Accountants in Baltimore?

[Sam Frank]

Hi All,

I am a little over a year into starting a company that does real estate investing and contracting work. We are trying to find a good accountant in Baltimore - it has not been easy. We have spoken to 3 different firms, and then went under retainer with one firm, who we have been disappointed with. 

The accountants we have met with don't have enough innovative strategies and/or are not proactive enough.

For instance, I learned through my own studies about a couple great tax strategies. i.e. - Depreciation on rental properties, writing off business meetings and business trips if you look at a piece of real estate. Great tips. Not one accountant that I have met with, has come to me with great strategies or knows many of these best practices in real estate. Meanwhile, I go to the local REIA events and most folks seem to know all the best accounting trade secrets for running their investment businesses.

The other thing, is I would love to be more proficient in quickbooks or if there is a better software we should be using as our business grows / if we do more rental properties (I always hear Brandon pitch a specific software product on the podcasts), then I would love to know from an accountant what that program or strategy would be. The accountant that we are working with now, showed me some best practices for quickbooks but I am by no means a savvy quickbooks user (as I would eventually like to be). Or I'd like to hire a reasonably priced accounting firm to help us get our books looking in beautiful condition.

What are other people's experiences? Any accountant referrals appreciated - I know this is likely a trade secret, but I'd be interested in interviewing some folks around town to see how they could help our business.

Cheers, Sam