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From my experience doing an MBA, I found it pretty worthless if you've already done a BS/BA in a business school program as the core classes are functionally the same (maybe there's a class on leadership or ethics or something that is new compared to the undergraduate curriculum, but it's not really worth doing a whole degree for and would probably be best to take as a standalone class) - an MS may be worth it so you can take specialty major classes (such as Finance, Taxation, Marketing, etc) rather than doing the core business curriculum again, although it also depends on your own cost-benefit analysis.
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Jan 10, 2013 19:32
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| # ? May 12, 2024 22:34 |
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Hey guys. So I'm a public accountant now. That's pretty wacky. I haven't had much time to post about it because well, I'm a public accountant. I was surprised at the lack of formalized training I was basically just thrown to the wolves to figure it out; trial by fire sort of deal. It felt really good though to actually be able to draw upon my education from my bachelors since I always felt like I wasn't really learning anything, apparently I was! Defenistrator posted:Any CA or to be CA's from Canada in this thread? Yes just write the UFE now if you can, otherwise you'll be waiting longer. As an added bonus if you write it now you'll wind up with five more letters after your name instead of just three!
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Jan 11, 2013 02:47
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Silber posted:Hey guys. So I'm a public accountant now. That's pretty wacky. I'm actually teaching the course all of our campus hires take when they start right now (winter hires) and I couldn't agree with you more. Every year the trainings seem to get longer and packed with more useless information than the previous year. I have to stick to the "curriculum" for the most part but I try to explain what is really working practice and what is the idealistic methodology of my firm, but there simply isn't enough time to tell them everything I think they should know and get through the material. That being said, I think you can only get so much from your initial training because experience and learning through doing is really the most effective way to figure out what is going on - a decent training course only serves as a light foundation for what you'll actually be doing.
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Jan 11, 2013 05:04
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 Urgh, I just had an interesting experience. So around about early august or late july I happened to send about 120 applications in the space of a week. And, for once, one of the interviews that followed got me into a Payroll administration/Tax advocacy job for a very big company. I won't name the company, but it was a recruitment agency for a ton of raw labour - Road builders, unskilled construction, that sort of thing. About 4,000 labourers nationwide. Quite a task for a guy with only a 6-month internship under his belt, but I reasoned that while it asked for 5 years experience with Payroll and another 3 with a particular type of software, they were offering an annual salary that only a graduate would accept. So I figured there must've been some issue with HR or something due to the conflicting messages (We want a qualified and exceptional expert! We'll pay peanuts!) and that I'd get taken on and given some training. Fair's fair, and this is my first actual job after 8 months of fruitless searching. Who was I to turn my nose at it? I wasn't into that place for half an hour before I realised something stank. It wasn't so much the conditions as the people issue - My training consisted of half a day of working with the previous holder of the position before she shot off, never to be seen again. This was a very large system, quite complex, and mistakes were made. I pretty much had to keep pestering for instructions because the old payroll system was so cantankerous that any wrong step could require another three hours of backing up. That pretty much set the tone until December. The bi-monthly tax deductions weren't so bad, but the insane number of branches, coupled with communication issues and the crotchety system meant that around a week had to be devoted to getting them submitted on time, which didn't please the SMT. I still wasn't being trained, but the supervisors didn't seem to be pleased that I had to keep asking questions to do the new parts of my position when they cropped up. This isn't to say I'm not also at fault, I've got an issue with attention to detail. But I doubt it was just me - There was a goddamned exodus from that company, extremely poor morale. I didn't work in the right department to know what it was, but poor communication and branch staff not knowing the payroll system was some of the parts I picked up. Eventually, I was asked to resign come Christmas, which I pretty much saw coming. The main reason was 'You don't have enough experience to operate effectively in your position. We're a recruitment business, payroll is essentially all we are, and your position is critical (It actually was, looking back). Too critical to have a graduate in it.' They apparently saw my CV and explained that based on that, I had a year of payroll experience (Whatever happened to those five years you wanted?). I pointed out that I had a year of accounting experience, and that payroll had been a small part in my internship. So that was that, it had all been a misunderstanding. So I learned three things the last few months: Some payroll stuff - I must admit, it's fleshed out my CV some. Only the dishonest graduates are ever going to be employed. If I'd just said I had double my actual experience beforehand, I'd have gotten into work, gained actual experience and continued to be employed. What a way to uphold the integrity of my profession! And of course, should I be challenged on it, I'd just say it was a mistake on behalf of the employers. No gross misconduct on my record. Beautiful. And finally, last week, I saw the exact same position being advertised for. In the same place. Five years experience, barebones salary. I am beginning to have extreme doubts as to whether this profession is right for me.
