The day before we spoke to him, Steve Piascik saved a client half a million dollars.

Actually, it was the night before - at the very last minute, the client wanted Piascik, a CPA and founder and president of the Richmond-area firm that bears his name, to look over some contractual agreements that it was about to sign. So at 10 p.m., Piascik found himself reviewing the terms of the deal, and suggesting some revisions that would save the client $475,000.

"We do not know the word 'No' here," he explained. "All we need to know is how to get it done. If I'm a client looking for a vendor, I don't want to hear excuses - I just want to hear, 'We'll get it done.'"

Those expectations have led the decade-old firm to focus relentlessly on client service. "We are in a service industry, and we outperform and we shine, or we're going to lose that client," Piascik said. That ethic applies in all its service lines, from its bread-and-butter work with corporations, partnerships and high-level tax planning; to the tax and financial planning services it offers professional athletes; the specialized financial, administrative and back-office help it offers foreign companies looking to operate in the U.S. through its Piascik Passport program; and the outsourced accounting services it's offering clients through one of its most recent service lines, Piascik Outsourced.

INTO OUTSOURCING

The premise of Piascik Outsourced is straightforward - hiring a full-time senior-level finance executive can cost a company anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000, and that's often before benefits and training costs. Piascik can do the same work on an outsourced basis for around a third less, with the firm assuming all the risks of hiring, training and maintaining the talent.

"They're looking at $150,000 for a comptroller, and we're coming in at $90,000," Piascik said. For that, clients get a wide range of services - including accounting, bank financial statements, depreciation, sales invoicing, debt collection, bill pay, loan reconciliations, and even executive concierge services - with CPA-issued financial statements as the end result.

It was client demand that led Piascik to create the service line in 2007. "I had so many clients say, 'Steve, we just need you to take care of this.' And I said, 'I have to charge an extra fee.' You're talking about large companies that don't have the time to go and hire a comptroller, plus it'll cost them $100,000. So Piascik Outsourced does it for $70,000, and does it all."

Between layoffs and hiring freezes, many companies are reluctant to hire full-time employees in the current economic climate - but that very reluctance can be a significant barrier to growth, preventing them from expanding into new areas, whether it's local businesses looking to grow in sales, or international businesses looking to expand in Virginia and the U.S. That group, with which the firm is already familiar from its Piascik Passport line, is of particular interest. "The sweet spot that we prefer is the $80,000-$100,000 client - the international client that has heard about us and wants us to take care of things," Piascik said.

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