senior accountant

certified public accountant

accounting technician

staff accountant

senior tax accountant

Crowe MacKay LLP

Originally recruited from the East Coast, I saw the potential for adventure and opportunity in the North and have never looked back on my decision. 

I originally began my career with Crowe MacKay LLP as an articling student in 2012 and have continued to work with the Company for the past three years, now a Supervisor. 

The opportunities I have been given to grow within the firm have been invaluable. The skills and knowledge I have gained over the past three years have made me a rounded Professional. I have grown to be able to provide valuable support to clients and staff members alike to help businesses grow and see other individuals succeed in the accounting field. I have been given opportunities to work in a wide variety areas, including for-profit, not-for-profit, financial services, consulting, tax and government projects alike. I have also been provided with the opportunity to travel the North exploring many parts of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Crowe MacKay has gone above and beyond my expectations as a articling student to ensure that I was given all the support and guidance through the CASB process. Ultimately I was able to pass all six modules and the UFE on the first time which is attributable to both the support of Crowe MacKay and my personal work ethics which were supported by their values. 

Completing the CASB/CPA courses is always going to be a daunting task to create work/life balance. Crowe MacKay LLP provides all CASB/CPA students with support through this process with experienced mentors who have recently completed the process themselves and are able to guide and assist through the process. Crowe MacKay truly wants everyone to succeed through this process and the time and monetary support provided are outstanding. 

Beyond the CASB/CPA process, Crowe MacKay continuously develops their staff and continues to invest in their growth. Crowe MacKay has provided me with extensive professional training and support to ensure that professional standards are adhered to and I am up to date on changing professional standards. 

Crowe MacKay LLP has created a culture based on their values and beliefs of caring, sharing, investing and growing in both their staff and clients. The Yellowknife Office hosts many staff events on an annual basis which assists in creating and maintaining a team environment where members are committed, supportive and respectful. 

I continuously feel supported by management and staff alike and feel my work is valuable to the Company as a whole. While no one ever said a career in accounting would be easy, Crowe MacKay LLP sure does make it worth it!

I'm not originally from Yellowknife but I decided to apply and then accept a job with Crowe Mackay as an opportunity to try something new and different. 

Like most accounting firms you are required to work in teams that change weekly therefore it is essential to be a team player.  The ability to work with others and keep a positive attitude is a pretty big determinant of success.  

I've found the firm very supportive of students working on CPA, I've attended three separate Densmore prep sessions, all have been informative and helped me pass the modules.  They also pay for all expenses to attend the module workshops. 

The work/life balance varies, during the busy season you are expected to work a significant amount of overtime while during the slower periods you can take Fridays off. I've always found them to be very understanding and accommodative when it comes to taking vacations as well. 

I have had many opportunities to advance quickly within the firm and also had the opportunity to do a secondment at another firm within the Crowe Horwath network.  I've always found the firm supportive of their employees which can be seen by sponsoring different teams to play on and hosting events/parties above the norm of other firms I've worked at.

Overall it's been a great experience and I'd highly recommend reaching out to current employees through Linkedin if you are interested.

Like most of us, we chose to go to Yellowknife for the adventure, and for the higher salary.  Generally speaking, most get recruited from the East, but this was not my case.

I was a Supervisor for a while, but do caution anyone who may choose to work for MacKay Yellowknife.

In your first year of working for MacKay, you will owe the company on average $9000.  It is normal practice for CA firms to add the cost of modules on a forgivable 1 or 2 year loan.  What is not normal, is to add the cost of Junior staff member 'in house' required training they send you on in the South.  Add your initial travel to Yellowknife, one or two modules, -you get the picture.  If you leave, they will just keep your pay and offer you no other way to reimburse.. this is also not normal.

Retention in any CA firm is not great, but MacKay Yellowknife has taken this to another level.  They will blame retention on the north, but the majority of designated accountants who have left them will still be working in Yellowknife.

I have never worked at a place with such a dark culture.  It was a terrible place to work for, and I should have decided to leave much sooner than I did.

I highly recommend anyone considering MacKay Yellowknife to get in contact with a former employee over Linked In.  There must be a better option for you out there, especially with this CPA merger.  You don't need CATO time, so do yourself a favour and pass on this "opportunity"

Currently the Calgary office is going through some tough times and company culture in word only but not in practice. A lot of senior staff left and it’s basically tones of juniors with 1 year of experience, lots of managers and partners. There is no one to train and everyone is overworked. We are doing overtime up till August of 2024.

Lots of unpopular negative reinforcement plans being introduced to get people to work harder but without any rewards. Weird policies like public shaming that was thankfully ended by the firm’s head of HR and phased out a week later. 

