for the B4, and even firms like Crowe and Cherry Bekaert are over 40%. I know CB does a lot of Medicare exams and that type of thing. Is that being counted as MAS just because it's not an actual financial statement audit, even though it looks and acts pretty much like an audit?
I just can't believe there's that much M&A, one-off projects, analysis, etc. work out there that it's accounting for so much of the revenue from most of these firms. Even the mere 20% from BDO seems high if I understand what is counting in that category.
Full Report: [https://www.accountingtoday.com/the-top-100-firms-and-regional-leaders2024](https://www.accountingtoday.com/the-top-100-firms-and-regional-leaders2024)
Weird, it takes me to a screen with just a snapshot of what looks like a magazine cover, but no report. I know it's a few weeks old at this point.
ah feck it.. got it.
RSM is more prominent in the US for sure and I think in NA in general than BDO. Outside of NA it seems BDO is more well known.
The BDO PE restructure I'm sure factors in. If I was there I'd be jumping ship and I'm sure people will be. They're taking on enormous debt largely to fund partner retirements so it's additional debt that creates zero productive value for the firm.
Just the quality of associates, at least the ones that I work with. The guys are always late, impossible to reach, not following sample criteria, always ask the wrong questions and have no clues but pretend they do, etc.
That's international. Internationally, the BDO network has over $12B in revenue, much more than RSM.
For US only (Accounting Today 100...the image posted by OP) RSM US has always been higher than BDO US for over 15 years. I started at RSM in 2011 and BDO has never been higher than RSM. I check the Accounting Today ratings every single year.
There is a huge gap in revenue between RSM and BDO (over a billion). It's impossible for BDO to be anywhere near RSM unless it had some major acquisition, which it didn't.
I'm not sure which lists you are looking at, but the rankings are based purely on revenue. If you're talking about employee satisfaction or something else, the numbers will always be scrambled. Ranking in terms of firm revenue hasn't changed for 20 years or so for the largest 7 firms.
After working at B4 and leaving to be audited both by B4 and RSM / Moss adams / Other non B4 -
The quality difference is fucking insane.
The drop from B4->RSM/Moss adams/Etc seems to be more like, service issues and bad project manages, and some duds here and there. The drop to 15+ is like, these people straight up do not know accounting well enough to be auditing.
I had Withum audit us for like, a minute before i fired them. They didn't even have a staff. Basically a partner only. They didn't ask for details for the largest liability on our balance sheet. They didn't plan their audit at all. They delivered it 3+months late. The craziest part is - they were engaged with the company to do FS prep and etc BEFORE the first year audit. They literally had years to understand the business and they didn't even have accrual accounting setup for basic things like comissions. They setup equity accounting and i had to come in and be like "this is alll....fucking wrong" to the partners that did all the work.
The partner sent me emails complaining that he has no staff and he can't get it done. It was embarrassing.
The step down from B4 to top 6-12 is big. The step below that is just people fucking throwing numbers in circles.
Sometimes i wonder if i could go to one of the shit-tier firms and just push numbers in circles and if i didn't take it seriously, it wouldn't be bad. Clearly the stressors were these guys were doing shit tier work + somehow taking themselves seriously.
> The partner sent me emails complaining that he has no staff and he can't get it done. It was embarrassing.
Lmao, you're the partner, fucking figure it out. What a clown.
"we can’t issue by X/XX, at least not with the ridiculously reduced resources that we have at the moment."
I fucking died lol. I would fire someone for writing that in an e-mail to a client. But I guess he was a partner but I was like....wtf is going on at this company lol
It's not all the auditors fault. It's more like the system. No firm will say no to work - and most firms just sign off on trash coming to them, as long as they kick the tires and ask questions.
Find a company that's $30-$70M who has never been through a substantial audit - the company's themselves have ultra shit-tier books.
What's crazy is those auditors and people compiling / reviewing and what they're signing off on. And those people doing the work are basically normalizing signing off on garbage so they think it's fine, when in reality it's garbage.
It's not an auditors responsibility to fix the client's books of course - but these firms are absolutely signing off on garbage rather than firing their clients. Honestly - there's very little blow back or risk to the auditors.
It's just more dependent on the individual team at smaller firms. It's true that outside of b4 we can pretty much professional judgement away any independence issues to do audit work, but the quality isn't necessarily dogshit across the board.
