“I always tell up and coming pest companies I know of that I highly recommend working with Dan and his team for a few reasons. No. 1, he understands our industry better than any accountant I’ve heard or known about. He’s able to do our tax returns and fi lings, but he also understands the industry really well, so he’s able to talk shop and provide guidance to any business owner that has questions about making investments in their business or how to handle certain management situations. He’s a great resource in all those areas.”

The relationship between RK Environmental Services (RKE) and PCO Bookkeepers goes back to the early days of both companies.

The principals of the two firms – Hank Hirsch and Dan Gordon, respectively – had previously worked together at a regional Pest Management firm in New Jersey. Hank was on the technical side; Dan a Certifi ed Public Accountant (CPA) was the CFO.

Shortly after Hank left to start RKE, Dan left to start PCO Bookkeepers. Hank wasted no time enlisting Dan as his accountant. “It just made sense that we’d continue to work together,” Hank says. Dan quickly got RKE up and running with QuickBooks; trained Hank and his team to use it; did the company’s tax returns, sales tax filings, set up payroll; and created the company’s internal controls.

“He helped me do all of the things I didn’t know how to do,” Hank says. “Dan had such a strong background in running the operations of a pest management company. Even though my company is a little different because I only work with food processing facilities, he guided me along and helped set up and create processes for running our routing software.

I wouldn’t have known how to do any of that without his help.” As RKE has grown, so has PCO Bookkeepers and their capabilities. “Over the years, Dan has hired several CPAs and bookkeepers on his team who we work with, and in the same regard I’ve hired people in leadership and operational positions,” Hank says. “And we’ve continued to work together all these years because it’s been a great partnership.”

One of Hank’s favorite things about working with PCO Bookkeepers is the reporting he gets at the end of every month, including the profit and loss statement and other data points his firm uses to benchmark itself against the rest of the industry.

“With the charts and graphs presented in a dashboard format, we’re able to see our performance at a glance,” he says. “In addition to that, we do our budgeting with PCO Bookkeepers every year because they really understand the operational software we use.”

Hank also praises the help PCO Bookkeepers provided his firm in the past when RKE has had to assemble boardroom presentations for some of its national accounts.

“Dan’s team had all the resources to be able to put together really impressive presentations with charts and graphs utilizing the data he pulled about our company,” he says. “It allowed us to show up in boardrooms and share professional presentations to compete at a high level against national companies.” Hank says Dan is not only his accountant but a friend, mentor and
partner to his business.

“We really appreciate everything they’ve done for us,” he says. “You couldn’t pay me to work with another accountant.”