Very top heavy with more and more managers getting hired externally so internal promotions above senior accountant is rare. Lateral managers that are external hired or merged from other firms are a mix. Some were wonderful and very knowledgeable to learn from while others arnt even as good as our internally trained senior accountants. Clearly these imposters show skills do not fully correlate with how many busy seasons you worked or where you worked

I worked here for over 2 years. It is one of the most hostile work environments I have encountered. 

No constructive feedback was provided even though it is a training office... only condescending comments were provided or no feedback at all. The partners would rather talk behind your back and not to your face. 

You are told that you will only have to travel 3-4 weeks during busy season.. which was a lie. I had travel assignments 7-8 weeks in the spring to remote communities.. two to three weeks away at a time from your family and friends. And then I was reprimanded when returning to the office for not returning a client phone call. Not sure how I was supposed to check my voicemail when I’m not physically in the office. 

I was also reprimanded for not meeting my chargeable hour budget even though I communicated on multiple occasions (and proactively) that I needed work.

The partners picked favourites as well and made it very obvious to the rest of the employees. This caused significant hostility and unhealthy competition between the staff accountants.

I worked for MacKay Yellowknife for a very short time (a couple of months).  I was recruited from the East, as the salary in Yellowknife was much higher.  Unfortunately, I should have listened to my gut feeling when I read about their 30 min policy for "Cake Day".. in their employment contract... and yes I'm being serious....

An example of their culture, which stands out to this day, was when I received a one-line email in July stating "Tell me why you didn't you obtain 200 chargeable hours, and don't give me a childish excuse".  

I obtained 197 chargeable hours as a Junior (3 hours short) and just found out I had passed my first module in the CA program.  I was disgusted, in fact, I still have that email, and I show it to students when explaining 'firm culture' to this day.    

Anyway, I finished my articling with a different firm.. that actually had CA's that I could learn from, and happily passed the UFE away from that place.

Over the years it's interesting to watch the "well known" Yellowknife MacKay revolving door get good use.  Before you choose to go there, do yourself a favour and ask a previous staff member their experience.

I worked at Crowe MacKay in Kelowna before I had to relocate and had an amazing experience. The staff were great to work with and very fun to hang out with. There were many social activities and through those, one could easily connect with other colleagues. There are also opportunities to travel to other offices and work with clients in different industries.

The managers and senior managers were always willing to listen / help and adopted a constructive tone when providing feedback. Speaking of feedback, there was lots of it so you always knew where you stood. 

The partners genuinely care and are very approachable. My impression was that they were very keen to build a positive and high performing culture. 

Cons: There were long hours but this was only during tax season which was reasonable. 

Overall, I had a wonderful experience and would definitely recommend Crowe MacKay as a firm that encourages growth, advancement and cares about its employees. It is also a great place to start an accounting career and article.

Dealing with clients in person as well as reception.  
Used Caseview for financial statements and related documents; Doc-It - provides document management and archiving solutions, used to create pdf files to save into the caseware program; Knowledge of TaxPrep and importing client list to Excel, creating monthly reports; Assemble Financial Statement packages as well as personal and corporate tax returns in a timely manner; Process credit card payments using Converge online; Outlook-scheduling appointments and shared calendars; Microsoft Word-daily correspondence as well as creating huge mail merges; Excel-creating spreadsheets and trackers.
I definitely learned time management as well as solution seeking.  The workplace culture was wonderful.  Everyone was very approachable and knowledgeable.
The hardest part was keeping up during tax season, but I had no problem working overtime to get the files completed.
All of the staff are very personable and we all had great working relationships.

Hands down, the worst job experience I've had in 30 years. Management are ignorant, misogynistic, rude, and often outright cruel. Even if they have zero knowledge in your practice area, they will not consider your professional opinion, and force you to perform tasks to their specifications, which are usually wrong, and when there's an issue, you are to blame.

The culture is poison. I've never met a more unwelcoming bunch; and this all stems from upper management. Management is happy to tear down an employee, both to their faces and behind their back.

Crowe will never maintain quality employees if they do not make some changes to their culture and work environment. They need to get rid of the cocky, arrogant management team, and actually bring in a professional HR and Benefits team, instead of hiring their buddies from previous offices, who are neither educated nor experienced in their field. When they DO have a staff member who can made a positive influence, they smother them with their poison.

Terrible.

The Calgary office recently merged in another firm and the whole process has been a pain for all sides involved. A lot of confusing, low budget and messy files came with the merger and they are wasting lots of staff time for everyone that works on those. There is an inside joke that getting assigned to these partners is a form of punishment for some mistake you made.

The managers and partners that came with the merger are clearly not as good or motivated and clearly waiting for a payout for selling a book of stinker clients to the Calgary office. They only know how to do compilations for old retiring engineers so the book of clients is losing value year over year as these clients age. 

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