NewRoc Now

I want to relay my experience with Ratafia and Company in the hope of saving another small business from the headaches that they put me through.  Anyone that runs a small business knows that whenever you switch accountants or bookkeepers the first thing you hear is how wrong everything you have done in the past is.  Without fail every accountant and bookkeeper has the same complaint and spends hours redoing things until they are comfortable.   This is fine and part of the game, however, Ratafia did this with such bitterness, rudeness and downright mean spirit that I highly advise anyone who is considering them to avoid.  There are tons of accountants to choose from, avoid Ratafia.

Here is what they did to me:

1) Took our Quickbooks file for over 2 months to ‘fix’.  While they had this we could not enter bookkeeping information and we fell behind in q1.

2) Missed all filing deadlines and filed for extensions - never had an accountant do that in 7 years in business.  Yes, I am not the most organized person in the world, but all others have been able to deal with it.

3) Spitefuly quit on April 14th, one day before personal filings are due, leaving me to fend for myself while absconding all of my personal papers and putting us behind by months.  They did this out of retaliation after I told a partner that they would need to file a personal extension because my accountant could not get the return done in time, despite my urging them to do so.

4) ‘Fixed’ my bookkeeping errors in a way that showed a paper profit of over 100,000 for a business that had minute cash resources.  When I questioned the work I was answered meanly, abrupbtly and insults.

5) Instructed me that I had a $16,000 personal tax liability that was ‘unavoidable’.  A new accountant looked over the finding and quickly noticed a mistake that could be fixed with an amended return and the $16,000 liability was reduced to about $2,000.   Pure stupidity for an accountant and they sure were mean in the process telling me how stupid I was for not properly withholding while the true error was a simple filing mistake.

Their side of the story is that I am difficult, hard to work with, my accountants were pea brains, my bookkeeper is a novice and inexperienced, I am disorganized, I am this, I am that, I am everything bad.   My counter point is that they were doing bookkeeping consulting for us for months prior and had already met us, knew what they were up against and accepted the work.

I feel that what they did is unprofessional - missing all filing deadlines, creating a tax burden of over $30,000 for me, insulting everyone that ever worked on my books and finally quitting the day before tax day. I hope that if you are considering Ratafia and Company as accountants or Margo Ratafia as a Quickbooks trainer that you look for other sources.