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By Paul Post
Kevin Hedley left the security of an established accounting firm to start his own one-man practice.
Thirty years later, his Clifton Park-based Hedley & Co. has nearly a dozen employees including two other CPAs, Kristen E. Bus and Joanna Piscitella, serving commercial and individual clients across the U.S.
“We’re very fortunate that our clients think enough of the work we do, and how we do it for them, that they’re willing to share it with their friends and colleagues,” he said. “It’s strictly word of mouth. We don’t do any marketing outside of Saratoga County. The fact that I’ve got clients from 30 years ago, including some from Florida, is a testament to what we’re doing.”
Rule number one, a guiding principle for the firm’s success is “being honest with yourself, your employees and customers,” Hedley said. “They’ve got to have confidence in what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and feel as though you’re doing it in their best interest.”
The practice does considerable work for clients in the service and construction industries.
“We deal mainly with smaller businesses with under $50 million in revenue,” he said. “A lot of those are also wealth management clients that we help with financial planning and assist with investments. We don’t do any publicly traded corporation work.”
For business clients, Hedley & Co. does everything from accounting system design to financial reporting, fringe benefit policy and succession planning. They even helping new businesses learn how to get started. For individuals, in addition to wealth management the company offers estate planning, IRS and state tax representation, and personal income tax preparation and planning.
Hedley, who grew up near Troy, is a 1987 Siena College graduate. He started out working for a couple of other firms, one in Massachusetts and another in New York. But most of his time was spent doing audits when he wanted to specialize on tax work so he earned a master’s degree in taxation from SUNY Albany and stepped out on his own, starting at a small office in Troy.
In 2001 he moved to Clifton Park and then expanded into a new building at 1593 Route 9, the firm’s current home, in 2008. The location couldn’t be better as Saratoga County is upstate New York’s fastest-growing county, and one of its most prosperous.
“But we have clients all over the country, in neighboring states, up and down the Eastern seaboard and the West Coast as well,” Hedley said.
In addition to its own growth, the firm has had to keep pace with unrelenting the fast-paced technological change during the past three decades. In 1992, the internet and email were still new to most people.
“Technology has changed things considerably,” he said. “It’s a double-edged sword. In some ways it’s made things more difficult. There are forms and schedules that didn’t exist a couple years ago, and forms and schedules that did exist have gotten bigger and more complicated. There’s more questions, more things that need to be completed.
“For example, now we have to get information about health insurance, which wasn’t needed 10 years ago on a tax return. Now we’ve got to know, do you have it? Do you not have it?”
“On the positive side,” he said, “modern technology allows us to work from home,” Hedley said. “We’ve been doing that for years. Obviously, COVID accelerated it more. Phone systems can be rerouted anywhere as long as there’s an internet connection. We don’t have to worry about missing calls from clients (at the office).”
Plans call for adding new software programs over the next several months “to make sure we’re staying ahead of the technology curve, continuing to be out in front for our clients and help in every way that we can,” he said.
Aside from his work at the firm, Hedley is a frequent lecturer on the topics of taxation, business administration, and management and is also a frequent guest on local television news programs. He has taught individual income tax at SUNY Albany; business valuations at New York University; and corporation tax, partnership tax, family tax planning, and trust and estate taxation at Siena College.
He’s also been an expert witness in New York State Supreme Court cases on tax and accounting matters.
Hedley is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants and the society’s Personal Financial Planning Committee. He has also earned the prestigious Certificate Education Achievement in personal financial planning.