CA Accounting Designation Revealed!

CPA merger is bad for us

2011-11-28T18:58:00.000-08:00

As a current CA student who is close to being designated in a few months, I believe the upcoming CPA merger, where the CA, CMA and CGA designations is bad for the CA profession, especially for current CA Students and newly designated CA’s.

The CA is supposed to be the golden standard of accounting designations in Canada. It is the oldest and most recognized accounting designation in Canada with over 100 years of history.

The ICAO argues that a more united profession (CPA designation) would be more efficient and effective than the status quo and would be a more relevant designation.

There is nothing wrong with the status quo. The CA designation is already an extremely valuable and highly recognized designation both domestically and internationally. Many places in the world will only hire CA’s because they understand the high quality candidate that they will receive. To change over 100 years of marketing and history is a terrible idea. In addition, CA’s can acquire the U.S. CPA through a series of exams if they choose to.

The ICAO argues that no one has to give up their current designation, and can use their current designation in conjunction with the new CPA brand.

Without proper marketing and support, the CA Brand will slowly die with the money being used to market the new CPA brand. The CA brand does so well because of the large amount of marketing support it receives especially from the big four. This marketing helps recruit the best of the best. The CA designation is still the top choice amongst the top tier University students. I am not bashing the CMA or CGA, but some of the toughest programs in University are still CA based. i.e. Waterloo’s AFM and Math/CA program. It is quite unfair for those CA students who had to do all the tough work plus insane hours of articling for this “Gold Standard” designation when they end up in the same position as CGA & CMA candidates, and with all marketing dollars being poured into this CPA.

The ICAO argues that with greater numbers, we will be able to provide enhanced support to their members and have a cohesive accounting profession with new education and professional development programs.

I highly doubt that that with any merger, the new education and professional development programs will be as hard, strict or rigorous as that with the CA program. I’m sure that there will be certain elements incorporated from each accounting program, but it appears that the goal of the new CPA is to increase in member size and be a strong international voice. CA’s will lose their competitiveness distinctness in terms of the specific rigorous training they received. The ICAO’s argument that you don’t technically lose the CA designation and can use CA.CPA for the remainder of your career is not a good one. Part of the reason the CA does so well and attracts the best of the best is that it is effectively marketed. With no marketing support and member dues used to market the new CPA, the CA designation will eventually erode away.

Who wins and who loses?

I’m not going to say that the CMA and CGA are winners of the merger (there are many CMAs and CGAs opposed to the merger as well). Rather, I feel the biggest losers are current CA students and recently designated CA’s. The reason we do not hear CA’s with 10 years - 20 years of experience complain is that they have already leveraged the value of the CA designation to launch their career successfully, opportunities that current CA students may not have.

Part of the reason that myself and many other CA students chose to take the CA program is that it is considered the gold standard, and we expected the strong marketing support from big firms to continue to market CA’s like they have in the past (when we decided to go into the program).

Do You Have a Messy Desk?

2011-09-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

I just saw this post from Accountant by Day and I winced when I read the post. You see it’s all about one’s (messy or clean) workspace. As I was reading it, I glanced at my desk and realized that it looked like it was hit by a hurricane! I’m not kidding. There are papers, ball pens, notebooks, books, checkbooks, folders, etc., etc. on top of my desk. And I don’t even have my laptop on it, there’s a separate space for that!

But then again, I’m cleaning up for my turn over to whoever will replace me as the accountant of my clients and I can’t really clean up everything in a day. So I have a perfectly good excuse (LOL) for having a cluttered desk.

The post, however, reminded me of my time in the auditing firm. As a junior, we didn’t really have any permanent desks, so we have to learn how to manage our workspace very well. But when I was a senior and a manager, we were given a, more or less, permanent workspace. And that’s when trouble (I mean clutter) began.

Actually, during the lean season, my desk was relatively clean. It was just a bunch of working papers, my writing materials and my laptop on top of my desk. So, no problem about de – cluttering it as I had time to clean up everything before the end of the day (or the week).

But when busy season hits, all clutter breaks loose. Papers started to pile up, working papers started to be shoved to the side (and not in their proper places), note pads and Post It notes were stuck everywhere. There were overnight bags under my desk, an extra pair of shoes and even sandals (for overnight work)! During the last 15 days of the season, my workspace (not just my desk) looked like a mini – house with me literally living in it!

Fortunately for me, I never seem to lose anything. Any paper I’m looking for, I could easily find even with all the clutter. Unfortunately for my staff, they could not wade through all my clutter to find out what they’re looking for so they leave my desk alone and just wait for me to find it for them.

By the last day of the busy season, I had what I call a de – cluttering binge. I’m a fast cleaner. In 2 hours’ time, my desk is squeaky clean, anything that should be filed I gave to my staff (poor them), anything I need to throw away, I gave to the one who’s going to shred them, anything that can be re – used, I put them in their proper places.

At the end of that day, my desk (and my workspace, in general) was so clean that some of my staff and the seniors would ask me if I resigned and it was my last day in the office, that was how free my workspace was from any clutter!

And I’m not the only one who had a messy workspace. One of my former boss’ workspace was really cluttered (and this is all – year round, not just during the busy season). The papers and books were piled so high on his desk that I sometimes joke that I couldn’t see him when I took the seat in front of his desk. Fortunately, the mess on his desk did not affect his work. He’s one of the most intelligent partners I know and our expert in the accounting standards. So having a messy desk or workspace does not exactly translate to a messy, confusing mind (I hope).

So how about you? Do you have a messy desk?

Things You Should Remember When You’re New in the Big 4

2011-09-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been a long blog in the making. I received the question (or questions) like a couple of months ago but it is only now that I’m writing something about it (my apologies to the one who asked these questions).

What the sender basically wanted to know is how he / she should act or what he or she should do when he / she is new in the Big 4. So I decided to write a post about things one should remember when one is a new junior in audit (I use audit because I was in audit or the assurance division when I was still working in a big accounting firm).

So here are the things you should remember:

The permanent file is…not just a file. It is something that should be taken out of the storage room every year to be read by the members of the auditing team. If you want to learn and learn fast about the company you are auditing, the first file you should look into is the permanent file. It contains (or it should contain) documents that are there to provide any member of the audit team (new or old) valuable background information about the company being audited. So if you’re a new member of the team, the first thing you should look for is the permanent file.

Last year’s working papers are…just a guide. Do not always assume that the things (procedures, schedules, etc.) you see in last year’s working papers are what you should follow in this year’s audit. Every audit year is different. Take last year’s working papers as a guide only. But don’t make the mistake of ignoring them either, some working papers you can carry over in the next year, saving you valuable time in your work.

Trainings are fine, trainings are very good for you…but you are the one in – charge of expanding your knowledge on the job. Read the files, listen carefully during the trainings, ask the right questions, look up to the right people, read sources and references and read, read, read about your clients – these are just some of the things I can think of to further your training in your chosen career. Feel free to think of more ways to learn.

Can you charge all your time to billable hours? Not likely. When you’re new, you’re still basically learning your way through so you are not yet at your most efficient self at this point in time. Be honest and assess whether you should charge all your hours to your client or charge them somewhere else (your senior or manager will be able to point you to the right charge code). This is not just the manager trying to control chargeable hours within the audit budget, this is you recognizing that you are still making your way towards conducting an efficient audit and your time sheet should reflect this recognition.

Now if you are in a tight deadline and you need to do everything ASAP, manage your time well and, yes, do overtime so that you can finish your job. And charge those overtime hours, please, especially if you know you earned every minute of it.

I don’t recommend skipping lunch and working through lunch. I’ve tried it, I’ve seen others do it and let me tell you, it is not productive.

It’s not a crime to ask questions…although you should assess whether it is the right time to ask these questions and whether the audit files already have the answers you are looking for. This goes for your senior / manager and your client. Try to set up a certain time of the day when you can ask them your questions and make sure you are prepared by this time. These people are busy, too, and let’s face it, they will expect you to look at last year’s working papers (and the permanent file) first to see if the answers you are looking for are in these files. So do your research first before approaching them for the answers.

It is also not a crime to make mistakes. Hey you’re new on the job, even managers (and yes, sometimes, even partners) make mistakes. So don’t feel it is the end of the world if you make one. Own up to it, make amends as soon as possible and try to avoid making the same mistake in the future. Now if your senior or manager or partner gets really, really mad at you, accept their anger, take everything with a grain of salt and wait until their anger subsides, then you can make amends.

Well, I hope the above are sufficient answers for the sender’s questions. Good luck with your job in the Big 4!

I’m Closing My Firm

2011-08-30T06:38:00.001-07:00

I’ve been quite busy these past two months. You see, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge. I’ve decided to close down my accounting firm after 4 years of running it.

Why?

Well, for personal reasons, reasons that are really too private for me to write about in a platform that is for public consumption.

How did I know I want to close the firm?

Well, I knew I had to make a decision when I realized I don’t have the drive anymore to run this firm. No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t revive my previous drive to do my job and to run this firm. I finally realized that it’s just unfair for my clients and for my staff if I continue doing something I no longer have the passion with, hence, my decision to close down.

So what am I doing right now?

I’m pretty much doing what I did when I left my previous employer 4 years ago. I’m talking to my clients, I’m talking to my close friends, I’m going to talk to my staff and I’m going to talk to the other people I have been involved with in the past 4 years or so. I know these are difficult tasks but then again, I’ve steeled myself to do all of them (again). I know it’s not easy (I’ve already experienced some odd questions and odd looks when I inform them that I’m closing down), and there will be negative (hopefully, not violent) reactions along the way but I’d like to think I’m prepared for them.

Next, what will I do?

Now this is the million – dollar question. You see, despite making this huge decision, I’m still undecided what I will do in the future. Do I go back to my previous employer, that big firm where I spent 8 years of my career? Do I go to an entirely new career different from this one (like perhaps online writing or outsourcing or online bookkeeping)? Or do I rest for a few months, think about what I really do want with my life, plan ahead and think about how I will stick to this plan? Or do I take up further studies in areas I am most likely to be interested in (believe me, I have quite a few that I want to study, and they’re not all related to accounting or auditing)? Or do I do a combination of all these things?

Will I regret closing down?

Uhm, I know I will not but ask me again in a few months’ time and I may give a more definite answer.

And I know I’m talking to myself in this post, but heck, I consider it good practice in my non-virtual life. I’ve already encountered some of these questions and I’m pretty sure I will encounter all of them by the time this year ends.

30 Unique Career Paths with an Accounting Degree

2011-08-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

Recently I ran across a blog posting from The Acclaimed Accountant that talks about 30 unique career paths that you can do with an accounting degree. The post is very interesting and is worth checking out and can give you creative ideas of what other options there are out for you as an accountant.

You can check out the post here.
http://www.mastersinaccounting.org/2011/30-unique-career-paths-with-an-accounting-degree/

Overall, while accounting is tedious and boring, having a bit of an accounting background certainly does give you an edge in the business environment. A lot of good entrepreneurs also have accounting backgrounds, if that is the route you want to go afterwards.

5.5 More Months to go!

2011-08-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

In a bit over 5 and a half month’s time, I will become a CA, should I choose to finish up the experience requirements in the next half year. This year has been an extremely busy packed season with so much things going on at the same time.

I apologize for not keeping this blog as active as I should have, but I’m back for good now, and will be blogging regularly (I promise), and will be even doing a bit of a website design in the future, and adding lots of great resources for fresh prospective CA students.

With 5 months left until I become a CA, these are the available interesting career options and choices available to me:

Do I still within Big 4 and wait until I make manager before leaving industry?

Do I venture off into industry once I get my CA?

Will I go private or public?

Do I even want to make CA so fast?

Do I want to try a small accounting firm?

Do I answer all the headhunter calls I’m getting?

Do I take a break for awhile and try some other things?

I must say the future holds some interesting promise. One of my regrets and maybe it’s a “The grass is greener on the other side” kind of thing, is that I’ve been working at Big 4 environment since I was 19 years old at a co-op and I never had a summer off since then.

It was either in school getting CA credits or co-oping at Big 4. I feel pretty tired and feel a lot of youth sacrifice had to be made. I felt a lot of envy over my other non accounting friends who got to jump from job to job and try different things. Recently I read about the guy who had 52 jobs in 52 weeks, www.oneweekjob.com and I felt really envious.

Looking back, I might have chosen a different route. Now that I’m nearing the end of my journey, I feel there is a lot of soul searching for me to do still. I feel lots of people at Big 4 are the same way. They don’t really know what they want to do with their lives and are putting off thinking about it until they get their CA.

The worse thing I would imagine is to get your CA, and then leave to a industry job that is even worse. After auditing at a lot of industry jobs, I notice that the CA’s especially in financial reporting roles are very miserable and have worse jobs than at Big 4 in terms of the *shit* they have to deal with.

Time to think has begun.

The Accountant.

My Close Friend Just Got Promoted

2011-06-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

I just got word that a close friend of mine from my previous employer – the auditing firm – will be promoted to partner by this year. Oh, there’s no formal announcement yet or celebration, but I’m happy to say that I’m still in the loop so I hear about these things. Plus, I checked her Facebook wall and I saw that very same announcement.

Her promotion got me thinking, if I stayed all this time, would I have been promoted too? I mean, we were promoted to senior and manager at the same time, have the same number of experience, have almost the same evaluation results, etc. It’s only normal to think that the answer to my question would have been yes. As one of my former seniors told me, I should have been promoted also to partner this year.

But then again, I get to thinking. The same number of years of experience and being promoted at the same time are not really guarantees that you will become partners at the same time, especially if you’re in the Big 4.

For one, if you managed to displease a certain partner you’ve worked with in the past, chances are, the same partner will block your nomination to partnership. I’m not kidding. I’ve seen this happen before. Managers who have been working for a long time in the firm don’t get promoted to partners. Why? Because one or two partners don’t want them to be promoted to the partnership (despite the fact that these partners were in the minority). There were even rumors when I was still with this firm that just one partner saying ‘nay’ will destroy your chances to become one even though the others agree to the promotion. Take note: this is just a rumor, but after my stint in the auditing firm, ‘news’ of the partners’ meeting tends to leak down to the managers’ level.

For another, the other partners may think you are not yet ‘ready’ to become a partner. I’m not really sure what the word ‘ready’ means as far as the partnership goes but I know for sure that years of experience do not necessarily equate to this readiness. And who will determine if you are ‘ready’? Why the other partners of course. They are, after all, in the best position to see if a manager is ‘worthy’ of becoming one of them.

Lastly, you, yourself, may think you’re not worthy enough to become a partner. Or you may think that you don’t want the life of a partner. Yes, I know the monetary value is great but then again, so are the hardships, the sleepless nights and the pressure of being a partner. I haven’t really seen a manager refuse to become a partner, but I’ve heard of managers who think that they shouldn’t be promoted to partners yet because they don’t think they can do the job. Some of them ended up becoming partners and some ended up leaving the firm.

As for me, well, I don’t think the life of a partner is for me. And I can only congratulate my friend and wish her well.

What about you? Do you think you will become a partner of an auditing firm?

Staying Healthy During the Busy Season

2011-05-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

The Accountant’s last post was about a PWC employee who died during the last busy season. I’m not going to go into who’s at fault and who’s not. Instead, I’d rather go into why it is important and how to stay healthy during the busy season.

Personally, I think the most important thing during the busy season is maintaining one’s good health - not the firm, not your partner, not your manager and not even your client. Stay healthy during the busy season and everything will just fall into place.

But then again, saying the above is one thing, actually achieving it is another. A lot of things can happen, a lot of factors can come into play and you can just say goodbye to an A+ health and hello to a weak, sickly body (and worse, succumb to your illness).

So how do you stay healthy during all those weeks (and months) of stress, overtime, week-end work, angry partners / managers / clients, tight deadlines, pressures, etc.? After listing all these, it sounds like a daunting task, right? And it is one but you can actually go through all of them and come out of the tax busy season still of sound mind and body. I should know, I’m not bragging, but I did survive 13 years of busy season and I intend to live long enough to experience 13 more.

First of all, you should be sensitive to your body’s needs. When it says stop working, stop working. When it says you need some fresh air, take a 15 minute walk somewhere where you can breathe in fresh air. Most of all, when it says get some rest, by all means, get some rest.

Second, if you feel something’s wrong with your body, go see a doctor (or at least a qualified nurse). I can’t count the number of times I went to my former employer’s resident nurse to have my blood pressure taken because I was feeling dizzy or felt pain at the back of my head or had the symptoms of someone with high blood pressure. And when your doctor says you need rest or you need to take some time off, have him or her draw up a letter or something in writing that you can show to your boss as proof that you need that rest. When my doctor told me I need to have a simple but necessary operation and that I need a one week rest (in the middle of the busy season, I might add), I immediately asked my boss to grant me a one – week leave and he immediately agreed to it. Just make sure you make up for the lost time when you get back to work.

Third, eat healthy. I’ve heard of one manager who just keeled over right after the busy season because he loved eating fatty foods and foods that are not, shall we say, conducive to good health. Added to that the sleepless nights and all those pressures and he was a walking time bomb that just blew up after everything was over. I know it’s very tempting to eat everything in sight during the busy season, especially if you feel that this is your only outlet for all those stress and pressure you experience but please, learn to say no and stick to a healthy diet.

Fourth, exercise. Go out for a short walk every night. If you’re fortunate enough to be assigned to a client that has a gym in its premises (I had one like that before) and you are allowed to use it for free, go ahead, take advantage of it. If not, find some other way to get that exercise. I had a manager before whose favorite exercise was to go down and go up a flight of stairs (he covers like 10 floors or something) in our office every night. He kept his body trim during the busy season, it doesn’t take so much of his time plus it’s free!

Fifth, grab whatever sleep you can. If you are one of those who can take a 30 – minute nap during lunch time, find a quite place where you can take this nap. 30 minutes of napping will not hurt your work (or your deadline) and, when you wake up, it does wonders for your state of mind and body and for the quality of your work. At night time, get as much sleep as you can. I used to have a manager who, from the time she was still a staff, made it a point to sleep at least 5 hours every night. Her only exception was during the last 2 weeks before the deadline but before that? Try making her stay longer in the office and you won’t really like the results.

Lastly, prioritize your health. Oh yes, I know your boss will not like this at all but, at the end of the day, the state of your health has a direct impact on the quality of your work and whether you get things done on time or not. After everything is said and done, you and you alone can determine if your body and mind are still sound enough to let you do your job. Nobody really dies if your work is not finished on time, please remember that. And if your boss or manager tells you otherwise, then just think about this, nothing is more important than staying healthy, especially during the busy season.

The Last Busy Season, the Best Laid Plans…

2011-04-24T05:27:00.000-07:00

…and everything went awry!

It’s now a week after my busy season officially ended. And I still don’t quite believe that I made it through the last one alive.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration but really, everything that seemed to get wrong went wrong during that time.

It started out really fine. I thought I was going to make an easy time for it. First, because I decided not to do any audit for the 2010 financial statements of my previous audit clients. Second, I had a good plan for ending my busy season earlier than before and third, because I had more experienced staff (those staff that had been with me for one busy season or more) than inexperienced ones.

It turned out that the first and second actually helped me go through that busy season after my third reason went south, big time.

First off, my only experienced male staff resigned. Okay, now that I expect because he informed me as early as December that he was going to leave my firm. Then lo and behold, another one of my experienced staff also resigned. Well, resigned is not actually the word here. She just went AWOL, gave me some excuse why she will be absent for a few days then she never came back!

Needless to say, I had to hire new ones and train them ASAP. But it’s not really the same and so we had to work double time to finish everything, address inefficiencies and several errors we encountered along the way.

So even if I had the inclination to write something here or in my other writing sites, I just didn’t have the time. My days (and nights and even week-ends) were fully covered with our closing of the books and financial statement preparation activities (and this is an indirect apology, by the way, for the owner of this blog).

Come to think of it, it’s always the same. We make plans. Even when I was with the Big 4, we always had planning sessions or meetings, meetings that we hoped would lessen our work during the tax busy season. But it never happened. From January to April, we’re always busy, always working overtime, always working during week-ends. It got to the point when we were (or I was) just playing lip service to the planning sessions, something that we can just document in our working papers for compliance purposes.

But to help lessen the workload during busy season? Never going to happen.

If it’s not a problem on our staff, it’s a problem with the client or it’s a new audit issue that just cropped out during the last quarter of the year (which wasn’t captured during the planning season which happened the third quarter of the year) or it’s a new auditing or accounting requirement (that went out only during the busy season) or it’s all of the above!

Not that I want to discourage anybody from going through these planning sessions. It gives some order on our audit procedures (or in my case, in our closing of the books process). But don’t rely on them to get you home early during the busy season. You can always hope for the best but certainly plan for the worst. And the worst always happens during the busy season, not before.

Enough about that. My busy season is already over. Now it’s time for some rest. Till the next post, ciao!

25-year-old Shanghai PricewaterhouseCoopers employee worked to death?

2011-04-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

Today when I was talking with a friend, she mentioned to me a shocking story about how a 25 year old PWC China employee died from overexhaustion.