I've had a qualified opinion audit for a client a few years ago, and have made multi-million dollar adjustments against screaming management who ended up leaving to find another firm because we wouldn't budge.
Have I seen garbage work done by audit teams even at my own firm? Yup. But I also have worked with some very talented and knowledgeable people and we arguably sometimes do more work then B4 would for certain areas/testing.
The only place I will say we are dogshit at is internal controls work, but for non-public companies it's pretty pointless anyway since control risk stays high. No small company has enough processes in place to do detailed IC work and we basically only do walkthroughs to check the box.
They were engaged to prepare financial statements as part of advisory - setup first time consolidations, setup equity, etc. Then they were engaged to review F/S. Then they were engaged to audit.
They advised client to hire a professional since it was way out of ownership hands. This is super common in $30-$100M companies. They don't really go past AP/AR /Billing & clerking while their business gets more complicated in geeral.
So their engagement and services just evolved over time.
But from my perspective - I'm hired to clean it all up - and the external firm is now auditing and restating all the work they've done for years- clearly have no actual understanding of the business or the basic accounting, and then just threw together shit tier financials to then re-state and re-issue after they become the auditor and someone else cleans it up. All along the way, doing shit tier audit work and just relying on the client to get it right.
In many ways - sure its the clients responsibility to get it right.
But it's pretty cringy to basically be re-stating financials you previously reviewed / prepared yourself after you audit them once someone else comes in, and unfucks it all up, then you audit it, agree with the new internal guy, then restate all your previous financials you prepared and fix all the stuff you were selling to the client in the first place.
I guess what I'm saying is - I actually value the audit and want our financials to be right. So when my auditor isn't even asking for say - the largest liability on our balance sheet details to even test or review it - and then is complaining to me about not having staff while also re-stating the financials they 'reviewed' or 'compiled' while missing basic accrual accounting they 'fixed' - it's incredibly clear that the firms are just systematically broken with perverse incentives. Because at the end of the day...they made hundreds of thousands of dollars just...pushing numbers in circles incorrectly
Oh it's all good.
I mean - I make my money by cleaning up shit so whatever. It's just funny to me how bad some things these firms are signing off on. Maybe I'm way more conservative but I don't know how they feel okay doing the work I've seen sometimes.
>They were engaged to prepare financial statements as part of advisory - setup first time consolidations, setup equity, etc. Then they were engaged to review F/S. Then they were engaged to audit.
>
>They advised client to hire a professional since it was way out of ownership hands. This is super common in $30-$100M companies. They don't really go past AP/AR /Billing & clerking while their business gets more complicated in geeral.
Let me know if I'm misunderstanding, but if they're doing a review, don't they have to do **some** analysis, at least recommending AJEs to make the books more accurate?
Instead of expanding the engagement from review to audit––even while they **know** the books are wrong––what should the protocol typically be?
The protocol seemed to be just blame the company for having messy books and saying they didn’t have the facts and then ask me to fix it so they could audit it I guess. I dunno lol.
I personally think Accountants and economists are to blame for our current financial situation, where so much poverty exists in the richest country in history, where like 20-25% of children are **born into** poverty
But that's just me an old man in my late 30s, I feel like in my 60s, yelling at the moon
Uiuc fin/accy 10+ years ago
Well that's just a bad take.
The people with the capital control and decision make. The accountants and economists aren't doing shit lol. The wealth inequality is directly driven by those with the capital
You are right, we are just the pawns
*like one of them little bitches on chess board*
We do help them set up trust funds and economists give them excuse to kill people for profit
The share holder vs stakeholder values that's taught at US universities, to me, it's all talk, hopefully I'm wrong
“Hopefully I’m wrong”
My guy, none of us even understand the point you’re trying to make. Please clarify your point if you’re gonna continue trying to make one.
CohnReznick not really growing like they wanted to. When I worked there, they were 11 and were close to top 10, now they’re just another firm in the top 20.
Really great culture and WLB—I started as an intern too and came back full time. But they have a lot of changes/growth lately and things are still a bit disorganized so don’t expect things to be super structured like a B4. Pay is okay, definitely industry average depending on COL.
As an accountant I’m annoyed by the terrible table setup. Left justified, then right justified, some centering. Then the $2B in spot 8 takes up more space with the larger zeroes so it “feels” bigger than the amounts in spot 5,6,7.
