Settling accounts for more than 40 years

OVANDO – When Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Terry Sheppard opened her office in Ovando in 1981 she was known as "the CPA on horseback." Her first tax season she spent April 15 knitting socks until 5 p.m. "just in case someone had a last minute return. Then I increased my clientele."

After 40 years of serving local, national and international clients, Sheppard announced her retirement Oct. 15. She will continue to assist local non-profits for the next couple of years.

Sheppard loved working for herself, even though it was a tough job. It allowed her to set her own schedule and work with a variety of clients, many of whom she considered family.

"We provided clients with personal service and they always knew who was responsible for their work," Sheppard said.

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Sheppard grew up on a farm north of Great Falls, the oldest of five siblings. She always wanted to be an archeologist but her mother convinced her to "do something more practical."

Because she enjoyed working with numbers, Sheppard pursued accounting.

She spent her first two years at Montana State University with less than 10% of her class being female. She transferred to University of Montana where she graduated in 1977 with a Bachelors of Arts in business administration with an emphasis in accounting.

"There was a real stigma that women should not be in the professional field," Sheppard said adding she faced some gender discrimination throughout her career. "I have opposing thumbs too."

Sheppard took her first accounting job in the beginning of 1978 with Kindred, Holland and Lundberg, a small firm in Helena.

The first year, she helped clients with accounting and bookwork. The next year, they worked her into taxes and auditing. While tax preparation became her specialty, she never cared for audits.

"You are always looking for something bad that you did wrong," Sheppard said. "People are really good at hiding it if they did something wrong."

Sheppard enjoyed the science behind putting the numbers together and the detective work to figure out the tax laws and how to mesh it with the clients' finances. Partner Ann Kindred taught Sheppard how to deal with the IRS.

"She was tough," Sheppard said. "Ann taught me I don't go to the IRS office, they come to my office. It took them a while but they did."

She also learned the art of working with clients. While understanding psychology has been helpful when dealing with clients, she also recommends that creative people should not do the books.

"They aren't doing anything wrong, they just aren't using that other side of their brain. They use creative ways of putting things down and it is not logical," Sheppard said. "It is just a different thought process."

She passed her CPA exam in May 1980. When her husband Bob wanted to move to Ovando she agreed. She liked living in a rural area and the CPA in Helmville had just moved.

"I had a college education, there was an opening so I started it," Sheppard said. "The IRS wants to hear from you no matter where you are."

Sheppard opened her business in 1981 in the old Blackfoot Telephone building, in downtown Ovando.

"You could only get in two ways, a key or a cannon," Sheppard said and laughed. "It was a cinderblock."

She heated with wood. She would take out her frustrations while splitting wood, sometimes even writing IRS on the wood rounds. Her neighbor could tell when she was having a bad day by how enthusiastically she split wood.

After a few years, Sheppard moved to her present location, 304 Central Avenue, with windows and a view of Ovando Mountain. She offered financial, accounting and tax advice along with tax preparation, accounting services, payroll reporting and notary service. She also made suggestions on estate planning, business start-ups and how to deal with credit cards and related debt. She worked with more than 120 clients at her peak.

"I worked myself to death. I would work 10-12 hours, six days a week," Sheppard said.

Most clients lived within a 60-mile radius of Ovando but she had out-of-state and international clients as well. Working for more than 40 years, she watched clients have children, raise their families and move into retirement.

"I worked with a lot of interesting people and a lot of interesting occupations," Sheppard said. "They kind of became family."

The biggest change Sheppard saw in her career was technology.

When she graduated from high school they had just come out with an electric typewriter. She barely passed her computer programming class in college where she had to write computer programs on a punch card. In 1986, she got her first computer but all the tax returns were still filed on paper.

"I remember making a mistake and it would change everything," Sheppard said. "I would erase so many times I would have a hole in my paper and have to start over."

Now she can file taxes on the computer. However, she theorized that Congress couldn't pass the "horribly, complicated, weird" laws without a computer.

"If I had to crunch those numbers with just a calculator, you couldn't afford to do it," Sheppard said. "Now with the computer and the software, even though each year I make sure it is working the way it is suppose to, it is just so much faster."

