A Conversation With: Stephen Gift

Stephen Gift, 63, founded Gift CPAs (formerly Gift and Associates) in 1984 and is today its managing member. The firm was named the 2019 large practice Accounting Firm of the Year by the Professional Association of Small Business Accountants. Gift CPAs has offices in five midstate locations, including Mechanicsburg and Harrisburg.

Gift has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Shippensburg University. He a certified professional accountant, certified financial planner and personal finance specialist.

He and his wife, Kelli – who is the managing member of PaySmart, the company’s payroll services arm – live in Mechanicsburg. He has two sons, both living in California, and two stepsons, one at home and one in college.

Q: You founded Gift CPAs in 1984 as a one-man operation. What do you bring from that experience to the small businesses you serve today?

A: We started as a small business and we certainly understand the challenges facing small business. When we started, we had very little technology available to us, a lot of it was handwritten and manual so the problems were mostly postal service-related or silly mistakes being done on the calculator, things like that. Now with the advent of all the technological advances we’ve had, it’s become a whole different ballgame and a whole different challenge. But believe it or not, the small-business person still is looking at the money that comes in every day or every month and the money that goes back out, and they still need to manage it like a business.

How do you guide clients through decisions that involve major changes, such as succession planning or expansion?

What we try to do is keep it as simple and as focused as possible for the client. We know our clients pretty well, we know their personalities, we know their hot buttons, we know what their risk aversion is or isn’t. We try to keep that in the back of our minds as we’re counseling them through whatever the changes might be. Most of our clients, being small businesses, are pretty entrepreneurial and they’re willing to take risks when they need to or there’s an opportunity to take risks. Sometimes we’re being a cheerleader to encourage them to do whatever it is they’re looking to do, sometimes we’re trying to discourage them from jumping off that bridge when they shouldn’t jump. It’s not a perfect world but we try really hard to build that relationship, and because we’re building that relationship we know what direction is going to be best for them.

Gift CPAs was recently named the Professional Association of Small Business Accountants 2019 large practice Accounting Firm of the Year. What does this award mean to you and your firm?

This is a group of around 225 firms around the country that provide similar services we provide here locally. They’re our peers. I’ve presented to them on various topics they were interested in learning about, learning what Gift CPAs does, trying to share some of the things we do. It was quite a surprise, and certainly we are very blessed with the team that is part of Gift CPAs and they all had something to do with this.

What is your favorite way to cool off in the “dog days” of summer?

I would say that this is influenced a bit by my wife, whose son plays baseball at St. Joe’s, but the easiest answer is to go to a Senators game, sit in a suite, have a beer and watch baseball.