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SiGmA_X posted:I broke the rule this month. I converted a report I developed into a macro and distributed the output 2 days earlier than normal, in part because the CIO moved up his reporting schedule this month. The business was overjoyed. I quickly realized my error. Rookie mistake, should've split the difference - send it only one day earlier, management still loves you just as much and you get a bonus day of sitting around and sipping La Croix.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:38
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Kitchner posted:I'm an internal auditor.... "Internal audit" is a greater badge of dishonor than "accountant", you already have a stink on you that won't wash off so you might as well go all the way! Abandon your youthful hopes and dreams and embrace the dull but comfortable existence of middle/upper-middle class adulthood. If anyone's looking for a horror story, I find the best ones in accounting aren't the unusual or strange ones, but the ones that endlessly recur like a nightmare you have every other night. I've been a CPA for ten years with most of that time spent in financial statement audits, and I've still spent far too much time this week dealing with a local bank that's acting like they've never heard of a goddamn balance confirmation request before. I'm having PTSD flashbacks to my first year in public accounting. EDIT: And another client just emailed me about a $3 discrepancy they have after posting their audit adjusting JEs, so now I'm going to stare out the window for fifteen minutes instead of writing an email that I'd regret. Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Oct 24, 2018 |
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Oct 24, 2018 15:22
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Orthodox Rabbit posted:How do you CPAs go about getting your CPE for you renewal? I have to start mine this year. Ideally it'd be a way thats not extremely expensive or also takes an assload of time. State CPA societies and industry groups often host CPE conferences and seminars, but they vary in quality and cost depending on the group/region putting them on, and some can get pricey if you don't have an employer paying for them. But if you do have an employer paying for them, some of them can be a nice excuse to get out of town for a day or two. If you're working in industry rather than public, some of the trade group sponsored conferences can be nice since they'll have a lot of CPE tailored to your specific industry. If you want to keep it cheap and easy, a lot of the big accounting firms host free webinars throughout the year for CPE credit, including both quarterly updates on a broad range of topics and occasional one-off webinars that go deeper into specific topics. PwC has one of their quarterly updates coming up in exactly two weeks. They all have newsletters that you can subscribe to that'll periodically inform you about their upcoming webinar schedule, if you keep up with those throughout the year it's a good way to stack up a bunch of free CPE hours.
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Nov 28, 2018 19:02
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My city just got hit with a shelter-in-place order effective tonight, so the tax folks at my small firm are all scrambling to figure out how in the hell they're gonna work from home since some of the tax partners never bothered to move into the 21st century and still do half of their poo poo by paper. A lot of bitching in the office today about the one partner who is still demanding paper copies of returns still be put in his office for his review, even though he's a germaphobe who decided to start sheltering-in-place a day early and didn't even come into the office today. (Turns out our shelter-in-place order exempts accountants, as payroll is considered essential business. The aforementioned partner apparently brought up earlier today when trying to suggest that some of his staffers keep coming into the office despite the order.) Those tax folks were still doing 45-50 hours at the end of last week, but I suspect that they're going to be running out of work to do within a couple of weeks since clients all but stopped bringing stuff in during the last week and a half. I'm on the audit side where we're a lot better equipped to work from home, but I think we've only got a couple weeks before we run out of work to do and we're all just sitting around watching Netflix. We've got a couple of small 12/31 audits we can wrap up (mostly local nonprofits and churches), but the 12/31 stragglers and the few 3/30 clients we have are all shut down now, so I think it's going to be a while before we can start on any new audits.
