Early, not accurate-in-April
Books close by the tenth and tax work starts in October. It means we cannot take a client in February who wants a return in March, and we turn that work away every year.
Home / The firm
The firm
A regional bench,
A regional bench,
run like a small practice.
O’Brien & Co. is a partner-led firm with clients in twenty-one states. A partner reads your file and answers the phone, and we have organized it deliberately so that it stays true.
Our story
Built around one
Built around one
fairly simple complaint.
O’Brien & Co. was built on a specific frustration: the clients who most needed judgment were the ones least likely to get any. Privately held companies were being sold a compliance product designed for much larger organizations, staffed by people who rotated off the engagement before they understood the business.
The firm started with four clients in a borrowed office on Congress Street. The proposition then is the proposition now: the technical bench of a regional firm, delivered by people who stay long enough to know why your inventory reserve is calculated the way it is.
Elaine E. O’Brien, CPA, CMA joined as Senior Partner in 2020, arriving from a decade of corporate finance leadership rather than from another practice, and took over as Managing Partner in 2022. That background is why the advisory bench looks the way it does: CFO strategy and M&A due diligence sit alongside the compliance work rather than being bolted onto it.
We have chosen to stay at a size where the firm can carry real capability in SALT, valuation and assurance without losing the ability to answer a question the same day. We have turned down two mergers to stay there. We are not the cheapest option in Boston and we are not trying to be. We are trying to be the firm that already knew about the problem before you called about it.
What we hold to
Three commitments,
Three commitments,
and what they cost us.
Values are only interesting when they are expensive. Each of these has cost us revenue, which is the only real evidence that they are held.
No contingent fees
We are never paid a share of a credit, a refund or a deal. It costs us the engagements where a percentage would have been worth more than our fee, and it is the reason our advice is worth taking.
Continuity over utilization
The same team returns to your file every year. We staff below the industry utilization standard to make that possible, which is less profitable and considerably more useful.
Timeline
Seventeen years,
Seventeen years,
in six lines.
Deliberate, mostly unglamorous growth. Every bench below was added because existing clients kept needing it, not because a market study suggested it.
2009
The firm opens
The practice opens with four clients and a borrowed office on Congress Street, offering tax compliance and planning to owner-managed businesses.
2013
Assurance bench added
Enrolled in the AICPA peer review program and began performing audits and reviews for clients whose lenders had started asking for them.
2017
Client accounting launches
Outsourced accounting formalized into its own bench after too many tax engagements began with rebuilding a year of books.
2020
Elaine O’Brien joins as Senior Partner
A CPA and CMA with a decade of corporate finance leadership behind her, she takes on financial restructuring, cost control and long-term planning engagements. She becomes Managing Partner in 2022.
2021
SALT practice established
Remote work turned multi-state exposure from an occasional question into a standing one. A dedicated state and local team followed.
2024
Advisory formalized
Valuation and transaction work, previously handled case by case, becomes a partner-led practice with its own standards and staffing under Elaine’s direct review.
2026
Holding at this size
Two hundred and forty clients across twenty-one states, and a deliberate decision to stay at roughly this size.
Standing
Licensed, reviewed
Licensed, reviewed
and accountable.
Every one of these is verifiable, and we would encourage you to verify them for any firm you are considering, including this one.
Massachusetts licensed
Registered with the Massachusetts Board of Public Accountancy. Every partner holds an active CPA license in the Commonwealth.
AICPA member firm
Member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and its Private Companies Practice Section.
Peer reviewed
Our assurance practice is subject to the AICPA peer review program on the standard three-year cycle. The report is available on request.
MassCPAs
Member of the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants, with partners active in its tax and valuation committees.
Working together
Firms are chosen on
Firms are chosen on
fit more than on fee.
A first conversation is forty-five minutes and costs nothing. Bring the thing that has been bothering you.