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Audax posted:You realize that passing one or two of those sections instantly puts you into employable category with a lot of firms, right? Something that should pay close to 2x what you're making currently. Just remember to pass the remaining three parts within the 18 month period after passing your first part.
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May 29, 2013 02:40
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WarpedNaba posted:Goddamnit
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May 29, 2013 02:41
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Hoops posted:You're in forensics? I'm starting in September. I'm in the UK so they hire straight out of university with any degree and train you for three years (I'm about to finish my masters in applied maths, I haven't taken a single accounting class ever). How long does it take to work up to the level of litigation support? Depends on the field, the country and the cases. Anywhere from four months to two years, from what I've heard.
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May 29, 2013 03:15
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WarpedNaba posted:Depends on the field, the country and the cases. Anywhere from four months to two years, from what I've heard.
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May 29, 2013 03:18
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Hoops posted:Fair enough. I see myself moving more towards investigations but going to courthouse to testify in criminal proceedings is about as sexy as you're gonna get from accounting. Not as sexy as working for the National Office of the ICA and doing some clandestine poo poo on behalf of them and the National Tax Authority. That's right, baby. You too can bend the failings of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its mainfests on Corporate governance policy to your whim. Provided you're approved, though, otherwise it doesn't matter how many execs you finger for criminal negligence/mismanagement. On the other hand, Espionage Accountancy is a drat cool career title.
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May 29, 2013 03:29
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WarpedNaba posted:Not as sexy as working for the National Office of the ICA and doing some clandestine poo poo on behalf of them and the National Tax Authority.
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May 29, 2013 03:35
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ThirdPartyView posted:Doing a two year degree is OK so long as you can meet the 150 credit hour requirement that many (most?) states now require - if this will be in effect an MS degree, they should be cool with it (since they'll understand if you didn't do the accounting degree as a BS degree). The program I'm looking at is an AS degree, but I already hold a BS in Engineering with about 138 credit hours. Ohio requires 150 credits but doesn't seem to segregate any specific degree or program. So 150 hours would be no problem. Edit: Actually found a local school that as a BSA program that may work for me. I just have to take the GMAT. quote:Forensics With the school I'm looking at, they have a specific CPA program, and one specific for Forensics. Most of the courses are the same. Would I be better taking one over the other, or is there little difference in the long run? The biggest thing I can see is that the CPA program includes courses for Business Administration and Auditing which aren't in the Forensics course. It seems as far as the Ohio CPA board is concerned it doesn't matter, but I want to make sure I can get a job when I finish the degree, and I don't get stuck with only MLMs calling me like I am now. CovfefeCatCafe fucked around with this message at 14:48 on May 29, 2013 |
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May 29, 2013 14:24
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Audax posted:You realize that passing one or two of those sections instantly puts you into employable category with a lot of firms, right? Something that should pay close to 2x what you're making currently. And I have the card of an alum who works for EY. I need to stop coasting.
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May 29, 2013 22:31
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YF19pilot posted:Would I be better taking one over the other, or is there little difference in the long run? Do you mind linking to the programs that you're considering? I'd be more than happy to offer feedback with regards to the curricula and whether or not they'll be useful for job opportunities (at least based on my own experiences).
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May 30, 2013 00:19
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ThirdPartyView posted:Do you mind linking to the programs that you're considering? I'd be more than happy to offer feedback with regards to the curricula and whether or not they'll be useful for job opportunities (at least based on my own experiences). The two year programs: AS CPA Major AS Forensics Otherwise, the BSA from Kent State looks like something I could do.
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May 30, 2013 02:50
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YF19pilot posted:The two year programs: This quote from the Stark State CPA major is weird (IMO): quote:Upon completing the curriculum, a candidate must take and earn a minimum score on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) prior to being allowed to sit for the CPA Exam. Why would the GMATs be relevant for sitting for the CPA exam? In any case, the Stark State CPA major seems to be a more generic all-around curriculum, covering financial accounting through Intermediate II (that is, no Advanced topics such as governmental, probably consolidations, foreign currency translation/transactions, not-for-profits, etc.), auditing (which, honestly, you can probably self-study the material as I remember my auditing class being pretty dry outside of the fraud stories the professor discussed), managerial and cost accounting (which may or may not interest you), individual taxation (which is worth taking just to see if you like taxation as an area of interest and will help pretty significantly with REG, IMO) and business law (which is a good class to take, once again IMO). On the other hand, if you're really interested in forensics it seems like that specialization eliminates a lot of the core business classes and plops in forensics-related IT, accounting and legal courses which would be interesting but may or may not be relevant if you end up deciding that you don't like forensics down the line. The Kent State degree is pretty similar to the Stark State CPA major so a price-point comparison between the two would probably be pretty useful if you decide to do a CPA major. However, based on the program requirements page, it looks like it's basically a 5th year and so you'd have to do a full BS/MS program, so I'm not sure if it's useful/realistic given the time/money commitment that would be involved.
