With tax season already here, accountants and CPA professionals are working around the clock to continue to provide top rate services to their clients. 

After seeing unprecedented growth over the past few years, Fayetteville based accounting firm TRP Sumner PLLC has made the strategic decision to expand their team beyond U.S. borders by adding new employees in Manila, Philippines. 

TRP Sumner Chief Executive Partner Kelly Puryear confirmed that a shortage in qualified accountants and CPAs both locally and nationwide is what led to the decision to add on team members overseas. 

“It’s really difficult for us to find enough people and so that’s why we’re using this option as well. NC State graduated a little over 100 people in December, all 100 of them went to about six firms, all national firms,” said Puryear. “We’ve gotten as many graduates of local universities as we can get, but we still need others and whatever CPA firm you call will tell you the same thing. It doesn’t matter which states you call in, they all have that problem, so this was a good solution.”

In order to ensure these new team members were up to company standards and practices, TRP Sumner partnered with a company in the Philippines that hires and confirms the qualifications of the people applying. The company provides background checks, conducts interviews with applicants and helps TRP Sumner by managing the different Human Resources needs of workers in a different country and culture. 

Three employees currently make up the Manila team: Janine Gaces, Aira Villareal and Jocelyn Buid. All three have 4 year degrees in accounting, a minimum of two years of experience and speak fluent English. Their Philippines office is located on the 24th floor of the IBM building in Manila. 

With security of the staff and client information being one of the highest priorities for TRP Sumner, the Firm implemented protocols that go beyond what is required by the Internal Revenue Service with companies contracted to provide both physical and cyber security for their workers. 

Puryear traveled to Manila in 2022 to meet the team and see the building for himself. 

“There is security at the front door [of the building] and then security at the front door of the office, so physically it’s secure. [For] cybersecurity, it’s a secure bay, there’s also this company there that provides the cybersecurity and there’s an IT person on site, making sure that things are safe,” said Puryear. 

According to a statement from TRP Sumner, the technical security of the computers and cloud-based software is as secure as the servers located in U.S. offices, and the system has a designated server set-up that is also closely monitored by TRP Sumner’s local IT team.

One of the main highlights of the expansion offered by Puryear, is that this process is not a form of outsourcing. Despite the 12 hour time difference and being more than 8,000 miles apart, the Manila team is still a part of the Fayetteville TRP Sumner staff. The Manila team works the same hours as the Fayetteville office and are easy to connect with through phone and video call.

“I don’t consider it outsourcing, because it’s our office. Outsourcing to me means ‘we’re sending you the information and you, the company, picks who does it and sends it back to us.’ We have an office in Dunn, we have some people that work around the country, these folks are just a little bit further away than the people that we have that work in Florida or Texas,” said Puryear. 

“Once they're on board, we treat them just like we do any other new staffers because they’re essentially the same thing. The only difference is that their supervisors may be a Manila [based] person and then they have perhaps someone in Fayetteville and they may have someone in the Dunn office, so they’re training several people at one time. The Manila folks are just team members at this point.” 

TRP Sumner is continuing to follow guidelines set by the IRS, including complete client transparency with who is handling their information. 

The IRS requires every CPA firm that employs workers outside the U.S. to disclose this to their clients before work begins. Puryear said that every client is given the necessary disclosures and given the choice to continue with the Manila team, or have their services done by a staff member in the U.S. 

According to Puryear, the client response has been mixed, but a majority of their base has been reacting with understanding and are willing to work with the new team. 

“I didn’t know what to expect with the response, and familiarity is always better, my opinion changed when I went and met them. When you get to know people, people are just people,” said Puryear. “But, we gave it to our clients and we’ve had responses ranging from ‘Gee, this is brilliant,’ and we’ve had clients say ‘there's no way that I want anybody outside of Cumberland County working on my work much less somewhere like that,’ so we’ve had the full range of responses. However, the response has been overwhelmingly ‘Yes.’

After being deemed a reliable, efficient and cost-effective way to serve their expanding client needs, Puryear said there is the possibility of expanding the Manila team in the future, but there are no plans to add onto their staff with employees in other countries. 

“They’re integrated into our team just like everyone else. Just like every other new person that comes in, we’re training them with those people, they just happen to sit a little bit further away than everybody else,” said Puryear.