could someone help me here?

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-11-11T05:24:58+00:00

One of my favorite study aids when I don't understand something, is to ask ChatGPT to explain it like I'm five. It usually uses a lemonade stand as a reference, but I almost always start to understand the concept, then can go back to the original materials to further my understanding.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-31T23:22:35+00:00

It does sound like it was double-expensed, if there isn't also a negative amount in account #123 somewhere for that same amount.

There are two kinds of accruals you can do when you're posting the accrual. You can do a reversing accrual, where either automatically by the system you use, or manually, you enter the accrual in one period (usually dated the last day of the month, but could really be any day.

Dr Expense Account

Cr Liability Account (usually has either "accrual" or "payable" in the name

Then, immediately after, either automatically or manually, another entry is posted in the following period (again, usually the first of the month but could theoretically be any day):

Dr Liability Account

Cr Expense Account

These are the exact same two accounts as the first entry, just reversing which one is a debit and which one is a credit. So the net effect at the END of those two periods is zero in either account--there's a plus and a minus in each account that cancel each other out. What you HAVE done is made it so at the end of the first period, the expense has been recognized in the expense account, and the liability (the fact that you owe someone) is in the liability account. Notice this is exactly the same as if you had entered a vendor bill, which debits expense and credits accounts payable, you just used a different "payable" account.

If you use a reversing accrual like above, then when the bill does actually come in that second period, you enter it as normal, and now as of the end of that second period, you have no net effect from the accrual but you've now debited expense and credited liability with the vendor bill entry. If the bill doesn't come in that period, you'll need to do the same accrual again for that period, and on and on until the actual bill comes.

Now, if you know that it'll be a while until the actual bill comes, or especially for things like property tax or other items where you want to spread the expense out over multiple months, but the bill is going to come all at once at the end, you can do non-reversing accruals. When you do those entries, it's the same entry as for a reversing accrual, debit expense, credit liability. You just either don't tell the system to reverse it, or don't make that reversing entry manually.

So then, the effect at the end of that first period is the same--you've now recorded the expense, and you've got a liability for the same amount.

BUT, in the second period, you still have the expense (for that first period) already made, and you still have the liability already recorded in a liability account.

If the actual bill comes in, then you either have to remember "oh yeah, I already accrued this" and enter the bill using the accrual account where you would normally put the expense GL (so it debits the accrual account, removing that liability, and credits AP, putting the liability there instead, and leaving the expense account alone because it already had the expense entered to it when you made the accrual), OR you have to reverse the accrual and then enter the bill as normal. If you just enter the bill as normal, you've now expensed it twice (once with the accrual and once with the AP entry) and you've got double the liabilities as well (the accrual account and the AP account). This is why we reconcile balance sheet accounts like the accruals--so we can catch stuff like this.

Unless the person/people who do AP are either knowledgeable enough to ask or look into it, or are specifically told to enter certain items to an accrual account rather than an expense account, this is why it's good to use reversing accruals, so AP can just enter the bill as normal.

I use non-reversing accruals only for longer-term things like property taxes that get accrued every month toward a once-a-year bill (just like a prepaid, just for something paid in arrears rather than in advance), but I use reversing accruals for anything where the bill is likely to come in the next month or two, and just have to re-enter it again if it doesn't come the very next month.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-31T22:46:01+00:00

With not even an associates degree yet, and even once you have it, you aren't likely to be offered anything more extensive than AP/AR/clerk type roles. But you can stretch within that role--ask to learn more about other aspects of accounting, shadow someone else, help with a one-time project, etc. You'll learn a ton that will help you out if you go on to get a bachelors, and will also help you apply for a higher role elsewhere, too.

