NANAIMO, BC – Simple, complex, personal or corporate – if you need an accounting service New Heights Accounting has the skills and the experience to match any requirement. “We’re basically everything,” explained New Heights co-owner Norm Wolf.
“We’re a true public practice, as such we do personal tax, corporate tax, and business consulting. Preferring to work in the world of corporate tax as the personal tax season is short, two and a half months or so, while corporate tax issues happen all year-round. Don’t get me wrong, we have many excellent personal tax people to work with, this year we did more than 550 personal tax returns, but there is a special experience when it comes to working with our many corporate clients,” he said.
Wolf’s passion for corporate accounting comes naturally, as earlier in his accounting career he worked for a small oil and gas company as the corporate comptroller and then one of the largest oil companies in Canada. A second-generation Calgarian he learned the intimacies of the oil sector, and he sharpened his accounting skills functioning within an economic powerhouse with more than 5,000 employees, and a corporate reach that spanned North America. “I was working as a joint venture auditor in Calgary but the work environment I was working in physically made me ill, and I knew there had to be a better way, that’s what ultimately brought us to Nanaimo,” he said.
With his wife Anna, who is also a CPA, they dreamed of launching their own accounting firm, but finding the right location proved to be a challenge. “She said she wanted to move somewhere closer to water, but where exactly proved difficult,” Wolf said.
“The closest body of water to Calgary was the Okanagan, but really the Okanagan is a desert, so the next body of water was Vancouver. But the costs of owning property or operating a business on the Lower Mainland were so high, we simply couldn’t afford to open a business in Vancouver. That left Vancouver Island, I didn’t want the hassle and traffic of Victoria, so Nanaimo proved to be the perfect choice. Three years before we finally moved from Calgary we bought our house, so when we finally decided to go, we had everything we needed already in place.”
Opening their firm in 2016, after having completed renovations to their Nanaimo home to allow them to initially operate as a home-based business, which they did for the company’s first five years. In time the expanding business and moved into their own office space (at #1, 1200 Princess Royal Ave), with the current staff that includes the two co-founders and four other team members – a team that will expand to keep up the growing demand for New Heights services.
Currently the backbone of the services provided by the accounting firm are divided into four distinct zones: Taxes (Corporate and Personal), Financial Reporting for businesses, bookkeeping services for their clients and Business Consulting; Working with firms newly created and well established, assisting them in maximizing their unique potential – solid pillars the company has built their success on since opening its doors more than a decade ago.
“Nanaimo has been very good to us. In our first year we were limping along as we had no clients to start. It was a case of opening the door with a hope and a prayer, but we had our first client within a couple of weeks and things began to take off,” he said.
To help get the word out Wolf taught bookkeeping at Discovery College for a year and became active in the community in a variety of ways, a corporate philosophy that continues today as New Heights works with and/or sponsors a number of organizations such as the Moose Lodge of Nanaimo, Nanaimo Fish and Game and the Nanaimo Theatre Group. What really jump-started the firm’s growth was an opportunity to acquire the clients of an established accounting firm.
“Anna had been working for several accounting firms during that time, and one fellow who wanted to retire so we put an offer in, he accepted and we took over his clients. We made several structural changes to the way we were organizing our business which provided us with the opportunity to grow the business, and grow we did,” Wolf recalled.
Anna Wolf is New Heights’ co-owner and a CPA, she spends much of her time working with the firm’s many personal clients
“Our core values have never changed, and we are proud that we have been a finalist to the Vancouver Island Business Excellence Awards consecutively three years in a row.”
Today in addition to the Nanaimo office New Heights Accounting also has acquired a satellite office in Richmond (at #704, 5911 Alderbridge Way) and has plans to expand even further in the future. “Our thought is we want to grow the business, that’s what I do, you’d have to say I get my jollies by growing the business,” he joked.
“I get excited when I see our client’s business grow and prosper as our mission statement states: “We Want to Partner in Your Success.” That’s how the community develops and we’re here to grow right along with them.”