I, myself, couldnt' believe it at first, and then I was like WTF? How could that happen? And then I was like, damn, that very much could happen to someone that works 120 hour work weeks.

This event, indeed has happened. I'll give a brief summary of the story.

Pan Jie, a 25 year old assurance associate joined the firm last October, and then went on to take a sick leave on March 31st, where she sadly, passed away 10 days later.

It was mentioned that Pan would frequently work long hours during busy season (120 hour workweeks!) since January, and her work got worse in March where Pan didn't get off work until 2 or 3 am in the morning. Her mom even had her taxi receipts that showed that they were over 1 a.m. and the latest one on 3:10 a.m.

Pan even requested for sick leave on March 25th, but her request wasn't approved until March 31st where her fever got very bad.

This story has sparked online controversy, as Pan even tweeted frequently about her job experiences, the late hours, and the craving for sleep.

Its something that we should all be concerned as part of the accounting community.

I was pretty pissed off when I heard PWC denies any wrongdoing, or the possibility of death from overwork. If I were the parent, I would want murder on the partner.

We all know how bad Busy season can be, and the insane time pressures. We know people have gotten sick from busy season and have endured insane pressure from the firm and colleageues in getting work done which has just added to our bad health.

It is not healthy, nor should be expected of any employee to work such late hours 1-3 a.m. Getting sleep for less than 5 hours a day is not something anyone can sustain, much less over a long period of time.

I really think that when events like these happen, Big firms need to take more responsibility in taking care of their workers. But the way the corporate structure is set up at Big 4, if your not working till midnight during busy season, your not a "good enough" worker.

As to people who question why didn't she just quit. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that China has a tough enough work culture which supports 12 hour days, the high 5,000 RMB salary, and the guilt and shame she would suffer from parents and colleagues if she quit.

Even in Toronto, I always question why people in Big 4 don't quit when they really feel like they can't do it anymore. At the end of the day, health > CA.

The Accountant

Link to the Story

1 Year until I qualify - Is it really worth it?

2011-02-01T21:29:00.001-08:00

Emie made a great post last week, about a potential change in career, and I have to say that, it is something that I have long and hard thought about. I am not a CA - yet.

I need one more year of experience until I become a CA. Now the question, that I really need to ask myself, and search deep inside myself.. Is it really worth it?

If you go all the way back to the very first post of this blog, you will recall me blogging about the "Young ambitious high school student." It talks about someone who is talented and smart, and has no idea what he wants out of his life.

That was me. Fast forward 5 years, and I am partly still the same way. I got my accounting degree. I have my UFE passed, and in one year, I will be a CA.

That is, If I stay.

Yes, busy season is bad and that partly may be the reason I am contemplating seriously quitting. But, a part of me feels that Big 4 is destroying my youth and happiness - and the longer I stay, the older and less risky I will be. The more and more I will stop looking for my own dreams (despite not really knowing what they are) and being merely satsified with what I have. I don't want to be old and say I regret wasting my youth on something I ultimately didn't really like when I have the capability to take risks now.

My biggest problem and concern is the brainwashing of the ICAO and Big 4 due to young kids, and I fell for it at the time too.

The CA is a highly marketable designation but does having a CA ultimately make that much of a difference in your career? It will guarantee you a good paying job, but ultimately will you be satisfied? Isn't life the pursuit of happiness?

I do think that some Big 4 experience and exposure is good, but if you are going to jump ship once you get your CA, isn't it pointless to wait if you really think accounting is not for you? I need to start thinking about opportunity costs.

My biggest problem is "Brainwashed friends" and "Drone like co-workers" who think that once they have their CA, their life problems will be solved. That, all the hard work they put in for their 30 month (lucky people like me) or 36 months (unlucky people afterwards) will guarantee them a nice ballin' life with a good job.

Let's be realistic. Getting a CA and leaving big 4 doesn't guarantee you anything. You might end up working in industry in a job you hate as a controller for 10K more, and hate your life just as much as you did in Big 4 (if not more).

Ask yourself this question. Having the CA opens doors, but does it necessarily open the doors to the jobs that you like?

And then when you find out you hate industry, what will you do?

If you hate accounting and auditing and are sticking around in accounting just because you want your CA, don't you think your wasting your time?

So, the question, I need to ask myself is "Am I really wasting my time?" What exactly is the CA designation going to bring me? Will it bring me happiness or entry into another high paying job that I hate?

I haven't really "reverse engineered my career" and I dont' think a lot of you have either.

The proper way to do things is to find out what you want to do in life, and figure out what you need in order to get there. In reality,

Would I be a fool to throw it all away, at age 23, with less than 1 year left until I qualify?

A Change of Career Anyone?

2011-01-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, first of all, let me apologize for not posting anything for over a month now (oh heck, I didn't realize that my last post was like Dec. 6 or something, I really, really am sorry).

Secondly, I've been meaning to write this for quite some time now but I hesitated because, well, basically, I don't think this is the right venue for it. But then, I realized what I will write could have an impact (I wish) to somebody reading this post. So here goes.

I've been actually thinking of a change in career. Like a total change of career, not just moving from audit to accounting and vice - versa. I don't want to post here what kind of career I'm thinking of shifting to but, rest assured, it is totally different from accounting. I don't know why but the excitement and the fun I used to have in this job are...well, not just there anymore.

Yes, yes, I know, this job is a lucrative one (if you're the owner, of course). I get to meet a lot of people, rich businessmen, heck even politicians. I get to handle different businesses and different industries. It's full of challenges, full of surprises and full of knowledge updates. But, on the other hand, it is also full of difficult clients, difficult employees, deadlines, overtime, etc., etc.

I know, I know, a change of career can be a scary prospect. I mean I have to study (again!) for this change (though I don’t think I will need another 4 to 5 years for this one). I have to take a cut from my current income (which is something my partner keeps on emphasizing) and I will probably hear some crap and whining from old clients, colleagues, family and friends. But after almost 15 years in accounting and half of that spent being restless and unsure of my choices, well, I feel like I’m being pulled more and more in this other direction.

Oh, and no, writing online is not that career change I’m talking about. Writing both in this site and in the other sites has been more of a pleasure than an income – generating endeavor. I just wish I could write more (another reason why I want a shift in career); something that I feel will be difficult what with the busy tax season coming in (aaarrggghhh!).

Hmmmm, I just wish you won’t think – what the heck is she talking about!???? I’m pretty sure a lot of accountants out there (not only those who are reading this) had contemplated, at one point or another, shifting to another career. I mean, come on, admit it, haven’t you also thought about this?

UFE Results – How to survive failure Part 2

2010-12-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

A week has officially passed since the day of your dreaded results, and by now, the reality has sunk in.
You may still be feeling bitter and angry and hate the world or you feel hopeless and tired, and scared.

Regardless, Even 1 week post results, It is ok to feel like Shit. I can only imagine how hard the first week back at work would be for you.

People asking you, “How do you feel?” and “Are you OK?”

People purposely avoiding you, and not wanting to socialize. IT really does SUCK.

This is why failing the UFE is so bad:

1) It must be one of the only tests in the world where studying the second time is harder than studying for the first. I say this because, in order to study for the UFE, you need to practice, and in order to practice, you need cases. And unfortunately, like most UFE writers, you would have done the 2006-2009 Cases + the 2010 one that you failed. And in order to get more cases, you need to get a prep program, and you will need to Pay or Pirate.

2) You get fired. There are some small firms that literally fire you if you fail the UFE. Most big 4 firms are more considerate and offer a one-strike policy. But failing the UFE is a big deal. For those of you who are commenting that failing the UFE is not a big deal, it is a bigger deal than you think. This must be one of the only exams in the world where failure leads to a loss of a job. This isn’t a University exam where you can write it next semester with no repercussions. Everybody’s situation is different, but losing a job or being at risk of losing a job is terrible. Big 4 Firms have fired All star performers at work... for the sole reason that they failed the UFE. This is a huge confidence shock.

3) Big 4 Firms offer very little support for repeat writers. Big 4 firms do everything to help first time writers pass. But if you fail and are a repeat writer, you have to do everything on your own. You have to pay for the UFE again, you have to pay for prep courses out of your own pocket, you have to pay for diagnostic reports out of your pocket, and the firm forces you to take time off work to study in August and September with no paid UFE leave like if you are a first time writer. The opportunity cost of failing the UFE can be greater than $5,000 not to mention emotional and physical stress.

4) Failing the UFE can destroy friendships and relationships. For the first time in your life, you may feel yourself not wanting to hang out with friends for the sole reason that they all passed and you didn’t, and you feel like you no longer belong. I have seen friendships destroyed because of failing the UFE, where a person no longer wanted to be part of their social group.

. I want all you failed UFE candidates to do these things and remember these things:

Do:
1) Forget UFE for a while. Its Christmas time. Spend time with the people who love and care about you. As hard as it is to not be bitter around your friends who passed UFE, remember, they are still your friends, and when you do pass, which you will, they will party it up with you.

Remember:

1) For someone who writes the UFE four times, there is a >98% pass rate. I’m not saying that you will write the UFE four times, but the probability of failing this test four times is close to zero. For second time writers, “P(Passing|Failed 1st attempt) >90%”.

I’m not going to turn this blog post into something positive and how you guys should cheer up with a bunch of constructive advice. It’s still way too early. I just wanted to bring one Do and Remember element for each of follow up blog posts. I’m sure thousands of others have already told you guys that failing the UFE is not the end of the world. But trust me, it will feel that way for a long time. You guys are still hurting, and it is ok to feel deep and dark inside.

The accountant’s friend
Successful UFE candidate – 2nd attempt

It’s Not Easy…Signing Off on Financial Statements

2010-12-06T05:57:00.000-08:00

Well, busy season is just around the corner. It’s time for the (seemingly) never ending closing of books (if you’re the accountant or bookkeeper) or all those audit procedures that you wished will be finished in time for the deadline (if you are the external auditors). And if you have your own small audit / accounting practice (like me), it’s time to sign off on your clients’ financial statements that you audit.

I’ve been signing off on a couple of audit clients for like 3 years now and honestly, I’m thinking of not signing off on anything for 2010. Crazy huh? I mean, becoming an audit partner and signing off on financial statements may be the ultimate experience / status for someone in the external audit world (no matter whether he or she is a CA or in another designation). But for someone who has been in this world for over 10 years, signing off is not as easy as it seems (but then again, it never was).

For one, the buck stops on you. The partner’s signature is now like an evidence, a kind of paper trail that will lead back to (and can be used against) the partner if something bad happens to the client after the audited financial statements are released. Just go over the accounting scandals that happened in the past. Whose name appeared prominently in the news, next to the names of the Pres., CFO and other key company officials? The audit partner, of course.

For another, it’s becoming more and more difficult to become a partner and to stay that way. The regulators are breathing down on you. Requirements after requirements are piling up on you and are becoming more and more stringent (case in point: the stricter independence requirements and the 2009 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants). And clients are expecting an unqualified (or unmodified) opinion from you (no matter what happened during your audit) – although this doesn’t mean you will do what they expect, of course.

Still want another? What about the independent review of the audit working papers? The CRA already issued its policy on access to audit working papers. There’s the CPAB for public companies. And if you are alone or there are only 2 of you, what’s to say that you can handle a full – scale, all out review on your audit working papers?

Lastly, and this is my pet peeve, it’s a thankless job sometimes (at least for me). There are times, really, when I just wonder if my clients really appreciate me as their external auditor or if I’m not just another signature that they need to obtain to comply with regulations. And then they haggle on my fees! Oh don’t get me wrong, even in the big firms, there are always clients who want to haggle on the fees but if you’re a very small one, haggling is a way of life for us. It’s like they think your signature is just worth peanuts or something like that. Or am I just one of those unlucky ones who have clients that are always trying to cut down their auditors’ audit fees?

Of course, being a partner is a status symbol or something, especially if you are one in one of the Big 4. Plus you earn more money (a lot more!) than other people in your profession. Plus you talk to the top people and may even become well known in your society. But, heck, with the above, I’m seriously re – thinking the signing off financial statements. Maybe I’ll just stick to doing accounting jobs for now.

Note to those who want to become partners – This is not meant to discourage you. These are based on my thoughts and experiences ONLY so I hope you won’t be discouraged with it. If you want to become a partner of an auditing firm, I’d still say go for it. As I said, it is the ultimate status for an external auditor working for an audit firm. And if you intend to stay an external auditor for a long, long time, becoming a partner should definitely be something that you should strive for.

UFE Results – How to survive failure Part 1

2010-12-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

On first note, congratulations to all those that passed the 2010 Uniform Final Evaluation. It marks a significant milestone in your career and you are one step closer to fulfilling your goal of “IwanttobeaCA.”

However, this article is not about you.

This article is dedicated towards the students who worked extremely hard, and often are the hardest working students, who failed the UFE.

Failing the UFE, when the vast majority of everyone else you know passes is one of the worst possible experiences of anyone’s life. The majority of people who write do pass –
which makes failure so much bitter.

You will have people tell you “There is more to life than the UFE” and “You can just do it again next year, I’m sure you’ll pass.”

Believe me those words don’t offer any sort of comfort.

Yes, there is more to life than the UFE. But the UFE is not just a test. It is a battle that you took over a month to prepare for, every single day, where you poured your entire heart into.

It’s a battle where you stressed over every single night, about how your technical was not strong enough and the disappointing Nominal competents that you received. It’s a battle where you had to sacrifice time with your friends, family, and relationships, and the fights you’ve had because of this “test”.

It was 3 days of agonizing pain. Waking up early, tired from not being able to sleep, going to write an exam where you’re only at 60% capacity and leaving every day with uncertainty of your performance, and knowing the painful cycle would simply repeat itself the next day.

You even had hope it would finally be over on the third day and that you wouldn’t have to look for another pervasive indicator.

Maybe in the back of the mind you considered the possibility of failure, but you still had hope, the 3 months leading up to results day.

Then when you checked the results yesterday, and you looked for your name, and you couldn’t find it, you were in utter disbelief, you refresh again, and the reality begins to sink it that you did not pass. Your friends and family call to see how you did, and you are just in utter shock and cannot do anything and just want to hide yourself from the rest of the world.

The nightmare will continue for you. This is the most demoralizing feeling in the world.

A painful analogy would be being released from jail, only to have to find out you need to go return 3 months later.

These are the painful things you will have to go through.

1) Another month of rigorous studying 8 months from now with stress and worry leading up to it.
2) Taking time off from work to study which translates to loss earnings.
3) Paying for the heavy cost of the UFE à even the big firms don’t’ sponsor second time writers.
4) Paying for additional prep programs.

But the worst part, is the different attitude that your co-workers will show you when you show up on work on Monday, and the people around you.

There will be the people who try to avoid the fact that you failed, and don’t talk about UFE in front of you, the ones in a group who will suddenly talk about something else when you show up and there will be those who ask how you are doing and try to offer emotional support.

Nevertheless, while both groups have good intentions, they simply magnify the reality and importance of your failing the UFE. And you hate them, and their probably gossiping behind your back anyways...

And you will have to wait, a long time, before you get a chance to redeem yourself. AND THIS SUCKS A LOT.

I’m not going to try to hide you from the reality of failure. It sucks and it hurts a lot and I painted the reality of the situation above for you. It will hurt for awhile no matter how many people tell you the UFE is not everything. Unless they are in the same position as you, they really don’t understand what you are going through.

I just wanted to present you with the bitter reality that failing UFE writers are
going through.

There will be a time when I will offer words of wisdom, and how to cope…

But for now, It’s ok to feel bad. It’s ok to to hate life and about how unfair the UFE is. How you worked so hard and your friend who winged it passed. Its ok to be pessimistic, and ok to cry, and ok to feel like the world is ending and that you are the only person in the world going through this. It’s ok to feel disappointed in yourself, and mad at your friends celebrating, and mad that you can’t share the happiness with them. It’s ok to feel hopeless and angry and tired and loss of interest in life.

Because, you are not alone, Trust me.

Sincerely,
The Accountant’s friend
Successful 2007 UFE writer – 2nd try

Why I Write About My Stint in an Auditing Firm

2010-11-20T07:20:00.000-08:00

I’ve been writing in this blog for over a year now. I’ve received my share of comments and emails, some nice, some not – quite – so nice. But this latest email I received had me thinking. The sender was telling me something like he or she kind of find my posts funny because I seem to encourage people to work with the Big 4, at the same time, I seem to be scaring them from working with the Big 4.

Well, I know I kind of get this kind of reaction from the readers sometimes. I mean looking back on the things I wrote, I get it why I received this kind of email. In some, I’m telling people why I like working in an auditing firm. In the others, I tell people what are the not – so – good things about working in auditing firms. Funny? It seems so. Confusing? Well, for me, not really.

You see, just because I liked my stint with this auditing firm, my former employer, doesn’t mean I couldn’t see what was wrong with it. Before I started working for this firm, I already had a fairly good idea of what to expect. I mean between members of my family who worked for the same firm and a brother – in – law who is still working in the same firm, it was nearly impossible to ignore the negative side of auditing.

Unfortunately, not everybody is in the same boat as I was. The proof? I’ve seen some of my co – juniors (when I was still one) and my juniors resign after a short time (one even resigned barely two weeks after her first day) because auditing work was not the way they envisioned it to be and the auditing firm we were in was not the kind of employer they would have wanted to get. Oh I know they were aware at some level just what they were going into but, without personal knowledge really they didn’t quite digest this kind of information.

It didn’t help that during career orientation programs, the HR people (and even the partners) from these firms won’t really tell you the negative side of working with auditing firms. They will tell you how many public companies they audit, how many big companies they audit, how many people they have, how many branches, how many affiliates, how prestigious it is to work for this firm, etc., etc. They won’t really tell you that you will work until 2:00 in the morning or that you will work for 48 hours straight or that during the busy season, you’ll get an average of 4 hours of sleep every night and that you will work your @ss off even during the week-ends.

And during my time (that was more than a decade ago), there was no blog such as this (or such as those in the links below), or comments such as those we received here. And that is why I write these things. I know that new graduates are excited to get into auditing firms, let alone the Big 4. I also know that it can be quite disappointing when you see and experience stuff you didn’t expect to see and to experience. That’s why I’m writing about both the good things and the bad things. And that’s why I’ll keep on writing about the positive side and the negative side when you’re working for an auditing firm.

To the one who sent the email, thank you for sending that email. Hope you get to work in one of the Big 4 firms and good luck!

Why I Can’t wait for the Slack Season to End!

2010-11-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

First of all, I’d like to apologize for not making a new post for the past 2 months. In fact, I haven’t posted anything for the past two months, not in this blog and not in other sites where I write.

Though I’m pretty sure nobody really missed me here. Not when there’s an interesting topic somewhere in this blog where a lot of people are really giving it their all in terms of their comments (hint: that post already has *gasp* almost 460 comments as of the date of writing of this post).

Okay so it’s now November. Less than two months away from Christmas and two months away from the busy season. Two months away from the end of my not – so – busy season a. k. a. slack season, which is something I am really, really looking forward to.

Hmmm, I can just see some eyebrows rising. I mean who in their right mind would say that they want their slack season to end? Well, I do. Oh don’t get me wrong. I like slack season. This is the time (I think) when overtime is down to a minimum, I get my Saturdays and Sundays back and the pressure is virtually non-existent. But, on the other hand, what we sometimes think is different from what really happen to us and over the years, I started to see that this time is really my worst enemy when I was still in this big accounting firm. Let me tell you why.

First of all, this is the time when I see (and receive) resignations left and right. Resignations abound during the slack season, from the partner (yes, even partners resign) to the staff. I know high turn-over rates is a way of life for accounting firms, but, heck, it’s really quite hard when you see your friends leaving the firm (and you).

Second, these are the months when I have so much time on my hands that I start to think about whether I really want this career or not. I can’t count the number of times when I honestly thought of resigning from the firm and even on embarking on a career that’s different from accounting. The fact that I promptly forget about these thoughts once busy season starts mean that I was not as serious as I thought I was.

Third, the special jobs (Argh!). I mean I’m all set to file for a vacation leave. And then my boss suddenly tells me that one of our clients is going public in August or September or October. Meaning? We have to prepare the comfort letter, prepare the working papers, prepare interim consolidated financial statements and all that stuff during the slack season. So, it’s goodbye vacation for me. And to top it all, I always seemed to be assigned to a special job during this time and it got to the point when I no longer anticipated having a full blown vacation during this supposed – to – be slack season. Oh well.

Fourth, this is the time when you don’t know where the heck you will charge your hours (if you don’t have a special job that is). Chargeable or non-chargeable? Which of my clients can still take my charges? I know, I know, charge based on actual hours and work done but realistically speaking? This is not true all the time. Especially if you’re an audit manager with a much higher rate than the staff and you can see your charges starting to go up and up (and it’s not the busy season yet).

Lastly, this is the time when I get bored with my career, with my life. Yes, B-O-R-E-D. Despite the special jobs, despite the challenge of planning for the next busy season, despite having more time to do other things, I feel restless and bored (there’s that word again) during this time.