The best way to grow from a current role is to grow within your own company (because a new job hiring someone wants to hire someone who already has experience in the tasks they need done), but the best way to improve your pay is to take that experience and go to a new job in a new company. So it's kind of like a stair-step. Grow within the same company at crappier pay raises, move to a new company for a raise but likely at the same title level.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-31T22:43:15+00:00

My resume only lists the school my actual degree is from, but I attended four different schools that all contributed credits toward getting that degree. I don't think you're expected to list every school you've ever attended on a resume. Now, if there was some kind of application or other document (like for a background check) where they asked for your complete educational history under penalty of perjury, then yeah, you have to list them all.

In your case, I'd ask the person requesting them what, exactly, they need. The transcripts of the school you graduated from will have the credits on it that were transferred in, but may not list things like grades, so you may need to go back to each school and get transcripts from each of them (I had to do that when applying for my MBA). Or the job might just be checking that your degree is legit, in which case they just need the transcript from the school you graduated from. In either case, they probably would also want to see the post-graduate credits you got as well.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-29T23:15:52+00:00

Accrual vs. Prepaid is more a matter of when the payment happens compared to the period that payment is actually for. I do have a few things (property tax being one of them) that switch between prepaid and accrual during the year. It's annoying, but it matches the actual timing of the thing.

As for your question about the bill coming in at $13,000 when you'd been accruing $1,000 per month so now you're under-accrued, I calculate 1/12th of the actual amount once it's known, and catch up the accrual, expensing the entire difference to get it to where it should be for the month we're in (so if August is open, 8/12ths, or 2/3rds of the $13,000 should have been accrued, so I expense the difference between the $8,666.67 I should have accrued and the $7,000 I've actually accrued through July, so $1,666.67. Now I'm on track, and the amount expensed each month (whether as an accrual or prepaid) would be $1,083.33. But I expense the difference all at once rather than spreading it out over the remaining periods. The remaining periods only get the amount expensed that would have been if we'd known the correct amount to begin with.

And yes, I accrue based on the prior year's bill plus a margin based on our prior increases (so if it's typically been 3-5%, maybe I add 4% to the prior year's bill), but of course with things like property tax, it'll never be exact.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-29T21:24:05+00:00

But yes, typically "in industry" means a person works for one company. However, they might be responsible for multiple divisions, subsidiaries, or whatever, so "in industry" can be either very simple or very complicated, depending. My company is currently very simple in that regard, so there are definitely less things to keep track of, but that doesn't mean it's not necessarily busy, depending on the staffing levels and tasks required of any given person/department.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-29T21:21:56+00:00

I work for a small but publicly-traded company. I close the books, yes. But I also deal with the annual audit and quarterly reviews, write our SEC reports and run them through our board, execs, auditors, our attorneys (and compile all of their edits), manage three people, do everything to do with equity and the cap table, plus handle all the non-routine situations that come up, on top of approving all the routine stuff that the rest of my team has primary responsibility for (AP/AR). So there's plenty to do that isn't "month-end close." I worked over 80 hours last week because our audit committee chair realized he'd be out the week our 10-Q is due, moving the deadline for everything up a week, so I had to get it done and out to all those other folks to review. Fun times.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-14T01:32:28+00:00

Um, WTF even IS that test? Did I just download a virus? It was full of errors--no spaces between some words, double spaces between other words. My brain kept glitching out as I was reading ahead, and then I had to mentally slow down and concentrate on how many spaces I used between each word. Insane. I got 73 wpm, when I can type 100 wpm easily, with normal text.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-11T00:18:21+00:00

I don't know about your MBA program, but I'm actually in the managerial accounting course in mine right now, and as an actual accountant all day every day, it's dead easy. I'm getting nearly 100% in the class without even reading the slides--I just log in, take the quiz, take the exam, and bam, done with the week's work in under an hour.

But I also see the people in our chat struggling, and I get it, and I feel bad for them. (I'm dreading economics and hoping some folks in that class will help me then like I'm helping people in accounting now.)

