There are 286,000 qualified accountants and 169,000 accountancy students in the UK (source: FRC). That means you can’t avoid them for your whole life. This blog post will explain where accountants come from and what motivates them.

The Defensive Play

It was once believed that accountants were delivered by storks while sucking their thumb and clutching a calculator. Modern biology proved that accountancy is not a natural career choice. Show me a child who aspires to be an accountant and I will show you the telephone number of a good therapist.

Accountants are actually produced from the “Big 4” accountancy factory (the four largest firms who dominate the industry). Fresh university graduates are the raw materials and they take three years to process. They are lured through the gates because the training contract offers:

• Stable employment
• A free chartered accountancy qualification (the “ACA”). Qualification means a large pay rise and near-guaranteed job security for life.
• Good work experience with exposure to many different aspects of a business

For these reasons, accountancy is a defensive play for 90% of trainees. It is a safe option for the graduate who is unsure about their long terms career goals. By simply doing as you are told for three years you will end up with valuable work experience and qualifications. No thought is required and the long-term serious career decisions are deferred.

It is a safe and pragmatic career choice. But that’s the way accountants should be.

The Machiavellian View

The cynical view is that trainees are entirely self-serving and leave as soon as the training contract ends, having conned the ACA from their employers.

However, this Machiavellian view is acceptable to the Big 4 because they easily extract enough value from their trainees. They perform a great bulk of the fieldwork at the client.  Even though the ACA is a great expense the cost is recovered many times over. A trainee is charged out at over £100 for every hour that he works at the client. A trainees will earn around £350,000 in profit for the firm during their contract period.

A lot of trainees do leave after qualification but the business model is not designed for all of them to stay. Otherwise, there would be too many assistant managers.

However, the three years are not just a relationship of convenience. The firms do want you to stay after qualification even if it is not as an accountant. They will make efforts to find placements elsewhere. Possible destinations include other business areas of the firm, such as advisory, placements at the client and placements abroad.

Trainees are not solely treated as a resource but as valued members. This is why the Big 4 do well in employee satisfaction surveys.

The Meaning of Audit

Accountancy is a good career – but why do any work at all? Accountants do have dreams of lying on a beach for half the year and skiing for the other half. But that would be a waste of immense talent. Also, modern civilisation would collapse if there was no-one to audit the accounts.

We agree that work is necessary. On the basic level, we need to earn money for food and shelter from bandits. However, should we expect fulfilment and satisfaction from our work, or is it just a means to an end?

Inevitably, accountancy is just a 9 to 5 job for a lot of people. I have joined in the bitching and moaning sessions while at work. But I have also met those who do enjoy auditing. It is more satisfying to work with them. They get the unpopular label of being “keen”, but it is the geeks who do well at school, not the jocks.

My Story

I wanted to become a chartered accountant after doing some work experience while I was in school. I did the usual amount of photocopying and filing. But I spent the bulk of the summer making over 100 archive boxes to store old files. This proved to be valuable experience because I won the first year trainee box making challenge. I was impressed by the importance of my bosses work and the respect that he got from his clients.

During university, I did some summer work in a chemical factory. I spent many 8 hour shifts lining up plastic bottles and stacking them on pallets. I vowed never to do any more menial work and to go for a challenging career. That’s why I am an accountant.

I didn’t know about the dire days I would have counting things on pallets and sifting through endless invoices. But I like the people and the work can be interesting. It’s pleasing to understand and apply a complicated accounting standard while at work. So like most people, I fall between the pragmatists and idealists on the purpose of work. Like most trainees, I’m still deferring the decision on what I will do after I qualify. But I will enjoy the time in between.

Work isn’t meant to fulfil your Ultimate Life Purpose™. It isn’t your whole identity. But it is OK to have fun auditing.

I am going to give an insight into what the trainee auditor’s life tastes like.

The Main Doughnut Sections

Busy Season
Half of the year’s audit work will be concentrated into these three months. Annoyingly, it is also the darkest and wettest time of the year.

College and Exams
Exams are a horrid burden and will ruin a lot of weekends for three years. However, college is a nice break from work. It’s a good chance to catch up with the other trainees who you otherwise wouldn’t see.

Holiday
25 days is the standard number of holiday time. You don’t have to take it during the summer and Christmas, but you can’t take any during busy season and college time is immovable.

The most interesting doughnut finding is that trainees don’t actually work that much when you add college and holiday time. For that reason trainee auditors don’t get paid as much as bankers or lawyers, but the trade-off is fair.