So now you see why I’m looking forward to the end of my slack season?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2010-08-27T08:21:00.000-07:00

“I’m a senior manager in a Big 4 firm. I was told that I am being groomed to become a partner of this firm in two to three years’ time. I am married with a kid and my husband and I are doing fine financially. Problem is I received a very generous offer from a private company if I resign from this firm and move there. Should I accept it? Or should I stay and wait until I become partner of this firm?”

The above is not an email, by the way. It was one of the questions my friend and I discussed when we met for lunch. She’s still in the Big 4 firm and she posed that question to me.

I’ve seen a lot of things written about working for the Big 4 in the Internet. But seldom do I see (or I haven’t really been looking hard enough) posts about becoming a partner, or how much a partner really receives from the firm. So whatever I write in this post, it’s based on my observation and what I’ve heard from the ‘office grapevine’.

For one, salaries of partners in Big 4 firms (and even in small to medium – size accounting firms) are not definite. Can anybody give me a sure figure? $200,000 a year? $500,000 a year? How about a million dollars (or more) a year? Is it lower than what you will receive if you become a controller or a CFO or a VP for Finance in a big or small private company? Or is it way beyond the said positions’ compensation package?

Put it this way, and as I’ve told my friend, it’s kind of hard to compare a private company’s offer with a figure that can range from six to seven figures a year! The partner’s salary is one of the most closely guarded secret I’ve ever known – at least where I came from but I don’t think this situation is unique. But personally speaking? I would say the compensation is far greater for a partner in a Big 4 accounting firm than for a CFO or a VP or a controller.

That takes care of the salaries (or does it?). What about the time spent in the office? Are the hours if you’re a partner the same or higher or lower than the hours spent when you’re in a private company?

We all know that the hours in the accounting firm can be hellish. I’ve seen partners who work from 8 in the morning to 12 midnight, 7 days a week during busy seasons. I’ve seen partners who are no-shows after 9 or 10 in the evening and even during weekends, and this is during the busy season. What about during the not-so-busy season? Again, it depends. Some partners go from 8 in the morning to 10 in the evening plus a Saturday. Some partners go home by 6 in the evening and you don’t see them around during a Saturday.

Admittedly, the hours are easier if you’re in a private company. But if you’re part of the group that closes the books, you can be sure you’ll be doing a lot of overtime during the month-end. I’ve seen some CFOs work their *ss off during year-end closing and FS finalization stages. Still the hours are less than those you will spend during the busy season, even for partners.

What about the risks? Which is more ‘risky’? I would interpret ‘risky’ here as which job has a higher probability of pulling you down into the mud if you or the firm or the company fails to address an issue that blows up all over your faces. Before the Enron debacle, I would have said being a CFO or a VP for Finance is more risky than being a partner of a firm. If you fail as a former, chances are you’ll be booted out (and may even be blacklisted) but if you fail as a partner, there’s still a chance you might salvage your position (only they will do some ‘revamping’ meaning you will no longer be allowed to sign off on financial statements). But after Enron, and watching a whole accounting firm go down, I’m on the other side of the scale. It is riskier to become a partner of a firm (and a Big 4 at that) than to become a part of a private company.

What about work challenges? Gee, this one is easy (at least for me). It’s the reason why I never contemplated working for a private company. I think there are more challenges if you work for an accounting firm than for a private company. In an accounting firm, unless you get stuck with the same client year in and year out (for the next 10 or 20 years); chances are, you’ll be resolving a lot of (different) accounting and auditing issues. The same cannot be said if you’re in a private company. But then again, this is me. It really depends on one’s appetite for such challenges. And I’m going to stop at that.

So what did I tell my friend? In the end, I told her it all depends on her and what she wants in life. Higher or lower salary aside, more hours or challenges or not, it all boils down on whether she really like what she’s doing. Kind of ideal, yes? But then again, I think it’s as simple as that.

If you’re my friend, what will you do?

My Own Accounting Firm…The Clients and the Money

2010-08-08T02:42:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I wrote about what the stress is like if you have your own accounting firm. In this post, I write about my clients and the money.

The Clients

Well, I’m just a small firm in this vast world of accounting / auditing firms. My clients are usually private companies and individuals, most of them local entities in the retail business. I do mostly simple accounting work like bookkeeping, taxes, closing the books, preparing the financial statements and the like.

I already have over 70 accounting clients. And no, I’m not responsible for obtaining majority of these clients. I actually inherited the firm from my father who died several years ago. I took over after he died and, since I was working in another city when he was still alive, I had almost zero knowledge about the firm and its clients. Fortunately for me, I had my 8 – year experience to back me up and I have to say that I was able to keep majority of his clients plus gain a few on my own.

What about auditing? Well I have a few audit clients. I don’t handle a lot since I’m the only one in the firm who can sign off on the audit reports and I can’t physically (and realistically) go through all of them during the busy season since I already have the 70 that I need to close during this time.

So, clients? Lots of small to medium – size private entities (usually family – owned and individually – owned), usually local companies engaged in the retail business.

The Money

Now we come to the most important aspect – the earnings. I can’t divulge of course. But my firm is earning more than enough to cover its expenses plus my personal expenses. My annual net earnings are more than my annual net salary when I was still working in a big accounting firm as a manager.

But…

I have to be honest. If I want to purchase new office equipment (such as computers, photocopiers, and such), I have to literally look for ways to raise the funds to buy these equipment. Right now, there’s little room in my firm’s cash flows to buy these items anytime that I want to. This may not be the case all the time but I think I can safely say that a lot of not – so – big accounting firms also experience this.

Another but…

If you want to become a partner of the bigger firms, I say stick to those firms (unless you will start a firm that you hope will compete with these firms someday). My net earnings are not in the same category as the earnings of the partners of these firms. Far from it.

This doesn’t mean that I want to quit what I’m doing right now and go back and become a partner of a big accounting firm. Having my own accounting firm is actually a trade – off between the time versus the money; the stress / pressure versus the money and the work – life balance versus the money. I chose the former, some people may choose the latter.

And this ends my posts on having my own accounting firm. To the two who commented in my previous post, hope I answered your questions. Thanks for your comments / questions!

My Own Accounting Firm…The Stress

2010-07-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

This post is really a sort of an answer to comments / questions posted in my previous post on the Results of My Experiment. Instead of replying to those questions through another comment, I thought about writing a post (or two or three) about my experience in having my own firm.

There are basically three things asked in my previous post – is it a lot of stress? What clients do I mainly deal with? And how’s the money?

First of all, the stress. Being my own boss is nice because I don’t have to answer to anybody. But then again, being my own boss means I get to worry and think about everything (I don’t have a partner by the way), which is not an easy task to do.

I mean now that I’m running my own show; I finally understood why my previous boss / partners kept on hounding us managers to collect from our clients. In my own firm, if I don’t collect what my clients owe me, my people do not get paid their salaries, I won’t be able to pay my rent and my utilities and I won’t be able to buy the equipment and the supplies needed to keep my business rolling. Plus, I won’t be able to have any funds for my personal needs. So yes, in this aspect, having my own accounting firm can be stressful.

And how about if one of my staff makes any mistake and I was not able to see it on time? I have to shoulder the blame on this. At least when I was in the big accounting firm, my boss kind of shielded me from the consequences of any errors I made. Now, the buck stops with me. Can you just imagine how it is when you realize your people made a mistake and you will be the one answering it? Not easy I tell you.

But then again, the stress here is much more manageable than the stress when I was still in a big accounting firm, particularly if you consider that I used to handle public companies. Now that was a somewhat nerve – wracking experience. One major false move and the firm can lose its (big – ticket) client and its reputation. With my own firm, thankfully, I don’t handle such big clients. Plus I’m closer to my clients right now and I have a good working relationship with them so I can readily address any problem that they may have as well as easily meet any (negative) consequences resulting from my or my people's actions / mistakes.

And that is all I have to say about the stress. On my next post, the clients and the money…

Please take note (not trying to be defensive here) - these are based on my own experiences. Others may agree with me and still others may have different views altogether. If you own an accounting firm and have a different take on this matter, please feel free to leave a comment below so that others will see and read them and gain more knowledge from them.

Results of My Experiment…

2010-07-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

On Internet access and my people's working hours / productivity.

I just read this article on the e-mail woes of certain companies and how e-mails are affecting the productivity of their employees.

And I couldn’t help but remember the post that I made last January on playing Farmville (and the reactions I received from that post).

I know a lot of people or employees resent the fact that their employers are restricting their time online (and even blocking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.). But consider first what I wrote here before you get your hackles up…

Real – Life Example

I was given the chance to put into test just how being online (or not being online) can affect one’s work. And I just want to take this opportunity to describe this experience.

If you’ve read my posts from the start, you’ll see that I wrote that I own my small accounting firm.

Small or not, my people used to have unlimited access to the Internet. Facebook (used to be Friendster), YM, Google, you name it, they can access it. Since my firm is a small one, I can’t afford to have my own I. T. so I could not possibly control these sites.

When I started my own firm, I was okay with such an access. I mean, heck, I thought my people were responsible enough when to call it quits online and start working offline. I spent two busy seasons believing this to be the case. Two busy seasons in which the hours we were keeping were very near the kind of hours I was keeping when I was still working for a big accounting firm (like a 12 – hour workday plus week-ends plus holidays).

Then I started noticing stuff. Small ones really. Like whenever I get near my people’s area, they suddenly switch windows. Like I happen to pass by their area and I see their IE or Firefox or YM open. Or I hear them talking about Farmville and the other things that they discovered online. Or I see them extend their working hours but instead of working, they’re online! Which got me thinking – are they working or aren’t they?

So I did a little experiment. Last February, I removed my people’s Internet access. Not just restricted the sites but completely removed it. Of course, they grumbled behind my back and it caused some friction but since I am the boss, what could they do?

My thoughts? Well, I just wanted to see what would happen during that busy season.

And the results?

Overtime hours went down.

They could go home at 6:00 or 7:00 p. m. every Saturday.

There was no Sunday work.

By April, we were more relaxed. My people could even go home at 6:00 p. m. on Friday and Saturday. On the 14^th of April, which is crutch time for everybody, they went home at 5:00 p. m.! And by noontime on April 15, everything was done!

Still more results? More face – to – face interaction with the clients and with their peers (particularly during break times). Plus, less mistakes, less review notes and faster turnaround of outputs.

The experiment...was a success...

At least for my firm, that is.

This is actually the first time I reflected on what happened during the last busy season. And this is the first time I put my reflections on writing.

I’m not trying to be preachy here or to advocate that the same thing be done in other firms or companies. Other firms may have different views, or different experiences, or different approaches to this matter. It's really entirely up to them.

You can react negatively or positively, it is all up to you. But for me, the Internet access stays off (unless really, really needed) and it will stay off as long as I am the boss here. May sound dictatorial, I know but hey, in the end, the results showed that it was well worth it.

And really, that is all that matters for me.

Why Do I Find Audit Exciting?

2010-07-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

Or do I…???

Somebody asked me a while ago (or rather a few months ago) whether I really find audit exciting. It would seem that my posts in this blog conveyed a sense of excitement in my old job.

Well, I had to admit I smiled when I saw that comment. I mean if you asked any of my old teammates or office mates if I looked excited during that time, they would just scratch and shake their heads. I don’t think they really saw me as “excited” when I was working in the firm.

Audit was my first job. I chose it not because I was excited about it. I chose it because, well, it was the only job I was knowledgeable about. I figured since a lot of my family members started out in audit and went on to build good or great careers, I might as well start with audit, too. Not very wise, eh? But then again, I didn’t know any better.

Seven months later, I soon found out the error of basing a choice on the wrong assumptions. I resigned.

That was my second mistake. Why?

Because when I started applying for other jobs, my 7-month worth of audit experience (which included one busy season) was like a no-experience at all. I basically had to start from scratch. So, after more than 1 year, I returned to audit, this time much wiser and much more mature than when I was first accepted on the job.

But wait! Was I excited this second time around? Still, no. It was just a job for me, something that I can later on put in my resume to get other jobs with higher pays and more perks. But as the years go by, I did find that there are things in audit I can get excited about.

Oh not getting new clients. When you’re in audit, during at least your first 2 years, you may very well get assigned to the same clients. I even had the same client for 5 years and another one for 3 years! So, no I didn’t get excited about getting new clients.

Was it the pay / salary that got me excited? Definitely not. Enough said.

Was it the hours kept? Whoever said they get excited with the hours in an accounting firm ought to get shot. Just kidding.

So what did I get excited about?

Meeting new friends? Yes! I met some very good friends during my 8 years of stay.

Meeting or auditing ‘popular’ clients? How about being the auditor of Google before they went public?

Sorry, I didn’t get a client that popular. But I did get to audit several clients who are pretty well known in my place. So yes, I was excited about those things.

How about getting great evaluations and being promoted? Who wouldn’t? I was promoted three times, got the highest evaluation several times (with corresponding salary increases to boot). I guess I was lucky that way.

How about traveling? I know some people would say traveling when auditing is not exactly a bed of roses and is not really conducive to sightseeing. Maybe true, maybe not, but just going to places that I otherwise wouldn’t have gone to if I wasn’t working as an auditor was an exciting thought for me. Plus, I was fortunate enough to be sent to another country for some on – the – job trainings. That was really an exciting time for me.

Lastly, the fact that I ‘survived’ 8 years working in an accounting firm is something I am always excited and pleased about. I know a lot of people will look askance at me over the fact that I managed to stay that long in the firm but believe me, it was worth every year of it.

So to answer the above question, I do get excited about some aspects of audit. Not all but enough for me to breeze through those 8 years and come out of them alive. But don’t let my ex – teammates or office mates read this, otherwise, I will never live it down. Admitting that you are excited over auditing is like asking them to dub you as an F – F – F – For the (Accounting) Firm Forever. And I’m not excited being called that.

And that’s all about being excited as an auditor. Thanks for reading! Cheers!

How to Get the Good (or Great) Evaluation

2010-06-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

Have you ever experienced being in the receiving end of a performance evaluation? If yes, do you even care to know what your performance evaluation is? Or if you do care, do you agonize about the results of the evaluation (like OMG I failed! I'm not worthy to work here! etc.)?

For those accounting firms with busy seasons ending on April 15, this is the time when evaluations, promotions and salary increases (or no increases) abound.

Seniors, managers and partners evaluate those people they manage.

Seniors, managers and partners talk to those people they manage about their evaluations.

Seniors, managers and partners then meet to finalize the evaluations.

And the juniors sweat it out while waiting for that all-important evaluation rating which will decide whether they will continue with the firm, or get promoted or get kicked out.

So if you’re a junior, how do you go about getting that great evaluation? Here’s how:

First of all, read this post about How to be the all star first year junior. Those are some very good tips on how to excel in your work even if you are still a junior.

Second, accept wholeheartedly whatever job is given to you and always ensure you give it your best. If you are given the task to vouch 100 samples, do it. Don’t take any shortcuts.

If you are told to get last year’s files for this year’s audit, do it (even if it means you have to wade through a lot of files and cart them all to your team’s office space).

Third, have the mindset of the one above you. If you’re a junior, start thinking like an in charge or a senior (even if your current work is ‘merely’ vouching and photocopying).

Why do I say this? Because if you are being evaluated for possible promotion, your attitude will show that you are prepared to go up the ladder of leadership in your firm.

Do not act like your senior though or they’ll think you’re arrogant or worse, you’re trying to challenge their authority.

Fourth, volunteer for more work. If they need a junior to do something (like help out with the files, photocopying, vouch more samples, trace more items, etc.), step up and raise your hand and say you’ll do it. Your senior will appreciate knowing that you will do whatever it takes to ensure that the team gets the job done.

Caution: check first if you can handle the additional load otherwise you may just be stretching yourself too thin and your senior will not appreciate if you volunteer for something that you can’t finish.

Fifth, do not look overeager when you do your work. Your senior or manager can sense who is bent on doing a great job and who is just showing off. Your senior or manager will also not appreciate it if they think that you are just after a great evaluation… and nothing else.

Sixth, make sure that you treat everyone nicely and you act professional at all times.

Nothing will ensure you get a bad reputation than when you ‘accidentally’ rubbed off another person the wrong way and that person happens to be a partner of the firm!

Or when you and your friends are on an elevator on your way to lunch talking and laughing loudly (read: unprofessionally) and one of the passengers is a partner of the firm!

The above may or may not affect your performance evaluation rating but are you willing to take the risk?

Lastly, as much as possible, restrain from grumbling about your work, your overtime hours, your pay or your boss to your office mate or teammate. Nothing can turn off your senior, manager or partner than having a junior who complains or grumbles about everything all the time.

I mean, if you don’t like working for the firm, just get out of the firm. Right?

And that's about it. Good luck on your evaluation! Hope you’ll get the kind of rating that you really want.

Tax vs. Audit

2010-06-19T08:27:00.001-07:00

Or Audit vs. Tax

Not exactly a unique topic here, judging from the fact that there are a lot of forums discussing this very issue. But then again, I thought that I just have to throw my two cents’ worth in and write about this.

As a bit of a background, I worked for eight years in an auditing firm in the audit division. I never once considered working in tax simply because I hated tax even when I was still in college (and it ‘hated’ me back, one of my lowest grades was in taxation). On the other hand, my sister – in – law also worked for the same auditing firm and she worked in the tax advisory division (for eight years also, I might add). So, I was able to see both sides, albeit the audit side was clearer than the other side.

So here are my thoughts about this subject…

Hours. During the tax season, audit people spend grueling hours, more than the tax people. We went home at 12:00 midnight or 1:00 am or 2:00 am and by that time, the tax people were long gone. We also worked during the week-ends, but the same can’t be said for the tax people.

But these hours are, most oftentimes than not, limited only during the tax season (which is about two to three months).

Tax people, on the other hand, do not work such long hours during the busy season but when they get a special tax job or when they are filled with tax audit jobs, you can just bet that they will work these long hours and even, during week-ends. And there’s a chance that they will do this all year round (especially if the firm is able to get a lot of special tax jobs)!

Knowledge, Updates and Training. Tax is more technical than audit. The tax findings, recommendations , etc. are all based on tax regulations or tax codes. On the other hand, audit is more flexible because the accounting standards are not made in stone, special circumstances involving the company being audited may involve certain ‘unique’ accounting treatments not found in other companies.

When it comes to updates, it really depends if there are any updates on either tax or audit. Same goes for training. Tax updates are part of the tax people’s life. On the other hand, I’ve never seen them have a one – week or two – week training for the new accounting standards (i.e., IFRS) that were given to the auditors before IFRS were first implemented. And with the current changes / amendments / new accounting and auditing standards, you can just bet such trainings will be maintained for these auditors.

Availability of work. Inside the auditing firm, audit people always have work (unless you’re currently unassigned). Slack season or busy season, doesn’t really matter, there’s plenty of work to do all year round. However (and I’m not trying to be insulting here, just pointing out facts), tax people may sometimes find themselves idle at some point in time when there are no tax jobs available. We used to ‘borrow’ some tax juniors for a week or two during the busy season just to do some tasks because of the lack of audit people to do them. We did this every busy season and, as far as I can remember, we always get some tax people to help us out during the busy season.

Outside the auditing firm? I believe audit people have more options when they go out of the firm. They have accounting, finance, financial analyst, internal audit, external audit, government audit and controllership (just to name a few). On the other hand, if you come from the tax division of an auditing firm, chances are, your job when you go to a private company is still related to (if not all about) taxation.

That said audit people, when they go outside, may face more competition than tax people. There are more ex – auditors out there than ex – tax people so chances are, if you’re an ex – auditor, you will be competing with more people for the same job.

Travel, here and abroad. Auditors are more likely to travel to other places than tax people. Auditors also have more chances of working in another country than tax people. Why? Because auditing standards and accounting standards (especially if you have a working knowledge of IFRS) are relatively the same in other parts of the world, whereas, tax codes and regulations (unfortunately) are not.

Lastly, if you’re planning to open your own accounting firm, having a tax background will be more advantageous than having an audit background. This I found out firsthand when I took over my father and became the head of his accounting firm. Sure I know how to calculate income taxes, fill out the income tax return form and stuff. But the nitty – gritty, the deadlines, the forms, the required documents, the registration requirements, etc. – all these I have to learn on the job whereas if I had a tax background, I’m pretty sure I would have had an easier time adjusting to my new role. As it is, I sometimes have to call my sister – in – law for some advice regarding taxes! But then again, I don’t regret my audit background because it’s a lot easier for me to understand the figures, the balances and the accounts plus I am capable of handling auditing jobs for smaller companies.

So there you have it, some thoughts on which among the two is better. Despite having an audit background, I really can’t say which is better (or my sister-in-law will kill me! – just kidding). All I can say is it depends on one’s preferences, on what you like to do and what your future plans are.

If you’re facing the dilemma of whether to choose tax or audit, I really hope the above helps. Thanks for reading!

Do You Love Your Job?