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Jan 24, 2013 03:40
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WarpedNaba posted:This isn't to say I'm not also at fault, I've got an issue with attention to detail. This is the part that worries me above all.
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Jan 24, 2013 04:15
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Yeah. I just started 3 months ago at a Big 4 in tax and while I still have very little practical knowledge about anything tax-related, the ONE thing that has people coming to me to give me work is my attention to detail. I think that's basically my entire job as a new hire, just catching other people's errors and spotting patterns in huge excel files (literally all I do all day).
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Jan 24, 2013 04:19
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Eh, attention to detail is a little overrated. It depends what you really mean when you say you lack it. Honestly, you probably weren't ready for the job and the company will chew up and spit out another payroll person in a couple of months.
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Jan 24, 2013 04:25
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Harry posted:Eh, attention to detail is a little overrated. It depends what you really mean when you say you lack it. Honestly, you probably weren't ready for the job and the company will chew up and spit out another payroll person in a couple of months. Essentially means that I did a lot of manual entries due to things like the branches forgetting the tax code, or having to sort out dividends for a co-owner in an acquired subsidiary. So that's a lot of numbers, and a lot of very quick typing. So every now and again (Perhaps one out of twenty?) I'll find that a 7 was supposed to be a 1 or so forth. Small fonts, poor handwriting and an incredible amount of values, even double-checking won't show them up from time to time, and the pace of the business meant that double-checking was the best I could do. As for the chewing, apparently I was the fourth payroll guy that year. At least I lasted longer than the other guys.
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Jan 24, 2013 04:31
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Alright, I'm having a tough time deciding what to do. Like I've posted before, I graduated in December and currently work part time at a store, with no insurance. The plan is to work part or full time and study for my CPA, but I'm torn between job options. One route is through this accounting temp agency (not Robert Half/Accountemps) that's sent me jobs that pay around $12 with no benefits, but are somewhat relevant to my degree. Either in cash posting or AP. Appealing for the experience, not so much for the pay and lack of benefits. The other option is working as a insurance salesman/customer service rep. Not the "sell life insurance to your friends and family" job, it's for this small mom and pop outlet called General Electric. That job pays 32k and has full benefits from day 1. I'm leaning towards the job at GE just because the company is so huge that there's bound to be opportunities to advance to other roles and offer more than just health and dental. I just want to know if not going directly into something like AP is going to stall my progress. This year is pretty much about just getting my CPA out of the way. I'm not even sure about my end goal quite yet. If I could list what paths I'm interested in in order, they would be AIS/audit, financial analysis, tax. I figure the CPA is a good start for at least two of those.