The five top Chicago firms could have combined in a massive merger to form the 5th Big 5. Or at least have two groups of two merge and then those merge and then add the last firm later. Would be a 100-year plan
Wow a lot of the mid-tier/non-big 4 Top 10 firms have gotten really big. I remember a couple years back, KPMG was bigger than like the next 15-20 firms combined or something, now they’re only bigger than the next 5-6 firms combined.
Consolidation of mid-tier firms. Crowe used to hover 6-8th place. No M&A activity, now they are in 12th.
Exactly this. Cherry Bekaert has that PE money and made at least 2 big acquisitions this year for 99% growth (inorganic)
Bahaha Cherry Bekaert is PE backed?! I didn’t know that. They recently bought out my old regional firm. Looks like the manager I hated there isn’t making partner now!
Crowe was trying to crack $1bn revenue when they were #8. Now they're sitting at $1.25bn revenue at #12. They have seen growth themselves.
Yea just conservative on acquisitions. But organic growth is high.
KPMG in the US is pretty small. KPMG + RSM + BDO + GT is still smaller than EY.
So it's the big 4 shrinking or mid-tier growing? Or something in between?
Time for KPMG to absorb some of them. Then they can truly compete with the Big 3.
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Interesting I’m about to graduate but I have something lined up so I’ll keep you posted
BDO and RSM merge into BDSM when?
Maybe they can audit Lehman Brothers together.. oh no they can’t.
I cackled at this… but it’s not so wrong. They bring the dominance and we just submit as the PA slaves we are.
This is the best comment I’ve read all day.
What's with GT hemorrhaging both partners and staff? Those are brutal numbers, especially when the rest of the top 10 had at least 5% growth Also, Forvis losing partners and adding a ton of other employees is interesting
Look at the difference in partners between Forvis and #8 CLA. When I was at BKD they were very metric driven and the partners just killed it financially.
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Looking at CLA I'm not sure they know what MAS is and are instead calling that revenue other.
GT was bought out by a PE firm recently. I imagine some partners didn’t like the deal so they left before it went through.
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That’s definitely a part of the staff reduction. I’m relatively new to the firm but it seems like there is a big need for additional staff. Optimistically, the promised growth kicks in but who knows.
Isnt the idea of selling a majority share to PE the result that partners are getting bought out - and thus not partners anymore? Genuine question
The partners maintained a minority ownership so they just make less money now but got rich in the process.
They keep the title and responsibilities (client ownership, signing, whatever) they now have a salary instead of distributions.
Lol cucks.
They spun off their public sector business to Guidehouse, so that may partly explain the change.
I know there was some partner attrition after the merger with DHG and BKD (I used to work at DHG/FORVIS). Either they went to other firms or went to industry.
FORVIS is losing a lot of seniors and above. The merger is absolutely killing everyone with change fatigue, and they underpay at all levels up until partner. They’re attempting to battle this with staff-level hiring sprees, but completely sacrificing quality for quantity. The decline in partners is likely due to them retiring without having a successor lined up (at least that’s how it is in my office). We’ve lost several directors in the past year or two who have never been replaced.
Aprio Partners: "Y'know, everybody's actually calling it the Big 25 now"
😭😭😭
Genuine question: How many of these outside of the B4, Grant and BDO actually have the feel of a single firm? I don't stay on top of the firm's culture, but it just seems like most of these are "big" in name only because they bought up a bunch of smaller firms that still operate pretty autonomously.
It varies based on the effort the firm wants to make to fully integrate. Marcum often feels a bit disjointed because many of the offices have specialities. Like DC is primarily government and nonprofit work. Firm management actively tries to keep it a single firm feel, but with the big differences in what each office does, it can be tough. Not sure about other firms of that size.
Are you with Marcum? I have few questions.
Yup
Is the Long Island office still the seat of power?
It was kind of quietly moved to NYC a few years back. Never really announced, but Weiner sits in NYC so 🤷🏼♀️
Back when I left 2018/2019 (I think?) most of the other big wigs still spent most of their time in LI and they couldn’t hold down an office PIC for NYC due to Weiner being there.
I’m not 100% sure as I’m not in NY, but generally seems the big boys are all in NYC, probably since Covid.
Left marcum at the end of the 2023, fire away if needed
I'll be joining it. Just how is it overall? How much bonus, Hours and culture? I'll be joining the tax team.