2010-06-14T04:17:00.000-07:00

And will your feelings affect your performance on the job?

Okay, I’m not talking about the CA’s job or the CGA’s job or the CFA’s job. I’m talking about jobs in general.

Assuming that we’re not experiencing the credit crunch right now, that everything is well, ‘normal’.

Do you love your job?

It always amazes me to see people having great, if not good, jobs and still they are not really happy. They like the pay, the perks, their boss, the company but they don’t like their jobs.

I’ve seen this happen and I believe it’s a reality in our profession. I know some (actually, a lot of) people who took up Accounting because they thought this was the most practical course to take and that they can handle the accounting – related job.

Well, they did get jobs, no problem about it. But they ended up hating these jobs. Some of them simply resigned, some went to find other jobs (that they soon hated also because the new jobs were more or less the same as the old jobs) and some stayed.

Which brings me to my next question. Love or hate the job, how’s your performance on the job?

Notice that I didn’t say if the people I mentioned above are good performers or bad ones.

Simply because it went both ways.

Some of them were good, some were great and some were, well, let’s just say they were not as good in it as they wanted to be.

I have a cousin who is also an accountant. He didn’t want to be an accountant. When he went to work as an auditor, he also didn’t want to become an auditor and he was simply bad at it. When he worked for a private company as part of its Finance group, he still didn’t like his job but because the pay is good (and he has children to raise), he’s staying. But then again, my cousin is getting promoted all the time. So, he must be good in what he is doing (hey, he’s my cousin so he must be good at it – just kidding!). And yet, he still claims that he hates his job!

Whenever I hear the above, I just want to shake him senseless. I mean, hey, other people don’t have jobs and would give a lot to have yours, and still you hate it?!?!?!

Or let’s take me as an example (hope nobody accuses me of bragging). When I was working for an accounting firm, I honestly could not say I liked my job. And yet, I got promoted from junior, to senior and, finally, to manager. Plus I was told that I have the makings of a partner. Still when I’m asked if I love audit, I would always reply no (and mean it). And I know a lot of my officemates (even my co-managers) feel the same way.

So, is it necessary for one to love one’s job to be good in that job?

Not necessarily. But it will definitely make your life easier if you love the job you are in.

And I leave you with this link. Hope you like reading it. Cheers!

Aptitude or Attitude?

2010-06-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

Promote the one with aptitude or the one with great attitude?

For a lot of accounting firms, the end of the busy season signals the start of the time of reckoning, I mean the evaluation and the promotions. In the past, I’ve always dreaded this time because there’s just so many evaluations to go through and so many people to consider for promotion. Although we weren’t the ones who decided who will be promoted in the end, we basically contribute by giving our evaluation.

And basically, the evaluations cover two things. If the candidate showed competence and if he or she also showed great attitude, which brings me to my next post, the role of competence or aptitude and attitude in one’s promotion.

If you’re a manager or a partner in an accounting firm, would you promote somebody who is very intelligent and competent but has a lousy attitude or would you choose somebody who has a great attitude but is not as intelligent or as competent as the first?

Yeah, okay, your answer may very well be, I’ll choose the one who has both aptitude and great attitude.

Lucky you if you can find a staff (subordinate) who has both. Unfortunately, based on my experience, it doesn’t always happen that way.

Take the case of one of my ex – juniors. He is very intelligent, graduated top of his class, knows the accounting and auditing standards in and out and seemed to be competent. But, during our evaluation, much to my partner’s surprise, his seniors wanted to let him go. Why? Because he’s attitude left much to be desired. Apparently (and this is only one of the reasons I could remember), he didn’t want to be assigned to “menial” tasks and when he does get them, he is basically slow in doing them, even though it was already the height of the busy season!

In short, he is competent but had a negative attitude.

Okay, you might say why he was assigned to “menial” tasks when he was so obviously intelligent. Let me tell you then, although this does not apply to all managers and partners, in my group, we let all the staff go through the experience of doing the “menial” tasks. We didn’t care if one graduated top of the class, one still has to go through such experiences. How will you tell your junior to vouch something if, in the first place, you didn’t pass through it and you don’t even know how to do it?

But I digress.

Let’s take another example. A fast – rising junior, became senior after one year, manager in another year and senior manager in two years! No doubt about it, he is very intelligent. But his attitude is another matter. To put it bluntly, he’s an @sshole (still is from what I heard). He’s not well liked nor respected by his peers and… well, I won’t go into why he gets promoted almost every year. Suffice it to say that his partner prefers intelligence over attitude.

On the other side of the coin, I’ve seen people who were only average in terms of competence and intelligence but is still going up the firm because they have great attitudes, good rapport, strong commitment and willingness to work hard (for the firm). I’m talking about honest – to – goodness great attitude here, not those who just pretend to have one just to get into the good graces of the partners and speed up their promotions (and yes, I’ve seen these too).

I recently read about the results of a study (I’m trying to search for it) quoted by John Maxwell in his “Maximize Your Day” book. In this study, top management of several large companies in the U. S. were asked their reasons for firing or letting go of an employee. The results? 30% said incompetence. So lack of aptitude is the highest among the choices. But wait, there are several more. 17% said inability to get along with other workers, 12% said dishonesty or lying, 10% said negative attitude, 7% said lack of motivation and another 7% said refusal to follow instructions.

And what does that mean? 30% of those interviewed did not like employees who are incompetent or have no aptitude for the job. But the other 60%? It’s all about the attitude for them. So in this case, attitude wins the game.

If you don’t believe me, check out this article about the results of another study on popular criteria used in assessing ones work performance.

What about me? Give me an employee who has a good attitude over somebody who is competent but has a lousy attitude. I can definitely train the first to become competent but I cannot train the second to change an attitude that he or she has even before he or she has entered the firm. Not saying it's impossible but I'll spare myself the headache all the same.

So which would you choose? Or if you’re on the other side of the coin, which would you like to be?

Why Accounting...Not!

2010-05-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

Why Accounting, Part II

Okay, let it not be said that I am completely biased towards my profession. In my previous post, I wrote about why one should take accounting. In this post, I’ll talk about why you should NOT take up accounting.

Why?

For several reasons.

First is, of course, I just want to warn whoever is reading this and is contemplating taking up accounting as his / her course.

Second, as with any other thing in this world, there are positive sides and there are negative sides to taking up and practicing accounting and, related to this…

Third, I don’t want to be remiss in my duty to lay out these negative sides after I have already written about the positive sides.

So why not accounting?

It’s not all about math. Some people, whenever they find out that I’m an accountant, would always comment that I’m good in math. Well, I’m not. If you’re one of those people who are good in math, you might be tempted to take up accounting because of this (mis?)conception. So sorry but this is simply not true. Accounting revolves around the basic operations of math (addition, subtraction, etc.) but there’s no complex math involved (unless you’re also doing statistics and those kind of things). So please do not take up accounting if you’re good in math because I would definitely say you’re going into it with a wrong reason.

Overtime, overtime, overtime. I’ve never seen an accountant not doing any overtime at all. If you’re going in an accounting firm, especially a big one, doing overtime (sometimes even overnight) is a fact of life. If you’re in a private firm, working in the finance or accounting department, you will also do overtime, especially during the monthly, quarterly or annual closing of the books. If you’re going into business and plan to use your accounting skills, the more you will do overtime as the owner of the business who wants to see his / her business succeed. And if you’re going to have your own accounting firm? Take it from me, you will do overtime because of all the above reasons I just stated.

Mind – boggling changes. Right now, we’re in the midst of a lot of changes in accounting and auditing standards, as well as the regulatory requirements. And sometimes, really, just trying to keep up with these changes can zap one’s strength and mind (that’s why I’m writing a post here instead of studying these changes J). College students who are in the midst of studying these changes are lucky, they will get to apply them first before going out into the real world. But what about us who have long graduated from college? It’s a scramble just to learn all these new stuff and sometimes, just sometimes, I just want to throw my diploma and license into the fire and just forget that I’m an accountant.

The sometimes-not-so-good pay. Sometimes I get the feeling that we accountants are oftentimes underpaid. I mean we go to college, study accounting, get our license then we end up working for a salary that’s below what other professionals are being paid. Yes, I know this is not true all of the time but I’ve seen and heard enough to know that there are a lot of underpaid accountants out there.

The bad rep…especially during times when there’s a corporate scandal brewing or blowing up in all our faces. Try to read the news when the scandal breaks out, what do you see? The accountants and the auditors being blamed side by side with the CEOs, the Presidents and the other officers. If you read a certain post here, there’s even a commenter who said (and I quote) that “the accounting business is nothing but a joke!”

And don’t let me get into people who think that accountants are just number – crunching machines with no brains who have no idea what is really happening in the business world and who will never get rich because they have no idea what is really happening in the business world.

And that ends my rant…er sorry. That ends my post on why one should not take up accounting. I hope I did not disillusion anybody. I never regretted the fact that I ended up becoming an accountant (and I’m sure that I’m speaking for a lot of accountants out there) but I’m not blind to the disadvantages of this profession either. And, I think, knowing these disadvantages will help us become better accountants (I hope). So, I hope you don’t feel discouraged in taking up accounting and again, good luck!

Why Accounting?

2010-05-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

Okay. I know this blog is all about being a CA (or an accounting graduate who is about to embark on an accounting career). But let me just step back a little bit in this post and write about taking up accounting as a course.

You see, over a month ago, I received an email from one of the readers asking me (or any of the other writers here) if he should go into accounting. He actually wanted to take another career path; however, he recognized that what he wanted will not be feasible so he is thinking of taking up accounting instead. He listed several of his reasons for considering accounting, as well as several pros and cons (at least on his side).

Let me just use this post to answer his email.

To start with, I can definitely sympathize with the sender. When I was choosing my career path, my first choice was a career in computers. Unfortunately (or fortunately), that was not to be my fate and I became an accountant instead.

So why accounting?

First of all, because of the availability of accounting jobs out there. Heck, even the smallest businesses need accountants to manage their books. Lots of jobs? Definitely.

What about stable jobs? I’d like to say yes but realistically speaking, it’s as stable as the company you are working for but then even the most stable companies (or so, you think) can sometimes go pfft (remember Enron?). Or, if you’re in an accounting firm or you have your own, it depends on the clients that you have (remember AA?).

Second, it’s not only the availability of jobs out there but also the variety of jobs. You can go from an accounts payable / receivable clerk or head to a finance manager to a bank personnel to an external or internal auditor to a controller or to a GL supervisor. You can even put up your own accounting firm or join the marketing department. I can go on an on with the kinds of jobs available for an accounting graduate and I’m not even getting into those jobs that one can get if one gets his or her license.

Third, it’s a relatively well – paying job. Why do I say ‘relatively’? Because it depends on one’s level and where one works. If you’re just starting, don’t expect the pay to be that good, especially if you are working for an accounting firm. But once you get up the corporate ladder, the pay starts to get better and better. Of course that’s assuming you are working your @ss off and proving to your boss that you’re an asset to the company (but that’s another story better reserved for future posts).

Fourth reason – flexibility. Not only in terms of the kind of accounting job one can handle but also in terms of geography. Big cities, small cities – all of these need accountants. The current trend towards globalization plus the adoption of the IFRS worldwide increased our chances of going to work not only in other cities within the country but also outside the country as well. Right now, I have friends who are working in various countries in Europe and in Asia. They’re also in the U. S. and in Australia. Need I say more?

Lastly, because of the prestige. No matter how other people might perceive our profession, I almost always see some awe in the faces of the people I’m talking to whenever they hear I’m a licensed accountant. I’m pretty sure some of the readers will not agree with me but I’m also certain some accountants have also experienced this.

And those are my reasons for choosing accounting. For those who read my post and who are already accountants or CAs, please leave a note below on why you became an accountant.

Seriously, why?

And that's it. I hope whoever wrote that email (not going to mention his name) will get to read this post (and the readers' notes) and be encouraged to go ahead and take up accounting. Good luck and drop us a note, okay? Cheers!

How to Fill Up Those Unassigned Hours

2010-05-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

“What do I do with my unassigned hours?”

I often heard the above question when I was still working in an accounting firm. Juniors who have nothing to do always approach me asking how they can address this or if I can get them on my team just so they have something to do.

If you have unassigned hours, you can do some (or all) of the things I wrote in my previous post: How to Maximize Your (Unassigned) Time After the Busy Season.

“I already did all of them yet I am still unassigned, what do I do?”

Okay, okay, I hear you. Hmmmm, so what do you do? How about trying one (or, again, all) of the following?

Go Hound Your Scheduler. Chances are your firm will have one or several schedulers who are in charge of arranging your schedules. If there’s no one ‘over-all’ scheduler for the firm (or the office), there should be people who are responsible for scheduling the work. Your scheduler is in the best position to know of a team or teams who are in dire need of juniors to work with them. So go hound one or two of them to give you an assignment during this time. But please, don’t be confrontational about this (although I never heard of a junior doing this but who knows, there’s always a first time for everything). Ask them in a nice, calm way.

When I was still a junior, I would email our scheduler a week or a couple of days before my ‘unassigned’ days to tell him / her of my ‘availability’. Usually, my ‘available’ hours became assigned hours within a day or two. So, believe me, it pays to drop a note to your scheduler.

Go Tell Somebody. Don’t be ashamed to admit that you are unassigned. It’s a common enough phenomenon in an accounting firm. If somebody asked you about your assignment, tell them honestly that you are not assigned anywhere at the moment. Who knows? That somebody might actually know of a manager or a senior who is looking for a junior. Better yet, that somebody might actually be looking for one.

Go and Keep Your Ears on the Ground. Meaning? Keep your eyes and ears open for any team or job looking for a junior. And when you do hear of one, gather your courage and approach the senior or manager – in – charge. It doesn’t hurt to be a little (okay, sometimes a lot) aggressive during these times.

Go and Re - establish Old Networks. Ask your manager or senior from your previous assignment if they are still looking for a junior. Or if they know of anybody who is looking for one. Networking is not only for outside your firm, it should also be done inside your firm so make sure you stay in contact with all the people you worked with in your previous assignments.

Once you get your next assignment, it doesn’t end there. Getting an assignment is just half the battle.

The other half? Putting your best foot forward and I really mean your best. Not your mediocre self or your old performance or even your good self, nothing but the best should do.

Doing your best - even if your assignment is just for a few hours, or a day or a few days, or even if it entails just vouching and footing and filing working papers - will guarantee your next assignment, and the next, and the next...you get what I mean?

And if you still doubt me, why not check this post from Krupo? There are very good points to consider in this post.

Just a last note though. The first (and so far, the only) commenter in my previous post asked me this:

If you are allocated to a client in the schedule but there are delays,
would you still charge your time to the client? Because you are not
technically unassigned.

I know this is a little bit off topic, but next to being unassigned, I know this is also one of the major worries of juniors. So let me answer this the best that I can.

My answer? Technically, you should charge your time to the client because they are the ones causing the delay. But make sure that your manager and your partner are aware of this and that you can back this claim 100%. Your partner and manager will take note of this and meet with the client to request for an adjustment of the fees.

Now, if making an adjustment is not possible, make sure that your manager / partner and you have an understanding on how to deal with this delay in your time report. Do not just assume that you can charge everything or you can charge nothing to the client. At the end of everything, it is still your partner’s and your manager’s responsibilities to make sure you are utilized 100% in your assignment.

And that ends my post on unassigned hours. Good luck in getting your assignments!

How to Maximize Your (Unassigned) Time After the Busy Season

2010-05-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

It’s almost a month after the busy season officially ended. Hope everybody already heaved a sigh of relief and is now going back to their after – the – busy – season mood.

Unfortunately, I’ve found out that (at least for me) the following months of non-busy season work oftentimes test my boredom threshold.

Not that I’m a workaholic or anything but shifting from a 16 – hour workday to an 8 – hour workday can sometimes make me feel like I’m floating or something. Good if I have a special job right after the busy season. That takes care of the boredom aspect.

But if I don’t have one?

I was reminded of this question when I was viewing one comment in my blog on Do You Practice URT? The 4^th comment in that blog was from somebody who called himself / herself anonymous. The problem? He / she had too much nonchargeable time and he / she is concerned this might reflect poorly on his / her performance.

Okay, first of all, this is not an unusual occurrence after the busy season. If it happens to you during the busy season, that’s another matter (actually, it’s a problem but I’m not going to go through that). But after the busy season, it is normal to hear about juniors and yes, even seniors, complain that they are not assigned anywhere and they have lots of nonchargeable time.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can just sit back and relax because, hey, everybody’s going through it. I’ll be honest. If it happens to you once or twice, it’s just a case of trying to shift people, clients and schedules around. Nothing to it.

But if you find yourself constantly drumming your figures, waiting for your schedule to be filled up, then you need to take matters into your own two hands. You can’t afford to stay unassigned for long periods of time, it will not really look good. You need to keep busy and here’s how:

Take Your Vacation. If you have vacation time due to you, why not see if you can take a vacation during this unassigned period? I’m sure your manager, partner or even scheduler will accommodate your request to go one. Anyway, you don’t have a client that you’ll keep hanging while you’re away right? And it might help you to think why the heck are you getting all those unassigned hours. Maybe it might even give you the time to finally decide whether you want to stick around working in an accounting firm or whether you want to resign and just work for another company.

Shift Your Training Schedule. If you have trainings coming up (particularly when you’re in a Big 4, they provide trainings after the busy season), see if you can shift your schedule to the time when you are unassigned. Your time report will no longer show “unassigned” hours but “training” hours. Plus you get the added peace of mind from knowing nobody will suddenly pull you out from the training room just to ask you about the client.

Maximize Your Unassigned Time. Make yourself productive and maximize your (unassigned) time. Read up. Read business articles, the news, the stock market, etc. Read the alerts or updates, read the auditing standards, read the new accounting standards and read the whole IFRS (Ugh!). Yes I know they are cures for insomnia (read: you’ll fall asleep in the middle of reading them) but heck, at least your mind is gaining more knowledge (sort of). Who knows? You might impress your next manager with your new found knowledge.

If all the above failed and you still find yourself twiddling your thumbs and staring into space while waiting for your schedule to fill up, then I guess it’s time for you to do something about all those unassigned hours. And my next post will discuss just that – how to address your “unassigned” hours. Hope you’ll watch out for it. See you.

End of Busy Season and I'm Back!

2010-05-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know busy season officially ended almost three weeks ago but like always, the "busy" part tended to drag until the end of April (sometimes even until May!). But now, I'm officially off it and it's back to the daily, normal life for me and that means I'm back and writing again.

This has been the longest lull for me, I haven't written anything for like more than a month already! And right now, well honestly, my brain is still buzzing with all those figures, disclosures, etc. that I have to take some time off just to think what I want to write about. I'm sure I'll get my groove back so...

For starters, I received quite a few emails these past few months and I haven't really gotten around to answering them so to the people who sent these emails, thank you and my apologies. Thank you because I now have certain topics I can write about and my apologies because I didn't write them sooner. Hope you'll bear with me. And for those people who still want to ask me questions, feel free to email me anytime.

See you in my next post!

Top 10 Issues Accountants Face This Busy Season

2010-04-02T09:02:00.000-07:00

Two weeks to go and what the hell?! I’m writing a blog post instead of working on my clients’ financial statements. But I needed a break so here I am writing.

While I was searching online, I came across this issue from CPATrendlines. It’s about the Accountant’s Top 10 Issues for Tax Season. I know the article deals mostly with U. S. Accountants but when you look at the list, they’re also applicable to auditors and in other countries around the world. Here are 7 of those 10 issues (and some of my thoughts about them):

General Economic Situation. I’ve been reading about economists and experts saying that the economy (global or otherwise) has hit rock bottom and there’s no other way to go but up but for this year, I don’t think the outlook is positive. This issue will definitely still be around during the next year’s busy season. This year? Well expect some clients to still ask for cuts in their fees or to still delay paying their fees. I know I am (expecting this).

Setting Aside Enough Time to Plan. When was this ever a non-issue? Ever since I started auditing, the planning season just never seem to be an effective one, mainly due to lack of time (due to special and other jobs) or lack of resources (human or otherwise). So yes, this is really an issue.

Staffing Issues. Too many staff? Too many lay-offs due to the recession? Or having difficulty finding the right staff who will fit in the job or the firm?

Tax Code Changes. Okay, I know, this is more of a problem for Accountants and for the auditing firm’s tax people but who’s to say we, auditors, are immune to these changes or that we shouldn’t know about them? Especially if your client suddenly runs to you and asks for your advice about the tax changes and how these affect them.

New Accounting and Auditing Issues. Very true especially with the adoption of the IFRS, the codification of the accounting standards and the revisions of the auditing standards. Well, this busy season is almost over but for the next? Better brace ourselves for these changes and issues.

Partner or Office Issues. Another issue that is the same year in and year out (unless you resign from the Firm). Even if you get to transfer to another team or partner just to avoid the partner that you so dislike, what’s the guarantee that you are really ‘safe’ from this issue?

