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Some people are working over 50 hours a week. Others barely have a reason to come in to the office, because they're just going to chat with their friends and make four trips down to Tim Horton's. Is this curious phenomenon limited to just accounting firms? Maybe not, but who cares - if this next quote represents "you," then you're Doing it Wrong: "I also have a lot of nonchargeable time when i'm unscheduled..i sometimes ask 1 or 2 managers(since there are lots in the office and i don't know most of them) but usually have no result..i'm concerned that this will reflect poorly on my performance evals..what are people's experience on this?" This is courtesy the comments to a blog post on people underreporting their time. I'm pretty sure I've railed against stupidly obeying the budget instead of documenting reality, but that's not where we're ranting today. Instead, let's deconstruct that scenario. The comment writer doesn't...
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...
If you started, say, an engineering program at one given university, could you switch partway through to a Chartered Accountant prep program instead in the same university's business school, and quickly get all the credits you need to graduate in a mere year and a half? One of the regular CA 'commentators' on the blogs and forums, sardaukar - who does an excellent public service in opening people's eyes to the "hell years" that await them as CA students, incidentally - did just that, and people wondered how this is even possible. Since I'm not really into Sudoku, and this is just the sort of "puzzle" I enjoy solving, I'll answer the question for the writer of comment #427. The funny thing about this exercise is that when you review the list of courses needed - I include links at the end of this article - many courses will count for "3 hours" even though they're full year, or half year. That means you can't divide 51 by 3 and...
If there's one question students in university may find hard to ask - even though it echoes in their mind all the time - it's "how much am I going to earn if I get hired by a CA firm?" If you're bold and outgoing and have friends who are already employed, this can be easier to find out. Otherwise, hopefully you'll stumble across either this post or the next forum as you turn to the all-knowing internet for answers. Stefano at mycasite took it upon himself to contribute to our collective knowledge by conducting a public survey - you can see the results here and comment on the outcome in this dedicated forum . He reports that the range of median salaries runs from $29,300 in Winnipeg to $45,000 in Toronto, with the size of the firm - big four or regional - playing less of a role than some might expect. A fair question you may ask, though, is why there's a 50% increase just for moving over one province. This is explained by the fact that regional pay depends...
I once alluded to instances of ignorant rants being granted precious space in newspapers. The most recent guilty party was written by a Toronto Sun columnist who misunderstands what "smart meters" are supposed to accomplish. Before you ask why I bothered with the Sun, I must explain that I'm willing to read pretty much any newspaper if you give it to me for free. It's in some ways a bad habit, although I've learned to fight it by skimming over the worst whiners. I'm exposed to enough poorly thought out thought processes as it stands when I travel by air. Who was, after all, the genius who designed this sign at O'Hare? Closer to home, an angry letter writer lauded this column , blasting the provincial government of Ontario for having the audacity to try and get people to conserve energy for all the right reasons. The angry protests about forthcoming doom caused by power prices going up by a fraction of a penny was simply too much to take. Let's not talk...
Every December, about a quarter or a fifth of the UFE writers from the previous September get the bad news - despite their best efforts, they didn't pass the exam. It sucks, but there's no reason to give up. Much advice will then flow forth, and one of the most repeated points - "figure out what went wrong" - will mean more than just asking yourself, "what happened during the three days of the exam?" Equally important, if not moreso, if figuring out what happened before the exam. Speaking very broadly, you have two groups - the people who studied the "right way", and people who studied the "wrong way." Figuring out which group you 'belong' to can help you debrief what went wrong. I'm not really sure what they're trying to warn you about doing with that cable car. If you studied the "right way" - with a study buddy marking your cases, following a well-planned schedule up to the exam, avoiding spending too much or...
As I mentioned earlier, I was slow in checking results this year as I'm far from home - but Ontario candidates can find the ICAO's UFE 2009 results on this page . [Edit - summary of all Canadian UFE 2009 results is up here. ] Congratulations to all those who passed. The ICAO has stopped disclosing the pass rates since I suppose they don't like the statistic viewed in isolation - but I never minded whether Ontario had a higher or lower rate. It's a tougher program to pass on your first shot because you get to write the exam much faster than in most other provinces - the CASB process may prepare you for a longer period of time, but if you're like me, you just want to go and write as soon as you're done the CKE and SOA. You can read details regarding the ICAO's logic on this page and you'll see that 15% more people passed than last year in Ontario. If you're really clever you can probably deduce the actual pass rate. My company did fairly well yet again...