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Mar 24, 2020 20:23
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The Bird posted:This is exactly what I was looking for. I think we're still losing something in translation here. If the business is taxed as a corporation (the business has its own tax return and pays income tax itself), then yeah, he definitely cannot take the business' payroll taxes as a loss on his personal return. But if the business is a disregarded entity (such as an LLC where he's the sole member), then the business' revenues and expenses just flow through to his personal return, and payroll taxes are a legit business expense that can reduce his taxable income. edit: we might be getting stuck on the term "liabilities" too. Do you mean "liabilities" in the accounting sense, as in taxes that were unpaid and owed at the end of the year? Or do you mean that colloquially, and you're talking about the taxes that were actually paid out during the year? Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 22:36
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The Bird posted:I thought you all had the lucky careers that were Accounting jobs are somewhat depression-resistant (after all, as long as there's money, folks need money-counters), but there ain't no such thing as depression-proof. This all feels reminiscent of the '07/'08 recession, but on a more-compressed timeline. Public accounting layoffs are a reflection of corporate layoffs at large - If public accounting firms are having layoffs (and they are), that just means that the accounting firms' clients have been laying off even more folks. One funny thing to keep in mind about the big firms' layoffs - the big firms depend on keeping overall salary spend low by having relatively-inexperienced, recent college graduates make up the bulk of the workforce. In normal times, something like 70-80% of new hires have quit and moved on to better jobs within 3 years, and the big firms expect that when hiring new crops of kids right out of college. The problem today is not just that business at the firms has gone down (some firms are reporting flat or increased revenues!), it's that nobody's quitting in order to take a better job outside of public accounting, because everyone outside of public accounting has a hiring freeze. They anticipated a certain number of staffers to quit this year, but those staffers didn't quit because the economy tanked and job offers dried up, and so now they're firing those people to make room for the next incoming class of college grads. (edit: "funny" as in "well that's a bit twisted", not "ha ha" funny) The Bird posted:So, the issue would be if the LLC is a sole proprietorship or has a collection of members. [...] In the case of multiple members, are the employer's payroll tax expenses proportionally divided to the member's returns? Sort of, but indirectly. If there are multiple members, an LLC can opt to be taxed either as a corporation or a partnership. If it's taxed as a partnership, the income from the business is passed through to each member proportionally, and their proportion of the business' income gets taxed on their personal tax return. That income is after business expenses (which include payroll taxes) are subtracted out, so yes, it all gets passed through proportionally - but you probably won't be able to see specific expenses like "payroll tax" broken out, the form K-1 that is sent to each partner with their share of business income doesn't usually break things out into that much detail.
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Sep 30, 2020 23:13
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sale on Banksy art posted:I had the same experience as you, and it's not being particular, it's that they have a set method of recruiting people that supplies all the bodies they need, and there is no need for these conservative risk averse people to look outside of that. Unfortunately, this seems exactly right to me. The big firms don't go with kids fresh out of a certain set of colleges because they are inherently better accountants. They go with them because a) that's just how it's done, HR just keeps bringing me resumes from kids at State U and nobody ever gets in trouble when one of them doesn't pan out, so why stick my neck out for a nontraditional hire, and b) getting a naive college grad with zero real-world experience is a feature, not a bug, when you're looking for people who will not question you when you regularly tell them to work a bunch of unpaid overtime filling out checklists and audit programs. It is possible to break in, but you'll probably have better luck with midsize and small firms. The bigger the firm, the more set in their process they are and the less willing they are to go outside of their usual recruiting pipeline.
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Oct 6, 2020 17:46
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Moneyball posted:I interviewed with BDO and Marcum over the years, no luck. Then some small firm I can't remember. Lord of Garbagemen posted:Unless the dude is a total poo poo lourde , go put two or three years there. It will open a ton of opportunities to you. You will move past all the entry level applicants and will have way more mobility. Agreed, hit that guy up and see if he wants to hire some help. Much of the hiring at small firms happens because someone knows a guy that knows a guy, not because of a blind resume drop. If you've got a connection to someone in the business, make use of it! Worst they can do is say no. (Sometimes even if they don't need to hire help themselves, they know someone else who does and might pass your resume along.)
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Oct 7, 2020 17:07
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Empress Brosephine posted:a lot of cutthroat people who don't care about you at all. i know accounting is the exact opposite of that which i kinda like tbh If you ever plan on working for a big public accounting firm, I have some bad news for you Good Citizen posted:Have you considered doing literally anything else with your life? I mean, focusing on tax leads to one of two places; client work forever and ever or a corporate tax/treasury position. So option one you're basically working a customer service position until you die. Have you met customers? They suck. Clients can suck but the thing about having clients is that having enough clients makes you unkillable. If you get to the point where you actually have clients that have a relationship with you, you have a ton of leverage over your bosses or you get to be your own boss. There's risks involved and clients can be a pain in the rear end, but if you manage to build a solid base of client relationships then you are far more firmly in control of your own destiny than most corporate employees. (Do it long enough and well enough and you even get the opportunity to start pricing out or outright firing the clients that are the biggest pain in the rear end.)