Personal or Family Issues. I always thought that family issues should not be brought to the office while office problems should not be brought home. But then again, this is easier said than done. And with the kind of hours we keep, especially during the busy season, be prepared for all sorts of issues (personal or otherwise) to crop up during this busy season and the next year’s season, and the next, and the next…

So those are the seven issues. The last 3 are – Competition from Others, Technology / Software Problems and New Office, Technology or Software Processes.

What Are Your Plans Post – Busy Season?

2010-04-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

First of all, I’d like to apologize (especially to the owner of this blog) for not being able to post anything for almost a month. I’ve been busy preparing the financial statements, doing some audit work and checking on my people’s work that I simply could not squeeze in the time to blog.

That said, I’m really looking forward to the ‘official’ end of the busy season (which will be in two weeks’ time) and I can’t help but feel excited. This feeling is the same whether you’re in a Big 4 auditing firm, a smaller firm or your own.

So what about the plans? Right now, my mind is just churning with a lot of them. They’re, well, like New Year’s Resolutions except these ones are for after the tax deadline. Here are some of those plans that I have (and mind you, I can honestly say I’m not the only one who has them):

Lose weight. What is it about the busy season that almost all of us gain some weight during these months? If you haven’t gained any, I envy you!

Lose the papers. Other than the weight, what usually accumulates during this season is the pile of excess papers that one has. From discarded notes, to schedules that were revised, to draft financials, to excess copies, I usually have a mountain of papers that I need to dispose of after the tax deadline. Some are retained for future use, others are filed accordingly and still others go to the trash bin labeled ‘for shredding’.

Take a day off. When I was still in the big auditing firm, the day after the tax deadline, the office looked like a ghost town. Either we were late, took a half – day leave or just took the whole day off. This year, well, we’ll just wait and see.

Go out with your friends, special someone, or families. Let’s face it. During the busy season, your social life sometimes gets to the point of being non – existent (I say sometimes because this is not applicable to every auditor or accountant during every busy season). The days after the busy season you will find time to plan and to go out with people who are special to you, people whom you haven’t seen for the past four months, in short, people who may have felt neglected while you work 16 hours every day, 7 days a week just to meet the tax deadline.

Catch up in my reading. I love to read but during the busy season, all I’m reading are working papers and financial statements! So after the deadline, I’d definitely make it a point to read something at my leisure.

Arrange the working papers, sign off and store them. Oh well, I didn’t say those plans have more to do with leisure and less with work. It’s back to reality for this one. Ideally, these should have been done even before the busy season ends but let’s face it, they’re easier said than done when you’re jumping from one client to another and trying to do a lot of things at once.

Evaluate and plan. Again, more work. Post – busy season is the time when we evaluate what happened during the busy season and start planning for next year. Ugh! Sorry this can’t be avoided. And the earlier they’re done, the better while everything is still fresh in your mind.

So, those are my plans post – busy season. What about you, what are your plans after this busy season?

End of the Busy Season? Not Really.

2010-03-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

Less than six weeks from now, we’ll be officially ending our busy season. So we’re sort of feeling the urgency now (which is why I was not able to post anything for the past three weeks). Expect the long hours, less sleep – hours, more week-end work, tempers rising and the general chaos of trying to finish everything on time. Because, whether we like it or not, on April 15 (for those with December 31 year – end), its pass your papers (or in this case, audited financial statements) time.

So why the title then? I mean, if the busy season will end six weeks from now, why is the title a question rather than a fact?

Because, in my 8 years in a big auditing firm, I haven’t really experienced a honest-to-goodness April – 15 – end – of – busy – season kind of thing.

Not trying to frighten you or disillusion you (that is, assuming you are already looking forward to the end of the busy season) but that’s just how it is.

For one, we still have what we call ‘tentative’ accounts, or financial statements that could not be finalized on time for the April 15 deadline. There are really various reasons why this happens. One, of course, is because the client (it’s always the client, by the way) did not submit what we need to finish the financial statements on time. Another is because there are certain issues that we cannot agree with the client and we need more time to thresh everything out. Still another is because the client’s accounts and balances are so much in disarray that we need more time to analyze everything out before we can sign off on the financial statements.

Two, we still need to clean up our working papers, sign off on them and ‘archive’ them (or store them properly) for proper documentation and for the next year’s audit. And if you think this will not take any work, well, this is not always the case. You will need to really spend time cleaning up those working papers, especially if you were in such a hurry during the busy season that your working papers are not in good order (and I’m saying this in a kind manner by the way).

Three, you have a client or clients with a year ending other than December 31, then your busy season will definitely move towards the date of the actual deadline of this client or these clients. Lucky you if this is the only client you will deal with during that time. But what if you have a client with a March 31 year-end with a deadline in the middle of the year when you are already into the planning season for the next year?! Goodbye to your ‘slack’ season.

Four, you have a special job. This happened to me during my last year with the auditing firm. Instead of finishing everything by end of April, we still have to extend the busy season to June of that year because we were preparing for the IPO of one of our clients! I didn’t do any overnights during that busy season but in June, I certainly did them!

And those are just some of the reasons why your busy season can get extended after the April 15 deadline. I’m sorry if I rained on your parade but heck, that’s the reality for some of us. I don’t want to say for all either so if you don’t fall into this ‘some’ category, then you’re lucky. But if you’re one of those unlucky ones, better take a deep breath, gear up and prepare for a longer busy season.

Do You Practice URT?

2010-02-16T04:38:00.000-08:00

Call me naïve or not in touch with reality (though I really hope you won’t call me that), I thought I was imagining things. I was researching some materials for an academic report when a study caught my eye. It’s all about the authors’ investigation on the concept of URT in auditing.

Okay, this is for the benefit of those who don’t know, URT stands for under reporting of time. Why did I think I was imagining things? Because, although it exists, URT is not something usually discussed outside the auditing firms. And before you get on my case and say this - not usually discussing it in public – is not true, the same study quoted an audit partner saying precisely the same thing!

Personally, I’ve seen this happen. When I was a junior, we were always told to log in our ‘productive hours’. Take note, productive hours, NOT actual hours.

Productive hours? What the heck does that mean? Do these hours include our learning curve (we’re juniors, remember)? Do they include the time when we had to go for a water break or just take a five – minute break? Do they include the travel time or the time we get stuck in traffic? Do they include the time we used up waiting for the client to finish his phone conversation so that we can start asking our questions?

Believe me, I spent 8 years in an auditing firm, and never once did I get the concept of ‘productive hours’.

When I became a senior then a manager, I couldn’t care less about productive hours and audit budgetary constraints. Sure, I prepared audit budgets and budgeted auditing hours, in short I played lip service to the concept of budgets and budgeted hours. But I never followed them.

Why? Because the reality is I know my clients and I know that our audit fees will not be enough to cover our actual hours. And which will I choose? Stick within the audit fee and curtail the hours by either reducing them or reducing the audit work? Or do the audit work required and to hell with those budgets? Easy choice. Fortunately, my partners never called me on it; I guessed they’re in touch with the reality as well.

But based on what I read, it would seem that URT is really a worldwide phenomenon (the study was done in Ireland) as far as audit is concerned. And the study gave off various reasons as well (and I thought it was only because we were unproductive). Let me just list them here:

Inefficiency

Why am I not surprised that this is the first in the list? Inefficiencies can be due to a lot of factors (according to the study). It can be due to doing activities that are not related to work (Farmville, anyone?). Or maybe one spent a half hour chatting over the phone with a friend. Or you feel that you are inefficient because you are a slow learner or you are still in the bottom part of the learning curve (as a junior or a new senior or new manager, you would sometimes feel this way). Or you made a lot of mistakes and you have to do everything all over again. Whatever the reasons are, these things boil down to one thing – you have to be 100% productive during the day or else…you’re inefficient! (I guess we’re not allowed to be human beings when we’re inside an auditing firm.)

Performance Evaluation System

Uhm, I never saw this as part of my evaluation (though if I did, I would have ignored it), but evidently, this was one of the reasons given for the URT. You want to be noticed, you want to be promoted quickly, you want to reach the top in your rating system so what do you do? Stop charging so you can meet the budget! (Ugh, not good, not good at all.)

Requests

This is how the juniors (and sometimes, the seniors) learn about URT. They are ‘requested’ (explicitly or implicitly) either not to charge all their hours in a particular job or charge it in another job. And being the dutiful juniors and seniors that they are, they complied.

So those are the three reasons given. How about you, do you practice URT?

Do You Play Farmville?

2010-01-31T02:35:00.000-08:00

Are you a Farmville addict? Or are you one of those who love to update your Facebook account every hour or so? Come on now, don’t be shy.

I just came across this article where the famous Dr. Phil strongly ‘advised’ a mother to let go of her Farmville addiction because she is neglecting her real family! There’s also a video howing how the dear Dr. went about castigating the mother for failing to do her duties to her family.

And if you think this type of online gaming addiction is only present in our personal or family life, better think again. They are present even in our professional lives.

Now, I’m not a Farmville addict. I don’t really have the time to learn the ins and outs of this game. Heck, I don’t even update my Facebook account. But I have my own ‘online addictions’. And I’ve seen some of my juniors (okay not some, almost all) have their own such addictions. Plus I sometimes see them do it while working! And don’t think the busy season will deter them from doing these things (albeit the frequency will decrease), when there’s a desire to do this, there’s a will. And when there’s a will, there’s definitely a way!

Here are just some of the things they ‘do’ online:

1) Update Facebook or their other social networking site. In fact, if not for my junior, I wouldn’t have heard of Facebook or such sites! Some of them even have accounts in two or more sites!

2) Play Farmville.

3) When Farmville wasn’t around yet, play other online games (including Warcraft and the like).

4) Search youtube.com for good videos and watch them during office hours.

5) Download mp3s, pictures, videos, etc., etc. from the Internet

6) Engage in online chatting

7) Write blogs or read blogs (gotcha!)

Okay, guys, if you want to do these things in your free time, it’s really up to you. But if you do it during office hours and you think the firm’s top brass is not on to you, better think again.

Firms are definitely getting savvier when it comes to knowing who is doing what online. In fact, I’ve heard of cases when the firms ban sending or receiving emails to and from outside email addresses like yahoo.com or gmail.com. Even social networking sites and downloading pictures and music are banned. The punishment? Suspension or worse, expulsion from the firm.

Of course, the juniors and even seniors who are also tech-savvy usually find a way to circumvent these bans (don’t ask me, I won’t tell LOL). But then again, pretty soon, the firm’s I. T. people will once again catch up with them. It’s a game, one that I’m sure the staff will not win.

And really, if you think about it, why do we engage in these types of activities during office hours? Boredom? Addiction? Do we hate what we’re doing (re: auditing)?

Personally, my reason (as I said I have my own ‘online addiction’) is plain and simple boredom.

For those readers who are working (or used to work) for the Big 4 and who did these things, leave me a note why you did these stuff. I’d like to hear from you. Thanks!

Note: This blog and its writers do not, in any way, endorse these activities. Sure, I engaged in one or two of these activities but that doesn’t take out the fact that they’re simply wrong. Doing any of these activities while on your job is tantamount to stealing time from the firm (time that you are being paid for) and as I said, some of these firms have already laid down sanctions for anybody caught doing any of these activities during office hours.

Big 4 Firms in Top 4 of Best Places to Launch a Career 2009

2010-01-31T00:28:00.000-08:00

I just came across this Sept. 3, 2009 article (little bit late I know) in Business Week about the Best Places to Launch a Career in 2009. This is actually a poll done in U. S. colleges and undergraduates on which companies or firms the respondents think are the best places to launch a career in 2009.

Surprisingly (or not surprisingly since evidently they’ve been in the top 10 since the survey was started in 2006), the Big 4 accounting / auditing firms topped the list. Deloitte is number one (in 2008, it was number 2), dislodging EY from its previous number one rank. EY is number 2, PWC is number 3 – the same rank it held in 2008 and KPMG is number 4. KPMG was the previous number 5 and it dislodged Goldman Sachs to take over the number 4 position.

Just two things I noticed. First is why Deloitte became number one. Evidently Deloitte offers higher entry – level pay per year than the rest of the Big 4, bigger signing bonuses and better time-off policies.

Secondly, the results stated that KPMG has no management training program???? This is quite news to me since one of the incentives offered by any Big 4 is a good training program. I don’t know, is this true? Any reader here who’s from KPMG who can verify (or not verify) this?

Anyway, back to the topic. The survey is U. S. – based but can be very much applicable in any countries where the Big 4 firms are present. As a former auditor working in a big auditing firm, I agree with its results.

Auditing firms, especially the Big 4, are good starting points in one’s career. I’m not saying this because the pay is good (private companies are known to pay better) but because (for me at least) of the on-the-job trainings and the training programs that one will get when one works for a Big 4 auditing firm.

After my first busy season on the firm, I was so burnt out I wanted to resign and to transfer to another company (with better pay and better hours, mind you). When I told somebody from the other company that training season is coming up in the firm, he told me to stay put and to take advantage of the training! Evidently, they don’t have such free trainings. In fact, for each level in the firm (from junior, to senior, then to a manager), there was a corresponding training program.

And what about new tax laws, new accounting standards and new auditing standards? Again, auditing firms take the lead in giving these trainings. I mean if you want to learn about IFRS, and for free at that, the auditing firm is the place to work with to get this type of information. New auditing standards? No problem, the auditing firm has another training program dedicated to these new standards.

Or how about the on-the-job trainings that one will get from the Big 4 or other auditing firms? Okay, this may or may not happen to you but definitely you will experience one or more of these. Some of the on-the-job trainings we got include SOX application, auditor – exchange programs, comfort letters for IPOs, due diligence (acquisition) jobs, fraud audits and IFRS first – time applications. These stuff one does not get to experience that much (if at all) outside of these accounting firms. So if you go and work for a Big 4 firm and stay around for one or more years, welcome any opportunity to do non-audit related jobs and you will get good on-the-job trainings.

If you want to see the full results of this survey, go to this link.

Of course, launching a career in a Big 4 is one thing, staying for a longer period of time within a Big 4 firm is another matter and not covered by my post. Thank you very much for reading it and ciao!

Say Goodbye the Right Way

2010-01-19T06:52:00.000-08:00

Resign properly or don’t resign at all…

Okay, ignore the second part of the above phrase. I mean I can’t really force you not to resign if you really want to resign. But the first? Well, this is one I have puzzled about for a long time. Having experienced being an employee and now, an employer, I have seen both sides of things and sometimes, seeing a staff or a manager (or even a partner!) resign is not really a pretty sight.

If I’m not mistaken, the usual policy (correct me if I’m wrong about this) is to give a one month notice. Sometimes, even, you’re not allowed to leave until they find somebody to replace you. But lo and behold, this is not often followed. Let me just give you some instances, which, mind you, are based on actual experiences:

Your staff or junior (who is, by the way, new to the firm) suddenly tenders his resignation because he got accepted in the job he really wants. And the effectivity? Immediately.
Or how about this one? Your junior tenders his resignation effective within a week or so. The reason? He wants to devote his time for further studies. The truth? You find out afterwards that he immediately went to work for another company. At least, in the first instance, the junior was honest. This one? Definitely, not!
Your staff or junior suddenly went AWOL for a few days and then he calls you to tell you that he is resigning (also immediately) because his family is pressuring him to find another ‘easier’ (read: less overtime) and ‘less stressful’ job. Correction. Your staff is not the one who called you but his older brother. No kidding!
Your junior has a family problem and rather than face it head on, she decided to run from it (literally!). As a result, you got a call from her early one morning and she tells you that she is no longer going to work because she needs to ‘hide’ for a while until things cool down. No resignation letter, no turnover, no nothing!
This one happened when I was still a junior but it really brought hell to one of my friends who was also a junior that time. Her manager was on sick leave for two weeks (either due to measles or due to chicken pox, I can't remember now). When he got back, he was only in the office for a day. The reason? Because he was tendering his resignation and it was effective immediately! To top it all, it was the middle of the busy season! My friend, who was the manager’s junior, was traumatized and she resigned just after that season.

I can relate a lot more. The thing is, I do not know why some people will just up and leave a company or a firm where they went through the proper hiring process in the first place.

I’m not trying to lecture or anything but this is really a sad reality and as an employer and a former manager, I have experienced this several times already.

Sure, I understand that sometimes, really, unforeseen circumstances will play a hand to one’s decision to resign or not to resign. And just sometimes, you cannot really force yourself to continue working for a firm that you already hate (read: Why They Left Part II).

But then again, when resigning, to the extent possible, protocol should really be observed. I mean, how would you feel if you’re already a manager or the boss and your junior does the same thing to you? You will not also like it (especially if it happens during the busy season).

If you want to be sure you are taking the right steps on resigning, there are a lot of sources here on the Internet about this topic (so I won’t go through them anymore). I just want to say that we owe it to the company or firm that hired us to say goodbye in the right way. And this ends my post (or rant, if you want to call it). Feel free to leave me a comment (negative or positive). I’m looking forward to reading them.

Note: Somebody asked me from my previous post what are the things I don’t want to hear from my junior or staff during the busy season. My reply is, please read the first four instances above and you’ll have my answer. Thanks for your comments!

Some Things I Don’t Want to Hear During the Busy Season

2010-01-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, let me get this straight. There are really a lot of things I like about the busy season (I must be a martyr or something). In fact, in general, I can honestly say I’m a person who can tolerate a lot of things. But then again, there are a lot of things I don’t like about the busy season and there are really some things that I don’t want to hear and to tolerate, especially during the busy season. Let me just tell you what are these things are:

From the client: “We’re moving the Board of Director’s meeting to an earlier date.” Meaning? They’re also moving the deadline for the audited financial statements. Subsequently, all your well-made plans and schedules get shot down and you have to scramble to re-schedule everything just to meet the new deadline. Thinking of protesting? Save your breath. The adage “customer is always right” works in the auditing firms as well, especially when it comes to deadlines.

From the client: “I haven’t finished the schedules that you asked. I’ll give them to you next week.” Meaning? It’s already the end of March and you need to submit everything to your manager and partner for review, otherwise, your head will roll (figuratively, of course). But here’s your client telling you that you still have to wait for another week for the much-needed schedules. What do you do? Call your manager or partner and tell them the FS will not be released on time and you will have to go on ‘tentative’ mode? Good luck, especially if your client is expecting you to still finish on time despite the fact that they’re the ones who are causing the delay.

From the client: “I’m right, you’re wrong.” You’re having the mother of all arguments with the client and to just get what they want, they’ll end the argument with this sentence???? Does this make sense? Or is the client starting to sound like a spoiled brat?

From the client: “You’re here again! Is it the time of the year already?” Uh, yes and yes. Why is it that some clients could not get into their thick heads that they need to be audited every year? It’s like we’re a bug or something that comes out from January to April of every year. Or we’re just somebody who they have to tolerate because we’re the ‘necessary evil’ for them.

From the client: “I don’t like your junior, send another one.” This I heard when I was already a manager. As if all the tight deadlines, overtime and overnights are not enough, I had to contend with the fact that my client did not like my new junior! Since it was already the busy season, replacing her was near to impossible, so I had to tell my senior not to let the junior get near that particular client. If I didn’t have a senior – I’m dead.

From the previous manager: “You need to help me out in finishing this job.” You’ve already done your schedule with this manager. You’ve submitted all your work and cleared all his notes. But then again, your ex-manager suddenly approaches you and told you that he needs your help to finish the job. And you’re already in the middle of auditing your next client! What to do? What to do? This happened to me once, and I knew I couldn’t say no. Good thing my new manager said yes. Don’t know what would have happened to me if she said no.

From the partner / manager: “I need this ASAP!” Right. As if all the rest of what you are doing are not urgent as well.

And lastly, “you cannot charge 100% of your overtime hours!” You work your butt off all those late nights (and week-ends, too!) just to be told that you can’t charge all of your overtime hours because the job is in danger of exceeding the budgeted hours. Need I say more?

How to Survive the Busy Season…

2010-01-08T06:18:00.000-08:00

Alive and (mostly) unscathed.

Okay, I was just kidding about the line above. As I said in another post, nobody really dies from the busy season. But I noticed that, even though I was writing a lot of stuff during the past few months, I’ve never really written about how to survive the busy season during and after you went through one.

Just a note – I’m not an expert in this subject – but then again, having gone through 10 busy seasons (8 in audit and 2 in accounting), I think I can say I’m a veteran in getting out of busy seasons “alive and unscathed”. Not to mention that I’ve seen a lot of people who have busy seasons for 20 or more years (and they’re still alive, not to mention, have lots of money)!

So, how do we really survive the busy season?

First stop, you have to pace yourself. If you have a client with an early deadline, work your butt off when you need to. But don’t overdo it. Take some rest; too, otherwise, you’ll just burn yourself out.

If you have a client that has a not-so-early deadline (lucky you!), start it easy then gradually increase your overtime hours and week-end work. Go with a pace you’re comfortable with but always keep in mind the deadline date.