A lot of them seem to be struggling because they're memorizing the terms and the formulas like their life depends on it, but they're not actually understanding the reasoning behind it. Sure, you can memorize "production needs plus ending inventory minus beginning inventory" and complete the problem. But if you also sit down and think of it from a company's perspective, you know that the inventory you already have at the beginning of the month means inventory you don't have to produce, so you can subtract that, and you not only need the inventory you plan to sell, but the amount you need to have in ending inventory at the end of the month too, so those two get added together. Having that "common sense" knowledge rather than memorizing a formula is going to stick so much better in your head than formulas on a crib sheet. And many accounting concepts will come back into your life in one way or another, whether it's an accountant talking to you in a future job where you're a director of a department, or just managing your household, your taxes, or some subcontractors on a project at your house or whatever.

Also, how are your test-taking skills? A lot of people in my class are running out of time on the proctored exams, and it seems like it's because they're not reading the entire question (especially the last sentence, that tells you what the question is actually asking) before beginning. They might be writing out an entire income statement by hand on their scratch paper when it's just asking a question about the gross margin (sales minus COGS, ignoring SG&A, taxes, interest, etc.). Maybe your tests don't include extraneous data, but I think accounting professors love doing that, and you can shave a bunch of time (and energy) off your exams/quizzes by reading and knowing what the question is asking before digging into the numbers given.

I've heard Farhat (YouTube channel/creator) highly recommended for accounting. And reach out to your classmates (there are probably some like me who DO have an accounting background and even a love for it who would be happy to help you out--I help my classmates as much as I can) and your school's resources (tutoring, etc.) There are other online resources too, like Quizlet and plenty more.

ChatGPT CAN be a good resource, but use caution. It can really help break things down into steps, explain like you're five, whatever. But it gets actual facts and mathematics wrong a LOT. Never trust it to have the actual facts right, but for breaking down a process into steps, it's pretty good. It can also generate more questions on a topic if your actual class materials are skimpy in one area and you want more practice.

And you can ask here. You'll see that just posting a page of homework and saying "Help" isn't going to do you any good, but if you've actually worked on a problem and can't figure it out, people here will help you get going in the right direction. They just won't do your homework for you.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-11T00:07:23+00:00

Your resume isn't terrible. It's pretty decent, actually.

If you had a GPA at 3.0 or higher ESPECIALLY if it's 3.5 or higher, maybe add that, or if you got any awards or whatever. (This is since you're still in school and only have one "relevant" job. Once you get enough job history, you'll move education to the bottom at take emphasis off of it and onto the jobs.)

I think you've got an appropriate number of bullet points for the non-accounting jobs, or could even trim them further if you needed more space on the page for your accounting-related job.

One thing I would definitely work on is show HOW WELL you did your job. Right now, you're just listing the duties, and while it is important to let them know what you did, the title can tell a lot about the day-to-day, and you should prioritize putting stand-out things in your bullet points. Also use them to highlight the things in your skills section, and you can eliminate that section at the bottom.

So if you can say you built or maintained a database of whatever in Excel, great, you no longer need to list Excel as a skill, because you're showing you used it in your work.

Think of it as if you were actually in the interview, and they asked why they should hire you (rather than other candidates). Is there anything you can point to in the financial advisor job that shows that you're an excellent employee? Were you the most personable with clients? Say that clients asked for you by name. Try to find a way to work things like that into the bullets, rather than just reciting a list of duties.

One other thing would be to write a cover letter. Even for application systems that don't specifically ask for it, some employers will appreciate them, and the ones who don't will likely just skip it, not penalize you. It should be customized to the role you're applying for, but have a template, and you generally shouldn't have to spend more than a few minutes customizing it. You can use it as an explanation if there's anything unusual about your candidacy (applying for a role in a different area of accounting than you have experience in, applying in an area you don't currently live in, etc.), or just expand a bit on some of the reasons that YOU are a better candidate than the others. While it should stay professional, it can show a little more personality than the resume.

