While the accounting industry faces an employee-pipeline crisis, Kemper Rojas, managing partner at Fruci & Associates PS, says the Spokane-based accounting firm has been engaging strategies focused on talent retention and recruitment. 

To support a flexible workforce, Fruci & Associates has allowed current and potential employees to set their own hours. Many accountants at Fruci work between 40 and 45 hours per week even during the busy season, which is known to demand upward of 70 to 80 hours from accountants. Others work 50 hours per week and some even as low as 30 hours, Rojas says. 

“It made recruiting a lot easier,” Rojas says. “We’re still getting a lot of recruits who are remote and coming from the big firms who are just burnt out. They don’t even have time to sit for their CPA exam because they’re working so many hours.” 

Retaining talented employees is essential to the company’s culture and structure. In Rojas’ two decades with the firm, it has never downsized, she says. Even during the pandemic, when accounting work dipped and many large firms let go of scores of employees, Fruci & Associates held on to all of its team members and placed a hiring freeze during the downturn. 

“We didn’t cut anybody. We took a huge loss, but it’s so hard to find (accountants). We have to keep them when we find them,” Rojas says. “From a long-term view, we knew we would bounce back because there is such a shortage. And that just doesn’t feel right to let these people go during a pandemic.”  

When work picked up again and the firm was being overworked, it cut 20% of its clients. The cut allowed the firm some breathing room and the ability to target and focus on the right clients instead of filling up with small clients, she says. Other companies in Spokane also cut clients, resulting in a reshuffling process in which clients were refitted to other accounting firms. 

Nick R. Fuller, a certified public accountant with Spokane-based Quantum Financial Planning Inc. wrote a piece for the Journal earlier this year in which he described the accounting profession as being “in the midst of a pipeline crisis.” In 2013, an Oxford study on the future of employment predicted the profession would be taken over by artificial intelligence and machine learning. However, that study’s forecast hasn't come to pass; the demand for CPAs is growing, not shrinking, he wrote. 

The National Pipeline Advisory Group offers sweeping recommendations, including reducing the financial barriers to CPA licensure and offering the workforce greater flexibility and alignment, Fuller noted. 

Fruci & Associates has embraced a flexible workforce, and has a supportive, noncompetitive environment, says Rojas, who has a degree in marine zoology and joined the firm in 2002. During her start at Fruci, she felt uplifted and supported while she took the necessary courses and sat for her CPA exam. She became managing partner in 2008.  

“I don’t want to work that many hours, so how am I going to make someone else work that many hours?” says Rojas, who averages 45 to 50 hours a week. “We’re working to live, not living to work. … We’ve been trying to change that up for the last five to six years.”

Located at 802 N. Washington, across North River Drive from the Centennial Hotel, Fruci & Associates has 63 total employees, including 26 CPAs, nine of whom are partners with the firm, and eight administrative employees. The remaining 29 employees are a mix of recent graduates who are waiting to sit for their CPA exam, bookkeepers, or enrolled agents. The firm has employees in nine states who are fully remote, and local employees are hybrid or remote, Rojas says. 

The firm was founded in 1938 by Roger Fruci Sr. and remains a family firm. Roger Fruci’s grandchildren, Paul R. Fruci and Julie Franz, are both CPAs with the firm, and a few of Franz’s children have expressed an interest in accounting. Rojas' son, a recent college graduate, also works at the firm in an administrative role. 

In the past five years, the firm’s workforce has grown 58%, Rojas says. Total annual billings have increased by 70%, and employee benefits have increased correspondingly, she says. 

Fruci & Associates has about 2,000 clients almost evenly divided between the firm’s audit department and tax consulting department.  Within the audit services the firm provides, its biggest book of business is audits for companies that trade on stock exchanges, a niche field within accounting that only about one-quarter of 1% of firms offer, Rojas claims. As a result, many of Fruci's clients aren't based in Spokane but are spread across the U.S. or are international clients. Clients on the tax and accounting side of services are mainly located in the Pacific Northwest, she says. 

The firm also partners with law firms for litigation support, and contracts with state agencies like the Department of Social and Health Services to analyze the financial exploitation of vulnerable adults.  

Fruci & Associates also performs services for startup companies, which require business audits before they can present to investors and raise funds. In the past couple of years, Rojas has seen a few of her audit clients go before investors on Shark Tank, she says. 

Looking forward, Rojas says the firm wants to grow organically. The firm’s audit department gets weekly referrals for large clients, however, it also often turns down work.  

“Every business needs an accountant. Everybody has to file tax returns,” Rojas says. “Consulting, litigation support, there’s so much that is needed.”