John Blanc
Owner and senior tax preparer for Freedom Financial, John has been helping people in the community with their income tax and retirement planning for over 30 years.
Catherine Ashton
Catherine was born to be an accountant! Despite her parents' strong desire for her to be a nuclear physicist, Catherine determined to direct her own life. "I took a bookkeeping class in high school to satisfy an elective requirement and I was hooked immediately," says the diminutive powerhouse. Of course that changed the direction of her college plans, a great loss to the scientific community; a boon to business. Married to a career military man for 13 years, Catherine moved around a lot early in her career, including a stint in Japan. This gave her an opportunity to work with a wide variety of businesses and to explore public accounting. "I value my private industry experience because it helps me understand the needs, goals and strategy of my clients. I also worked for several years in public accounting, learning bookkeeping principles necessary to provide a favorable tax plan." More than anything, Catherine loves to help people get organized and understand their financial reports - to be able to use the information to better their business. Having that information in a timely manner is critical to business success. As she explains, "The money is made with sales; information about where to apply sales efforts is in the financials. The financial statements tell a story about the operation that can help an owner decide where to take the company and how best to get there." One of her biggest success stories is about a client who was struggling to keep her business afloat. With Catherine's advice and support to tighten in some areas and expand in others, the company grew to over 4 times its original size, all without having to add staff or enlarge facilities. "It's all about focusing one's efforts in the right direction."
When not deeply entrenched in her QuickBooks and Excel worksheets, Catherine is also the creator of many of Freedom Financial Service's marketing materials. At home she loves reading, crocheting, long walks, old movies, crosswords, video games and jigsaw puzzles.
Mary Beth Davis
Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Income Tax, Notary...
More to come
QuickBooks Accounting
QuickBooks joined the Freedom Financial Service staff several years ago, although it played a much smaller role in the beginning. More recently, working with Catherine and Mary Beth, QuickBooks has taken on a more proactive and involved participation in the operation of the business. The QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program helps Catherine and Mary Beth stay on top of the best resources for accounting and support for our clients with expert advice and knowledge. Now, we can set up QuickBooks in our clients' businesses, train and assist them in recording their transactions throughout the year. At year end data can be transferred electronically here to our office where it is reviewed and imported into Lacerte Tax for income tax preparation. (Remote access to client data that allows us to view online trouble spots and assist clients with questions about their QuickBooks usage will be available early next year.) For those businesses who prefer to have us do the data input and maintain files in our office, QuickBooks allows us to quickly compile reports and graphs to give our clients the best information available. QuickBooks helps us prepare our clients financials in our office that are ready for direct import to Lacerte Tax at year end. We are very happy to have QuickBooks as part of our accounting team. Catherine sums it up nicely, "Working with QuickBooks is the most fun I've had working with an accounting program in all my years of accounting."
Sherran Ahrens
Under construction
Cesar Chavez
Under construction