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Nov 24, 2020 23:03
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If all you need is a few hours and you don't care about the subject, the big firms tend to offer free webcasts for CPE throughout the year. Several of the Big 4 do a general accounting and financial reporting update webcast once a quarter, and some of those are coming up in the next couple of weeks. If you keep up with them throughout the year it's a nice way to get some CPE hours for free. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/dbriefs-webcasts/topics/upcoming-webcasts.html https://www.pwc.com/us/en/cfodirect/multimedia/webcasts/pwc-current-accounting-and-reporting-developments-webcast.html https://frv.kpmg.us/cpe.html https://www.ey.com/en_us/webcasts
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Dec 1, 2020 16:43
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Audax posted:On the other hand, multiple times at meetings I've had to you know... say I'll come back to you on that when asked about reorganizations because I loving forgot that poo poo the day after the test. That's how it is with any moderately complex topic in the real world. You're not actually gonna remember most of this poo poo after you pass the exams, the goal is to make sure you know where and how to look it up again once you're on your own.
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Jan 14, 2021 18:05
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Mush Mushi posted:Have you ever... loved taxes? I... I was wondering if even accountants fall in love? Personally I didn’t want to spend 30 years trying to find out if I could learn to love taxes, so I went into auditing (and then corporate accounting) (and then auditing again because I’m dumb but at least it’s at a firm with no unpaid OT now) To be clear, I don’t love any of this either
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Jan 16, 2021 01:50
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mojo1701a posted:Whenever I talk to my boss, or the most recent partner, they both malign audit work and say that's why they chose public accounting with no assurance work. Nevertheless, when I finally took the auditing course, it was interesting at first but then became very dry because it's mostly knowledge of procedures and reporting documentation and sources. In fairness, I think auditing is perhaps the accounting topic that is the hardest to get a feel for based on what you learn in the classroom. It's very much something you learn on the job, not from a textbook. Like most accounting courses, the auditing theory and concepts you learn in the classroom are important to know but are not something you think about as much when you're actually doing the work, and when you do think about them, it's more interesting when you're dealing with a real-world situation. I realize this is true for much of accounting and college education in general, but I think it's extra true for auditing, the disconnect between classroom learning and the actual work is even greater than in the other accounting topics IMO. Empress Brosephine posted:I finally start getting into auditing classes though now, which should be fun? I hope?
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Feb 23, 2021 17:23
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Democratic Pirate posted:After switching to an industry role and actually doing financial reporting processes, I’m certain I could go back and be a much better (and more empathetic) auditor. I went and did financial reporting (and other odd tasks) in industry for a while and then went back to auditing, and I can confirm your theory - I'm a far better auditor (more efficient, more effective, and more empathetic to the client) after learning exactly what goes in to making the financial statements that I'm auditing. Most audits could be done in considerably less time than they usually take (and to a higher standard of quality) if the audit teams actually had experience in corporate accounting and financial reporting, rather than the usual bumbling audit team of fresh college graduates being guided by slightly-less-fresh college graduates. (This will never happen because it is marginally cheaper for a firm to staff an audit team out of fresh college grads willing to work 80-hour weeks on a fixed salary than it is to hire or retain experienced auditors.)