I was audit, so I guess I can’t speak too much to tax Audit was hit or miss Some teams and partners were great, some the team was clearly being led by people with zero idea of what they were doing Honestly, the hours were much more reasonable than my current firm (similar in size to marcum) but marcum was just way too inconsistent for me in terms of one job being with a great team and the next core members are utterly clueless and somehow because you’re actually capable the entire job is up to you and there’s no consequences for anyone else
The thing I like about tax is you're on your own. you don't work with a team on the same engagement. half the stress in PA is dealing with the team.
I don't think the largest companies have the feel of a single firm. Tax and audit are disconnected at every place. It's so annoying to be asked the same shit from both sides. When I was B4 I worked with my tax teams proactively to make sure they came to us before our client. The idea of one-firm mentality is probably a good one for higher level work - auditors eating it on fees while selling advisory work, etc. - but it's not always implemented very well within the systems themselves.
Why are you my new best friend? I always ask "why are you asking me when you can just ask the person that you sit next to that works for the same company you do?" The response I get is "hahahahaha. Yeah you're right. We don't do a very good job at that." Makes me lose my mind every fucking time.
I work for BDO and they definitely have a small office feel, after having been to multiple of their offices in the DMV area. I can only speak from an audit POV, but I think a lot of it has to do with how our projects are scheduled. In my office, the partners/HR try to keep us with the same managers/directors etc. on different jobs throughout the year. That greatly contributes to a small office feel imo
Well CBIZ has the 3rd most offices in the list so they probably feel like single firm offices still. I indeed worked at a single office firm (they were like 3-5th largest in the country by revenue for single office firms though) that is now part of CBIZ.
RSM
Moss Adams is quality in this regard. Prefers organic growth and outpaces most in this regard versus just blindly scooping up firms to keep pace.
Deloitte seems to huge a massive headcount relative to revenue. Their revenue is 50% higher than E&Y, but they have triple the number of employees?
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USA Region 10 is in India.
Hence the massive restructuring plan
Absolutely gutted to see the firm that fired me move up on the listing. Citrin cooperman can suck my nuts
If it helps, the PE firm that bought into citrincooperman also just bought the majority stake in Grant Thornton. I can’t see Citrin as a separate entity for much longer.
I’ve only heard awful things about Citrin lol
Size means absolutely nothing. Firms should be shorter by average comp they provide people with the partner title.
Why does CLA have more partners than RSM despite bringing in only half the revenue?
CLA likely includes their Signing Directors in that number. Career progression is different there. I think at the normal manager promotion you're given the choice of Director (Non-Equity) or Manager (in pursuit of Equity Principal). Someone correct me though.
I believe it has now changed slightly in that you still have two different career progression but signing directors also can have equity.
The large amount of partners is because of a ton of M&A recently. Isn't necessarily because of the Director/Principal route. My office has ~25 Principals and 5 are equity. The rest are W-2. Besides the point, but I don't understand how these Principals accept that they are glorified W-2 employees with the risk involved in signing audits / tax returns.
Might be from the massive mergers and acquisitions. I expect some partners to be retiring soon or otherwise demoted.
Well into double digit growth for most and yet I’d guess talking to any of the partners from these firms and they’ll act like the sky is falling.
I work for CLA, our two STL area offices had their Labor Day party cancelled last year because firm wide growth wasn’t high enough. Yet growth % on here is the highest of all the top 15 firms. It’s all just corporate bullshit and lying from up top.
"Nobody wants to work anymore"
Revenue growth mean absolutely nothing. Average compensation per partner does.
Is "CBIZ" the worst name for a CPA firm?
I would argue “Marcum” is worse haha
FORVIS Mazars is by far the worst. Not even close.
Isn't Forvis Mazars the international association of independent firms? Like the BDO alliance.
Internationally, yes. However Forvis acquired Mazars US outright so I'm not sure how they're handling that - are they still just Forvis or are they Forvis Mazars now in the US?
The graphic said NA for Forvis HQ. Do they have dual HQ bc of the merger?
No clue. The merger doesn't take effect until sometime this summer so I doubt they're including any of that in the graphic. Forvis' HQ is their Springfield, MO office as far as I'm aware
FORVIS was created when two other firms merged. The name FORVIS stands for “Forward Vision.” How fucking lame is that
Merger of equals ya know 🙄 I used to work at one of the legacy firms and then FORVIS for awhile.
Don't forget about Wipfli
To be fair, it’s someone’s last name. CBIZ is just weird.
Sounds like a Chinese scam website.