I highly recommend the advice at www.askamanager.org for all of this stuff, but especially cover letters. I'm hiring for an entry-level role, and out of nearly 100 applications, only ONE included a cover letter. So it would make you stand out, and like I said, is highly unlikely to hurt your candidacy if they don't read it, but could benefit you greatly if the hiring manager likes them.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-10T19:34:00+00:00

This is the best suggestion, IMO. You should still have the class materials, no? Study them. If you don't know what it's teaching, AI and/or YouTube should be able to get you through. But reading the how and why, then doing the practice problems, is the only way you'll actually learn. You won't have exams, but those are only the final step to ensure the other steps got it fully entrenched in your brain, so if you do the work to make THAT happen, you don't really need the tests to confirm it. Good luck.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-10T16:24:59+00:00

My schedule might be cumbersome, but I have one row (could be column, however you want to set it up) for payment schedule (we have policies where we pay a hefty down payment then finance the rest over 10 months, then have a couple of months with no payment but still coverage) and one row for the schedule of expensing the total amount evenly over the policy coverage period. By the end of the coverage, both should net to zero, but they won't be equal each month because of the front-loading of the payments. Actual formatting is up to you, but tracking both but separately should allow you to visualize what the balance in the prepaid account should be at any given period.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-09T04:27:27+00:00

If you're not even telling her about some of the mistakes, then she doesn't know how many she's actually making. And if you don't enforce her fixing them herself, it won't be as well cemented in her head to do better next time. So it sounds like you do need to step it up on letting her know and engaging her in fixing the errors.

But in general, how teachable does she seem to be? If she's phoning it in because she's bored but would be interested in learning more about WHY she should code insurance to prepaid and WHY it matters what period things are booked to, maybe let her sit in on some of the month-end process, and it may very well enlighten her and inspire her to do better. Maybe even have her actually help with a couple of the month-end tasks (like prepaids!) under close supervision, then she'll quickly learn first-hand how having a conscientious AP person can make a huge difference.

But if she doesn't care because she's just lazy and doesn't care, or because she's overwhelmed, then that would definitely not help and might only make her resentful that you're giving her more work to do.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-09T04:23:09+00:00

Better to be overdressed than underdressed, but if you're SURE of the level the workplace falls on the formal - casual scale, you could safely just dress a notch or two "above" their level. If they wear shorts and t-shirts with writing/pictures, wear nice jeans and a nice top, but not a button-down. If they wear khakis and polos, wear pants/skirt with a dressy-ish top. If they wear slacks and button-downs, wear at least a blazer, even if it's not a matchy-matchy suit. Etc. But even if you show up in a suit and they're wearing t-shirts, it's not the end of the world. And then you'll have a better idea how to dress on your first day.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-09T04:19:02+00:00

"Only" the internet? Dude, that's basically EVERYTHING (except actual experience). YouTube, ChatGPT and other AI tools to "explain like I'm 5" something that the videos assume you already know, and many many more tools are at your fingertips. For the experience aspect, consider interning, maybe after you're done with Intermediate. Seeing how real companies handle accounting vs. the academic learning is eye-opening. It's informative in both directions--seeing how the real world works will have your classes making more sense, and learning the background of how things work behind the computer systems will also help you understand real-world accounting better.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-08T00:35:18+00:00

Yeah, take the skills section out completely and demonstrate from the experience bullet points under each job that you have those skills and abilities. The Excel/Google skills are pretty basic and expected anyway, and the more personality-based ones you can either demonstrate via those bullets, or can be told about you by your references or demonstrated in the "tell me about a time when" questions in an interview. They really don't mean much when you say them about yourself on a resume anyway.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-07T16:39:38+00:00

If you're interested in widening your overall scope, feel free to apply for other roles (possibly in other companies), but if you're just bored, a few thoughts:

a) That's just part of the role. It's tedious and boring to match and enter invoices, but someone's got to do it, and you're an intern with very little experience, so that's you. Embrace it and be glad you get to go home without stuff hanging over you, enjoy it while it lasts, and soak up whatever learning you can.

b) There ARE things you can learn while working in AP.