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Feb 24, 2021 19:06
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Hurt Whitey Maybe posted:Accounting is a trade, and just like laying bricks, you pick up most of the useful knowledge actually laying bricks, not reading about laying bricks.  Hellblazer187 posted:Also I think once you've been working for like 2 years and have a CPA license, nobody is going to care what university you went to or what your major is. Good Citizen posted:It's a bit sad to say, but how good your college is at teaching accounting isn't as important as whether or not your school has an active recruiting pipeline into the public accounting world, assuming you're trying to advance to the higher accounting positions. Erev posted:As for my school putting me in contact with an employer or whatnot - didn't happen but that doesn't bother me too much. My work offers both a sort of 'management intern' thing within my department as well as has a program for accountants where they'll send you around the company for four six-month stints and then place you. The only downside to that is I could basically spend two years shuffling between different places in Florida, California, and possibly Texas, Paris (unlikely), or China (very unlikely). FWIW, I was an accounting major who went into public accounting for a few years right out of college, but I had a buddy who was a finance major who went into one of these kinds of finance rotational training programs with a big company. He moved around a lot for the first few years, but he seemed to enjoy it (much more than those of us in public accounting enjoyed our jobs), wound up learning roughly as much about financial reporting and corporate accounting operations as I did, and kept moving up through accounting/finance/managerial positions at his company. If you're relatively happy with your company and they have a good internal program for training up accounting/finance/management types, you're starting off in pretty good shape - you're arguably in better shape than fresh or soon-to-be accounting grads who have nominally met CPA exam eligibility requirements but are still job hunting.
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Mar 5, 2021 16:47
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Erev posted:I mean, it's Disney. One of the good things about it is that the company does have a track record of preferring to promote internally and they do go out of their way to not screw you over on it - something which I can personally attest to. My advice would be to keep doing what you're doing - keep taking advantage of that free college opportunity, and take advantage of your employer's rotational training program because you're going to learn far more about accounting doing that than you would sitting in any classroom. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the CPA exam requirements for whatever state(s) you think you might wind up in once you stop moving around, and start picking up extra credits here and there to hit their credit-hour requirements (or, plan on getting a MAcc or MSA or other such degree, if you're far enough away from the specific hour requirements that it's easier to just do a one-year masters program and you don't mind paying a bit extra for that ease).
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Mar 5, 2021 18:28
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Hurt Whitey Maybe posted:If at all possible, I’d HIGHLY recommend knocking out the exam before working. I passed it while I was in the last semester of school in about 3 months, but to be fair I had been working for a CPA test prep company helping people study, so my experience was probably uniquely fast. Good Citizen posted:Just a heads up that getting a CPA will probably require a masters degree or at least some amount of additional accounting/ethics credits beyond what your university requires for a bachelors, depending on your state edit: this also deserves emphasizing: Jimong5 posted:Accounting is more than just public and tax as well, and a lot of entry level industry/government jobs are staffed by people with a HS diploma if you want to jump careers ASAP and get some experience on your resume. Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Mar 24, 2021 |
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Mar 24, 2021 20:04
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Hellblazer187 posted:Uh, this is entirely hosed. Remember I said I talked to a recruiter? So... management of the company that was trying to recruit me... warned my current boss? Is that hosed? It seems hosed. So my boss and I had a long talk just now about it. lmao what the hell. Yeah you got hosed, not sure what the recourse is for that particular kind of hosed. Call up that recruiter and bitch them out, at a minimum. Did you just get unlucky and the guy at your new company is somehow buddies with your boss? e: was this a corporate recruiter or a third party recruiter? Hellblazer187 posted:At least the call was a "what can we do to keep you?" call and not a "how could you?" kind of call Well that’s good, that can go a lot worse with the wrong kind of boss. Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 02:17
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School of How posted:How can I calculate which approach is better? with a calculator School of How posted:How do I find a good accountant? I don't think taxes should be your primary concern right now, the downside risk of your crypto holdings should be your primary concern. You're talking about leveraging speculative investments that have a considerable amount of volatility and downside risk. You should not be taking out a loan with the expectation that you will pay it off some other day with proceeds from speculative investments. edit: on second thought, if you had any significant crypto trading activity in 2020, taxes probably should be your primary concern right now, rather than posting about home purchase financing/future tax avoidance strategies Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 20:48