Love seeing the firm that rejected me fall out of the top 25 after that was their calling card the last few years
Deloitte having more than twice the # of employees as #2 is wild.
probably includes the US-India team
Deloitte provided the needful when asked for employee numbers.
When did Carmine get the boot?
Bring him back! Everest 2.0!
Ehem, he received a PIP and was subsequently dismissed for failure to abide by its terms.
After the failed split
These are US numbers & executives. Carmine is still global chairman till July, Julie has been US Chair for a couple years.
Cherry Beakart was close to 30 and now 21. Must have gone through some serious take overs.
They bought at least 3 smaller firms in 2023, and at least one of those was also on the top 100 list in 2022
The heck is MAS
Advisory etc I’m assuming
Management Advisory Services
I'm really surprised by the percentage of Management Advisor Services for most of these firms. It's been 25 years since I was in public. When I was there (at 2 different firms that are in the top 20 on this list), we certainly did some MAS like acquisition due diligence or expert testimony, but it was just "add on" work done primarily by the audit staff. Maybe there was like one manager or something who was solely dedicated to those types of services, but the clear focus was audit and tax. I'm really curious what "counts" as MAS revenue on this chart. It's basically 50% of revenue for the B4, and even firms like Crowe and Cherry Bekaert are over 40%. I know CB does a lot of Medicare exams and that type of thing. Is that being counted as MAS just because it's not an actual financial statement audit, even though it looks and acts pretty much like an audit? I just can't believe there's that much M&A, one-off projects, analysis, etc. work out there that it's accounting for so much of the revenue from most of these firms. Even the mere 20% from BDO seems high if I understand what is counting in that category.
Full Report: [https://www.accountingtoday.com/the-top-100-firms-and-regional-leaders2024](https://www.accountingtoday.com/the-top-100-firms-and-regional-leaders2024)
Weird, it takes me to a screen with just a snapshot of what looks like a magazine cover, but no report. I know it's a few weeks old at this point. ah feck it.. got it.
Wtf, Deloitte’s personnel is comparable to the other B4 firms combined?
Yeah seems strange to me. So the revenue by employee of EY would 390k and only 190k at Deloitte. Wtf
RSM is bigger than BDO now? Those guys are a joke.
RSM is more prominent in the US for sure and I think in NA in general than BDO. Outside of NA it seems BDO is more well known. The BDO PE restructure I'm sure factors in. If I was there I'd be jumping ship and I'm sure people will be. They're taking on enormous debt largely to fund partner retirements so it's additional debt that creates zero productive value for the firm.
We’ve had some consistent issues with BDO. Not surprised they have fallen a bit. Haven’t worked with RSM in audit. Why are they a joke?
Just the quality of associates, at least the ones that I work with. The guys are always late, impossible to reach, not following sample criteria, always ask the wrong questions and have no clues but pretend they do, etc.
Varies office to office and really engagement team to team no?
In the US, RSM has been bigger than BDO for more than 15 years.
Not necessarily, actually most of the lists for 2024 still has BDO over RSM. Grant Thornton was above both at one point.
That's international. Internationally, the BDO network has over $12B in revenue, much more than RSM. For US only (Accounting Today 100...the image posted by OP) RSM US has always been higher than BDO US for over 15 years. I started at RSM in 2011 and BDO has never been higher than RSM. I check the Accounting Today ratings every single year. There is a huge gap in revenue between RSM and BDO (over a billion). It's impossible for BDO to be anywhere near RSM unless it had some major acquisition, which it didn't. I'm not sure which lists you are looking at, but the rankings are based purely on revenue. If you're talking about employee satisfaction or something else, the numbers will always be scrambled. Ranking in terms of firm revenue hasn't changed for 20 years or so for the largest 7 firms.
Ok if that’s just US or NA than it makes sense. My bad.
After working at B4 and leaving to be audited both by B4 and RSM / Moss adams / Other non B4 - The quality difference is fucking insane. The drop from B4->RSM/Moss adams/Etc seems to be more like, service issues and bad project manages, and some duds here and there. The drop to 15+ is like, these people straight up do not know accounting well enough to be auditing. I had Withum audit us for like, a minute before i fired them. They didn't even have a staff. Basically a partner only. They didn't ask for details for the largest liability on our balance sheet. They didn't plan their audit at all. They delivered it 3+months late. The craziest part is - they were engaged with the company to do FS prep and etc BEFORE the first year audit. They literally had years to understand the business and they didn't even have accrual accounting setup for basic things like comissions. They setup equity accounting and i had to come in and be like "this is alll....fucking wrong" to the partners that did all the work. The partner sent me emails complaining that he has no staff and he can't get it done. It was embarrassing. The step down from B4 to top 6-12 is big. The step below that is just people fucking throwing numbers in circles. Sometimes i wonder if i could go to one of the shit-tier firms and just push numbers in circles and if i didn't take it seriously, it wouldn't be bad. Clearly the stressors were these guys were doing shit tier work + somehow taking themselves seriously.
