Meet and Greet: Louisa Else, Tax Manager and Controller

We are pleased to share a bit about Louisa Else who joined Fine Point Consulting several months ago as a controller and our Tax Manager, (and all around awesome co-worker).

Tell us about the work you do for Fine Point.

Along with being a controller, I am the Tax Manager at Fine Point. My team and I prepare the tax returns for many of our clients and work closely with the controllers to make tax time as painless as possible, by leveraging all of the knowledge we already have from working with our clients on a day to day basis.
Outside of tax time, I’m also happy to research and answer even the craziest tax questions that come up. We also provide support for quarterly payment calculations, nexus studies for our clients who work in multiple states, and anything else that we can help with.

Tell us about your educational and professional background before you arrived at FPC.

I graduated from Hamline University with Economics and Creative Writing majors and an emphasis on Accounting and Business Management. While I was at Hamline, I had the opportunity to study at two different business schools in Germany, which had an incredible effect on how I view and understand the business climate from a broader perspective than if I had only studied in the US.
After college, I began my career working in public accounting at BDO in Anchorage, Alaska, where my focus was on business and not for profit tax returns. I also spent a season working at a smaller firm, where I was able to get a great amount of experience in individual and small business returns. When we moved back to Wisconsin, I spent 2.5 years working on the tax accounting team of a large, publicly traded company.

What do you like most about working at Fine Point?

Hands down, the people I work with. We have such a smart, fun loving, interactive team, even though many of us are located remotely. It makes it fun to work together each day.
I also really enjoy the challenge of creating the best processes to optimize our tax preparation structure. What excites me most about our tax model is that we are doing returns for our clients we already work so closely with. That allows us to bring efficiency to our work and make tax time less stressful for our clients. We’re not working to have a mad rush of returns within three months. We want a relationship with our clients all year long that smoothly transitions from day to day transaction entry to estimated tax payments to yearly return filing, and everything in between.

Luella is a big reader. Any favorite business, accounting, or other books, blogs, or podcasts you like?

I read everything I can get my hands on. I skim the Morning Brew newsletter most mornings. It gives a good overview of some of the bigger business headlines of the day with an engaging, sometimes tongue in cheek, voice. I’m often caught listening to various learn German podcasts as I try to keep my vocabulary fresh in my mind.
I also recently read I Know How She Does It, by Laura Vanderkam. I appreciated how she challenged the propensity to talk up how much we work and do and points out, with research behind it, how pockets of free time exists in many places we don’t realize.

One thing others might be surprised to learn about you.

I’m probably the loudest introvert you’ve ever met. I enjoy networking and working with clients a great deal, but it is also exhausting if I bunch too much together! As long as I have my husband and kids around, I can quite happily not interact with another soul for days at a time. That’s probably why my favorite vacations are heading to the Kenai Peninsula or camping in Northern Wisconsin.

When you’re not working at FPC you…..

I’m chasing my kids and animals! My kids are twenty months apart and every day is a new crazy story I could tell. Their exploits are a great hit in the FPC Slack channels.
When the kids are occupying themselves, it’s a safe bet you’ll find me curled up with either a book or my current crocheting project. Our weekends are also full of football whenever possible – my husband coaches high school, my dad coaches college, and on Sundays we’re wearing Green and Gold.

‍