Hot on the heels of the PwC discussion regarding people getting "packaged off", comes another eye-opening post - this courtesy of Going Concern, which discusses layoffs at Ernst & Young . The post primarily concerns the E&Y offices in the USA, though there's a growing thread of commentary including updates concerning offices from across the globe. And it currently tails off with rumours of upcoming cuts at KPMG in January, though that timing makes absolutely no sense to me considering that's the start of "busy season" for almost everyone! As you can imagine from my own interjection, the comment thread is a rich trove of unverified but plausible and rather civil reports: a careful readthrough reveals that it includes comments about cuts made last summer, right now, and expected in the near future. Ironically the people responding to those comments aren't naive and challenged the KPMG rumour on the spot, asking for proof which didn't feel like...
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...
The sad news I broke ten days ago about "layoffs" hitting writers coming back from the UFE is being discussed in greater detail at mycasite.com . Click here to go to the article and read more details about the unfortunate "welcome back from the exam, pack your desk up right away" terminations. What's most troubling about all this is the fact that the website of the firm in question (which one of the unfortunate former employees identifies here ) actually has, as of writing, a job posting for a CA articling student . Uh, what, sorry? If I was drinking something at the time, I probably would've done a spit take all over my monitor on seeing that. It's more bizarre than anything I saw at Nuit Blanche. Well, with the possible exception of the young father who wanted to smoke up instead of returning to his lady and child. That was even weirder, but only by a small degree. And this wasn't bizarre at all, just cool. In the firm's defence, their website...
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...
My dear readers have reported experiencing something horrible: layoffs immediately after the UFE! Although it's one thing to decide, "we have too many young staff, let's tell some of them not to come into the office on Monday", saying, "well, let's get it over with quickly and call them to the office immedately after they have finished their 13 hour exam." Seriously - calling someone in on a Thursday afternoon to tell them they're being let go? Is that someone's idea of a sick joke? It's marginally better than doing it before the exam itself - that's a cardinal sin which I decry even more loudly, since it throws people off their game for preparing for the exam - but you would think that firms would realize that, "hey, we're doing campus recruiting right now." What does that mean? It means that students across Canada and in other parts of the world are currently applying to work for accounting firms. If students find out that...
I've noticed people are wondering when marks are coming out for the UFE's 2009 sitting. Yes, I vowed not to make any more comments on the exam yesterday, but left some exceptions. One of them would be people coming up to me and asking question, and I'll count "people landing on my site looking for answers" as an invitation to comment. So to answer your question, in case you don't have access to your firm's UFE timeline calendar or didn't find the ICAO page - and you chose to stop reading the entirety of my article's headline - marks will be posted online Friday, December 4, 2009. Edit: I forgot to mention when posting this originally, that the lucky ducks in Quebec find out the night before, on Thursday December 3. Avoid post-exam anxiety by indulging in your local community's colourful fall street festivals . To reward you for reading so far down, I'll answer some common questions about the process. Are the marks always released on a Friday...
Word has reached me that on day one of the 2009 UFE , one writer, presumably in Quebec, had enough - and left the room after about an hour into the "comp" - the 5 hour comprehensive first day case of the three day exam. I know of no other facts aside from the fact that it presumably looks like someone cracked under the stress of the, in total, thirteen hour exam. If you're new here, I'm talking about the Uniform Final Evaulation - the Canadian Chartered Accountants' final professional exam, not some fitness competition . Although there's definitely some sort of mental fitness you need to possess to survive the exam's sick game. Stress management takes many forms of awesome. Pictured: a relaxed survivor Hopefully everyone who wrote the exam and who cares so much about it that they're reading the entries here passed. You'd have to ace the second two days exams' to have a chance at passing if you ran out of the first day's exam. And unless there's...
Across Canada a few thousand students are now sitting down to day 1 of the 2009 UFE. It's not going to have as much IFRS content as the 2010 exam, but compared to prior years, where good old GAAP was the only thing for which they had to furiously thrash out responses, it's something new. Good luck. IFRS: the three-wheeled motorcycle of accounting standards?
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