Second, always make room for adjustments. When I was working for the big auditing firm, we always give allowances for any adjustments. If the deadline is March 31, we plan to end everything and issue the financial statements a week before March 31. This way, our minds are set on March 24 plus we work the hours required to finish everything on March 24. If there are problems encountered along the way, we can always fall back on the extra week. Better to do this than to peg the March 31 date then find out that we’ll have to extend until April 7!

Third, lay off planning and/or preparing for personal major events. Sorry, have to say this. When you’re in the thick of things during the busy season, try (really hard!) not to do or plan for anything major in terms of your personal or social life. Just a few things that can be categorized as major (and I know I will get into trouble for saying this) – buying or building a new home; planning and preparing for your own wedding (plus having your own wedding during the busy season); and planning and preparing for a family or school reunion. Heck, I’ve seen some female auditors even schedule their pregnancies (and dates of giving birth) away from the busy season! Yes, I know that your personal or social lives should not take a backseat over your own career, but let me just say that from the start, you’ve been warned that there’s a busy season. So if you want to save yourself the trouble and the headache of juggling a lot of things all at once, please apply this tip.

Fourth, plan for some ‘me’ time. The third tip does not mean you’ll spend your busy season living in your office and having no personal / social life. Believe me - you’re entitled to some ‘me’ time. So go out and have dinner with your friends or loved ones. Have coffee breaks. Watch a movie (or movies). Take a break when you’re in - between clients after a deadline. Go home early on a Friday. Go to a spa and have a massage. Sleep longer during week-ends. Take a day off after the April 15 deadline (which is what we usually do, so after this date, the office is usually quiet because a lot of the auditors take the day off or come in late). Little things I know, but they all add up to relieve your stress and to relax you just a little bit during this pressure - packed times.

Fifth, keep your cool (and your sense of humor). During one particular busy season, one client commented that even if we were already busy, I still have a smile on my face. Don’t take everything seriously during the busy season. If your client has been pressuring you to finish everything, don’t lose your cool and erupt like a volcano (you’ll get nowhere plus you’ll just make everybody feel bad). If your boss or manager bullies you to do a lot of things, don’t take it personally, they have a lot in their minds, too (and they are as pressured as you are or even more so). Lighten up. Download a funny YouTube video and laugh while watching it. You may look like a fool (just in case you’re hiding while watching the video) but believe me, it gets loads off your chest.

Lastly, don’t bite more than you can chew. They don’t call it an ‘audit team’ or simply ‘team’, for nothing. Don’t take on everything and don’t say ‘yes’ to everything. You know your limits, when you’re reaching it, pass on some of the load to your peers or ask your senior or manager to assign it to somebody else. They may or may not like your request but at least you know that you can manage with what you’ve got and will not disappoint them later on. Plus, if they still insist you take on the assignment, you’ll have the luxury of telling them later on that ‘you told them so’.

And those are my tips on how to survive your busy season. What do you think?

And a Happy New Year to All of You!

2009-12-31T23:17:00.000-08:00

It’s been about 4 months now since I started blogging in I Want to be A CA. And although I can’t honestly say that blogging here has been a picnic, writing blogs here have been a really interesting experience. For one, this is my only platform to write about my experience (as well as my thoughts) about auditing. For another, I’m receiving great comments from readers out there (despite the fact that some did not agree with what I wrote), attesting to the fact that somebody out there is actually reading what I wrote.

Well, okay, reminiscing over. I just want to write this post to wish people out there a Happy New Year.

To the accounting student reading this, I hope you will have a great year ahead of you (in terms of your studies). Hope you will pass your subjects and your course. I hope, too, that you will stay on course to become a CA someday.

To those who are planning to become CAs in 2010, I wish you good luck and hope you will get what you are aspiring for. Incidentally, I just read that 3,127 CA students passed the 2009 Uniform Evaluation. Congratulations to them!

To those who are working in an accounting firm (regardless if it’s a Big 4 firm or not) and are about to enter the busy season, I also wish you good luck (I need this one also) and good health (believe me, you will need this). Don’t forget that it’s only for four months so keep your cool and you’ll survive it.

To those who are already CAs, my good wishes for your career and life, in general, in 2010.

To those CAs (and other professionals as well) who were (or are still) negatively affected by the economic crunch or the recession or the financial crisis, my wish is that you will find a (much better!) job or you will find a career path that is the one really meant for you.

To everybody else, have a good year ahead of you! Thanks for reading.

Evaluations and Rankings in a Big 4…Part II

2009-12-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

In the first part of this post, I kind of summarized how we go through the evaluation and ranking process for the juniors and seniors. The process is really fairly easy and after five years, I can go through them with my eyes closed. But despite the familiarity with the process, it’s not really as easy as it sounds (and may not really be that effective all the time). Here are just some of my reflections or reasons why I state it this way:

First of all, ideally, one should evaluate and rate a junior right after the engagement is done. However, this is seldom done, especially during the busy season (I mean, heck, you don’t even have time to sleep, much less rate your junior or senior right after the engagement).

The result?

Everything boils down to the evaluation period and you really have to refresh your memory about everything that your staff did during the engagement. And since I didn’t make it a habit to note down my thoughts and observations, the trip down the memory lane can become a major headache for me (which, I know, is also similar to the other managers’ experience).

Secondly, it can be really subjective some times (okay, most of the time). Let’s face it, we sometimes have selective memories and what do we seem to remember the most? The shortcomings of the staff during the engagement.

Why do I say it’s subjective? Because if the staff just happened to rub the senior or manager the wrong way (even though the staff is a good auditor) or just happened to do something (even not related to the engagement) the senior or manager didn’t like, these will be reflected in the evaluation, even if what happened is a very rare occurrence. Is this fair? I don’t think so. Does this happen? Definitely it does.

Third, who is really in the position to rate the junior or the senior? Who knows the staff’s performance firsthand? Who has the ability to back up what kind of evaluation the staff received? Is it not the one who worked with him or her as the manager or the senior of the audit team? One would think that the answer to all these is very simple and very obvious.

But then again, it’s not as simple as I first thought. Sure, I’m the one who evaluates my staff. I’m the one who discusses the same thing with my staff and, later on, with my boss. But heck, there were times when my boss actually overturned my rating! One of them even questioned me in front of other managers and told me pointblank that my rating was wrong! Ouch!

Fourth, do these really make a difference, first to the staff / senior being evaluated and second, to the firm, as a whole? I’ve rated some of my staff for 4 straight years and my comments or ratings were the same. Even those “constructive criticisms” I indicated in the first year of evaluation were the same “constructive criticisms” I wrote in the 4th evaluation. This kind of defeated the purpose for the staff or senior because nothing is really absorbed and everything is just a cycle, something that is repeated over and over again.

What of the firm? Do these evaluations really help make the firm better in delivering its services? Or are these evaluations just “for compliance only”, something that we do just to show the outside world that we are trying to maintain “quality people” to ensure “quality audit”? Honestly speaking, if there was really any improvements brought about by these evaluations and by booting out those who did not meet expectations, these were so little, I hardly felt them.

Lastly, on the Forced Ranking system, this one is where I sometimes see the saying “majority rules” becomes true. If one, two or three managers worked with the same staff or senior, the ranking given by two out of the three managers will prevail, regardless of how the third manager ranked the staff or the senior.

For what we call the ‘top performers’ among the staff, there’s really no debate about them (most of the time), they’re really ranked at the top 5 among the staff (it’s just a matter of saying who’s first, second, third and so on and so forth). It’s in the middle level and the last level of performers that we, managers, sometimes reach a stalemate, and when this happens, somebody has to compromise his or her evaluation and ranking just to ‘break the tie’. So the evaluation sometimes takes a back seat over the ranking because the latter really has to be done and has to be done fast. Is this effective and efficient? I don’t know. But this is how it’s really done.

In the final analysis, the ranking and evaluation processes of a Big 4 auditing firm (read my disclaimer in the Part I of this post) may look and sound good to an outside party but, internally, this may not be the case. It’s good that there’s a system wherein we can evaluate the staff or the senior for their performance. The Forced Ranking, well, I have to say that this is a good way to weed out the not-so-good performers and to highlight who are the best ones (and you can start chasing them to become part of your team) and right now, I can’t think of anything better.

So if you can think of one or would like to share your experience in this aspect, feel free to leave me a note below. And so I end this rather long post. A Happy Holidays to everyone!

Evaluations and Rankings in a Big 4…Part I

2009-12-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

Note: The post below is based on my personal experience with a big auditing firm. What I am relating may or may not be applicable for other Big 4 auditing firms. Please feel free to leave your comments and any thing you want to add about this topic. I am really interested in hearing from other auditors as not much seems to be written on this topic.

I came upon this article by Francine McKenna on ratings and promotions in the Big 4. Two words caught my attention: “Forced Ranking”. According to Ms. McKenna, the Big 4 firms have seemingly become advocates of this performance rating where everyone’s performance is compared with everyone else.

Frankly speaking, this was the first time I’ve read about this forced ranking concept (although I understand it has been around for quite some time now. The above article made me remember my years in an auditing firm. I stayed for 8 years in the firm but I never actually realized that there was anything “forced” about our rankings (although, upon reflection, yes it is ‘forced ranking’).

Out of the 8 years I spend in the auditing firm, 5 of those were spent evaluating and ranking my juniors and later on, my seniors. Every time the busy season ends, another season begins – the pre-ranking, pre-promotion, evaluation season. In a nutshell, here’s how this evaluation and ranking goes:

First, we evaluate and rate each of our juniors and even, seniors while our managers and partners also rate us.

This is the time when we fill up a couple of pages worth of checklist plus put in our comments regarding the junior’s or senior’s performance for the last six months (kind of like having a trip down memory lane because you really have to remember the basis for your comments). The evaluation ends when we put in our over-all assessment of the junior or senior.

Second, we discuss the said evaluation with our junior or senior.

Sometimes, if we’re too busy with other jobs (they never really end, even during the ‘slack season’), there’s no face-to-face discussion involved. We just let them read our comments and if they have any questions, they will come to us. If they have none, then we’re okay. And sometimes, really, the person we are commenting on is just interested on his or her over-all rating. The comments? Read on.

Third, submit the evaluation to the partner for his / her review, comments and reference. The partner may also add other comments, refute some of the ratings and even change the over-all rating of the junior or senior.

Fourth, hold a meeting with other seniors and managers. This meeting is where our ‘forced ranking’ occurs. We rank each junior or senior according to their level or ‘batch’. Such a meeting takes anywhere from 2 hours to 6 hours, depending on the number of people we have to rank.

Fifth, submit everything to the partner and to the HR for final approval and future reference.

Sounds easy? NOT! On paper, yes, but definitely in practice, it’s a resounding NO. The reasons? You have to check out my next post on that.

Why the Big 4?

2009-12-07T05:04:00.000-08:00

For the past few months, I’ve been reading and writing about what’s not good in the Big 4, why people leave these auditing firms (and mid-sized auditing firms for that matter), why I (and other people) would not return to working for a big auditing firm and what (negative) things can you expect when you work for a Big 4.

But despite all these, why are accountants (CAs, CGAs, CMAs, CPAs, etc.) still flocking to these auditing firms?

Why are these firms still able to hire hundreds, if not thousands of new graduates (and even experienced people) every year?

What do these auditing firms have that people still want to work with them, despite knowing the long hours, low pay, (sometimes) @sshole bosses and not-so-good working environment?

Is it the prestige of working for a Big 4 (or if you’re in another country, an affiliate of the Big 4)? I mean let’s face it, when people hear that you are working for one of these firms, their eyes will go round, their mouths will drop open and they will exclaim that you’re so lucky to be working for one of these firms. No matter if they see you already looking pale from being cooped up inside an office for a long time; or if you have dark shadows under your eyes for lack of sleep, or if you can barely say anything coherent because you are just so damn tired and just want to lie down and sleep.

Or is it the chance to audit big, public companies or private companies with well-known names – with the hope that you will get hired by these companies later on (after the requisite cooling off period that is) and get triple (or quadruple) your current salary?

Or is it the chance to gain more experience and (free) training to boost your resume and increase your chances of getting hired by the above companies when you resign from the firm? Or perhaps you just want to have more experience when you go back to school to get your master’s degree, or law degree?

Or maybe one joins the Big 4 because this is the best way that one will get the relevant experience and knowledge in auditing and accounting? Let’s admit it. This is the major advantage of the Big 4 firms, they have an arsenal of resources, knowledge bases and expert – partners to face whatever challenges there are in the field of auditing, accounting and even taxation. With the adoption of the IFRS, the Big 4 firms in Canada are once again in the forefront of these activities and the auditors know that this is the place to be to learn IFRS and its application.

Or maybe you just don’t know what to do yet with your accounting degree and your CA/CMA/CGA license and you saw that your friends are working for the Big 4 so you want to get in as well to be with them. And then you stay longer than all the others because you found out that this is what you wanted after all.

Or, and this maybe rare but it can happen, you know that your place is with a Big 4 firm and that you want to be (and you think you are meant to be) a partner of that firm. Although I haven’t personally heard this reason, I know that there are auditors out there who have planned their lives to become partners and earn what current partners earn (or even more).

Or, is it because you honestly do not know what to expect when you go inside the Big 4 and you naively think that working in one is the same as working for a private company? I do hope not.

So which is it really? Why do you want to work for a Big 4 auditing firm? Is it because:

I like the prestige that goes with working in a Big 4 firm?
I want the chance to audit big companies (that may become my employer later)?
I want to gain more experience and training to boost my resume?
I honestly don’t know what I want to do and thought, since most of my friends are in the Big 4, I might as well join them?
I want to become a partner of a Big 4 firm?
I don’t know, I don’t know much about the Big 4, I guess it’s just like working for a private company?
None of the above

So what is your reason for working in a Big 4?

Working with the Big 4 – What I Do NOT Miss

2009-12-04T05:23:00.000-08:00

So okay, I wrote a post on what I miss when I was working for the Big 4. That post was a “feel good” one. This one is for those things that I don’t miss (read: those things that “sucked”).

I don’t miss…the overnights. Okay working overnight was not a common experience for me, even when I was working for the auditing firm. But one or two overnights were enough for me, thank you very much, that I didn’t want to repeat the experience again. I need my sleep and I don’t want to wait 48 hours before I can get one.

I don’t miss…working during the week-ends. I’m willing to do overtime work as I know it’s really part of the job. But please, leave my week-ends free. That’s the time when I do my housework, do my laundry, watch TV and generally, just sit back and relax.

I don’t miss…those clients…who are so slow that you have to wait for quite some time before you get what you want. Or how about those clients who insist on what they want even though you keep telling them that that is not the right accounting? Sucks, doesn’t it? Or what about those clients who, when you think you are already on the verge of finishing the job (including reviewing and checking the financial statements), suddenly give you a new adjustment and revise the whole financial statements?!!!!!! What the…?

I don’t miss…the strict rules…and the many requirements inside the auditing firm. Okay, how many times do you want to review the financial statements? How many partners do you need to review and sign-off on the financial statements? How many working papers / documents do you need to finish off the work? How many independence checklists do you need to sign off? And the list can just go on, and on, and on…

I don’t miss…the long meetings with clients, particularly those really tense ones that will really drain you of your strength at the end of the meeting. How long is long? Uhm, like 8 hours (this is I think my longest in one day)? It doesn’t help that your client is mad at you for proposing an adjustment and wants to chew your @ss and spit it out. To top it all, this is just your first meeting for the day. You still have another meeting to go through after this one plus you need to finish something for another client, etc., etc. Just a short tip: If you have a client that likes loooooonnnngggg meetings, do not schedule anything else during the day and, after the meeting, go straight home and go to sleep – you need it.

I don’t miss… partners or managers who are perfectionists, who question everything that you do, down to the last centavo in your working papers (hello? Where’s the materiality level here?). Or they will read and re-read your memo and tell you to re-write certain portions again and again until they’re satisfied with your grammar and sentence construction. I had a manager like this once (when I was still a senior), believe me, it took me half a day just to revise a one-page memo to his satisfaction, aarrrrggghhh!

And these are the things I don’t miss from working in an auditing firm. Oh don’t get me wrong, I still have those overtime, annoying clients and working during week-ends. But (at least for the overtime and the week-ends), I call the shots. The annoying clients? Well, I don’t think I will be able to escape them as long as I am in public practice. So, hey, I’ll just have to grin and bear it (or them). Thanks for reading my post!

Working with the Big 4 – What I Miss

2009-11-27T19:39:00.000-08:00

I’m feeling a little bit nostalgic here. Christmas season is just around the corner. And no, I’m not nostalgic because of the coming holidays. It’s what comes afterwards that I’m remembering – the busy season. With the 8 years I spent in an auditing firm, the season kind of grew on me and even though I’ve been gone for over two years now, there are still a lot of things I miss working for the auditing firm. Let me just list some of them.

I miss…the food. A lot of my clients actually give us free food for lunch or dinner, or even both! One even served buffet lunch or dinner. In the office, the last month or so before the actual deadline, dinner is also free. No wonder a lot of us grow bigger during the busy season. All those food and no time to exercise...

I miss…the coffee. There were times when we were working until the early hours of the morning and we need something to keep us awake. Our solution? Go out and buy brewed coffee from Starbucks (which is just a few blocks away from the office / client). There was even a time when my boss brought in a coffee maker in the office so that we can brew coffee anytime we want. Sure the office smelled like coffee but for us, coffee lovers, that smell was great. So brewed coffee at 1:00 am in the morning, anyone?

I miss…my friends. Working in an auditing firm during the tax busy season can leave you little time to socialize with your friends outside the firm. But take heart. You can find good friends even inside the auditing firm. Sure you don’t see each other during the day because you’re too busy in the client’s office. But after 5 pm, some of us go back to the office, which meant we saw each other more frequently. I met some of my very close friends during my stint in the auditing firm. Oh and, by the way, that coffee-break will not be complete if you don’t share it with friends.

I miss…my boss. Now I know there are a lot of auditors out there who complain that their boss is a complete @ss, but my boss is not like that. Sure he loves to pressure us to finish the audit on time and to produce what he wants us to produce but what is a boss for right? But the knowledge I gained from my boss plus those times when I butted heads with him because we disagreed on something – these are the things I miss.

I miss…my clients. Who value what we do for them. Sometimes I have clients who think of me as just “another auditor”. But there are some who show how they appreciate what we do and these are the clients I really miss.

I miss…gaining knowledge from the firm. When you’re in a Big 4 or even a medium-size auditing firm, their knowledge base on GAAP / IFRS, auditing standards, ethics, etc. is really huge. You might take it for granted when you’re still inside the firm (especially since it is available at the click of your mouse) but once you get out, you’ll appreciate it and even miss it. Now that I’m out of the firm, I do everything – my own research, my own consultation, my own interpretation, etc. If I can just tap into that knowledge base…oh well, wishful thinking on my part.

I miss…the pressure and the adrenaline rush! Let’s face it. Some of us can really get addicted to working very hard, facing enormous pressure and the adrenaline rush. Call me a workaholic if you like but admit it. There’s nothing more satisfying than finishing your audit work and the audit report on time every time. And it’s not the same every year. Above everything else, auditing and working inside an auditing firm is not a boring job. Huge pressure, late nights, week-end work – YES, but boring? Definitely, no!

Working for the Big 4 (and even other auditing firms) during the busy season can really be a pain in the @ss and you have to face a lot of cr@p along the way. But hey, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get anything good from working as an auditor. There are a lot of good things inside the Big 4 and if you just think about it, there are a lot of things you will miss when you go out. So tell me again that you don’t miss anything when you worked for the Big 4?

To Return or Not to Return – That is the Question

2009-11-21T08:03:00.000-08:00

This week I got a call from one of my former officemates in the auditing firm I used to work with. She is actually a close friend of mine and I still keep in touch with her (just so I can get the latest scoop on my former employer LOL). She was actually asking me when I will return to that firm. Apparently, some of our former (experienced) officemates (who were working in other countries or companies hit by the financial crisis) have already returned, giving them the hope that I would do the same.

First stop, I told her my answer is still no (hell, no!), same answer I always gave whenever I’m asked the same thing for the last two years now.

Second, I was surprised with what I’ve heard (although, come to think of it, I don’t think I should be). Yeah, I know we have the crisis right now and the auditing firms (especially the Big 4) have been letting go of juniors or offering flexi-time or shorter working days, etc. But from experience, I should have seen this coming.

Auditing firms almost always welcome ‘returnees’ or what they call ‘experienced hires’. My boss – partner is one example. He left the firm two times, the last time he was gone for almost 10 years, working as an operations manager in a private company. When he returned, he became a partner in less than 5 years! I, myself, was also a ‘returnee’ like 10 years ago and so are some of my former officemates in the same firm. So I know it happens.

This brings me back to those who returned. Why would they return? I mean, if you have already experienced what it’s like outside, have gone through less (even no) overtime hours, have more time for yourself and for your family and, generally, have more money, why would you want to return and to work for the Big 4 or for an auditing firm where the opposite of these may become true?

Unfortunately, I do not know how to get in touch with these former officemates of mine so I can just speculate why they returned (you’re welcome to add on to my speculations).

