Our Story
More than 30 years of tax and bookkeeping work in Lenexa, built for independent healthcare practices across the country.
A Family Firm Since 1995
30+
Years of Tax and Bookkeeping Work
48
States Where We Have Clients
Melissa Baker, a CPA, opened Baker's Bookkeeping & Tax Services in Lenexa in 1995. For more than 30 years the firm has handled tax, bookkeeping, and payroll for families and business owners across the Kansas City area. We prepare around 1,000 tax returns a year, and we've placed in the top three of Best of Lenexa for eight years running.
Most of our clients have been with us a long time. 81% are families who have worked with us across two or three generations. When clients move away, even out of the country, they tend to keep working with us. Today we have clients in every state except New Mexico and Maine. Clients describe us as proactive. We look for ways to save and start planning for next year instead of just filing this year's return. That habit is a big part of why people stay.
Melissa's daughter, Marcella Nichols, and Marcella's husband, Marc Eastin, joined the firm to launch a remote services division for clients nationwide. Its focus is independent medical and healthcare practices, including physician and surgical practices, behavioral health groups, med spas and aesthetic clinics, and direct care and integrative medicine. Marc is a practicing neurosurgeon who also owns a business, so he knows this world from the client's side. As Chief Information Officer, he designs the systems and technology the firm runs on and builds them around the person on the other end.
Medical practices come with their own set of problems. Insurance payments the billing system shows as collected that never reach the bank. Providers and clinicians paid from production numbers or by the session. Prepaid packages at a med spa that look like income before the treatment happens. A practice and the building it sits in, each needing separate books. These are the things we look for and keep straight every month.
We're a bookkeeping and tax practice. Tax returns, tax planning, and IRS or state notices are handled by enrolled agents, who are federally licensed to represent taxpayers before the IRS. Books are kept in QuickBooks Online and payroll runs through Gusto, so your numbers stay current and you can see them from anywhere.
A practice owner three states away should get the same attention as a Lenexa family that has filed with us since the beginning. That's the standard we work to.
Meet Marcella Nichols
Marcella Nichols is the President of Baker's Bookkeeping & Tax Services. She is taking over the firm her mother, Melissa Baker, CPA, founded in 1995, and she is the second generation of the family to run it.
Before joining the firm, Marcella spent seven years in recruiting and HR at a large software company in Southern California. She started as a recruiter and became Talent Acquisition Lead, managing a team of recruiters. Her work there was about hiring well and building teams that do good work for the long haul.
She runs Baker's the same way. Client work is handled by a team of credentialed enrolled agents who learn each client's business. You won't be passed around a call center or explaining your practice to someone new every time you reach out. The firm is hiring more enrolled agents as it grows, and finding the right people is the kind of work Marcella knows best.
Her background shows up in the work itself. Marcella holds a master's degree in clinical psychology, which gives her a real feel for how behavioral health practices operate, including how clinicians are paid and classified. Her HR experience is also the reason the firm offers Hiring & HR Support. Outside of the finances, staffing is the biggest problem most practices face, and it's an area where she has years of hands-on experience.
Marcella leads the firm's remote services division together with her husband, Marc Eastin, the firm's Chief Information Officer. The firm is still based in Lenexa, and it now works with practice owners across the country.
A Family-Run Firm Since 1995
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