CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen), Minneapolis

"Terrible accounting service. My taxes were never correct. I was assigned to different “accountants” in the two years I used, communication was horrible , and they always needed extensions. I was penalized for overpayments and underpayments. They will send invoices with no explanation and never provided a written explanation or lists of fees. They insisted I use their person to “clean up”my QuickBooks and charged me $3000, she categorized one of my tax payments as an expense instead of a liability, which is costing me more to fix. Once I canceled services I received another bill for $800. When asked what it was for they stated it was for email communication and projecting for this year, which again was off by $20,500"

"If there’s a pattern, there’s a problem…. I applied for a communications and marketing specialist position at CLA in Minneapolis in August 2023. The recruiter, Mary-Faye DeMarco, was so disjointed and inept that I don’t think she knew exactly where she was each time we interacted. After she sauntered in nearly 10+ minutes late to our phone interview, seemingly irritated that I couldn’t stop my day and continue going over our allotted time, I completed the interview the best I could; after all, if she can’t be bothered to show up on time, I am not rearranging my day for her nor rearranging prior appointments. After completing the interview, she told me to wait by my email/phone and she’d have an interview set up for me with the hiring manager shortly (Cam, I think was his name). In fact, she wanted to set me up either same-day, or the very next day, to the best of my recollection. Several days went by – nothing. Several more days went by, and she reached out to me by email to see if I was still interested. I ignored this email, moving on with my job search, because it was evident Ms. Demarco was either a liar and/or simply bad at her job. A few days after ignoring her, she came slithering back with her tail between her legs, seeing if I was still interested yet one more time. I responded with a long email, continuing to express interest, and letting her know exactly where I was in my overall job search. It was nothing short of a kind and inviting email. Again, she did not reply and completely ignored me, not even acknowledging my email. Fed up with her disjointed, erratic, unprofessional behavior and bread-crumbing me along as a senior talent acquisition specialist – or whatever her role is — I wrote her an email withdrawing from the position and explaining my frustration over the way I was treated. As was customary for Ms. Demarco, she did not reply. (In fairness, what does she really have to say when she’s called out for her inept and lackluster conduct?) I received an out-of-the-blue decline email in February 2024, for the exact same position I had applied to back in August, and I had to near beg her to stop contacting me; it was quite embarrassing — for her — to beg her to stop contacting me, which she agreed to do, and finally put me on their “do not contact” list. Because I do have private services through CLA, I had to get Ms. Demarco to clarify whether or not this do not contact list would affect my private services through CLA, and she was finally able to do her job and get an answer. Overall, Ms. Demarco is exactly the type of recruiter you pray and hope you never run into: inept, lacks follow through, unprofessional, strings you along, and is simply bad at her job. Worse yet? She simply doesn’t care. As one or two other reviews have noted, the employment practices at CLA are questionable at best. If there’s a pattern, there’s a problem…."

"Although the office people were generally nice / sociable, CLA was a bad company to work for. They showed massive favoritism to their accounting / tax / audit staff and treated management/consulting people like second class citizens. A bean-counter type mentality and they treat people like numbers instead of fairly like human beings. They would actually give management consulting jobs to less qualified accounting / financial people just to keep them busy with no consideration to the more qualified management consultants who actually have more management knowledge and experience to do the management jobs for the client. Poor performance resulted and they did not seem to care for the client or the management consultants who should have been assigned instead of the tax/audit/accounting type people to begin with. They would pay management consultants on a contract basis, no salary or bench time. They would say in the interviews about how they would quickly get assignments for consultants once hired or between jobs with little down time. Not true. Many consultants would be out of work for long periods of time. They also would not start compensation and benefits until they find the new hire their first contract job. Additionally, if you were a new hire and next in line to be submitted for upcoming contract jobs, then other existing contract employees recently came off a contract, they would push you down the list and place the other employees ahead of you, extending the amount of time before you get your first job. It could be several weeks or even months before you start your first job after being hired. I expect they do this because the other existing employee's benefits have already kicked in and yours as a new hire have not. Benefits are bad. I set up an employee health benefits program for a smaller client prior to starting with CLA and know what the costs were. Then when hired, I noticed that even though they were a massively larger company, their benefits were not nearly as good as the smaller company and also cost roughly a couple hundred dollars more a month. It was like they were charging the employees $200-300 per month to administer the benefits program. Their benefits should have been cheaper being a massively larger company. I also noticed after working for them over time is that the quality of their management consultants was very poor and they would place consultants in jobs they were not good at. I would say about 50% of their management / consulting type people were unqualified or lacked the personal character / intelligence / abilities to do excellent work for clients. If I was a client I would stay away from them. As an organization, they appear to have poor leadership. Also, they showed bias towards people from special interest groups and accounting/financial backgrounds, and did not seem to base client assignment decisions on which people were best to provide excellent services to the client. They just did not seem to care about their management / consulting people or the financial hardships they caused for employees, so definitely look elsewhere for work. Seemed like a somewhat disorganized, unfair, unethical and poorly managed company."

"Horrible experience. Our account has been passed to four different Principals in two years. Our first Principal simply “lost” paperwork received and tried to bill us for her errors. Most recently, our last Principal left the company, without informing us of his departure and NO ONE from CLA has contacted us about our new representative, our pending tax deadlines, etc. — I’ve worked diligently to file a complaint, meet our supposed new representative, get ahead of this deadline and penalty to no avail. Do not work with CLA. Find a more committed company with any standard of customer service because they simply have none."

"Very caring people."