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School of How posted:What I mean is, imagine a graph with the x-axis being size of a mortgage loan, and the y-axis being total interest on that loan. That plot makes a curve. On the same graph there is another line with the x-axis being income and the y-axis being tax. At some point those two curves intersect at some x value. Behind that intersection it cheaper to just get a mortgage, and above the intersection is cheaper to just pay the high income tax bill (or vice versa). Its my hunch that accountants must get asked this kind of question often. I can't be the only person in recorded history to find myself in this situation. nope, never been done before, you're the first. you should probably ask about this with the CPA you've got doing your taxes, because you got a CPA to do your taxes after you became a crypto millionaire, right e: Hellblazer187 posted:Personally if I had a bunch of crypto, a fake thing, and I could turn that into a house, which is a real thing, I'd probably do that immediately without being too concerned about taxes. I feel like getting a house out of the deal before everyone realizes how stupid crypto is and it turns into nothing is probably a good idea. don't listen to this nerd. crypto is very real and definitely not a highly volatile speculative investment that provides no utility or intrinsic value, it will definitely be worth even more a few years from now and you should avoid all taxes by hodling forever and definitely not cashing it out as soon as possible Good Citizen posted:PwC’s new guidance suggests that companies account for crypto as intangible assets on the balance sheet with all the impairment implications that entails. gently caress that and gently caress all crypto Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 23:24
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Hellblazer187 posted:I've seen so many people save $500 on a consultation fee and cost themselves $25,000+. yeah but how could I possibly afford a $500 consultation fee when I'm about to be out $600k to Nancy Pelosi and the Demonrats, randos on the internet are cheaper and eventually one of them will tell me what I want to hear https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1382332559795888131 Bernie is survived by Harry Markopolous, the forensic accountant who did just a little bit of math one day and realized Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, and was then ignored for almost a decade because nobody wants to listen to the accountant telling everyone that the party is about to end and the hangover is going to be incredible
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Apr 14, 2021 15:34
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Hellblazer187 posted:Open Microsoft word on your personal (not work) computer. Write everything you want to say to the partners. Then delete it. Then just google "template resignation letter" and send them that instead. Not sure how it works if you're remote, I've always handed that letter over/broken the news in person (usually first to whichever partner you work for most or heads up your practice group). You giving two weeks notice or bouncing right away? I know it's customary and generally expected that you offer two weeks notice, but if you're leaving for a competing firm don't be surprised if someone from HR gets back to you with "thanks but let's just go ahead and call this your last day"
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Apr 15, 2021 17:41
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Setting aside whether or not this particular job is right for you, it does sound like a good idea for you to start looking right now for better experience and more pay at bigger/different firms. I agree with hellblazer that you shouldn't let your boss' impending retirement stop you from leaving if it makes sense for your own earnings and career development. And asking recruiters to keep it quiet is perfectly reasonable anytime you're looking to leave a job, especially if it's moving between accounting firms in the same town. Where is this, Canada? NTRs are basically the equivalent of a compilation, right? I don't know how this translates to Canada, but in the US, I'd be a little apprehensive about jumping to an "audit manager" position if you have little experience doing audits or managing engagements with multiple staff members. An experienced accountant can usually learn how to do audits without too much trouble, but "audit manager" is not usually the level where you do that learning. In my experience, someone with that title would typically be an experienced, proficient auditor that staffers and in-charges can go to with questions about the trickier parts of any given audit. That said, I don't know how things are different for the industry in Canada relative to the US, and the relationship between a job title and the actual duties/expectations vary from firm to firm, particularly at smaller firms, so take that with a big grain of salt. Regardless, I think it's important to set reasonable expectations and make sure a job is a good fit rather than rushing into it, so I would go ahead with the interview and just be frank about your level of experience (while trying not to undersell your abilities, of course), and see if they seem willing and able to support you while you learn a new line of work. Make sure to ask questions about how many audit staff they have and how long have they been with the firm, what kind of clients do they audit, and, in particular: does it involve travel to audit clients, and how much? e: another thought that occurred to me - be wary of recruiters pushing you towards jobs that you feel underqualified/overqualified/ill-suited for. Third-party recruiters typically get a cut when you take a new job, so their incentive is to get you into a new job as quick as possible, not to take their time and find the right job for you. Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jul 28, 2021 |
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Jul 28, 2021 18:54
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Any of y'all audit and assurance types ever had to deal with fuckery on a client representation letter? I'm trying to wrap up an old financial statement review for a smallish (and notoriously tardy) client, and nearly two weeks after sending the rep letter template (with explicit instructions to talk to me before changing any representations), I just got back a signed rep letter... with the two specific representations about knowledge or allegations of fraud conveniently skipped over, then a half-page's worth of representations missing as if another page was printed and not scanned, and then the paragraph numbering monkeyed with to make it end on the same paragraph number as the original template. Also the automatic page numbering from the template's footer is gone, meaning I can't tell if they printed 3 pages and simply forgot to scan the middle one, or deleted a ton of paragraphs and said "well it's still the same page length and ends on the same numbered paragraph as the template, maybe he won't look at it very closely". I responded with something to the effect of "hey it looks like a page is missing from the scan and uh also these missing paragraphs about fraud are mandatory, we need to talk about why you removed them", and got a response from a different person that it was all accidental, and so-and-so was using "some type of publisher" (???) and this was either a glitch or user error. Hm. OK. Been doing audits (and some reviews) off and on for about 12 years, this is the second time I've had a noteworthy fuckup or manipulation of a client rep letter, and at least the first one (different client, years back) had the decency to make their change subtle and not insult my intelligence.