For one, the crisis is so severe that they could not find any other work so they chose to return (back to the fold, so to speak). Anyway, they know that the firm will always welcome them because they are experienced auditors and will just fit right in.

Or, for those who are working in other countries, the crisis is so severe in that country and they were the first to be laid off so they have no choice but to come home. Since they don’t want to go through all the trouble to look for another local job, it’s easier for them to contact our former employer and to return to the firm. These may be the people who will just bide their time when they will get another (more lucrative) jobs, either here or in other countries. Doesn’t paint a nice picture, does it?

Or, now here’s the catch, they truly miss working for the firm and they found out that this is where they really want to stay. I know, I know, this begs the question of why again (why would you want to work in the firm?). But then again, these are the people who became so immersed in the auditing firm’s culture and the kind of life they led when they were still there that, honestly speaking; they can no longer imagine their lives outside of the firm (we have a term for this – FF or For the Firm)! They already ‘escaped’ from that kind of life but in the end, they didn’t really want to ‘escape’ so they returned. And mind you, these are the people who said they will never (ever!) return to the firm.

Or, some really persuasive people managed to convince them to return to the firm, even though they already swore to high heavens that this is something they will never (ever!) do.

Whatever their reasons are for returning, there’s always the thought that they will not really stay for good. I mean, they already left, so there’s a possibility that they will leave again. But since the firm lacks experienced auditors, the firm is always after these experienced hires. Now, if you are in the place of these former auditors, will you still return to your former auditing firm?

A Balanced Life in a Big 4 / Auditing Firm – Is it Possible?

2009-11-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

I got a comment from one of my previous posts on Skills You Need When Working for the Big 4. It’s all about sacrificing some (okay, most) things in life just to make it as a CA or an auditor. The list seems simple enough – watch TV, play computer, clean the house – all normal things. What bothered me is that the commenter thinks he needs to give these up to be a CA and an auditor. Is this what it takes to succeed in the field of auditing?

I’ve often heard this before (and I’ve often said it before also) that working for a Big 4 or for an auditing firm (for that matter) may mean a not-so-balanced life.

But then again, really, what is a balanced life? To the one who commented, I can see it is experiencing the simple joys in life. What about to those that are in audit (or were in audit), what is a balanced life? Is it being able to leave your job and go home at exactly 5 p.m. every day and not work during the week-ends? Is it being able to go and watch your favorite movie whenever you want to (and not when you can)? Is it being able to go to all the parties and social gatherings and all those cool vacation places every year? Or is it just being able to leave your job and go and watch your daughter’s school play or organize and go to your son’s birthday party or be with your parents and siblings?

So what is really a balanced life? I’ve heard this question a lot even up to now but I still don’t have a clear answer nor do I have a clear definition of a “balanced life”.

When I was a junior in the 90’s, I have a manager who was already 8 years in the firm. He wasn’t just working in the firm; his whole life is his work in the firm. I asked him about his life and he told me that he’s contented. All he asked was that he’ll be able to go home to celebrate his or a family member’s birthday, anniversary and holiday. Pretty simple huh? Yet for him that is a balanced life.

Or let’s take for example some of my (previous) juniors. They work their @ss off, especially during the busy season. Even going to the extent of renting out a unit nearer to their clients’ offices (yes, they were that ‘devoted’ to the firm). But they also know how to party, to go out during week-ends and when busy season is over, man, they do know how to take a vacation (other local places, other countries, different one every year, etc.). And I never hear them complain that they don’t have a balanced life.

Or what about my previous boss? He’s a busy-body during the weekdays but he has a ‘policy’ that he will go home at exactly 10 p.m. every day (no matter if it’s busy season or not) and that, as much as possible, he will not go to the office during week-ends. He also takes his vacation time very (very!) seriously (we’re not allowed to call him even during emergencies). And yes, he is happy with his life.

So again (for the last time!), what makes a balanced life, especially when you’re working for the Big 4? I’d say it’s simple. A balanced life is relative. What may be balanced for one may not be balanced for another. Only the individual can tell if his life is balanced or not.

Knowing what you want and going for it, but at the same, knowing how to compromise when called upon to do so is also another way to look at a balanced life. It is knowing when you will do something that you will really want to do and when you will have to forego something because duty calls (and there is no way you can do both at the same time).

Meaning, when you have free time (read: not a busy season), you enjoy yourselves, go home early, stay home during week-ends, go to parties, vacations, etc. But when the busy season arrives, you also know how to work your butt off to finish everything on time. It’s a compromise – this balanced life. Don’t you think so?

How to Look Good…Even During the Busy Season

2009-11-16T05:36:00.000-08:00

Uhm, don’t get this blog wrong. It’s not about looking ‘good’ per se. It’s about how to maintain the appearance that you’re still a human being even when you’re already working 80 to 100 hours a week.

Have you ever noticed that during busy season, physical appearances change? I mean you can easily tell if an accountant or a CA (or a Certified Public Accountant in other countries) is working for an auditing firm and it is busy season just by looking at him or her.

Dark shadows under the eyes (that get darker as the deadline approaches); puffy, sleepless eyes; the haggard pale look (because you’re cooped all day long inside the office) and the general appearance of busy-ness, tension and pressure – do all these sound (er look) familiar to you?

When I was working in a big auditing firm, it always amazes me that every time I see somebody who resigned from the firm, he or she looks so d@mn good. This former officemate looks younger, fresher, well-rested and happier. When I resigned from the firm, I heard the same comments just after a few months! Did we really look different (terrible even) during the time we’re working with an auditing firm?

Okay, just in case you’re wondering if I’m trying to scare you away from working with the Big 4 (again), wonder no more. This blog is not about ‘scaring’ you away. Rather, I just want to share some tips in how to still look good even when you are already deep into the busy season.

Get Some Sleep. I mean it, man, GET SOME SLEEP. Two hours a day, three hours a day, four hours a day, some even six hours a day! Whatever works for you, do it. Please don’t go 48 hours without sleeping for even an hour during all those hours. I know, I know, you have a deadline, a meeting, a report due, etc. but believe me; not sleeping is tantamount to ensuring that you will look like a robot, and a ‘dead’ one at that.

Get a Power Nap. This may not be the thing right? But I swear by this tip. 30 minutes to 1 hour tops. This will especially do you wonders if you do it after lunch. Rather than grabbing a cup of coffee to wake you up, find a quiet place (I usually go for conference rooms), close your eyes and snooze (uhm, make sure you set your alarm first). Believe me when I say that when you wake up, you’ll be ready to face the world, notwithstanding the fact that you got only a 2-hour sleep last night.

Eat Right. Okay, am I starting to sound like your mother here? Mother or no mother, skipping meals I don’t really advice, especially breakfast. Believe me when I say I saw a lot of auditors (myself included) who get cranky when they skipped lunch or dinner. The results? Disastrous if you get cranky in front of your boss. Bad rep if you get cranky in front of your junior. So grab something to eat and save yourself (and your boss or your junior) the bad mood.

Learn to Let Go. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t be too tense. Don’t worry about the little things. Don’t take it into heart when your partner yells at you or your client swears at you or your junior walks out on you. Repeat after me…business only, nothing personal…business only, nothing personal…etc., etc.

Go Out. For God’s sake, don’t make your office your home (I also saw some auditors do this). Go out. Stretch your legs, take a walk. Go out on a dinner date. Go out with your friends for lunch or for dinner. Or just go out, go to the nearest mall and take time out to look at what you want (but can’t buy because you haven’t received that overtime pay yet). If you feel you don’t have the time to do these things, squeeze in the time to do them.

Get Your Hair Cut Before and After the Busy Season. Look good before the start of the busy season by getting that hair cut that you want. Then schedule a hair cut after the busy season so that you’ll have something to look forward to. Better yet, schedule a visit to the spa right after the busy season. Knowing that you have something this enjoyable after the busy season will make the days go by really, really fast.

Lastly, Don’t be a Super Human Being. Don’t try to do everything yourself. Delegate. Prioritize. Learn to say ‘no’. Learn to let small stuff go. You’re only human after all. You have your limits. When you feel your body is already telling you that it needs to rest, heed it.

Hmmmm, serious stuff you think? Well, busy season is serious stuff. Ensuring that you still look good even during the busy season is more serious, especially for some auditors :). Hope the above tips help. Good luck with the busy season!

Skills You Need When Working for the Big 4 (Part I)

2009-11-11T06:30:00.001-08:00

What are the skills that you need to be an auditor? A new way to look at these skills.

For those who already have their careers or those who are still applying for a job (whether in the Big 4 or in private companies), I’m pretty sure you have encountered phrases like “must possess the following skills” or “skills required for the jobs”, etc. Well, working for the Big 4 and becoming an external auditor is no exception.

Let me just tick off some of these skills based on what I have learned in an auditing firm – people skills, leadership skills, technical skills, communication skills and time management skills. Nice set of skills, right? Admit it; they sound nice. But then again, if you’re working for the Big 4, what do they really mean exactly? Here’s a new way to look at these skills.

People skills means you have to handle a lot of people, from different ages, with different personalities. It also means that you must NOT (in fact NEVER) talk back to your senior / manager / partner when he or she is reprimanding you for not doing something he or she should have done in the first place (makes sense?).

Good people skills entail learning how to nod your head meekly when your manager says you have to work overtime during the week-end (even though you secretly know that the reason why he is telling you that is because he will be on a week-end getaway with his family and just wants you to cover his @ss when the partner comes looking for him).

Lastly, possessing good people skills also means that you stay patient and try to look cool (if you can manage it, smile) at 2:00 AM while you are discussing accounting issues with an insomniac client who is insisting that his or her accounting / disclosure is correct and who does not want to listen to you when you say he or she is wrong.

Leadership skills - one of my worst (if not the worst) busy season was when I was a new senior, with a new partner, with new juniors working for a new client and the only one who has experience with that client is my new manager. And then the manager up and left all of us with barely two months before the busy season! And they didn’t think to replace her, leaving me to handle the whole team and the new client (that happens to be a small publicly-listed company). Aarrrrghhh!

So what about leadership skills (and no, I’m not going to say I acquired the skills during that time, on the contrary, I nearly blew the whole thing up!)? It means you are ready to handle new juniors (even though you’re still in your second year with that firm) and their endless questions / queries / worries / mistakes / errors. And no, you can’t brush them off as easily as you want to.

If you’re a senior, this skill means you can make your junior follow you while you are also (blindly?) following your manager and partner.

If you’re a manager, it means you know how to delegate all the work to your senior and junior while you just sit back and wait for them to give you the working papers for your review (nice one!). And then you meet with the partner and impress him or her because he or she thinks you are doing all the hard work (believe me when I say there are managers who are like that)!

Part II (see below)

Skills You Need When Working for the Big 4 (Part II)

2009-11-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

Technical skills – Of course, you must have this. I mean you can’t get into the Big 4 if you do not know what you are doing. In fact, they (especially the clients) will think you know everything (or at least, know where you can find the right answer). You are NOT allowed to make any mistakes or say a wrong thing. You are EXPECTED to be able to answer all your client’s / boss’ queries at the drop of the hat. If you do not, they will ask you “What the….? Why the hell did you graduate and got accepted here? You should know this!”

Communication Skills – both spoken and written. Let’s go to the spoken word first. You have to know how to talk to people. Even when you are dead tired or you do not want to talk to somebody, you manage to get yourself up, meet your client and talk your way through the meeting. The finest measure of your communication skills (at least one of them) is that you are able to convince the client that the accounting treatment is correct (even though they may end up recognizing huge paper losses because of it, thereby making them see red when they think about it). Another fine measure is when you are able to take a purely technical standard (like IFRS or the current GAAP) and translate it into layman’s terms to get your client (who is a non-accountant) to understand it and thereby, saving your head from his wrath.

Okay, so that’s the spoken part. What about the writing skills? Ever heard of the phrase – “your working papers should stand up for themselves”? Meaning, even when you are long gone from the firm, the one who will read your memo or your working papers should still be able to understand them without the need to hunt you down to explain what you wrote. So, you must know how to write. And I don’t even mean “grammer and speling” here. I mean, you must know how to write down as clearly and as concisely as you can the story behind your audit, without going through lots and lots of explanations and lots and lots of papers to get your point across. Now this is a writing skill.

Lastly, your time management skills a.k.a. multi-tasking. I know, I know, multi-tasking may not result to quality work but heck, at least, you’re getting some work done here. So, if you have this skill, you know how to juggle the following: talking on the phone with another client, while answering or clearing the review points of your partner / manager, while reviewing your junior’s work, while researching a particularly difficult accounting issue and while scheduling a meeting with your partner, with your team and with other concerned partners for your planning session. Need I say more?

As usual, I managed to write up a storm (oooppps, I guess I flunked the written communication skills). So tell me, which skills did you possess when you went in the Big 4? And which did you develop when you resigned from the Big 4?

Why Do We Have the Busy(!) Season?

2009-11-05T07:07:00.000-08:00

Barely two months before Christmas, a lot of the Big 4 offices around the world are preparing for the busy (tax) season.

It’s always the same year in and year out. Planning starts middle of the year, then interim work, then finalization of interim work (going to the year-end audit) and then, the busy season. And then the late nights, overnights, week-end work starts. After the tax deadline, the cycle starts all over again.

It's always the same every year for the 8 years I worked in the auditing firm. And every year I also hear the same things: (1) that we’re going to start planning early to finish the audit early; (2) that we’re going to prepare everything during the interim so that during the busy season, we’ll just plug in everything; (3) that we are targeting an early deadline for all our clients so that we will not have to work late nights or even overnights when the deadline draws near; and (4) that we’re going to be more efficient this year and reduce our overtime hours to the ‘minimum’ (yeah, right). And these things are coming from the mouth of my partner – boss!

So, we start early. Planning, preparing, interim reporting, interim auditing – all these are done early. But what the heck! Once the busy season starts, our nose are still on the grind from 8 am up to whatever time we can still keep our eyes open! Darn it! Everything that should be done was done early on, everything worked as planned. Correction, everything worked as planned, EXCEPT, for the busy season.

Why is this happening? Why do we always have to work double time during the busy season? Why do we have to come in on week-ends to do our jobs? Why, why, why?

This was the question that always plagued my mind. It got to the point when a lot of us no longer believed the promises that the next busy season will be a much better one than before (actually it got worse!).

What do I think could be the reason? Let’s see.

One, there’s just too many things to do, too many stuff to document, too many things to consider during the audit that everything just get clogged towards the end.

Two, even if you did your interim work diligently, there are just some things you could not capture during your interim work and you have to play catch-up towards the end. I’m being nice here. On to the next reason.

Three, your juniors resigned at the end of the interim work and all your subsequent juniors are new to the team! So you have they have to spend more time familiarizing themselves about the client (and the audit, as a whole) and you (as their senior or manager) have to spend time cleaning up their mess (I mean work) before your partner finds out about the mess.

Four, you did not really do the job well during the interim audit, resulting to a lot of audit notes from your partner and manager, resulting to more work for you during the busy season because other than the year-end audit you have to do, you also need to clear their notes! Or you procrastinated during the interim work (because well, there’s just no pressure then) and you left out a lot of things that your manager or partner actually wanted you to do! So, to get back at their good sides, you are now working double-time (during the busy season) to finish all your year-end work plus all the interim work you failed to do!

Five, if you are the senior, your manager suddenly resigns before the busy season started and you ended up suddenly becoming designated as the senior in-charge or a super-senior because it’s already too late to find a replacement for your resigned manager. So now you are wearing two hats, a go-to senior for your juniors and a go-to manager for your partner. This happened to me during my first year as a senior (and it was a public company!) and that was one of the worst busy seasons I ever had.

Sixth, there was an audit issue that you consulted with expert partners during the interim but the issue was not immediately resolved. It was resolved only during the busy season and your client no longer wants to accept the resolution and blames you for your lateness! So you scramble to get everything fixed before the deadline, which means more meetings, more conference calls, more consultations and more documentation.

Seventh, your client suddenly changes their internal deadline before the busy season started and you have already scheduled all your juniors for the original deadline! So you scramble to re-schedule them (good luck) or, failing that, getting new juniors to fill in for the new time frame. And you go back to number three up there (and no, you can’t blame your client, customer is always right, right?).

Eight, you’re already finished with substantially all your year-end work. And then suddenly, the firm’s top management released memos on stuff that you still need to do before you can finalize everything. And you have no choice but to do all of them because failing to do so will mean no sign-offs on the financial statements! Gggrrrr. This is rare but it happens.

What’s my point then? Well, if you hear promises of no overtime / overnights / week-end work during the busy season, don’t believe them. Even if you do everything humanely possible to avoid those overtime and overnights, busy season has already become a fact of life for the auditor (whether in the Big 4 or not). The only way to avoid all these things during the busy season is to resign from the auditing firm and live a quieter (less busy) life. And that's a fact.

No Regrets: My Experience with the Big 4

2009-10-30T07:27:00.000-07:00

For my last three posts, I know they sound so…well, so negative. Reading through it myself, I can honestly understand why some folks out there think it’s not worth it to go to the Big 4 (or for any auditing firms for that matter). If this is the case, I would like to apologize. Scaring you was not my purpose; I just wanted to tell it as it is so that you’re better aware of what you are entering into when you go inside any of the Big 4 or the other accounting firms.

With that behind me, I just want to write some (okay a lot of) positive things about my experience with the Big 4. When I started out here in iwanttobeaca, I mentioned staying in one of the big auditing firms for more than 8 years. Truth be told, if circumstances did not turn out the way they did, I would still be there until today.

Staying for 8 years was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m not exactly the type of person who knows what she wants and goes for it. I’m more of wherever-the-wind-blows-me-I’ll-be-there type of person but I’m sure glad I was blown over that auditing firm. Suffice it to say that I have absolutely no regrets in working for that firm and given the chance to do things all over again, I would have gladly worked for that firm again.

Why did I say I have no regrets? Well, there are a couple of reasons. Let me just go through them:

First of all, I learned how to handle or deal with different people (with different personalities) during those 8 years. I’ve been assigned under partners and managers who had the temper to match a raging volcano (figuratively, of course) and who can quell their staff with a single glance. I have also been assigned under partners and managers who are the opposite of the previous ones. And I count myself fortunate I was able to survive the first and thrive with the second.

What about clients? I have handled some that are really in the extremes. I have a client whose Controller is really somebody avoided by everybody, even our partners and managers! In fact, when I was about to leave, my partner and the other partners met several times just to discuss who will replace me as the manager of that client! I also have clients that are well-sought out by the other managers because they know the clients are kind and accommodating to their auditors. Extremes? You bet.

Second, I got a lot of invaluable and extensive trainings. I attended trainings from basic auditing skills to managerial skills to audit updates to tax updates to accounting updates and (the last) to the IFRS. To top it all, they were all free! When you go out, you will spend your hard-earned money just to attend these types of seminars or trainings (unless you go to another company offering the same kind of training, lucky you).

Do you know how much these trainings cost outside? You can literally hear your wallet or purse screaming as you pay the fees. So if you’re with a Big 4 right now or any other accounting firm offering free trainings, treasure the times when you get to attend those trainings (and your manager or partner leaves you in peace because of this) because these are part of the benefits you will receive from the firm.

Third of all, I was exposed to different industries or kinds of businesses. To name a few: hotels / resorts / restaurants, supermarkets / hypermarkets, service companies, export companies, transportation, newspapers, manufacturing, construction, real estate, parent companies, and even, to some extent, banks. Now how many other companies can offer this type of experience to the accountants out there?

Staying with the auditing firm helped me become more aware of these types of businesses and their issues in auditing and accounting. And if you’re going to set up your own firm after your stint with the Big 4, you will surely see the value of what you have learned while you are still with that big auditing firm.

Fourth, financial analysis and financial statement understanding is a lot easier for me since I worked for the auditing firm. Because I was exposed with different financial statements, different reporting structures and different financial information (including disclosures), I became used to analyzing and understanding the financial statements. The more financial statements I get to read, the more knowledge I got and the more ‘trained’ my eyes and mind were in reading (and understanding) these financial reports.

Fifth, the networking. When you’re a junior, you get to deal with the client’s staff, managers and even the controller. But when you’re already a senior or a manager, you start dealing with the CFO, the VPs and even, the Presidents of your clients. So this is your chance to establish your networks. When you go out, don’t lose touch. Who knows? You might get a job or some business with that former clients of yours.

And these are just some of the things why I don’t regret working for a big auditing firm. Sure, I also got the late nights (even the overnights!), no-rest week-ends, low pay, cr@ppy boss, hardheaded staff and scary clients, but in the end, they were just all part of the experience.

So if you are already working for a Big 4 and you have the chance to stay for a longer period (like 3 or more years), then do so. I can assure you, you will really learn something from your experience there. And no, I’m not giving you an empty promise on this one. Trust me, your experience will be well worth it. And that’s a promise.

Freedom or Face?

2009-10-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

I will be perfectly honest. There have been so many times where I’ve contemplated leaving, and just decided to stick on for a little while longer. I’m a relatively young guy, and to be honest, I face the same dilemma, I’m sure a lot of you do.

