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    Accounting It Really Do Be Like That

    January 06, 2019

    Accounting It Really Do Be Like That

    It Really Do Be Like That

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 12:13 PM PST

    Hopefully this is the right community to get an answer on this - is this how income taxes work? My salary doesn’t just get plugged into a tax bracket?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 05:01 AM PST

    When you reconcile an account on the first try

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:10 PM PST

    My Personal Experiences with FDD

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 02:09 PM PST

    I'm posting this from a throwaway account to maintain some anonymity. Like many posters on here, I was an auditor that desperately wanted to do FDD. I absolutely hated audit and FDD is certainly better than the crap I put up with in audit. That said, if you're unhappy in audit, you probably won't like FDD either. I wanted to offer my meditations on the job within this post. One caveat is that I'm ex-Big 4 auditor and now work at a well-regarded boutique firm. YMMV slightly if you're at a B4/audit firm.

    • Pro: The job is more interesting than audit and you rarely deal with ICs or boring ass detailed testing. You also gain certain business skills that people care about (i.e. business report writing and data manipulation) that auditors won't get.
    • Pro: Since the fees and margins are better, my firm at least doesn't cheap out on expenses (except 1st class flights). I've expensed $120 on a night out with my local friends while traveling for a client, and nobody gave a shit
    • Pro: Compensation is much better. My firm is known for having a very generous bonus structure, so this may or may not happen at the Big 4. That said, I know 100% salary is 15-20% higher in FDD versus audit.
    • Con: The job is still accounting. Despite the bullshit people say, you're not doing any of the high-level, perceived value-add work on the deal (i.e. the market analysis, forecast of future cash flows, etc.). Your job is to use your knowledge of accounting to figure out what may be causing large changes in the financial statements and determining what the HISTORICAL pro forma EBITDA is.
    • Con/Pro (depending on you): You're still going to be spending lots of time dealing with trial balance data and trying to manipulate it in order to make sense of what's going on. I like this part of the job, actually. What I hate is dealing with MM companies with CFOs that are clueless or use archaic financial systems. This means at the lower level that all you do sometimes is remove duplicates, etc. within spreadsheets with hundreds of thousands of rows in order to let the person above you do the part that's interesting.
    • Con: The hours are better in aggregate but the variability is killer. I probably work less total hours than I did in audit, just because busy season is basically IB hours without the pay. That said, I can't tell you how many times I've dealt with the bullshit of having a dataroom populated at 3 PM on Friday, thereby having my weekend plans go up in smoke. TAS has extremely tight deadlines, so you often only have 3-5 days to get an entire databook and question list ready to go, and maybe 1.5 weeks to get the report out post Management Meeting. The job is moreso the equivalent of running mini sprints versus a marathon like in audit.
    • Pro: When you aren't on a deal, you can often bounce early (YMMV based on office culture)
    • Con: Speaking of office culture, I find FDD to be somewhat shitty. There are plenty of normal people at the firm, but there are also lots of wannabe "hardos" that think they're bankers, but are really just accountants (see point about how the job is still accounting, not true M&A). These people are insufferable because they take the miserable parts of banking and apply that to consulting. The difference is bankers get paid multiples of their salary in bonuses to make up for this crap; accountants don't.
    • Pro: The travel isn't as bad as Management consulting. Usually I travel 5-6 days total in a given month, so none of that gone from home M-Th crap. The only downside is you won't get to flex travel since there's no business need for it.
    • Pro and Con: The good part about FDD is that it's much easier to sell yourself for FP&A roles compared to audit. You can tell recruiters that you understand both the accounting and finance side, which is often what's needed in FP&A. You also could sneak into IB at MM/boutique firms. The bad part is that you're still not competitive for corp dev roles, which was my main reason for switching. FDD only deals with a small part of the deal process, and it's not as appealing to recruiters to hire you versus a banker looking to improve his QOL and has more extensive experience with deals and modeling. Additionally, technical accounting roles are going to be a tougher sell from FDD than audit because FDD doesn't dive into the codification very much.

    Overall, I'd say my experience in FDD has been mixed. I generally like the work and it's taught me that understanding historical information can be fairly valuable. I can't tell you how many times I've busted some idiotic projections bankers have made by digging into the historical data and advising the PE firm that it would be a pipedream for the Target to realize those forecasts. It has also shown me that a lot of the "sexy" finance is smoke and mirrors and to be weary of pie-in-the-sky ideas that will often fail when negotiating with another party.