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Jan 24, 2013 19:28
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From what I figure, a generalised grounding tends to suit better for placement in an ATO than hitting up AR/AP/Credit Control etc. Especially if you angle for an Accounts Assistant role, since from what I've heard that can easily transfer to a junior executive role in the right company.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:49
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Is there an easy way to tell my boss that she is just throwing way too much work at me? This is my first real job after college, and I have been working here since July 2011. To give some backstory, I work for a small company that does the managerial and accounting work for a chain of convenience stores, a lumber mill, a Papa John's restaurant, and a bunch of rental properties; these are all owned by the same man. There are 5 of us in the accounting department. Over half of my workload comes from the convenience stores, and the only thing I do zero work in is the rental properties. So my job title is junior accountant. I do the payroll for the convenience stores and pizza shop, prepare the financial statements for the pizza shop, review all the work that the AP and AR clerk do for the convenience stores before I post it to the GL, and I prepare the financial statements for the convenience stores on my own; except I don't deal with depreciation or the fixed assets. Basically for the convenience stores I see the transactions go from store level to financial statement. I do not mind doing this, but lately my boss has been showing me how to do stuff with the other businesses, and always ends it with "this will be your responsibility going forward." Like last week I had to prepare all the fixed assets for the lumber mill and the convenience stores to be sent off to the CPAs so they could make us new depreciation schedules for 2013. Now today she tells me that she would really like me to assume more of a managerial and supervisory role, i.e. any problems the AR and AP clerks have they are to only come to me and not her. Also there is talk that they are going to be buying new POS systems for the c-stores which is just going to be a nightmare and I am sure I will get sucked into that. I guess I just don't know what I should do or how I should handle this situation. I kind of feel like it is only going to get worse, and I am going to miss an important deadline or something.
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Feb 4, 2013 17:47
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More responsibility is in itself not a bad thing, this is how people get promoted after all. You can ask for a better title and more pay, or if you must, an assistant. Be careful hiring an intern, they can be more trouble than they're worth...
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Feb 4, 2013 18:08
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I would say that if your job responsibilities and roles are equivalent to that of managing/supervising, your job title (and thus your compensation) should be accordingly commensurate. I'd look into seeing if your boss would be open to sitting down with you for an hour or so one day to take a step back and see what you're actually responsible for in the company. She might be: - unknowingly heaping tons of work on you (i.e., giving you progressively more work to do and forgetting about who it is delegated to, as long as the work is done), - expecting that the assignments that you're currently held responsible for are getting delegated to other members on the totem pole, or -(worst case, and cynically speaking the most probable scenario) taking the piss out of you and working you to the bone for the same pay rate, in which case it might be time to look elsewhere. However, you won't know until you actually sit down with her. 
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Feb 4, 2013 18:10
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Communication is the one thing that keeps things like that from getting out of hand. I've found that the people above you don't understand how busy you are, either because they are busy themselves or they just aren't perceptive enough to get it. It's on you to speak up. If I were you, I would try to do the work, then have the chat with her once you're at a point where it's not efficient or feasible. The key is to have that chat before it causes some sort of disaster, which is where some skill is required on your part. On a related note, I've been working big 4 tax for 4 months now, and it seems like the most technical and knowledgable people communicate like 3rd graders. Take the extra minute, form a coherent email, and don't waste everyone's time. I spend more time trying to decipher incoherent sentence fragments in emails than I actually spend doing taxes. Let's also not forget the amount of time spent fixing work due to miscommunications from the top down. Is it like this everywhere I wonder? /rant
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Feb 4, 2013 19:26
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chupacabraTERROR posted:Let's also not forget the amount of time spent fixing work due to miscommunications from the top down. Is it like this everywhere I wonder? Yes. some person that sent me this email posted:Haryr,
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Feb 4, 2013 19:39
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Harry posted:Yes. What gets me is that putting an extra 30 seconds of thought into that email would save at least 30 minutes of extra work... Maybe not 30 minutes for something like that where you could just pick up the phone but for bigger things, these inefficiencies add up...
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Feb 4, 2013 20:17
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chupacabraTERROR posted:What gets me is that putting an extra 30 seconds of thought into that email would save at least 30 minutes of extra work... Maybe not 30 minutes for something like that where you could just pick up the phone but for bigger things, these inefficiencies add up... You're not thinking of it the right way. By emailing you, it then becomes your problem and out of their hands.