I am a young ambitious person. Throughout my university career, I always knew accounting wasn’t really what I wanted to do. However, I stuck around, and I’m still around, wondering when I should make the move.

I think a lot of our readers face a dilemma of freedom vs. face.

A lot of us want freedom, but we don’t want to lose face.

We want to quit our jobs, but we don’t want to face the embarrassment.

We’ve built a sort of pride that we don’t want to lose. We got the 40K co-op jobs while our friends were making $12 an hour at Mcdonalds. When we graduated, we got the 60K senior staff accountant Big 4 job, when our other graduating friends were still struggling for work. Our friends and parents respected us and we didn’t want to lose that respect.

Our parents brag to their friends about us. We’re Big 4 Prodigies. My son is making 60K. Your son doesn’t have a job. Etc., Etc. I mean, what kind of 21 to 22 year old has a 60K job in another field?

We’ve built ourselves into our trap.

Deep down, we also know, that if we weren’t in accounting, we wouldn’t command the 60K senior starting salary, and the respect of our high school friends and parents.

Do we have the skills to even get an 40K job?

We’d be regular graduating Joes like everyone else.

We are on the inside and know it’s not that great. But because, the people on the outside don’t know, even if we secretly resent our jobs, we choose to be stubborn, and play the appearance game.

After all, it does feel good to blow your peers out of the water in terms of comparison.

No there is nothing wrong with you if you’re young and you hate accounting and your job. If you ever considered quitting, but felt something was holding you back, I truly believe it’s a matter of not wanting to lose face.

Why They Left…Part II

2009-10-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’m on a roll here. Just posted a new blog on the Big 4 and the recession, and now this. But then again, I’ll be taking a trip this week so it will not be possible for me to write new posts during the week. Plus, I just can’t help it, my fingers are itching to write this second part on the Why They Left post.

In my first post Why They Left, I wrote there the reasons I noted why my officemates (and ultimately, I) left. These are my readily-observable-very-true-but-safe reasons. I received a couple of comments on this one, the notable of which came from an anonymous poster and to quote: “Some people leave just because the job just plain sucks.....vouching 200 invoices a day can really make you wonder about your purpose in life.....and they wanna give something else a shot”. Hmmm, telling it for what it is, I see. I was curious. Evidently there are more reasons out there than those I covered, hence this part II post.

Someone wrote me an email referring me to another site: www.jobvent.com. This site basically shows the reviews of various people (employees, both current and former) from all around the globe on their companies. Now, I know the site may be familiar to you but it is definitely new to me. So I browsed it. Of course, being an accountant / auditor, I promptly went and searched for the Big 4 auditing firms. What I found is quite…Er disturbing to say the least. All Big 4 firms have negative scores! EY has a -199 score, PWC a -26 score, Deloitte – negative 396 and KPMG has a -485 score! Wow! What negatives! Reading through the reviews opened my eyes to some of the possible reasons why these “reviewers” left (leaving the firm and leaving the negative reviews). Let me just summarize some of these reasons. A caveat first: these are based on the reviews I read and do not, by any stretch of imagination, pertain to my personal experience. So don’t quote me on this, okay?

Kiss @ss managers, bad @ss partners: Managers who retaliate because their juniors / staff do not worship the ground they work on. Partners who are being bad examples to their staff. Partners who have simply no heart and just give their staff their walking orders without so much as a by-your-leave. Managers or partners who have absolutely no ethics, who unfairly treat the staff and who do not seem to appreciate their staff’s work. Need I go on?

Not so good work environment: No work – life balance (even though this was one of the things promised when they were recruited). Stressful work atmosphere. Strict policies / stifling work atmosphere.This also includes bad technology, slow IT people, slow materials procurement, etc.

People problems: Other than the manager or partner, that is. Lack of young people working within the same office (the one who posted this may still be young and wants the company of people his / her same age). Rampant drug use (what the…? Hope this is not true). Brutally honest people (so brutal, they can reduce you to tears). Hypocrites who say one thing and do another (aren't these people found everywhere?).

Low pay. I guess I was too kind in my previous post. But some of the comments here are really negative when it comes to this aspect. Salaries / rates are too small. There are times when salaries were delayed (that hurts, you work your @ss off just to get your pay three months after!). Overtime pay virtually non-existent (this after working 7 days for the whole week!). And what about the benefits? Not so good and even sometimes, they suck.

There are some more reasons I no longer included here. Suffice it to say that the above are the most cited reasons. But they are also quite the eye-openers. I guess I was just lucky enough not to have experienced these things (except for the low pay but our benefits were okay).

Another note: This blog is not to discourage those who want to go into the Big 4. It just shows how it is inside BUT you don’t really want us who used to work in these firms, to sugar-coat it for you, do you? In my next blogs, I will write positive stuff about the Big 4, promise. Till then, bye and see you!

The Big 4, the Recession and the Redundancies (My Perspective)

2009-10-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

Let me just say this first – to those who lost their jobs, whether in the Big 4 or not, you have my sympathies. In these difficult times, losing one’s job is a very difficult (and scary!) experience. For those people’s sakes (and for others as well), I really hope that the recession will end in the (very) near future.

Okay, so you just might say “What the…! What is this blog?” Settle down. I just wrote that first paragraph because well, these are really hard times and those working in the Big 4 are not immune to the effects of this recession.

In fact, after reading through some blogs / posts and some articles over the Internet, Big 4 firms around the globe announced employee reductions as early as last year and as late as the second quarter of this year! These firms may have been late in such announcements, but they are catching up in the redundancy wagon and they are catching up fast!

That said, I just really want to write a blog (a rambling blog, if you want to call it that) about the Big 4 and the effect this recession has on them.

In fairness to these Big 4 firms and from what I read, they tried (as much as possible) to avoid these redundancies. I mean private companies shut down or laid off as early as 2007, with the bulk of them (the most controversial ones at that) doing so in 2008. But the Big 4? They held it off for as long as they could, going to the extent of implementing other cost-cutting measures (like flexible working hours) just to avoid the staff cuts.

But alas, the hard times caught up with them and all four have no choice but to let go. Sure the redundancy rates are small but if you compare them to the thousands of people employed by these Big 4 firms, the number can also be quite large.

But then again, on a positive (if you want to call it that) note, I haven’t seen any indication that any of the Big 4 firms implement freeze hirings (unless I’m wrong about this, feel free to correct me) and I really don’t think they should. Why? Because it backfires.

When a certain continent experienced a financial crisis more than a decade ago, some Big 4 affiliates reduced their new hires to the bare minimum (like only 20% to 40% of the usual number of new juniors). After less than 5 years, this continent’s economy picked up and the Big 4 affiliates realized their mistake, a mistake even one country managing partner admitted in a speech. By reducing their new hires during the 1990s, they now had fewer experienced people to promote to seniors and managers, and even partners!

On the other hand, I remember when I visited my old office a few months ago. I talked to a friend of mine still working in that auditing firm. She was a manager when I left the firm, now she is a partner. I asked her how the crisis was affecting them. Her answer was the firm is still doing okay (not excessively well, but just okay) but…here comes the tricky part – they were now on the evaluation stage for the new juniors and they were going to be quite brutal about it. Meaning? They were going to weed out those juniors that they think are not good enough and replace them with a new batch of faces (which legally they can still do since these juniors are still classified as “casuals” or “temporary”). They can afford to because there are already a lot of applicants (unlike before when we had to scramble to get new ones) who may be better than the ones they have now.

The above just goes to show that in good times, being a good junior (or a good auditor) will guarantee you a place in the Big 4. In bad times, being a good junior does not cut it; you have to be an exceptionally damn good junior because there are other applicants out there who are more than willing (excessively eager, in fact) to take your place.

It’s harsh, I know, but this is how it goes. And this ends my ramblings, uhm, I mean my blog. Good day and cheers!

Why They Left

2009-10-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

Big 4 firms (and even mid-sized and small firms) are notorious for their high turnover rate. As a matter of fact, I just read that the average turnover rate in the Big 4 is somewhere between 15% to 20% every year while other industries are just averaging 5% (Note: the study was done two years ago, before the recession set in, the average rates may actually be higher during the crisis)! I won’t say if these rates are reasonable or not but turnovers have become so much a part of life of the Big 4 that they have targets for it and even have plans to lower the rate.

In my 8 years in a big auditing firm, I’ve seen my share of people who left the firm. From my co-juniors (when I was just starting out) to my co-managers and even to myself, it seemed like a never-ending exodus of auditors going out of the firm and even out of audit.

So why do these auditors leave? If the Big 4 is such a great place to work in and to get good training and great audit experience, why do we still see juniors, seniors, managers and even partners leaving the firm? I don’t have the hard and fast answers but in all those years, I had the chance to ask my co-auditors who resigned from the firm and I will share some of their answers here.

The grass is greener…on the other side of the fence. The number one reason? Money or financial reasons. Don’t get me wrong, salaries in Big 4 are okay. But they’re not really that big and well, private companies pay bigger salaries. And if you have loans to pay or a family to support; or if you just want to live a better life, this can be a very good reason for leaving. Of those people I saw leave the firm, maybe about 60% to 70% left because of this reason.

The other company’s (and even firm’s) offer is too good to resist. This is not only based on salaries, it also includes perks. Perks such as giving you a car, giving you company shares, more benefits, less overtime, giving you a chance to travel to other places and even in other countries. The list can just go on and on. I have a former senior (I was her manager) who resigned to become a chief accountant. Two years later, I saw from her Facebook account pictures of her visiting other countries (with her family in tow). Turned out she was sent there for certain job assignments and the company allowed her to bring along her family (the company subsidized some of their expenses). Lucky her!

They don’t like their clients / boss. I had a fellow junior who, after finding out she’ll be assigned to the same client for the next busy season, promptly served her resignation letter to her boss! Obviously her reason was, she does not like the client (like may seem a mild word, okay, she hates the client). Or there’s this other junior who was constantly at odds with her manager that she left after just one busy season. Of course, she wouldn’t admit it but, knowing their history, we could read between the lines. Resigning because of the client or the boss is not quite as common as the first two but they do happen. And when they happen, you can be sure that client or that boss will be avoided like a plague by the other juniors.

Health reasons. Okay, I’m not trying to give you a panic attack or something. But it is true that sometimes, people leave the firm because they want to stay healthy or to manage their blood pressure (which is perpetually high during the busy season) or to live a longer life. I’m just kidding on the last one. Seriously, the Big 4 is not for everybody and sometimes, being in a Big 4 can wreak havoc on one’s health. Some people just deal with it by taking in more and more medicines (and staying on the firm) but other people, well, they deal with it by leaving the firm.

Family reasons. How does family become a reason for leaving the Big 4? Let’s count the ways. One, your family pressured you to leave the firm because they see that you are looking very, very tired, are often sick, have dark shadows under your eyes and have no time to visit them anymore. Two, the family is banking on you to earn more money because you are helping them out financially so they pressured you to leave the firm (even if you don’t want to) just so you can get a higher-paying job. Three, you, yourself, are starting a new family and you want to have a more balanced work-family life so you chose to leave the firm and get another job that is not too demanding and does not make you work until 2 in the morning (on a Sunday at that!). Fourth, your aunt, uncle, father or mother runs a small town accounting firm and he or she wants you to take over him or her. And you, being the dutiful son / daughter / nephew / niece, resign from the firm to jump to a smaller one.

So those are the reasons I compiled over the years. What about me? What was my reason for leaving the firm? Honestly? Last reason, fourth way. What about you? If you left the Big 4, what was the reason? Or if you’re thinking of leaving one, what do you think you’re reason will be?

A Necessary Evil? Facing It Off With Clients

2009-10-21T01:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve worked for an auditing firm for 8 years and, honestly speaking, there are really times when I asked myself if it was worth it. I mean just think about it, if the government / regulators do not require companies to have their financial statements audited, will we (auditors) still exist?

If companies know that they can just present their unaudited financial statements and get fresh capital from here and from other countries, will we still have a job called “audit”?

If companies can self-regulate themselves and always present accurate, fairly presented financial statements, what are we going to audit in the first place? I know, this last question is rhetoric, unrealistic at best and downright impossible at its worst. But that puts to mind the question in my title, are we, as auditors, just necessary evil?

Now why did I think of that? Oh I don’t know.

Must be the fact that some of my clients always have this look in their faces when they see us during the start of our audit, as if they couldn’t believe we’re there again. Some just blurt out “oh no, is it audit season again?” Or some just flat out try to avoid us during the audit (one of the assistants even filed a leave for the whole two weeks we were on site just to avoid us, sshhheeeesssh).

During my first audit season, one of my teammates discovered an error in the accounting of our client. The error was discussed at length and was rectified. You’d think they appreciated that? Noooooooo. Now why did I know that? Because the next time I went in and ask for a certain document, one of them said “now why are you asking for that? Are you going to look for an error again?” Good thing I was still a neophyte then or I could have told him what to do with that document.

Or what about those clients who want to leave everything to you and just sign off the approval when you give it to them? And then you get blamed if there was a mistake in the financial statements.

There are still more such instances but these are the ones that are the most memorable to me and sometimes make me feel like a fly on the wall.

On the other hand (so that you won’t say I’m trying to frighten you), in fairness, there are really clients who are really appreciative of what we do for them. I won’t exactly say they welcome us with open arms but they’re very cooperative, patiently answering all our questions and going the extra mile to provide us what we need during the audit.

Then there are those clients who make it a point to seek you out for your opinion on a certain accounting matter. True, this will make you rack your brains for the answer but hey, the fact that they thought of your opinion first is a testament to the fact that they think you have something valuable to offer right? Otherwise they won’t go through the trouble asking you.

Then there are those clients who will really go out of their way to give us the space, the time / schedule and the personnel whenever we need them. These are the clients who welcome us with open arms during the audit season. But don’t try to kid yourself there are a lot of clients like this. They’re really quite few. So if you’re assigned to one such as these, lucky you and appreciate your time there.

So what are we really? A necessary evil, something that they can’t do without (although a lot would love to), or an integral part of the business and the business world? Are we here just to piss off our clients or to help them out or to stay neutral? Up till now I still don’t have the answer. What about you, what do you think?

5 Tips in Writing a Cover Letter

2009-10-18T02:44:00.000-07:00

In my previous blog, I was asked to write something about how to write cover letters. Although I promised to come up with one within one to two days, due to some unforeseen, I was unable to write one circumstances (sorry Anonymous, whoever you are). Finally, I have the time to write one (hope it’s not too late). Same as my last post, I have to add a caveat here. I am by no means an expert on writing cover letters. I have written even less cover letters than resume in my 12+ years of experience in accounting / auditing. So I do not profess to be an expert. That said; I do have experience in looking through cover letters so the tips I’m going to provide below are more on the side of the interviewer / hirer rather than the interviewee / new hire.

The first thing to remember is that the cover letter is your sales letter. And what are you selling? Yourself, of course. Your cover letter will basically tell your potential employer whether it will be worth his / her time to read through your resume and to call you for an interview. So, when you write that cover letter, make sure that you are writing the best cover letter (that you can write) on your side of the Earth. Okay, an exaggeration, I know. But if you’re a new graduate in need of a job in a good company where you will have lots of competition, your cover letter should put you on a class above everybody else. Unless you graduated with honors and at the top of your class and the companies are all after you to hire you, then you won’t need that cover letter. But for the rest of us, mere mortals, a good, no, great! cover letter is the way to go. Enough of the intro, let me just go through some basic tips:

Keep it simple. Use simple words. Write short sentences (don’t make your whole paragraph a one-sentence thing). No fancy words please. No slang words either. A cover letter that is worded in a simple manner connotes professionalism, something that you will need if you’re going to apply in a professional firm (like the Big 4).

Go straight to the point. The advice is to limit your cover letter to one page ONLY. This is so you will be able to capture quickly and retain the attention of the one reading your cover letter. State your objectives in a forthright and concise manner. Include brief (but thorough) descriptions of your accomplishments. Not beating around the bush may be cliché, but this really applies when you’re writing that cover letter.

Keep a positive, upbeat tone. This will ensure that you will give a positive impression to your potential customer. Use active, instead of passive voice, as the former will make your cover letter look more dynamic and interesting.

Customize it. In your quest for a job, you may have applied in a lot of companies and writing a single, uniform cover letter may be a little bit too tempting (saves you the hassle of thinking about writing various cover letters). But this is not recommended, not even for applying for jobs that are (more or less) similar to each other. Always customize your cover letter to make the contents more appropriate for the job you are applying for. Even if you know the jobs are similar in nature, take the time to tweak your cover letter every time you submit it.

Write to impress. When writing and submitting your cover letter, keep in mind that you need to impress your potential employer with that one-page letter. What does this mean exactly? One, no matter how short the cover letter is; do not forget to include (even highlight) your accomplishments that you think your prospective employer is looking for in an applicant. Two, if you know something positive about the firm, state so in your cover letter so that you will be able to show that you are really interested in working in the firm. Three, do not forget to stress any quality that you have which you think is unique and is of interest to your potential employer. These three, among all the other tips, will make your cover letter stand out among the rest.

So there you have it, 5 tips (I won’t say they are simple) in writing a cover letter. Before I end this post, I just want to make two more points. Do not forget to PROOFREAD your work. Check for errors in both grammar and spelling. Failure to do so will make your letter look sloppy; which may also be a reflection of your personality and professionally capacity. Lastly, do some research before writing that killer cover letter. The Internet is positively booming with all sources related to cover letters, as well as samples of cover letter. I’m sure you will find one that suits your needs. Just don’t forget to customize your letter. No matter how great the source is, you will still need to customize it and add your personal touch to that letter. Good luck in your job application.

Some Practical Tips on How to Improve Your Resume

2009-10-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, let me just clarify something. I’m not an expert in resume writing. In my whole career, I’ve only prepared / revised my resume perhaps a total of 4 times, one was for practice back in college, the next was when I entered the Big 4, the next when I applied for another job and finally the last after I resigned and had my own small-town accounting firm. Didn’t really need to do the last one but figured it will not hurt to have one in handy anyway.

So that’s out of the picture. What am I doing writing this blog anyway? Well, for one, I may not have written (or edited) much in terms of my own resume but I have certainly read some resumes when I was still an audit manager and was asked to interview some applicants after they already went through the HR Department. And although they seemed okay, there were some that caught my attention and when I googled about resumes, I remembered what were those things that got my attention. So I decided to write this blog on some tips on how to improve your resume. Most of these tips are for new graduates. Not planning on writing much, just a quick rundown will do and here it goes:

Job Objective – make this short and brief. Don’t make it into a one-paragraph, half-page thing. I’ve read some resumes that have long objectives and my mind just shut off after reading a line or two. And please make sure that your job objective coincides with the job you are applying for. If you’re applying as an audit staff on a Big 4 firm, your job objective should be connected to auditing like ‘developing your auditing skills’ or ‘gaining professional growth in a top-rated auditing firm’. Not ‘getting my license as a commercial pilot’ (an exaggeration, I know, but gets my point across right?).

Hobbies – This one has me confused really. The resume is supposed to be a reflection of what you are in your professional life. But then again, hobbies are more of personal in nature, not professional. But they are still included. Although sometimes I have to shake my head when I see these hobbies – cooking, cross-stitching, reading novels, listening to radio, searching the Internet, etc. From what was taught to me, the rule is that, while it’s true that you have your hobbies (few people do not have one), if such hobbies will not further your job application, don’t include them. Unless your hobby is reading the business section of the newspaper or an international business magazine (is there such a person?) and you’re applying for a financial analyst job, leave those hobbies out of your resume.

Plain versus fancy paper – Although I have never seen this in my whole time in auditing, I know that there are some people out there advocating the use of fancy paper for resumes, instead of plain white bond paper. I can see why they would suggest such a thing and, personally, I don’t have anything against using that kind of paper. But you have to admit, fancy papers are not really appropriate if you’re applying for an audit or accounting job. If you want to impress (and look very professional), use ivory paper or a white bond paper that is of highest quality.

Short resumes vs. long resumes – The usual advice is: don’t make your resume too long. If you’re just starting out, a 2-page resume may seem appropriate (unless you have a lot of work experience in the past). But then again, do not scrimp on the number of pages if you really have very good credentials to fill up those pages. If you have been working your butt out for the last 4 or 5 years while studying in college, by all means, include your job experience there.

Extra-curricular Activities – such as organizations, groups, clubs, etc., etc. Same with hobbies, make sure your affiliation with an organization will help your case in terms of your job application. Student organizations related to your course / profession are okay. Organizations that show you possess a certain skill or talent needed for the job you are applying for should be included. Other than these, if you are in doubt about including your other organizations, think and re-think about including them. If you still cannot decide then it would be better not to include these organizations. Better be safe than sorry.

Okay, this is a little bit longer (thought I said I’ll run them down ONLY, oh well). But I didn’t want to break this off into two. Hope the tips I gave will come in handy for you. Have any questions or concerns? Feel free to drop me a line.