    That said, I do think the culture in FDD isn't for me. While I don't work as many hours in aggregate as auditors and definitely not as much as bankers, the unpredictability of not knowing when I am and am not free is taking a toll on my social life. Additionally, while I've worked with great people, the wannabe finance bros and their "deal sleds" are insufferable.

    The purpose of this post wasn't to convince you either way on whether or not you should do FDD. It really depends, as much as it sucks to give that answer, on your end goals and stage of your career. I really just wanted to give a somewhat balanced idea of what people can expect going into FDD, should they choose it, because I see a fair amount of misinformation being spread about the job from people who perhaps haven't actually worked in the deals space.

    submitted by /u/fdd_ta
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    Not sure if I handle another Monday.....

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 07:11 PM PST

    Without a pump-up thread from my favorite Redditor u/sneezis that is! I know I shouldn't expect anything, but you are the hero we need, not the hero we deserve.

    ​

    Edit: Messed up the title... "not sure if I CAN handle another Monday"

    submitted by /u/flow_theory
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    Sums up my B4 First Year experience so far.

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 09:10 PM PST

    What surprised you most after you started working in public accounting?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:50 PM PST

    I'm starting soon, and naturally have been reading every thread about people's experiences. I'm wondering what surprised you after you started working in public?

    What caught you off guard about the people, work, hours, or otherwise.

    submitted by /u/Tominuuss
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    Is it a bad move to specialize in manufacturing/retail nowadays?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 06:02 PM PST

    Hi everyone,

    I am currently working with a Big 4 firm in a smaller office that doesn't have much industry specialization. When I joined, I was gung-ho about doing tech, and they were able to accommodate this preference. Having worked on my tech client and then rotating to a manufacturing company, I personally feel as though the manufacturing company is more interesting from an accounting side than the tech company was. Software has weird rev rec, but outside of this, I don't feel like my finance background added much to the Company. As I learned more about industrials, I've started to geek out on supply chains, costing, etc. and feel there's much more value I can add on that side. Plus, industrial companies can still have difficult accounting concepts (i.e. % of completion or contract structuring) that tech companies have.

    I recently received an offer from a competitor to move to a bigger office where I would be specialized in industrials and no longer splitting time with other industries. One of our family friends, who has been helpful to me throughout my short career, advised against moving into industrials, because "software is eating the world", plus tech companies have more room for growth/pay more.

    My long-term goal is to move to corporate finance and move up to a role where I have a tangible impact on the bottom line and the direction of the business. If I move into industrials, I'd aim to get into supply chain/ops finance roles and work my way up to controller, where I'm analyzing inefficiencies in how the company is purchasing materials or in the manufacturing processes to reduce expenses. This would obviously be on top of figuring out how to grow the top line, which I'm sure I'd get more exposure to if I made controller. With tech, I don't really see a position where I can do this type of work that blends ops and finance, outside of maybe revenue accounting.

    Does anyone have any advice regarding this? Am I overselling industrials/underselling tech?

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/ragingbear4
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    Do audit interns get business cards?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 01:55 PM PST

    My grandmother is pretty weird, she wants a business card to frame. It's dumb, but does anyone know if B4 audit interns get business cards?

    submitted by /u/throwaway125135
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    Average salary of a CPA industry vs public in Canada?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:43 PM PST

    So I'm in the midst of making a big decision of deciding whether I want to work towards a CPA. I've been lurking on this subreddit and learned/read a lot of about salaries, work life...etc but it's hard when most of the quotes here are from the US. Some things I've learned is that I would rather work industry instead of public, because just based off the terrible experiences, mental strain and low pay, working and staying in public doesn't seem good for my well-being.

    I think industry accounting will be my best bet. I'm thinking however, to use the CPA to get a taste of different areas too, because I am math major and working with data seems hot right now. Hence, I'd like to know whether a CPA is something I should work on, so that I can make the right course selection as a university student right now so that I can take the neccessary courses, and then the exams prep that follows.