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Aug 6, 2021 17:38
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Hellblazer187 posted:No audit/assurance experience but I kinda feel like I'd cancel the engagement if I saw poo poo like that. This is right at the end of the engagement, this was the last piece of paperwork holding it up and if they had just signed it and turned it over without incident we’d probably have delivered the final copies today. No hint of foul play before now, but since it’s a review rather than an audit, it’s based mostly on inquiry and analytical review rather than direct evidence of balances/transactions. (This is for better and worse - we’re less likely to catch non-obvious errors or fraud, but we also have less liability because it’s a lot lower bar to clear to issue an opinion.) We’re still likely to issue at some point, but we’re gonna have some more conversations with some additional people first to figure out what the hell is going on here. We’re talking to the executive director (who also supposedly signed the letter, and is the boss of the other person who actually handled production of the letter and sent it to us) next week to see how much of this he knows about. Strange thing is the guy who did this started right at the end of the year under review, he barely had opportunity to do anything illicit. I wonder if he knows about someone else’s actions that he doesn’t want to tell us about, because if the guy himself had committed fraud, why not just lie about it and keep those bits in the rep letter? So we’ll see how this shakes out next week, but either way I think we’re gonna have some long conversations about whether we want these people as clients anymore.
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Aug 7, 2021 01:07
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Epi Lepi posted:Man I'm severely underpaid, I'm finally making $60K base, and I've been doing this for 10 years. I'm on Long Island as well but I'm at a mom and pop shop dealing with extremely blue collar families and small businesses, and you're at like an H&R or something right? Covok, I think I'm probably echoing what some others have already said, but: while it's possible that staffer was never going to work out, I do think you need to set more reasonable expectations for inexperienced hires going forward. Rookies really do not know a goddamn thing, I'm not shocked by someone like that being ignorant of EINs and 1099s and the basic mechanics of bookkeeping. (There's a lot of accounting degree programs that cover the lingo and theory of debits and credits and tax principles, but never give a hands-on opportunity to learn how to fill out a 1099 or a K-1 or what it actually looks like to type a JE into Quickbooks or an ERP system.) Not only are they completely ignorant, the observant ones are painfully aware of that ignorance, and if they sense surprise or consternation at that ignorance, of course they're going on the defensive - particularly in a small-firm environment where they're picking that up from the only person around to teach them things. It sounds like you might've oscillated between hot and cold - hours-long lectures and textbook readings one moment, then pulling away to work on your own things for days at a time. It's a difficult balance when you have a lot of your own work to attend to, but I would suggest spacing out the lectures, walking them through an actual return or project of just describing terminology and forms, and hammering home to them that you are available for questions, you expect questions, you get worried when they don't have questions, and there are no dumb questions (except for questions that they ask over and over again, because it means they're not writing this poo poo down like they should be.) That said, I see red flags in a few of her responses - saying "do I need to know this" to something you're teaching is suggestive of someone who is not getting it, and was she taking notes during all this? Don't beat yourself up over it, training up an inexperienced hire requires you to be more of a tutor or big sibling than a manager. It's not an easy thing to get right, particularly at small shops where there's not a formalized training regimen and they have to rely on you alone to teach them, rather than a bigger team to share the load. e: I may be reading something between the lines that's not actually there, but... after re-reading one of your reddit replies about your boss' attitude towards admin staff and how she's handled those hires in the past, I suspect your boss' attitude and hands-off approach isn't helping here. I wonder if your boss also needs an attitude adjustment and shift in expectations, too - not just in that they need to reduce expectations for what rookies are capable of, but in that your boss should expect other people, including themselves, to have a hand in setting up rookies for success. It's not fair to you or the rookie to make you the sole person that a rookie spends all of their time learning from and interacting with. Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2021 16:33
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Epi Lepi posted:There's no way that's true. You can call yourself an accountant, just not a Certified Public Accountant. Not necessarily, it varies from state to state. Covok posted:I kept saying that. They're saying I am a tax preparer, not an accountant, because the IRS reserves that for CPAs only. I can't find that anywhere. It’s not an IRS thing, it’s usually determined by state law. State laws or state board of accountancy rules often reserve certain terms for use only by licensed CPAs, so you need to look up the rules published by your state’s board of accounting. For instance, I know that Texas restricts you from publicly presenting yourself as an “accountant” unless you have a CPA license.
