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It's the calm before the paperstorm, and the most wonderful time of the year for Chartered Accountants working in firms that enforce a Christmas Holiday Blackout period, where non-essential work is put on hold to let the staff and partners spend some time with family before disappearing into the dank pit known as Busy Season. I hear PriceWaterhouseCoopers is good about not even agreeing to doing special assignments during the Christmas break - hopefully your firm has a similar attitude towards demands for reports getting issued around December 31 or so. It being the calendar year end, there are some things that may be inescapable due to poor planning. Such as inventory counts that have to happen on December 31. Good luck if you're stuck on one of those. IT auditors and anyone else who needs "point in time" evidence will also be scrambling with clients who "didn't feel like" or "were too busy" to prepare evidence of password settings and other information...
Something that helped me immensely when I was preparing for the CKE , and should be helpful to anyone taking a multiple choice test designed by halfwits, was to realize that the test was probably designed by someone who wasn't thinking things through very much. Reading too much into a question is a recipie for anguish and anger. If you make it all the way through this rant you'll pick up a tip that will prove invaluable on your next multiple choice test. Yes, you may be right when presented with all the possible exceptions to a scenario, but in an ordinary multiple choice question, go with the answer they're "looking for" rather than the answer that shows off how smart you are. It's sad but true: learning more facts and gaining more knowledge than expected of you can actually end up harming you, when you're presented what the test writer would consider to be a "simple" question. Right lane, left lane : right answer, left answer. Step away from the...
Last time we discussed the joy of empty roads and the ability to find a seat on a subway train when commuting home from work . I of course glossed over the fact that you can also avoid the rush by leaving before 5 pm, but that crazy notion should seem absolutely foreign to anyone living in AuditLand so why bring it up? Sure, an auditor could come in at 7 am instead of 8:30 or 9. Would it mean they would leave one or two hours earlier? If you think the answer is yes don't let an actual auditor know that. The bitterness of their laugh, while epic, may cause permanent scarring. On your soul. Anyway, long hours. Why bother subjecting yourself to that sort of torture? You must learn. Unless you're some mad prodigy who picks up everything on the first shot perfectly, you need to practice if you are going to have any hope of getting good at something. And auditors are constantly being bombarded by new "somethings". An average clerk may spend days or weeks becoming proficient...
I was going to compare the punishing hours one experiences in AuditLand to the more "normal" hours experienced by most other people and make some lofty defense about the good things that come about from sticking around an audit room while an entire client site empties out promptly at quitting time. And we'll get to that. Eventually. But first let's talk about one entirely practical upside: skipping the 5 pm rush on public transit, particularly overburdened systems like the TTC is nice. People who go home between 6 pm and midnight are not aware of what "crush load" really means. Having said that, the people who are leaving at all sorts of crazy late hours do miss out on various things, like a healthy and normal meal with family or the ability to go out with friends on a weeknight. So it's not *much* of an upside, but when you're sinking in the ocean, there's no point in turning down a life preserver simply because the shade of orange on the jacket...
I suppose there's not anything wrong with being a gofer, or a dogsbody , but there's no doubt that there's this precious moment of complete disillusionment when a young business graduate finds himself fetching a dozen lunch orders at Petit Four . Each brutally customized by the sadists known as his co-workers. In the name of "researching the human condition," I decided to be posh and get myself some food there too. I ended up observing the poor schmuk placing a lunch order so large, it clearly had to be his company's idea of a hazing ritual. From a distance he looked like the typical suit coming down for his Fancy Power Lunch, but up close you could see the naive youth. "Work hard, follow these orders. Climb the ladder Monty!" As enlightening as my research was - conclusion, he really should've called ahead with his crazy order - I did want lunch, and the one person ahead of me wasn't getting any service at the cash. Fortunately the lunch rush...
Short answer: yes. In fact, I'm working from home right now. Above: not home. Would be nice though. To be specific, I stopped working when I checked mail from my readers, and decided to write a little article. I can easily resume when I'm done. In fact, I was going to resume, right now, as I had a nice long article written. Then random computer things broke down - we forgot to add diesel to the engine running our server - which caused me to lose my entire post. That's ok, though: you get to enjoy the more succinct "take two" re-write I'll share with you, which loses most of the superfluous wit or "fluff" in the interest of trenchant analysis reducing the aggravation from my computer, once more, choosing to spite me when I least suspected it would. It's also ok, because at least I have the luxury of working from home. This saves me the hassle of going downtown to the office. If you live nearby, that's probably an hour of round-trip travel. If...
Big Four firms are very hierarchical, to the point where a colleague jokes with me that you gain certain magic powers when you get promoted to higher ranks. Mind-reading, the ability to move through walls, halt traffic with your mind. And other sorts of Jedi tricks. I experienced a surreal moment Monday after work, as I discovered what may be as simple as a perk that comes from wearing a dress shirt and nice pants: you have the keys ot the city, so to speak. Perhaps I should talk this up at future recruiting events. The adventure started when my phone buzzed with news that the 506 streetcar had to detour around the stretch of track in front of the Police HQ. Thank you TTC : coupled with the weekend's protests and violence, you could infer this meant protesters had gathered in front of Toronto Police Headquarters to lambast police tactics and chant for the release of those detained during the weekend's G20 shenanigans. And so I walked up from my office, big fancy camera in hand...