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May 30, 2013 03:28
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ThirdPartyView posted:
Because each state has different requirements for sitting? Ohio posted:To sit for the CPA exam as a first-time four-part candidate in Ohio, follow these steps: You will need 150 hours* of college credit and either:
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May 30, 2013 04:33
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Mandalay posted:Because each state has different requirements for sitting? Not sure how a 620+ on the GMATs can act in lieu of an additional 30 credit hours, though?  I took the GMATs when I did an MBA and it really has nothing to do with actual studies (no more than the SATs). It just seems like a really stupid rule to provide a 120 credit hour 'out' and avoid forcing everyone to take 150 credit hours (why not just let people do 2 years of experience instead if they want 120 credit hours as was the case in most states before the 150 credit hour policy was implemented?).
Horseshoe theory fucked around with this message at 11:58 on May 30, 2013 |
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May 30, 2013 11:40
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Looking for advice on where I should be heading next in my career. I'm 25 years old with a degree in accounting and roughly two years of experience at a private company (manufacturing industry California). I was hired on in 2011 as a "Purchasing Agent / Cost Accountant" which basically ended up being a buyer position. Due to my willingness and ability to take on an obscene workload I was able to push myself into more and more accounting responsibilities at a rapid pace. In the last two years I've gotten experience in the following: Report Writing (Excel, SSRS, Microsoft Data Query) Report Optimizing (similar to above, but modifying existing reports) Inventory Control (6 offsite warehouses 2 onsite) Purchasing / Sourcing (managed to get better prices on 3 key products for manufacturing) Cost Accounting (Reserves, OH Calcs, Weekly Inventory Posting / Reconciliation, developed Gross Profit/Margin Report, Standard Cost Evaluation Report, Estimated Cost Evaluation Report) General Ledger Accounting (Produce month end journal entries, perform inter company reconciliation, clear ZINGER accounts, reconcile GL accounts at month end, maintain GL records) Sales / Use Tax Reporting (CA, OH, KY, IN, PA, and AZ) Budgeting / Forecasting (Designed 2013 Budget from scratch, worked with department heads to forecast 2013 revenue/expenses, created individual budgets for 11 divisions and a rollup budget to be presented to the CEO/CFO, ran budget to actual comparison for Q1 2013 meeting) I guess my main three questions are: Am I spreading myself too thin? Which of the above do a highlight when creating my resume moving forward? What skills (if any) am I missing that would be expected of an industry accountant at 2 years? I will be working on my CMA this year, and starting on MBA a year from September if I stay at my current company. My mid term goal is a Corporate Controller position and then eventually VP Finance/CFO.
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May 30, 2013 16:40
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ThirdPartyView posted:Not sure how a 620+ on the GMATs can act in lieu of an additional 30 credit hours, though? Bugamol posted:I guess my main three questions are: Am I spreading myself too thin? Which of the above do a highlight when creating my resume moving forward? What skills (if any) am I missing that would be expected of an industry accountant at 2 years? If you happen to be in Orange County, CA, I'd suggest checking out the IMA-OC monthly dinners for networking purposes. Bunch of CMAs there.
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May 30, 2013 22:18
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I'm in an Accounting/MIS grad program and starting full time with a Big 4 in 2014. Does anyone have a good resource site for Excel knowledge? I have the basics down and have taken/will take macro/VBA classes, but I tend to forget the details when I don't use excel on a daily basis and I'd like to have somewhere online to periodically refresh my knowledge. The semester long internship with my firm didn't require too much advanced knowledge of excel, but it's better to be able to poo poo out a file with too many details and formulas and all that than having to always guess-and-check work requiring more than simple formulas and graphs.
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Jun 17, 2013 22:07
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You could always get certified. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?id=77-882#fbid=HqWS1ELfYNd I took it last weekend and it was boring as poo poo but now I have a nice piece of paper saying I don't suck at Excel.