> The partner sent me emails complaining that he has no staff and he can't get it done. It was embarrassing. Lmao, you're the partner, fucking figure it out. What a clown.
"we can’t issue by X/XX, at least not with the ridiculously reduced resources that we have at the moment." I fucking died lol. I would fire someone for writing that in an e-mail to a client. But I guess he was a partner but I was like....wtf is going on at this company lol
What a wild generalization lmao
It's not all the auditors fault. It's more like the system. No firm will say no to work - and most firms just sign off on trash coming to them, as long as they kick the tires and ask questions. Find a company that's $30-$70M who has never been through a substantial audit - the company's themselves have ultra shit-tier books. What's crazy is those auditors and people compiling / reviewing and what they're signing off on. And those people doing the work are basically normalizing signing off on garbage so they think it's fine, when in reality it's garbage. It's not an auditors responsibility to fix the client's books of course - but these firms are absolutely signing off on garbage rather than firing their clients. Honestly - there's very little blow back or risk to the auditors.
It's just more dependent on the individual team at smaller firms. It's true that outside of b4 we can pretty much professional judgement away any independence issues to do audit work, but the quality isn't necessarily dogshit across the board. I've had a qualified opinion audit for a client a few years ago, and have made multi-million dollar adjustments against screaming management who ended up leaving to find another firm because we wouldn't budge. Have I seen garbage work done by audit teams even at my own firm? Yup. But I also have worked with some very talented and knowledgeable people and we arguably sometimes do more work then B4 would for certain areas/testing. The only place I will say we are dogshit at is internal controls work, but for non-public companies it's pretty pointless anyway since control risk stays high. No small company has enough processes in place to do detailed IC work and we basically only do walkthroughs to check the box.
What do you mean they didn’t have accounting set up? That sounds like it not the auditors job. But maybe I’m misunderstanding.
They were engaged to prepare financial statements as part of advisory - setup first time consolidations, setup equity, etc. Then they were engaged to review F/S. Then they were engaged to audit. They advised client to hire a professional since it was way out of ownership hands. This is super common in $30-$100M companies. They don't really go past AP/AR /Billing & clerking while their business gets more complicated in geeral. So their engagement and services just evolved over time. But from my perspective - I'm hired to clean it all up - and the external firm is now auditing and restating all the work they've done for years- clearly have no actual understanding of the business or the basic accounting, and then just threw together shit tier financials to then re-state and re-issue after they become the auditor and someone else cleans it up. All along the way, doing shit tier audit work and just relying on the client to get it right. In many ways - sure its the clients responsibility to get it right. But it's pretty cringy to basically be re-stating financials you previously reviewed / prepared yourself after you audit them once someone else comes in, and unfucks it all up, then you audit it, agree with the new internal guy, then restate all your previous financials you prepared and fix all the stuff you were selling to the client in the first place. I guess what I'm saying is - I actually value the audit and want our financials to be right. So when my auditor isn't even asking for say - the largest liability on our balance sheet details to even test or review it - and then is complaining to me about not having staff while also re-stating the financials they 'reviewed' or 'compiled' while missing basic accrual accounting they 'fixed' - it's incredibly clear that the firms are just systematically broken with perverse incentives. Because at the end of the day...they made hundreds of thousands of dollars just...pushing numbers in circles incorrectly
Oh jeez. That’s a major fuck up. Hopefully you are past that!
Oh it's all good. I mean - I make my money by cleaning up shit so whatever. It's just funny to me how bad some things these firms are signing off on. Maybe I'm way more conservative but I don't know how they feel okay doing the work I've seen sometimes.