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Sep 17, 2021 23:48
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I don't suppose any of y'all happen to work at Mazars and feel like filling us in on the behind-the-scenes chatter that led to this masterpiece of how to fire a tax client https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1493324645583441922
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Feb 14, 2022 22:42
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Banzai 3 posted:On the Trump/Mazars saga, “he just tweeted it out” except the “it” is Mazars 6/30/14 Compilation Report disclaimer and list of GAAP departures. I think one of these reports has been leaked out before, but I don't remember the list of GAAP departures being so long - what's left in there that is GAAP compliant? After all the stories about Deutsche Bank over the years, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that stuff like this is what passes for due diligence
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Feb 16, 2022 19:25
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Covok posted:My boss has weird policies. The one I wanted to talk about is, if someone leaves, we refuse to tell anyone they did so they don't leave the firm. They don't learn until they come in for their appointment. The hope being they'll just let it go then and meet with whoever is there. That always struck me as scummy. And I know she'll do the same with me. Audax posted:I wouldn't get too hung up on it. People leave jobs all the time. Their services are with the firm, not the individual.
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Aug 2, 2022 15:10
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Covok posted:Our firm requires us to sign a two year nonsoliciation agreement when we join the company. So, I couldn't do that our the firm could request one year of profits from the clients from me. Which would ruin me. That's why I went private. Ok, now that's lovely and less typical, in my experience (which is not in New York/the northeast, so maybe things are different there). It sounds like its a good thing that you got out of there.
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Aug 2, 2022 16:01
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I haven't seen one or signed one at the two firms I've worked at, but I've also worked only in at-will employment states and have never once in my life signed a long-term contract for any of the jobs I've held. Is this something that's more typical than I realize from my own experience, or is this something that varies a lot based on location/market? I was under the impression that they're somewhat common, but often unenforceable for accounting/tax services (and I've yet to hear of someone threating to sue some poor bookkeeper over one.) Are y'all at least getting/offering employment contracts that go along with this, or are y'all just getting at-will employees to sign these? e: Covok posted:To explain myself, however, my boss literally tells me all the time how she stole all the clients to start her old business from a former employee then turns around a does lawsuits against people for stealing the firm's clients. And she does this all the time. And she is so proud of how she "made herself" that it just is like "okay, but can't you see the hypocrisy?" That would certainly chap my rear end to listen to. There's no shortage of folks like that in the industry, but there's also no need to keep working for someone like that, there's enough opportunities out there working for people who don't pull the ladder up behind them and rub it in your face. Blotto_Otter fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Aug 2, 2022 |
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Aug 2, 2022 16:38
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Epi Lepi posted:That's pretty wild if it's enforceable. What sucks is even if it's not you know your old boss is willing to dish out the attorney fees to at least bluff that it's enforceable. You'd need your own cash to deal with an attorney to respond or a good friend who would do it for free and without those you just have to accept what the boss is pushing. Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that Covok's old boss was an exploitative rear end in a top hat even by the low standards of public accounting. It hardly matters if that agreement was enforceable (I'm skeptical, but I'm not an attorney), the belief that it might be is enough for the old boss to use it to intimidate current and former employees. I don't think Covok's take on this is all that spicy, in light of how public accounting works in the US. Non-solicitation clauses exist entirely for the benefit of the employer, and to the detriment of the employee. Perhaps there are situations where they are justifiable, if the restrictions placed on the employee are not too onerous and if the employee receives commensurate benefit... but that often is not the case under at-will employment as it exists in most of the US. Covok posted:Yeah, that's why I see this contract as so exploitative. I thought that was a standard nonsoliciation, but I'll accept I am wrong about that. And I have seen her do about 3 to 4 lawsuits on this contract. She lost like two of them, I think, and was only able to get an injunction on one because the guy actually solicited.
