A.L. Nella & Company

A.L. Nella & Company does the accounting at the place I work. The customer service has always been friendly and very helpful. They do a great job keeping our books in order!

Considering business reviews, I should have provided A. L. Nella & Company with 5 stars when Unilocal was originated!
For 25 years I have owned a business in SF. For the last 15 years, Ken & his staff have guided, offered support & handled all aspects of my CPA challenges & needs.
A sole proprietor has limited time, A. L. Nella changed that in a positive way!

A friend and legal advisor recommended this company to me, so my expectations were high. I was specifically referred to Joan, who I will say is very nice and quite personable. I did not expect that it would have taken so long, and so much of their time to get an answer to a very simple question regarding a 401k distribution, especially given the answer they gave me and the reasons behind it. I was like «Duh. It took over two weeks? I could have figured that out.»
Then came the bill! I expected it to be at most between $ 500 – 800, but it was over $ 1500. Given their awareness of my finances (or exceptional lack thereof), I would have expected them to give me a heads up of where the charges were heading, especially since they knew I didn’t have that kind of money. It didn’t hep that they scheduled one meeting which was entirely unnecessary, and which I still got billed for. Not once, in any of our meetings or email conversations, did she mention anything about rates. I expect to pay for professional services, but this was ridiculous.
Needless to say, I will not be using their services again.

I was recommended A.L. Nella & Company by a friend, so I expected to have a good experience with them, and kept living in denial, but after 4 years of them doing my tax return, me thinks not.
My initial double take was that they did not deal in exchanging information via email and password-​protected zipped PDF; the only option of exchange with them was via snail-​mail (and this was 2006 for gods’ sake). Also, the cost for preparing my taxes has always been high (550 $ – 750 $ [750 $ when I got married]).
Early last year, I asked them for a recommendation for withholding as my income was projected to change. I received that recommendation along with a bill for $ 750! I could not believe this was accurate and emailed them to inquire;they did not reply for over a month. Around this time we received another bill along with a late fee tacked on. Upon receiving this I called and sent another email expressing my dismay over the inflated charges and her lack of response to my query. I finally heard back from them and they politely explained the details of the bill and confirmed that yes, it was accurate. We were flabbergasted. After they did my taxes the first time they offered a recommendation on my withholding free of charge. Now we are stuck with a bill that is equivalent to what we pay to have our taxes done annually!
We promptly discontinued service with A.L. Nella and will never ask a question of any accountant again without first asking if it will cost an arm and a leg (post mortem: our new accountant confirmed it was ridiculous to charge 750 $ to calculate witholding). These accountants are overpriced for simple accounting work and they are bad communicators. I am sure they do good work for fat cats, but not for your average tax payer.

AL Nella was recommended by our loan agent after we bought our first home and wanted to optimize our taxes rather than trying to do them ourselves. We set up a meeting for late February with Joan that went well. We asked about costs and she told us that we would be charged by the hour although the hour for this meeting would be free. She estimated that we would be billed between $ 700 – 800 for 3 – 4 hours of work which was higher than we expected but we figured that we were paying a premium for the extra service. We basically had a personal conversation for half of that hour. In order to start our taxes, Joan said she needed one extra document which I sent to her a few days later.
Two weeks later, I had heard nothing back from them and figured I should check in. Mid March was approaching and we assumed we would be returning to their office to go over our returns in detail and be able to ask questions. When I sent an email to Joan, she replied back the same day and said our taxes had been assigned to a preparer but hadn’t been started!
Three days later a folder arrived with copies of our returns. Some details were obvious but we had a lot of questions. As a tiny gesture to our expectations for financial advice, there was an IRS form for our estimated taxes for 2010. There was a short cover letter telling us to sign everything and send it back but no mention of the meeting we expected. Included in the folder was a non-​itemized bill for $ 1100.
Shocked and disappointed, we begin to share the experience with friends and family who thought that even the original estimate of $ 700 – 800 was high for tax preparation let alone $ 1100. Plus, we had obviously been treated as a low priority considering they left our returns to gather dust for nearly three weeks and then did a minimal amount of work. I wanted to call immediately and speak to Joan but a friend reminded us that we would probably be charged for the call.
I did call and request an itemized bill from the receptionist and one arrived a few days later. We had been charged a varying hourly rate that averaged out to $ 250 for roughly 4 hours of work plus we were charged for a half hour of our first meeting. After calming down and formulated our response, I sent a professional email to Joan expressing our expectations and disappointment. She never responded to the email but did call me back after I called and left a voice message for the actual tax preparer. During the call, she claimed that we hadn’t been misled but they would reduce the bill to $ 885 anyway because of our ‘confusion.‘
Obviously we won’t be using AL Nella again and have learned a lesson. Because they are a gay-​owned company, we had a higher level of trust in the beginning. In return for that trust, they treated us like we were exploitable and we were only able to minimize the impact by complaining. So much for community.

We love our accountants! A L Nella has handled our personal and business accounting for almost a decade now. A lot of lawyers and accountants say they want to be your business partner, but our accountants here really take the time to understand the business. Over the years, they have guided us through some really tough decisions, including how to take risks in a smart way. They understand the complexities of running a business in San Francisco and trying to build something from nothing. During tax season, they’re very good at working with you to get info quickly and make sure everything is complete and accurate. Outside of tax season, they’re willing to meet with you to discuss long-​range planning. Most important, I feel like I get great customer service, and am not just a record in their database.
They are not cheap. If you are looking for somebody to do last minute taxes at a bargain rate, this is not the place. But if you have complex or ongoing accounting and financial planning needs, I think they are a total bargain.