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Jun 18, 2013 18:16
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Democratic Pirate posted:I'm in an Accounting/MIS grad program and starting full time with a Big 4 in 2014. Does anyone have a good resource site for Excel knowledge? I have the basics down and have taken/will take macro/VBA classes, but I tend to forget the details when I don't use excel on a daily basis and I'd like to have somewhere online to periodically refresh my knowledge. The semester long internship with my firm didn't require too much advanced knowledge of excel, but it's better to be able to poo poo out a file with too many details and formulas and all that than having to always guess-and-check work requiring more than simple formulas and graphs. Start maintaining some personal logs (budget, calorie/food intake, hours spent on various tasks) and then manipulate it (create graphs, breakdowns, summaries by month, quarter, year). If you don't know how to do it, simply Google it (How do I create a XXXXXX in Excel 20XX) and you will find tons of resources. This way you have a reason to use excel every day or at least once a week. For example you could maintain an excel log of your daily cash spending with categories (food, gas, personal, misc) and then write some formulas to sum it up =sumif(B:B, "food", A:A) and such. You can then create breakdowns of where your money is going. You can apply conditional formatting to the cell if it exceeds a certain amount to flag yourself that you're possibly spending too much in one area. When you learn new techniques tricks you can go recreate your spreadsheets using the new formulas. Honestly I wouldn't get a certificate because it is pretty meaningless in anything beyond finding an entry level job (obviously a personal opinion), and it sounds like you're past that step already. Most of the time when hiring my boss (CFO) is looking for VLOOKUP, Pivot Tables, Graphing, Nested IF, etc.. These are the ones I usually see when looking at jobs posted online as well. If you don't know what they are just Google them. Like any programming type language the best way to learn it is to use it.
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Jun 18, 2013 18:51
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A lot of it is just going to be problems you find while working (mainly the "gently caress, I don't want to do this") stuff, but a big help for me is just browsing around excel forums. I check up on this one every other day and just read the problems and solutions. As Bugamol said, a huge help is just googling it. I would say read the excel thread on here, but for some reason it's acceptable to say "this should be on a database" to nearly any question referring to a lot of data, which just isn't going to happen like 90% of the time.
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Jun 18, 2013 19:18
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Hey folks, I'm currently into my 3rd year of accounting study in New Zealand and planning to become a Chartered Accountant with NZICA. What I'm wondering is is an NZICA qualification recognised at all overseas, or will I be stuck working in NZ if I follow this?
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Jun 19, 2013 01:15
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Thanks guys  Excel does seem to be a thing where the only way to learn it is to mess around with it, screw it up, and find out how to fix it so you don't do it again. The main problem is dealing with dumb client files and things not importing in the correct format. And that time I spent multiple hours trying to complete a controls test with a VLOOKUP that wouldn't work half the time. I'm pretty sure being a master at all things VLOOKUP would get me a raise after my first year.
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Jun 19, 2013 23:31
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Democratic Pirate posted:Thanks guys Maybe not a raise, but it will earn you points in my book. I'm an experienced senior and have to confess I'm awful at vlookups, so when I see a use for it I just ask my staff to do it for me. All the staff are pros at vlookups and other Excel formulas and macros, while all of our seniors and above are terrible at them.
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Jun 20, 2013 04:24
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hellboundburrito posted:Maybe not a raise, but it will earn you points in my book. I'm an experienced senior and have to confess I'm awful at vlookups, so when I see a use for it I just ask my staff to do it for me. All the staff are pros at vlookups and other Excel formulas and macros, while all of our seniors and above are terrible at them. It's funny because once you really start to dig into Excel you realize that VLOOKUP is a very basic function. All it does is take a reference, look for the first occurrence in a range, and then return the column # you asked for.
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Jun 20, 2013 15:35
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Vlookups are nice, but don't be afraid to use other functions.
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Jun 20, 2013 15:55
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But the other functions are scary 
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Jun 20, 2013 16:24
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Bugamol posted:It's funny because once you really start to dig into Excel you realize that VLOOKUP is a very basic function. All it does is take a reference, look for the first occurrence in a range, and then return the column # you asked for. This is true - I have successfully used vlookup before, but I use it so infrequently that after a while I forget.
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Jun 21, 2013 03:06
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New thread title: Accounting Megathread - I have successfully used vlookup before
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Jun 21, 2013 03:30
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I just heard from a very reputable source that California will grandfather in CPA candidates with less than 150 units if they pass all four exams by the end of this year, giving a two year extension to complete the work experience requirement if you only have 120 units. That's great and all, but I wish they figured this poo poo out before hundreds of students decided that they needed to pay, and even move for grad school in order to comply with the new requirements. Every piece of guidance from the board of accountancy up to this point said that there would be no grandfathering. Everyone was aware that this was happening and planned accordingly. Now it seems none of that was even necessary.
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Jun 24, 2013 06:25
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Mush Mushi posted:I just heard from a very reputable source that California will grandfather in CPA candidates with less than 150 units if they pass all four exams by the end of this year, giving a two year extension to complete the work experience requirement if you only have 120 units. This is news to me... where did you hear this? I've passed all of the exams but I'm waiting until August until I have my 1-yr experience and can apply for the license. I've been under the impression that if you didn't actually have your application in by December 31, 2013, you were poo poo out of luck. In fact, that is actually what the CPA board currently says on their website. quote:If I pass all or part of the Uniform CPA Examination before January 1, 2014, will I be grandfathered into the existing requirements?
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Jun 24, 2013 06:51
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http://goingconcern.com/post/good-news-future-california-cpas-who-were-totally-going-get-around-150-hour-thing-eventually That link sums things up. There is a possibility it won't happen--but it will.