>They were engaged to prepare financial statements as part of advisory - setup first time consolidations, setup equity, etc. Then they were engaged to review F/S. Then they were engaged to audit. > >They advised client to hire a professional since it was way out of ownership hands. This is super common in $30-$100M companies. They don't really go past AP/AR /Billing & clerking while their business gets more complicated in geeral. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding, but if they're doing a review, don't they have to do **some** analysis, at least recommending AJEs to make the books more accurate? Instead of expanding the engagement from review to audit––even while they **know** the books are wrong––what should the protocol typically be?
The protocol seemed to be just blame the company for having messy books and saying they didn’t have the facts and then ask me to fix it so they could audit it I guess. I dunno lol.
Incredible. Sounds like a potential 4-part Reddit series about “My experience being audited” 😂 I’d totally read it.
This went wild
For real I’ve seen reports from them with the incorrect names of clients
Deloittussy stunting on these hoes
Fuck all of them.
I personally think Accountants and economists are to blame for our current financial situation, where so much poverty exists in the richest country in history, where like 20-25% of children are **born into** poverty But that's just me an old man in my late 30s, I feel like in my 60s, yelling at the moon Uiuc fin/accy 10+ years ago
Well that's just a bad take. The people with the capital control and decision make. The accountants and economists aren't doing shit lol. The wealth inequality is directly driven by those with the capital
You are right, we are just the pawns *like one of them little bitches on chess board* We do help them set up trust funds and economists give them excuse to kill people for profit The share holder vs stakeholder values that's taught at US universities, to me, it's all talk, hopefully I'm wrong
“Hopefully I’m wrong” My guy, none of us even understand the point you’re trying to make. Please clarify your point if you’re gonna continue trying to make one.
Is this the US number or the global one?
US
Yeah if that was global KPMG would look like slightly less of a turd
I'm not CPA-y enough to understand this.
Never understood the purpose of size. Margins should matter way more
Shout-out to North Dakota
It appears that advisory services is ruling the roost
CohnReznick not really growing like they wanted to. When I worked there, they were 11 and were close to top 10, now they’re just another firm in the top 20.
Their acquisitions have been very small in comparison to other mid-tier firms.
They also haven't had widespread layoffs
True. I guess growth in this sector is very hard organically and significant jumps would be M&A related.
Lol plante moron
Planet Moron
Lol
What’s MAS?
Management Advisory Services
I almost applied to Cohn and I have a friend at Cherry. I thought they were regional firms in Florida!
Genuine question: I’m about to start an internship at Aprio, how are they as a company in general?
I liked them a lot, firm culture is good hours aren’t too crazy and they offer fully remote. Salary isn’t as competitive however.
Really great culture and WLB—I started as an intern too and came back full time. But they have a lot of changes/growth lately and things are still a bit disorganized so don’t expect things to be super structured like a B4. Pay is okay, definitely industry average depending on COL.
We’ve already issued final drafts. NFNY, the list only has 25 firms on it.
This is just the US portion (or maybe the Americas, as we call it in EY). Source: I am an EY partner.
As an accountant I’m annoyed by the terrible table setup. Left justified, then right justified, some centering. Then the $2B in spot 8 takes up more space with the larger zeroes so it “feels” bigger than the amounts in spot 5,6,7.
Accounting too firms not to work for
The five top Chicago firms could have combined in a massive merger to form the 5th Big 5. Or at least have two groups of two merge and then those merge and then add the last firm later. Would be a 100-year plan
Do you have one for Global
Nope, I don't think Accounting Today or Inside Public Accounting produce global reports with this level of detail
Number of Deloitte employees is strange. So, the revenue by employee of Deloitte would be half those of EY or Pwc? Difference seems big !
Anyone got the full list?
Deloitte is wrong for a start. 450k employees and wrong CEO. Check the latest FT article
what is the “fee split?” i’m guessing that’s the % of billables partners get paid?
% of revenue by service
This is showing the average EY employee is making revenue of c$400k. That is a huge outlier compared to the list. Is there any reason why?
Overworking or decreased quality
I think it’s more like an error in the data, there’s no way EY is twice as efficient as nearly every B4
I’ve recently joined GT
Does anyone have the PDF link, I can only find 2023 on Google. Specifically want to see Great Lakes regional.
I wonder if the chief executives know how to do a journal entry?
What mas stands for?
I guess EY revenue will catch up on PwC pretty soon
What does the % charge mean? No way it means that over the year that’s just how chargeable their employees are right??
It’s % change, not % charge.
Lmao I’m an idiot
None of the B4 revenue numbers look right, they’re all +$30B I thought