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Feb 4, 2013 20:31
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Harry posted:You're not thinking of it the right way. By emailing you, it then becomes your problem and out of their hands. I picked the wrong career then because that's not how I operate  are smaller companies like this too or are they all full of not-my-problem manchildren :/
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Feb 4, 2013 20:40
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I'm on the audit side of Big 4, but you'll come to find that virtually of the work you do comprises of assignments that the partner tells the manager to do, who then tells the senior to do, who then tells you to do. These are then conveniently labeled as "opportunities," which after you get reamed out for not doing the work properly, evolve into "coachable moments." Additionally, the tailored procedures and work that is performed is essentially to CYA from any liability/potentials of malpractice if an engagement goes south.
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Feb 4, 2013 20:52
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chupacabraTERROR posted:I picked the wrong career then because that's not how I operate
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Feb 4, 2013 21:35
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So clients don't give a poo poo because they pay us to do their work. The people above me don't give a poo poo because its not their problem, until someone yells at them, then it's a huge problem and drop everything right now and fix a thing. No one communicates so I spend half my day doing nothing and half my day rushing to get someone out the door. Everyone constantly BSes to each other so that they can be perceived as busy when they're really just awful at managing people/time (even more ironic for people with the Manager title!). And why bother training the new guy, he's just going to quit in a year anyway. Wonder why... drat I love my job! And busy season hasn't even begun! How do you people do this for years??
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Feb 4, 2013 21:51
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I have my suspicions, Chup, that this is actually a recession thing rather than an accountancy thing. Poor workplace management and - as has been stated so many times before - worthless communication tend to kill businesses better than any economy. And let me guess, they aren't willing to take suggestions because what do you know, am I right?
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Feb 4, 2013 21:57
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WarpedNaba posted:And let me guess, they aren't willing to take suggestions because what do you know, am I right? They constantly ask for suggestions, but I've kept my mouth shut for 3 reasons: 1) I'm new, so what do I know? 2) literally everyone in my group is like this. What are they going to do, fire everyone? 3) this seems like a serious culture/personality thing that involves lots of egos that could really backfire on me Basically, by mentioning this kind of thing to a partner, not only will nothing come of it, but because of the way people's egos work, it will actually make it harder to address if I do stick around. I'll give it a year and then when I feel comfortable I'll tell these people off in the most professional way possible. Until then, I'll post about it itt and see if you guys have any suggestions, since you all seem to know what I mean. The one thing I can't do is become like them, I just don't work like that, never have and never will. So I fear I may be in the wrong industry :/
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Feb 4, 2013 22:06
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At least you guys haven't had someone complain about you because you sometimes wear your coat while working. (yes, this happened to me)
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Feb 5, 2013 05:08
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Why would you wear your coat while working? Do you support total anarchy?
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Feb 5, 2013 05:15
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I wore mine because the SMT was too cheap to cough up for some air conditioning.
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Feb 5, 2013 05:19
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abagofcheetos posted:At least you guys haven't had someone complain about you because you sometimes wear your coat while working. I've seen this happen to my staff before. The audit room was fairly cold and my staff put her coat on to keep warm and the client asked me to tell her to take it off because it was unprofessional. I asked them to turn the heat up in our room and we didn't have any problems after that.
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Feb 5, 2013 05:37
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Harry posted:Why would you wear your coat while working? Do you support total anarchy?
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Feb 5, 2013 05:50
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Good God, this is common? 
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Feb 5, 2013 05:56
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accountants are awful people (myself included)
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Feb 5, 2013 06:12
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hellboundburrito posted:I've seen this happen to my staff before. The audit room was fairly cold and my staff put her coat on to keep warm and the client asked me to tell her to take it off because it was unprofessional. I asked them to turn the heat up in our room and we didn't have any problems after that. We have an (illegal) space heater in our audit room.
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Feb 5, 2013 06:52
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24 posts in as many hours - yeap, bunch of folk bitching about public practice. My fave is when managers refuse to accept a change in treatment/work process, regardless of potential increase in accuracy/efficiency/both, because it "isn't how we did things in the prior period." Because the path of least resistance is always just to do the same thing the partner signed off on last year.