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Jun 25, 2013 03:28
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I have like 200 credits including 47 in business/accounting, no CPA work experience, and have not started studying for the exams yet. I don't suppose this has any implications for me. Even if it did, I guess the old path would require the 2 years work experience so it wouldn't really save me any time anyway.
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Jun 25, 2013 04:54
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Lemmi Caution posted:I have like 200 credits including 47 in business/accounting, no CPA work experience, and have not started studying for the exams yet. I don't suppose this has any implications for me. Even if it did, I guess the old path would require the 2 years work experience so it wouldn't really save me any time anyway. Why do you have so many credits? Are you in the US? Are you working on a Masters? I graduated a few years ago, but isn't it only like 120 credits to graduate?
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Jun 25, 2013 05:22
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Lemmi Caution posted:I have like 200 credits including 47 in business/accounting, no CPA work experience, and have not started studying for the exams yet. I don't suppose this has any implications for me. Even if it did, I guess the old path would require the 2 years work experience so it wouldn't really save me any time anyway. You live in California? It might. Under the old 120 unit path, you need 24 accounting units and 24 business related units--48 units total. Assuming this latest development goes forward, you can become licensed under this path if you pass all four exams by December 31 of this year, because you will be given a 2 year extension to get the work experience requirement. Previously, the word was that if you did not have ALL of the components for the license by the end of 2013, including 2 years of work experience, you were out of luck. If you don't pass all four parts by the end of the year, you get to comply with this bad boy: http://www.dca.ca.gov/cba/applicants/tip_sheet.pdf It doesn't matter how many credits you have. They need to be in the specific areas on that sheet. Unless you are prepared to go back to school, take a good long look at your transcript and see if you have 48 units that will qualify--24 accounting and 24 additional business related. You need those 48 units (to sit for the exam) and have to pass all four parts by Dec. 31, 2013, or your window to get the license under the old rules (without the new education requirements) might close. If this happens you'll have no choice but to comply with the new, very specific, 150 unit education requirement.  Edit: All of this applies to both of the old pathways: 120 units + 2 years of work experience, or 150 units + 1 year of work experience. You need to pass the exam by the end of the year in order to get an extension to complete the work experience requirement. Mush Mushi fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 05:43
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Mush Mushi posted:http://goingconcern.com/post/good-news-future-california-cpas-who-were-totally-going-get-around-150-hour-thing-eventually This owns and will simplify my life slightly. Do the thing, California legislature.
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Jun 25, 2013 06:12
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Bugamol posted:Why do you have so many credits? Are you in the US? Are you working on a Masters? I graduated a few years ago, but isn't it only like 120 credits to graduate? Because I have a bachelors degree and a teaching credential and my accounting study, all with no overlap with each other. I'm just trying to get my CPA as quickly as possible, and I believe I can complete the accounting study/ethics requirements by the end of this year and do the exam and work experience next year. The old two year work experience path doesn't really gain me anything as far as I can see. Now if they got rid of the additional accounting study and ethics requirements, that would make my life easier.
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Jun 25, 2013 06:23
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Mush Mushi posted:You live in California? It might. Under the old 120 unit path, you need 24 accounting units and 24 business related units--48 units total. Assuming this latest development goes forward, you can become licensed under this path if you pass all four exams by December 31 of this year, because you will be given a 2 year extension to get the work experience requirement. Previously, the word was that if you did not have ALL of the components for the license by the end of 2013, including 2 years of work experience, you were out of luck. Haha yes, screw you online Business Law at Santa Monica College. Who needs ethics anyways? Now let's see if I can pass AUD without having taken an Auditing class..
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Jun 25, 2013 18:49
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Don't suppose there's anyone here who knows about Tax at KPMG? It's a vague question, I know, but I'd appreciate anything.
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Jul 9, 2013 10:53
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Depends on the market. In LA for example, KPMG tax is by far the smallest practice of the 4. You're gonna have to be more specific.
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Jul 9, 2013 14:40
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chupacabraTERROR posted:Depends on the market. In LA for example, KPMG tax is by far the smallest practice of the 4. You're gonna have to be more specific. Also, what specifically are you trying to get information on? There are many areas within tax (Corporate, Partnership, Sales & Use, etc) and it gets broken further by industry. Horseshoe theory fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 00:03
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chupacabraTERROR posted:Depends on the market. In LA for example, KPMG tax is by far the smallest practice of the 4. You're gonna have to be more specific. Same in the Bay Area. My brain is completely fried right now. I'm just starting my internship in a tax specialty group and feel like I am learning hundreds of new things every day. Am I supposed to remember all of this stuff, or do I just need to know that there is a code section somewhere that says a thing? It's tough doing something brand new every day and going through the "ohmygod what am i looking at" process every time.
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Jul 10, 2013 04:30
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