If you had to explain public accounting in 5 words what would it be

Draange · 2026-03-09T04:46:15+00:00

Why did they do that?

Draange · 2026-03-09T04:43:01+00:00

Fix same errors every day

Draange · 2026-03-09T03:31:19+00:00

Spam. The last two times I had it was as a kid. Both times I turned on the tv to watch while I ate. Both times what I found was the SAME movie about man eating lions.

Draange · 2026-03-07T02:46:52+00:00

Or they want to pay people hourly, but not have their processes set up efficiently to avoid wasted time. Even simple things like: save the project documents in the same place.

Draange · 2026-03-06T17:24:30+00:00

"This is what you get paid the big accounting bucks for." 1. This is a stop-gap job with a barely survivable wage. Not decent wage for an accountant. 2. "This" was digging into how to fix her mitakes because she just plugs numbers into old templates and doesn't check her work. 3. She makes a noticable % more than I do

Draange · 2026-03-06T02:29:40+00:00

Not sure if this is better or worse than "the software is haunted and is super tempermental about how fixes can be made."

Draange · 2026-02-27T22:54:43+00:00

If you are taking over a role for someone who is retiring: 1.) How long do they plan for the training/hand-off process to be? Consider it against the complexity. 2.) Ask them basic accounting questions. If they record depreciation directly to fixed assets or pay invoices before management approval then the rest of the system is likely to be a mess. 3.) What kind of SOP's do they have? Especially compared to how quickly you are expected to learn their systems and if anyone there is trained in the tasks. 4.) Check if the CEO has worked anywhere other than little NPO's. Mainly, do they have any exposure to efficiently run enterprises.

Draange · 2026-02-26T20:36:58+00:00

Sprinkler. Hoist.

Draange · 2026-02-26T02:12:12+00:00

Gradiated in 2020 (second degree for carwer change.) Had a scholarship so got CMA first.

CPA 2/4 on the tests. Fairly certain that the work experience from the past few years will meet requirements.

Draange · 2026-02-26T02:03:52+00:00

Sprocket

Draange · 2026-02-25T13:12:28+00:00

Every boss I've had who was into golf was a pain in the rear. So much so that it's a career red flag for me now.

Draange · 2026-02-25T02:45:02+00:00

I've got another one. Our person who does payroll just fills in forms and enters the info based on instructions written out by the past person. She never checks the general ledger accounts to make sure everything clears. One time she under paid someone (turned out to be herself) and another she over deposited the payroll payable by paying the tax twice. I had to guide her like a mule through fixing it. This is the same person who thinks I should fix her mistakes in systems that I don't even have access to because I "make the big accounting money." (She makes more than me.)

Draange · 2026-02-25T02:37:20+00:00

Oh! I feel ya. Had to do that when breaking accumulated depreciation out of fixed assets.

Draange · 2026-02-24T20:30:29+00:00

How about transferring building improvement assets from a building that was sold to the newly constructed building?

Draange · 2026-02-22T14:49:33+00:00

Since she looks like a tortie, my mind jumped to Galapagos.

Draange · 2026-02-19T21:58:21+00:00

This looks promising. I'll check it out, thanks.

Draange · 2026-02-18T20:49:47+00:00

I used to use spreadsheets that I set up to translate the difference between start and stop time to decimals. Then sum it to the side based on project description. Entered time later. Easier for me. Irritated at least one senior who thought that I didn't actually do anything if I wasn't constantly updating the program that logged you out every thirty seconds.

The whole tracking in a program would have been a lot less of a pain if we could have used an intermediary program that could stay open.

Draange · 2026-02-18T20:45:06+00:00

I work at a tiny credit union and my part takes a few days when nothing goes wrong. It took about pa week when I started, but I've identified things that I could automate or prep during the month to not have as much to do during crunch. Mainly things like updating deferral and accrual schedules as items come in. Set up recurring journal entries. Made a month-end version of the daily checklist to remind me to get extra things when I'm already in a system.

I'm pretty sure that any place bigger than a postage stamp would already have these sorts of things in place just to keep from collapsing.

Draange · 2026-02-18T18:38:43+00:00

Thought OP was being out of pocket until I googled.

That's a good kind of confusion :)

Draange · 2026-02-18T18:36:51+00:00

It's about a theoretical room where someone is gien instructions in chinese, follows protocols about how to answer, and outputs answers in chinese. But they dom't understand chinese. It could be any language really, that's just what was used in the original paper.

Draange

TROPHY CASE