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Aug 2, 2022 20:34
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Missing Donut posted:New client, an engineer, does not provide original documents but had transcribed them into multiple sheets of an Excel workbook. The transcriptions include only the information the client thinks we need, therefore we are missing some vital information, and there appears to be some errors in the transcription. nope. absolutely not. jesus christ.
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Aug 16, 2022 14:06
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Mandalay posted:My experience is that nobody really cares as long as you get these things vaguely correct. I’m in the process of handing off my bookkeeping to a CPA firm and the level of rigor applied to categorization is….not that high. At least for things like cleaning supplies. Normal non-accountants aren't going to care that much as long as you stick it somewhere reasonable. Experienced bookkeepers aren't going to worry about it much because they've realized it's not worth anyone's time to obsess over expense line item captions, as long as the material poo poo is in a logical place. For small businesses, the place where expense categorization gets somewhat important is just making sure you don't mix in any non-deductible expenses with deductible expenses when it hits the tax return. Zarin posted:For example, we've changed the classification of some things between different expense categories already. Working through other things today when nobody else is available, I tried asking Google "are cleaning supplies COGS for a restaurant" but that produced conflicting answers. My knee-jerk inclination is "no, it's an overhead expense" but at the same time, they're pretty loving crucial to a place that serves food/beverage and the consumption would vary based on volume, so . . . maybe?
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Feb 22, 2023 15:31
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knox posted:His bullshit explanation for 2021 was I worked two different jobs (I left a position and took the higher paying one I am still at now) and something about the withholding. Gabriel Grub posted:There's a chance he's being rude to you because he wants you to go away. It's very common in the tax prep industry, and it works. i mean, it's possible he's being rude and it's just a coincidence that OP is a bad client, but usually that's not a coincidence
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Apr 30, 2023 00:00
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pseudanonymous posted:Have you worked at nonprofits? Because no. Nonprofit accounting roles are extremely uneven. Some are great. Others are not.
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Oct 18, 2023 17:11
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mcmagic posted:Anyone get to mid career doing accounting and loving hate it but there are no career switches you can make that would pay you anywhere near what you're making in the job you hate? lol
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Nov 17, 2023 17:40
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Annointed posted:Any of you got tips on how best to coordinate with clients to ensure people pay on time? I been trying with nonsttop emails but unsure how best to ensure people pay or inform that payment is arriving to make sure my boss' quikbooks are accurate to the company funds. i think it might help to clarify what problem you're trying to tackle, because "tracking which of my clients have not paid their bills yet" and "getting my clients to pay their bills" are two separate problems, but the post seems to imply that you're tackling both problems. The first problem can be solved through good old fashioned bookkeeping. The second problem can never be totally solved, it can only be managed by haranguing people until they pay their bills and/or you decide to drop them as clients. (Also worth noting that at some businesses, the employee who handles the first problem is not necessarily the same employee who handles the second problem.)
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Dec 21, 2023 16:51
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Covok posted:I mean, one question was on a $1 Adj for rounding, for instance, so I don't know if its materiality that is the concern. but are these questions actually coming from that manager, or from the staff on the job? because this could all be explained by some combination of "audit staff is mostly new college grads who don't know anything about anything", "audit manager is splitting time between several audits and doesn't have time to baby the new staff this year", and "this audit got picked for some internal audit quality review this year and the reviewer thinks their workpapers suck"
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Apr 5, 2024 16:57
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