A Counting School - Hardcore Chartered Accountancy

When exactly will we hit the bottom? How can CAs help? Try helping the needy

Anyone who has studied economics knows about economic cycles. Right now things are clearly rather absolutely horrible - it seems like everyone, including fellow blogger Joe is reporting layoffs . Francine touches on the subject while going into huge depth on how a CFO should handle their Big 4 service provider. It's easy to be stuck in the death spiral of pessimism at times like this. Even though, as an Economics Major, you know that things will at some point things always improve. But when? When prices fall low enough, perhaps. For now, less driving, more walking. As everyone cuts back to save money, that's causing everyone else to cut back even more. It's bizarre, but at some point it should stop. Some people out there who saved up money will swoop in and start buying things when their prices have fallen low enough. How low? Who knows. That's the giant question mark billions would love to have answered. Looking at how things are progressing, yes, people who didn't...

How to get an accounting job in the 'off season'

If you're not familiar with CA firms, you may be a little surprised to know that there's such a thing as "recruiting season." Employers will come around university and college campuses during set times of the year - both in Canada and the US - to interview potential employees en masse . The phenomenon of ‘campus visits’ is especially pronounced in the US where there’s a plethora of colleges to visit - smaller campuses often miss out on visits from the Big Four and students who want to get noticed with an in-person interview end up having to travel to a campus visit taking place at another larger school. A reader asks what to do if you had the misfortune to miss out on recruiting season - or were simply unsuccessful in the hunt for a position . Above: Non-big-four recruiting poster in Buffalo's airport. Photo credit: Krupo (as usual) I'm grouping both scenarios together because the methods of dealing with either scenario are ultimately the same. Figure out what...

Policing the police - Economics and Accounting should mix more than they actually do in the US

There's a relatively new site commenting on accounting for accountants, students and the like, The Accounting Onion . It took me a moment to realize there's no relation to The Onion , America's Finest News Source, but it looks just as interesting, and perhaps more useful to CAs, CPAs, and allied folk. The same lack of time that has caused my postings to nosedive will keep me from going through all the entries there, but this one caught my eye - it's about PCAOB inspections . Basically, all audit firms in the US are subject to inspection, but it's the big 4 that take care of 99% of the revenue being churned through the US economy. So spending more than 1% of your time auditing companies that represent 1% of US corporate revenue - to simply things - is, according to Tom Selling, a misallocation of resources. It would, of course, make more sense to more efficiently focus on areas where you're going to have the biggest hurt - larger companies. Then again, if a large...