Dan Pavelich With Personalized Service And Consulting, Accounting Firm A Local Mainstay

Accounting, like corn, has become a commodity.

Dan Pavelich, chairman of BDO Seidman LLP, said successful accounting firms must do more than grind numbers for clients.

They must add value to their service by acting as consultants on technology, regulations or other issues of increasing importance to business, he said.

Seidman, for example, has specialists in computers, bank regulations and international accounting on its Spokane staff of 37, which last year moved into larger offices on the ninth floor of the Seafirst Financial Center.

That was shortly after Pavelich was made chairman of Seidman’s directors, overseeing a professional workforce of 1,500 in 40 U.S. offices.

Seidman is a partner in BDO Binder, the seventh largest international accounting firm with 400 offices in 60 countries.

Pavelich said the Spokane office can draw on the expertise of any of those offices in an effort to “partner” a local client with another business that has overcome similar problems, or that shares similar goals.

Pavelich himself was on the telephone with BDO Binder’s chief executive partner in Germany last Tuesday discussing common concerns.

During a business day that begins at 6 a.m. and stretches to 11 p.m., such calls are a significant part of his activity, he said.

“I have to balance the flow of my schedule,” Pavelich said, to assure that his clients and others served by the Spokane office do not suffer from his time on the phone or traveling to Seidman’s New York headquarters.

Off-hours, he busies himself on a five-acre tract on the southern edge of the Spokane Valley. “It’s my vacation home besides being a home for my family,” he said.

One son and one daughter are accountants in Seattle and Portland. Another daughter is a psychologist.

“Trying to operate out of Spokane is certainly an interesting process,” Pavelich said.

He started with Seidman in 1969 as the third employee in the Spokane office.

The Kellogg native and son of a Yugoslav immigrant had graduated from the University of Idaho in 1967. He took his first job with Price Waterhouse in Seattle.

Life on the West Side did not suit him, he said, so he took the Spokane position with Seidman, then one of about seven midsized accounting firms in the United States.

Today, only BDO Seidman and Grant Thornton are left in that fold. “We’re down to the survivors,” Pavelich said.

He said Spokane is an ideal market for Seidman, which fits between Coopers & Lybrand, the only major national firm in the city, and local stalwarts LeMaster & Daniels and McFarland & Alton.

“We don’t have a financial-center mentality,” Pavelich said.

The blend of size and expertise has fueled the office’s tenfold growth since 1969, he said.

Pavelich joined the company’s national board of directors in 1990. He said he decided to become chairman to improve his own skills and add more value to the services he can make available to Seidman’s Spokane clients.

“It helps me serve 300 partners here in the U.S.,” he added, noting Spokane is the smallest city represented on Seidman’s board.

Although the company has long been known for its specialization in taxes, Pavelich’s own expertise is auditing and consulting for some of Spokane’s prominent locally owned businesses.

“Family-owned businesses need people to talk to,” he said. “It’s almost like an armchair consultant.”

Consulting and other value-added services now contribute about half of Seidman’s revenues, Pavelich said, almost double the share of five years ago.

Expanding those activities is one of his biggest challenges, he said.

Others are training and recruitment. Pavelich said Seidman works with a few major universities nationally, the University of Southern California, for example, to improve accountant training.

Graduates today are much more capable than his classmates not just in paperwork, but also with increasingly important interpersonal skills, he said.

Pavelich said recruiting to Spokane can be frustrating. His alma mater and Gonzaga University have been good hunting grounds, but many talented candidates at regional schools are more interested in Seattle or San Francisco.

“We can’t be interested in those who are not interested,” he said, adding that the other Spokane firms are tough competition for the best candidates.

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