Think of the deep philosophical implications your work can bring to peoples' lives. Now I'm not a regular financial auditor, but one of the things they do is test the payroll. How can a company be defrauded via payroll? By having ficitious employees on the books. One of my friends, an English Major, work for a non-for-profit organization, and was surprised to see a random gentleman waltz into her office and her ask if there is anyone there by her name. "Oh no," she thought. "Did I have a meeting scheduled?" No, no meeting. Just a surprise caller. It turned out to be an external auditor, checking to see if the people in the organization's payroll really existed. There are various ways of achieving this objective, but in this case they decided to actually wander down to the offices and look for people. I'm pretty curious to know if this is a "standard practice" or a zany methodology whose primary intent is to haze the newbies by making them do...
Doing fieldwork in the name of science sometimes often has things in common with audits - tight deadlines are one of them. It's good to have a contingency plan if things don't work out at first. During our visit to plant bee traps we also inspected a set of marked coffee plants to see how their flowering action was progressing. Unfortunatley one of the plants wasn't ready for our visit as the flowers weren't out. Without flowers, there's not much that can be done, so we made a note to come back the next day to perform our observations. Our follow-up visit was more successful - I only have still photos from that element of the adventure, but "hand pollination" took place. Hot. If you build in time for "contingencies" - unplanned emergencies, your work, either in pure research, or in AuditLand, will be significantly less stressful! Let me know if you can hear the audio in these clips. I'm finding that the uploaded videos are awfully quiet - it's...
Dressing up beyond business casual just makes me look silly , er, too professional. Although I work alongside bank auditors in the office - who often run around in suit and tie to match their client's idea of normal business attire - I'm an IT auditor, so it's golf or dress shirt and nice pants if I want to fit in at my client's offices. The last time I wore a suit to my client's office, they asked me if I was going to a job interview to quit for a competitor. No, it was a formal "power breakfast" I happened to be invited to. As you can tell by my recent videos , the suits are nowhere to be seen. Helping with scientific research in the coffee plantations of Costa Rica, the only reason to have a formal dress suit in your bags is because you flew directly here from a big fancy formal client meeting. Our field professor even told us that you have much more 'street cred' if your clothes are neatly stained by the fieldwork you've been conducting. Speaking...
I get to say goodbye to my polished shoes for two weeks while I'm assignment in Costa Rica, where a team of co-workers from around the world will join together to support an Earthwatch project involving a coffee farrming cooperative. "Getting ready" meant finishing the work I might've otherwise been doing next week, which led to elss posts around here since I had some days with long hours. It's absolutely worth it, though, since my costs for visiting a cloud forest and volunteering to help with a sustainable research project for a week are covered in exchange for me using up a week of vacation days. Fair trade! Freshest possible pineapples perhaps? Yes please Before I can lace up my hiking boots, however, I need to close off Earth Day by updating my self-review. The review may sound like a foreign concept to people who work in companies with haphazard performance review processes, or students who are used to either getting a good or bad mark on tests and essays rather...
Short answer: depends on your manager. I very much like using the new 3D images in Office 2007 to make my workpapers look a bit more interesting, but I only use them when I know they're going to be appreciated, otherwise it's just standard yellow boxes and red check marks. Good tick marks are easy to draw, and are easily distinguishable from each other. These random thoughts came to mind after reading about Jim Carroll and how he did just that as a young CA student a few decades ago. He realized that being creative and a Chartered Accountant doesn't at all mean dealing with contradiction, and he went on to become a popular speaker on futurism and even writes a regular column in CA Magazine . Oddly enough I didn't think to wander onto his website until just now despite reading about his adventure in creating an app for simplifying that task. Go there , and you'll have a chance to listen to him speak is pretty captivating - and there's a introductory video on his...
There's actually a rule on how to treat "stolen property" on your US tax return: " Stolen property. If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner." Someone reported a robbery? As usual, I remind you that I'm not offering you any tax advice here - hire a professional if you need any of that. Of course, I don't think the target audience for this bit of tax law would even care about my disclaimer - they probably have other issues they should instead be dealing with. What makes this funnier is seeing this featured on Failblog, although I stumbled upon it courtesy CPASuccess - thank guys, that's just epic. Possibly be an epic win rather than a fail depending on how you look at it, though. I was going to say "I don't have the US tax code on hand to verify if this is in fact real," when I first saw it on their blog, but then I skipped...
An example of "what's it like to be a senior staff" writing seems in order, after all the drama of the nasty early fall combined recruiting, layoff and UFE exam analysis season. The thought of explaining what it's like to run jobs with eager young staff ready to assist you came about, ironically, after noticing that Stuff Accountants Like , an unashamed homage to the inventor of the online genre, Stuff White People Like , announced their site is going on an LOA , an extended vacation - I found it amusing that my search for the SWPL link led me to their article about taking a year off - so "unashamed homage" is not too subtle a term here. SAL explained that the work involved in writing new posts has taken its toll and a busy season is no doubt about to smack the author in the face. My own busy season is in unabashed full swing - now that I've been working in as a CA firm for a few years I have the joy of being trusted to Get Things Done, while at the same...
If you stay up late to finish work, you may just get it done. But at what price? You turn into some sort of 24 hour automaton. Remember how to stop and relax, then do it. One of the things I enjoy about my job is the flexible work schedule. Coming from a student journalism background, I'm well versed in the joy and pain of pulling an all-nighter to get things done once in a while. The risk, of course, is that you'll wake up. Sort of. You'll be groggy, and you'll hit snooze and pass out for another hour. And whoever tried to wake you up will hear you muttering about what you were doing when you were awake. Like searching for super users in the application you were testing. I wouldn't have thought of sharing this thought, since it's not all that interesting to me, except for the pure comedy of finding out you were spewing out jargon while asleep, until I read Dennis' points about the joys of blogging about the German ERP . And you'll know you had to be babbling...
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