The company offers a fully paid health insurance policy through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. The plan includes a deep network of participating physicians and access to the Baylor Scott & White network of hospitals in the event their services are needed. The company also offers family coverage, a dental plan, and an optical plan for each employee to consider enrolling in with pre-tax payroll deductions.

Frequently, employers offer unlimited time off because "you can work from anywhere," which sounds great on the surface, but that often turns into no real time off. Technically, with our hosted server, you can work from anywhere at the BaCo Group, but the BaCo Group respects the boundaries of each of our employees and the idea that their time off is their time, not the firm's. Just because we can work from anywhere doesn't mean you are expected to. What does that mean? It means no lugging a laptop along on vacation or for a weekend with your significant other. It means no text messages, emails, or calls to your cell phone. Your time is your time. Your paid time off includes holidays, post busy season days, and time off commensurate with your tenure with the firm. We also have a summer reduced hours policy where members of the team can take off every other Friday, giving each team member the ability to get a summer with an abundance of three-day weekends.

If you are wondering how we do that, take a look at any of our business cards and see if they include cell phone numbers. Our voice over IP system is really flexible, we can take calls anywhere but we don't include our cell phone numbers on our cards because that sends a message to the person that has the card that it is okay to call me on my cell if needed. Clients, vendors, etc may not be aware that you are on vacation, or running some personal errands.

It's also your cell phone, so adding your business email to it is your call, not ours. Many of our staff have it set up and turn it off and on, at their discretion. That boundary is important to us, it's how we keep our work life balance and different than a lot of firms, ownership here expects you to take time off and unplug. They ask you to make sure email is turned off on your phone and everyone at the office is asked to respect that time. Ownership has your back when you are out because they want the firm to have their back when they are out. 

You won't walk into our convenient North Dallas office, located near the corner of the Tollroad and LBJ in Farmers Branch, and think "this is an accounting firm." We are going to look different because we are different. Each full-time, professional staff person has their own private office, and they aren't the traditional private offices you see in a lot of firms, complete with a print of cattle grazing in front of an oil well. They are uniquely yours. The art on the wall includes prints from some of your photos of favorite places you've been, so the feel in your office is going to be unique to you. As an accountant, we spend a lot of time in our office working on tax returns, projecting results and tax consequences, or researching the tax impact of a particular transaction. You need a place that allows you to focus but feels comfortable. That's why we have resisted the idea of hoteling. You've heard firms make the comment that real estate is the most expensive part of a firm, and therefore, they are willing to sacrifice your comfort for their bottom line. We roll up our sleeves and work hard, so we need a place to do it. We give you a private place to work and offer some flex environments like smaller collaborative workspaces. We have a conference room and comfortable break area for firm-wide events.

The office is non-smoking and there is an abundance of free, covered parking just outside the door to the office.

It's dangerous to be an accountant. We spend a lot of time sitting at our desks, working on a computer, snacking on something convenient, and getting returns done. Because of that, we are more susceptible to things like heart disease, diabetes, or just getting obese. The founder of the firm has lost a lot of weight and that process is what made us a firm where the health of our employees and community is important. 

We, therefore, support the American Diabetes Association and are active participants in their annual tour de cure, where we sponsor a rest stop. The City of Farmers Branch also makes their rec center available to people who work in the city and the BaCo Group pays for your membership to the rec center for all full-time employees that want to use it. The rec center includes an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, a 60,000 square foot workout facility with a running track, exercise equipment, treadmills, bicycles, basketball and racquetball courts, and exercise studios for yoga, Zumba, spin, or aerobics that are all included at no additional charge, with your membership.

Have you ever heard of a firm say, "Our goal is to eliminate overtime in tax season"? Well, you have now. How do we do it? Technology. Instead of an environment where we use technology to work from anywhere at any time, we are developing a technology that does work behind the scenes, gathering transactions and account balances that let us know what's going on in our clients' files real-time. We combine that with a unique, patented process that automatically converts GAAP financials to a tax basis balance sheet and income statement. That makes the data 24x7. Our clients like the idea that we are going to eliminate surprises, give them insights into their business, and most importantly, get in the huddle with them. 

Clients always make statements like, "this should be easy" or "why does this have to be so complicated," and we agree that a complicated thing like income taxes should be easier for you to determine and plan for. Our clients are profitable, ethical, and therefore, understand that they will have to pay taxes. They expect us to help them reduce their taxes and plan for them. Tax prep will still be part of the job, it just won't be as time-consuming because we will work hard all year long, preparing the returns and getting questions answered before year-end.

Even though the technology is not in final form, it already has proven to be an invaluable tool that continues to reduce the hours we work. Each staff member is given a work plan before the year where the hours projected for their projects are lined up for them. Last year, due to these efficiencies, not one member of the team has met their expected hours' quota and we think that's a good thing.