Feature Article in the Charlotte Business Journal:

Accounting for growth
Side venture goes full-time, quadruples client its base

Charlotte Business Journal - July 20, 2007
by Fred Tannenbaum
Staff writer

Bobby Palmer had operated his accounting firm as a part-time venture for several years when he noticed a common theme among his small-business clients.

Many of them were so busy juggling the day-to-day tasks of running their companies that they were overlooking tax breaks that could save them money.

Palmer saw a business opportunity. By taking his accounting venture full time and adding a range of consulting services, he quickly built a practice focused on small to midsized clients.

"They were running by the seat of their pants," Palmer says of his clientele. "I wanted to show folks how to use
accounting to their advantage."

The strategy is paying off -- for Palmer as well as the clients of Robert Palmer & Associates. The Fort Mill firm, which Palmer and a partner launched in 1998 as Palmetto Accounting Services, has grown to about 260 clients. That's more than four times the number Palmer had in fall 2005, when he bought out his partner's interest in the business, took it full-time and renamed it.

Palmer seeks clients primarily in York County and Charlotte that generate up to $250 million in annual revenue. But some are startups or part-time businesses with yearly sales of less than $100,000. In its services to small-business owners, Palmer's five-employee firm tries to coach them through the ins and outs of bookkeeping and accounting, showing how various strategies will affect their tax bill.

That kind of advice has proved valuable to Fort Mill restaurateur Jane Walters, who owns Jump N' Java Café on S.C. Highway 160 near the entrance to Baxter Village. Starting in mid-2006, Walters enlisted Palmer's help in finding ways to grow her business. Along the way, he showed her the coffee shop had been overpaying its sales tax. (She declines to say by how much.)

"Bobby's very detailed and takes an interest in your business," Walters says. "That's brought us a long way."
Palmer's small-business focus is ironic since most of his previous experience was with large companies. He was a
corporate finance executive with CSX Terminals when he started the firm, and he worked for INA USA Corp., the Fort Mill-based subsidiary of a German bearing manufacturer, in the 1990s and again from 2002 to 2005.
During the second stint with INA, the corporate world -- and constant travel back and forth to Germany -- began to lose their appeal, he says. "I didn't want to do that the rest of my life. My wife and I were getting ready to have our first child."

After operating initially from his home in Fort Mill, Palmer's firm moved to an office on Baxter's Market Street in
April 2006.

Bobby Palmer’s Robert Palmer & Associates has grown to about 260 clients, four times the number the firm had in fall 2005, when he made it a full-time operation.

And this month it expanded by purchasing Tolbert Accounting Services of Fort Mill. Financial terms weren't
disclosed, but Robert Palmer & Associates added an employee and picked up 72 clients in the process.


QUICKINFO ROBERT PALMER & ASSOCIATES
Business: Provides payroll, consulting and accounting services to small and midsized businesses
Founded: 1998
HQ: 1171 Market St., Suite 101, Fort Mill 29708
Principal: Bobby Palmer
Employees: 5
Phone: (803) 547-7066
Web:www.robertpalmerandassociates.com