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Feb 5, 2013 08:02
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Sat down with my boss last night after work, and again first thing this morning, and talked to her about how I was feeling. She did say she was personally going to look into ADP to maybe try and get the payroll out of our office, but I know that in the end I am probably way cheaper than what ADP is going to cost. Then I asked her about maybe delegating some of my work to other people. In the past we tried giving the AP clerk the pizza shop payroll, and that culminated in me and my boss coming in on a Saturday and working eight hours to fix the mistakes she made. The other lady we have up here just started going back to school and I am pretty sure that is going to end in her having an emotional breakdown; so my boss is wary of trying to give her more work. The third lady we have up here is very old and works part-time these days so that is out of the question. I then just flat out asked if she was thinking of giving me a raise,she said I could stay later and come in early if I felt that would help me get my work done. Hooray I guess? I think it may be time to start looking elsewhere. Anyways thanks for listening to me whine
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Feb 5, 2013 15:33
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So the solution is to just work longer hours? And no pay increase? drat son run
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Feb 5, 2013 16:30
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Get out of there, dude. Bad job market or no, it ain't worth risking your health over.
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Feb 5, 2013 22:16
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Hoping for a miracle here: I will likely be bringing my soon-to-be wife to America in a little over a year from Korea. She has her BBA in Accounting from a Korean University and works for the biggest bank in Korea right now as a teller. Tellers in this particular bank need to have quite a bit of experience and study quite a bit to get the job, so it's not like the tellers we have in America (as I imagine them anyway). What I'm hoping for is for someone to outline for me what she would have to do to get off on the right foot as an Accountant in America. The fastest way, basically, not necessarily the best unless they are the same way. Is there a certificate or license she can get or does it all come down to a degree and the big CPA? She doesn't have the ambition, I think, to climb to the top of the pack with an MBA and I'm not sure either of us have the patience, financially speaking. She's planning to also take a class at the same time in English/Business English to improve her communication skills. Her English is adequate, I think, to get by very well, but she wants to polish it as much as possible. Regional advice: planning to move to the Washington state area, probably somewhere near Seattle. Neither of us have ever been there, but that's where we are planning on. If anyone can recommend good quality and/or low quality schools in the area, that would be great, too. edit: and am I reading it right that it's a tough market for accountants these days? When I graduated in 2006, most accountants at my University were being recruited before they graduated for salaries that are at or above $55K edit2: and would she have a shot with her Korean BBA and so-so English straight away? or is the right approach to study first? TreFitty fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Feb 9, 2013 |
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Feb 9, 2013 14:33
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abagofcheetos posted:At least you guys haven't had someone complain about you because you sometimes wear your coat while working. A couple people I'm friends with from classes and I are interns at the same company right now and one of them got pulled aside and told to stop laughing so much because it was really starting to piss off the people he was working with. There is no room for joy in public accounting.
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Feb 10, 2013 06:40
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TreFitty posted:Hoping for a miracle here: I will likely be bringing my soon-to-be wife to America in a little over a year from Korea. She has her BBA in Accounting from a Korean University and works for the biggest bank in Korea right now as a teller. Tellers in this particular bank need to have quite a bit of experience and study quite a bit to get the job, so it's not like the tellers we have in America (as I imagine them anyway). Why not have her work in a Korean accounting office in a Ktown? Don't know about Seattle but there is a huge community just west of downtown LA.
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Feb 11, 2013 18:35
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Jota posted:A couple people I'm friends with from classes and I are interns at the same company right now and one of them got pulled aside and told to stop laughing so much because it was really starting to piss off the people he was working with. it's me i'm the guy in this post ps the box seats were awesome
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Feb 11, 2013 19:43
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| # ? May 12, 2024 22:34 |
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So I'm a junior in my accounting program at a big state university. I've been applying for Summer Leadership Programs at the Big 4 along with smaller firms. I am moving in vaguely the right direction, correct?
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Feb 12, 2013 17:49
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