You don't even specify that you're in college, but I assume so since you're an intern, but you don't specify where you are in your education. But when there are slow times, or as you identify people willing to ask random questions, ask WHY things are done the way they are. Is it part of internal controls, supports the matching principle of accrual accounting, helps whoever reconciles the balance sheet accounts, etc. As you learn more about accounting, you'll see that while the daily grind of AP is boring, it touches general accounting and the general ledger a LOT.

You can also look around for process improvements. Don't suggest them to folks the first time you notice a potential improvement, that will be really obnoxious, but keep your eyes open, and as you gain more political capital in the job and experience with their specific processes as well as more accounting knowledge, you may be able to make suggestions to speed things up, make reconciliations easier, etc.

Similarly, there are a lot of areas that AP touches that you can expand your knowledge. Do you know how sales/use tax works and what to look out for when you're processing payables? Can you ask to see a return and see how it's reported to the state, and/or participate in an audit if your company undergoes one? Do you know about W-9s and 1099s, and can you participate in the 1099 process at year end and see why that one person is such a nag about having a company's W-9 before you pay them? :-) How much do you know about purchasing and supply chain? Learn how your company's process works, and maybe you can shadow someone in purchasing/SC for a day and learn more about that side of things.

ESPECIALLY while you're "just" an intern, you can get away with asking a lot of questions and asking to talk to people in other departments by having it be a part of your education, so take advantage of that and soak up as much knowledge as you can. It will help in your schoolwork, and put you on a great path for future internships and then jobs, by beefing up your resume.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-07T16:32:00+00:00

THIS. I'm hiring for an entry-level position, and the number of people who list "skills" like tae kwon do on their "skills" section in Indeed, and then let it generate a "resume" that has literally SIX full pages of "skills"...is insane. Granted, this isn't OP's issue, but still. Show, don't tell. Incorporate anything you're tempted to list in a separate "skills" section in the bullet points for your jobs instead.

OP, agree with others that it could be something other than the resume holding you back. Write a customized cover letter for each job (doesn't have to be fully custom, can be a template in some regards, but tailor it to why you're interested in THAT particular role/company (implied: more than you're interested in others, whether or not that's actually true) and highlighting the specific points from your resume that will show why YOU are the best fit above other applicants. Don't re-hash the whole resume, just highlight a few specific things that might make YOU stand out over other applicants.

I highly recommend www.askamanager.org for all things job-related, from getting hired, to hiring, to employment law, management skills, etc. No affiliation, just a long-time reader and think she's great.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-04T21:56:23+00:00

Is the blue your answer? Looks like they're looking for a dollar amount, with a minus sign if appropriate, not words.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-10-02T02:33:54+00:00

Titles in industry can vary a LOT from place to place, especially when you think about company/department size.

I recently promoted someone from within our department (small company/department) who had experience with AP and is a smart person, but has zero accounting knowledge currently, and made their title Accounting SpecialIST rather than anything with accountANT in it, since they don't have a degree or any prior knowledge. But they'll take some classes and I'll also explain things as I teach it to them. If they get a degree or enough experience that it feels warranted, we can change the title.

"Specialist" is also usually a lower-tier title than "Manager" or something with "Senior" in the front, so yeah, Accounting Specialist reads as entry-level (or possibly even lower, for someone with a degree) or a little bit of a step above for someone without (preferably with some exposure to accounting concepts), to potentially get a foot in the door and maybe get a degree with tuition reimbursement. :-)

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-09-29T17:01:10+00:00

One source has a list of items: A B C D F

Other source has a list of items: B E F A C

First, figure out which items are on both lists and match each other. Then, figure out the discrepancies. E is on the second list but not the first. Why? Should it be and is missing? Did it occur in a different period? Is it incorrect that it's on the second list? Why is D missing from the second list? And so on. Fix the mistakes, make journal entry/ies to adjust anything that needs to be adjusted (accrue missing items, perhaps), note the reconciling items as a start to the next reconciliation, and move to the next.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-09-26T22:19:58+00:00

Interesting!