From copiers to calculators everything has improved. In her first years as a CPA, her bookshelves were full of reference books. When they changed a law, she would physically replace the pages in her books with the new law.

"I would hire someone part time and that was their job. That was a boring job," Sheppard said. "Now the research is all online."

Already having the tools to work virtually, Sheppard feels that CPAs were able to adjust more readily than other occupations when the COVID pandemic hit. Sheppard shifted to meeting most of her clients via phone or online. However she said she did not like that as well because she couldn't read their body language as well to help her tell if they were telling the truth.

Sheppard said she also saw a big change in the government during her career. When she first started, the IRS was very strict and she would only hear from them if something was wrong. She said they would also pick on people that operated with cash, especially waitresses or bars.

"They got so bad that they were the Gestapo," Sheppard said.

Making good on his campaign promise, in 1998 Bill Clinton signed the IRS reform bill aimed at changing the culture of IRS and boosting taxpayers' rights in disputes.

"It took a while but it changed," Sheppard said. "They were friendly."

Sheppard worked by the motto, "If you like it, tell all your friends. If you are unhappy, you talk to me first."

She explained that nine times out of 10 when someone got a letter from the IRS saying something was wrong, they were the ones that missed something, not Sheppard.

"That is where you learn to stand up for yourself," Sheppard said. "The IRS works for you, I don't work for them."

On one such visit with the IRS auditor, Sheppard's "very organized" client dumped a box of miscellaneous receipts, bank statements and checks on her desk in front of the auditor.

"We are going to have to sit here for hours, and this was like 1 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday," Sheppard remembered. "It was totally out of character."

She listened with her head down as the auditor pointed out the obvious that they were in no order, all the checks were loose, some receipts were good and others were unreadable.

"She looked at it all for a while, picking up several and said 'Well I guess it is ok. I will review it over again and see,'" Sheppard said. "I thought I was going to have a heart attack. She just wanted to go home."

After the auditor left, Sheppard confronted her client. He confessed that he couldn't find all the receipts, "so I just thought I would make it look big. Of course I told him don't you do that to me. I charge by the hour."

Sheppard has gone through several audits and had one client who got caught "cooking the books." Thankfully she did everything correctly and avoided any penalties due to the engagement letter her client signed taking responsibility for the information provided.

Learning how to interact with clients was another challenge Sheppard faced. Being an introvert it took her awhile to learn how to work with different personalities.

"You have to learn to be diplomatic and have some finesse," Sheppard said.

She also was bound by strict privacy standards. She never talked about anything that was shared by clients and her part-time employee was required to hold the confidence as well. There were a few times stories came out at the bar from others and thankfully she had a heads up so when the client confronted her she could defend herself.

A fellow CPA told Sheppard she would know when it was time to retire. Sheppard realized that a few years ago because it was not fun anymore.

"I don't care how much you get paid, if you don't like your job it is not worth it," Sheppard said.

In addition to not enjoying the work anymore, Sheppard said the price of the accounting software has increased to $10,000 per year, making it unaffordable. At 67, she can no longer multi-task like she used to and she is having a harder time replacing the old laws in her head with the new ones. It is also too hard to find part-time help when she needs it.

Instead of focusing on her have to and should lists, in retirement Sheppard looks forward to getting to focus on her want list. One of the things at the top is visiting all 50 states. Sheppard said she has visited 22 states so far and hopes to trace her family genealogy and visit relatives during her travels in and out of the country. Visiting Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian are a priority stop.

Sheppard is also looking forward to getting outside and exercising more. She wants to do more hunting and would love to hunt snakes. She also would like to go zip lining and scuba diving. Another bucket list item is getting a ride in a Black Hawk helicopter.

She is considering taking online classes for archeology and studying history. If she slows down long enough to be inside, she hopes to do more needlework and write more.

"I got to stay in rural Montana, was my own boss – which sometimes I don't like my boss – and could set my own schedule," Sheppard said. "I appreciate my clients for their support all these years."