A Toronto-based accountant with professional credentials on both sides of the border has opened shop in Amherst.

Marlies Hendricks hopes to build a base of clients from her new office at 1101 Niagara Falls Blvd. and continue in the United States what she has built in Canada since establishing her practice there in 1990. Her target is small businesses with revenues from $250,000 to $10 million.

The office is known as Marlies Y. Hendricks & Associates LLC and employs two. Hendricks said she expects to hire a third accountant a year from now.

Hendricks was a corporate accountant working for a telecommunications company in Toronto when her entrepreneurial leanings prompted her to open an accounting business on the side. She operated the office part time until 1993, when she left the company to devote all of her time to the firm. It is known in Canada as Hendricks & Associates CPA CGAs and employs five. A certified general accountant, or CGA, in Canada is equivalent to the U.S. certified public accountant.

The firm began concentrating on small-business work and performed some tax planning, payroll services and cross-border issues for companies with dual sites or that moved between the countries.

Hendricks earned a CPA license in Illinois in 1996. She became a member of the state Society of CPAs and is working toward licensure in New York.

She opened a second location in the United States to make better use of her education of the American accounting practice, and in Buffalo to be close to her Toronto flagship, she said. Having a physical presence was necessary to build the U.S. end of her firm, he said. Hendricks also moved her young family here from Canada.