    So, back to my question; anyone here who works in Canada could you kindly post:

    1. where you work (geographic)
    2. Public or private
    3. number of years worked after graduation (and differentiate if it was all public or half industry..etc)
    4. time to get your CPA + hardest part of getting the CPA
    5. Salary (and if you'd like the increase during your work time)

    And any advice for a confused uni student about their career? I know a CPA is a big investment, but I just want to see if there's actually a big impact having the CPA will have if I get it. Thanks!

    submitted by /u/30fr3end98
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    Inventory count on a Sunday night

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 04:30 PM PST

    I have to go to a store an hour away from me and count things for a team I'm not on in an industry I'm not in, not finish until approximately 4am, and still do a full day of client work tomorrow. Why are the inventory count policies like this? At least it's only one day

    submitted by /u/logitechmouse101
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    Any last minute advice before audit internship tomorrow?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 06:39 PM PST

    Like what to bring, conversation starters, things to do/not do?

    B4, big city (Chi)

    submitted by /u/SuperSaiyanOverlord
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    Accreditation and Graduate Schools [US]

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:14 PM PST

    Hey everybody,

    I have been prepping to take my GMAT and have been doing a lot of research on schools I'd like to apply to in the fall. I have learned there is a large distinction between accreditations as I attend a ACBSP accredited school and am looking to attend a AACSB school - I attend a regional private school and was being stupid when selecting where I wanted to go to college. After reading several threads, I am concerned that the accreditation that my school has acquired could affect my admissions into a Masters of Accountancy Program/ MS in Accounting.

    Bottom line:

    The Good: My GPA is a 3.9, I have some strong extra curricular activities (in which I would have leadership experience), I will have some work experience (Internship)

    The Bad: I haven't taken my GMAT yet, My school isn't AACSB Accredited, My school isn't exactly well-known (outside of my state)

    The Question: How demising will an ACBSP accredited school be on an application to a MACC/MS (AACSB) program?

    I should also note that the schools I will be applying to would be out of state.

    submitted by /u/CasuallyGreen
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    Where does everyone get their dress attire? Most importantly, dress slacks.

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 07:46 PM PST

    I've been getting my dress pants at Express because they fit very well, however, they don't seem to hold up well. My favorite black dress pants from there lasted a year and half, granted I wore them a lot. They are pretty pricey too in my opinion if they are not on sale.

    Just seeing if you guys have any hidden gems of stores with good quality and less expensive attire.

    Thanks for any tips!!

    submitted by /u/o0ashes0o
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    1st day at Big 4 audit as new grad in Toronto, Canada. Dress code: wear suit? with tie or no tie?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:59 PM PST

    What day is tomorrow?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:23 PM PST

    I am an incoming intern at PwC with training beginning tomorrow morning. I have been given a limit for food today since I had to travel to training. Is alcohol typically reimbursed or should I get it on a separate tab?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 05:29 PM PST

    Also, any and all advice for tomorrow or this week in general would be greatly appreciated!

    submitted by /u/bushytailz
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    Between college and CPA question

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:27 PM PST

    I have been looking forward to my future, as I'm half way through junior year now. What seems unclear to me is just how much time is really needed to study for the CPA exam. Is there more to learn after college? Or is studying for the exam just a lot of reviewing what you've already learned?

    submitted by /u/Corys456
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    What to bring on first day of work?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 02:59 PM PST

    Starting my first job in Audit tomorrow. Anything i should bring?

    • Pen and notepad to take notes?
    • Should I bring my own lunch/snack?
    • Backpack?
    • Padfolio?
    submitted by /u/ShhDontTalk
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    New Tax Law: Section 179 vs Bonus Depreciation - Why Choose Section 179?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 07:22 PM PST

    Studying for REG and learning about bonus depreciation and Section 179. My question is under the new tax law, why would someone choose to use Section 179 when bonus depreciation is 100%?

    submitted by /u/iLLThunder15
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    Assistance Required

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 10:06 PM PST

    I can't do this class

    submitted by /u/haadihusain
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    Why use Quickbooks vs. Online Bank Statements for small business accounting?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 03:54 PM PST

    I'm a dentist. I was previously a banker for 10 years. What are the advantages of using Quickbooks vs. just using online bank statements? I worked in banking before the internet revolution. It made sense to use accounting software then. Why use it now? Everything is logged online and you can categorized it for accounting purposes. It seems to me like this is double accounting. Any suggestions?

    submitted by /u/mlakedmd
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    As an accountant would you suggest this career to others? Why or why not?

    Posted: 06 Jan 2019 05:27 PM PST
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