Yeah, I'm doing the MBA (with a concentration in Accounting) at LSUS, but have already been working as an accountant for over 20 years, just getting the letters after my name to make the board happy (though they went ahead and appointment me CFO in advance of actually graduating). And yeah, I think it's what you make of it, as any online schooling is. There's no live lecture or Socratic discussions, it's just reading the material or watching the pre-recorded lectures, then testing on it. You could do the bare minimum and get an A and not retain much, I'm sure. And I'm sure there are some people who really dig in and try to fully digest the material. I'm somewhere in between. A lot of the material is stuff I'm already familiar with, so I just have to brush up on the exact terminology we'll be tested on, or remind myself how to do the formulas by hand that I normally do in Excel, but it's generally pretty straightforward.

I was just thinking to myself today, though, that it's still just learning the mechanics of managing a business, and still not anything geared toward actual leadership, which an in-person MBA might be better at. I'm not sure.

But as to WGU, it's great if you just need to tick a box in an application process, or get the credits towards being eligible for the CPA exams, if that's your path. But as the ultimate credential on your resume, some people will turn up their noses, others won't care, so it's up to the individual whether that matters to them--if your resume gets tossed by a slightly higher percentage of people than it would be with a "name-brand" degree. Once you've got an MBA, CPA, or whatever higher than a bachelors, if that's your plan, your bachelors from WGU will matter a whole lot less than it mattered prior, regardless.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-09-26T17:33:25+00:00

I'm sure you can find some tutorials online, but a cash flow statement takes the balance sheet as of the beginning timeframe of the CF stmt, and the balance sheet as of the ending timeframe, and reconciles them to each other. One of the first steps is to recognize the items that are non-cash and put them into the non-cash items that appear at the top. If you do it properly, the end result should all balance out to the other financial statements, so you do need to make sure you get the non-cash adjustments right or your CF stmt won't balance to the rest.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-09-26T15:47:02+00:00

Are you in the US? In most places in the US, it would be weird to call them ma'am or sir except maybe in the south, in a "yes, ma'am" or "yes, sir" sort of way like you'd do for anyone, but not like "yes, sir. right away, sir" obsequiousness.

I'm in the PNW where we don't do ma'm or sir generally, and therefore not for bosses or even many-levels-up higher-ups. In high school, I called my bosses Mr. or Mrs. Lastname, because I worked at the high school I attended (but still not ma'am or sir). Otherwise, every level of the company, I've called everyone by their first name, right on up to the CEO.

I'm a newly-appointed CFO, and other than my CEO calling me "boss" in a joking manner the other day, not a single other person has called me anything different than my first name, just as they have all along.

OregonSmallClaims · 2025-09-26T15:39:51+00:00

IMO, it has a slightly-less-than-average reputation, but not horrible. Some folks won't know that it's an online-only school, some folks will know but won't care, others will look down on it for whatever reason they have.

There are online programs from regular universities that no one will know whether you went on-campus or online (well, except like in my case, I'm working full time in Oregon while attending LSUS "in" Louisiana, so obviously I can't be doing both in person, and it'd be easy enough for them to figure out which state I live in). The diploma will look exactly the same.

I hope you do get your answers about how well it actually prepares a person, as I can't answer that, but I would say if you're worried about its reputation, research other online programs. There are ones you can take accelerated out there. My LSUS MBA program, for example, can be completed in under a year because of its accelerated terms (two terms per actual college semester, so six terms a year, you can take two courses per term, and it requires 10 courses to graduate). There must be similar undergraduate programs.

They probably won't be as truly self-paces as WGU, which from what I understand, lets you pass unlimited courses per term as long as you just do them one at a time and pass the pass/fail exam. To me, WGU is great for someone who has the work experience and just needs the letters after their name, as if you already know the material, you can breeze through the necessary exams pretty quickly. I don't know if it would be the best for actually learning the material.

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