7 - Pairing Solutions with Protea Financial's Zane Stevens

In this episode of The Concierge CPA, your host Jackie Meyer talks with Zane Stevens, Founding partner of Protea Financial. 

Zane shares his accounting journey with his wife and the story of his move to the United States from South Africa. Throughout his career, accounting and bookkeeping are Zane’ top priorities. However, after being exposed to the wine industry for so long, he became interested in starting a business that could provide better funding for the industry. It was then that Protea Financial was created. The mission is simple: to provide high quality and more affordable accounting services in the wine industry.

As an accountant, businessman and innovator, Zane puts more emphasis on the importance of delivering accurate and consistent financial data in every transactional accounting. He points out that failure to provide the right information will affect all forecasting and strategic analysis. Their business focuses on these 3 main points: consistency, timeliness and accuracy. Operationally, the company offers their employees the ability to schedule their own working hours. They believe employees can become more productive when they work their preferred hours, are able to find a routine that works best for them, stick to it, and be more consistent.

While there can be multiple projects going on at once, Zane says they often struggle to find a balance between doing too much and too little. One of the core values ​​of their company is not only to ensure that jobs are done on time, but also that employees have time to develop their skills. Zane says they provide weekly training to their employees and encourage them to pursue continuing education. Ultimately, they want their employees to feel valued and supported without feeling overwhelmed. One piece of advice Zane has for all accountants? Never forget that what they do matters.

Key points from the Episode:

• What Makes High Quality Accounting Work?
• The role of an account manager for each project and their qualifications
• Tips to help accountants become better at what they do

About Zane Stevens

Zane Stevens is a director of Protea Financial. Prior to joining Protea, he was Chief Financial Officer at Syntell and its subsidiaries in Cape Town, South Africa. Syntell is a premier company with over $38 million in revenue that provides cutting-edge technology services for road safety, traffic management and revenue collection.

Prior to joining Syntell, Zane was a supervisor at KPMG in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, South Africa, where he led financial and IT audit and advisory engagements.

Working with a wide range of clients, ranging from owner-managed entities to large multinational publicly traded corporations, Zane has gained extensive experience in various industries including automotive; public sector; food, beverages and consumer products; detail; health and agriculture.

Zane is registered as a Chartered Accountant (South Africa) with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. He received an honors degree in accounting from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, where he also completed his undergraduate degree in accounting.

About Protea Financial

Protea provides services to take over the burdens and responsibilities of finding, managing, and training an accountant or bookkeeper for businesses and free up proprietors’ time, so they can focus on building their businesses.

With a management team and account managers based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Protea provides business owners and managers with financial information and insight for making decisions. Protea’s goal is to provide, at costs below the market average, timely, accurate, and high-quality financial information on which a business can act.

Protea can provide any combination of standard bookkeeping and accounting, either as a fully-outsourced service managed by Protea or by adding a dedicated full-time or part-time accounting professional to your team at a significantly lower cost than what you would pay to hire an accountant or bookkeeper.

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Want to learn more? Check out Protea Financial’s website at https://proteafinancial.com/

Check out Zane Stevens on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/zane-stevens-16a50159/

Check out Zane Stevens on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the_operational_accountant/

Check out Protea Financial on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/proteafinancial

Check out Protea Financial on LinkedIn at  https://www.linkedin.com/company/protea-financial/

Check out Protea Financial on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FinancialProtea

Check out Protea Financial on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwo27_BLQESQand0WjBEii

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Check out more of Jackie’s work at https://www.jackiemeyercpa.com/.