The September Milestone

Accountancy firms are the largest recruiters of graduates, therefore, the audit year follows the academic year because most join in September. The new first years do bring a feeling of renewal. The new joiners’ event celebrates their entry by subjecting them to the ritual humiliation of karaoke. They made me remember when I joined just 12 months previously. I realised how far I had come in that time (and how much stationery I had wasted).

September is also promotion and pay rise season. This is celebrated by the awarding of medals and the consumption of doughnuts.

Social Events

Large social committee budgets and mandatory contributions means that there are lots of social events throughout the year.

Alcohol
The highlight is the Christmas party, which is ridiculously messy but will give you lots to talk about until next year. There are regular pub meetings, which are mainly caused by a high turnover of staff leading to lots of leaving drinks.

Strangely, there are no regular pre-weekend Friday drinks because auditors are scattered throughout different client sites and are not based in a common location. The other (implausible) explanation is that I’m not being invited.

Corporate Social Responsibility Day
This is where the department take a day out of work to help the community. In my first year, we painted an old persons home. Other departments have gardened, cleared rubbish and done volunteer auditing for the needy.

Department Away Day
The department stops auditing and does something fun for a day. This may include sailing, horse racing and hunting bandits

Inter-Department Sports Events
The rivalries cover football, pub quizzes and netball. Accountants are competitive. The sight of partners dressed in fairy wings and pink leggings is pretty scary.

Looking Forward

Trainee auditors enjoy a varied (and tasty) life. If you are are having a bad week then there is always an event or a change in activity to look forward to. Fifteen exams is daunting when you start but time does pass crazily quickly. Busy season is hard but there are lots of fun times too. I look forward to qualification and the lifting of the exam burden. But the audit doughnut does become somewhat less interesting:

1) Blue, black, red and green pens – The most standard of audit tools, since the staple work involves marking up of schedules, invoices and other paper-based evidence. A red tick against a particular number says clearly that:

• it agrees to the same number somewhere else in the accounts
• it agrees to some other firm evidence
• all is well in the accounting world

Auditors can demonstrate their creative side by using different coloured pens for different tick marks. The height of the auditors art is a multi-ticked and multi-coloured A3 Excel spreadsheet. However, the art is dying with the introduction of paper-less audit.

Before then, the debate rages between owners of single four-coloured pens and owners of four pens of different colour. The four-coloured pen is more useful, but it is more expensive and the auditor becomes impotent if it’s lost.

2) Second screen – Immensely useful. Second screens can be used to compare two documents, transfer information, or display different windows – like having email on one side and the internet on the other.

Unfortunately, carrying around a second screen on your back, in the tube on the way to a client is not practical. However, a second screen has other fringe benefits. Colleagues will wonder how you can use both eyes to focus on two separate screens (like a fighter pilot). It will make you appear 10% more intelligent and advanced.

3) Numpad – On average, an auditor will type out 1,456 numbers a day. Using the numbers at the top of the keyboard takes 0.4 seconds longer than using a numpad. That’s a potential saving of 9.7 minutes a day.

Auditors probably shouldn’t make up facts and numbers.

4) iPod – Music helps you audit, especially Taylor Swift.

5) Jedi powers – Fancy equipment makes not an auditor. It is his experience and knowledge that add the value. Good auditors work out where the adding error occurred without use of a calculator. They manipulate Excel spreadsheets by the keyboard alone. They instantly recall the most obscure of numbers from one page out of a thousand in a five year old audit file. They bring calm to the audit room. They are the Audit Jedi Masters.

Picture the scene: You are at a party and meet someone new. You ask for their name, which is pointless because you forget it instantly. You move onto the next question: “Where do you work?”. Fortunately for you, the person is not unemployed but does say that they are an auditor.

Suddenly, you have no intelligent follow up questions, and are struggling not to make a joke about calculators. You force yourself a polite smile and comment that it is a “nice” job. However, you actually end up communicating that you think the other person is as interesting as beige. Talking stops and you both separate and get on with the rest of your lives.

This is where you need “insider questions”. Every profession has its own vocabulary, key concepts and idiosyncrasies. Learning a few key questions will make you sound intelligent and have great conversation. However, use insider questions sparingly before you are discovered to be a fraud. Do move the conversation on to mutually interesting topics, such as the weather.

The insider questions for auditors

1) Busy season – Auditors will do a great deal of their work from January to April, often without holiday. This is because audits are conducted after the end of the financial year. This is 31 December for most companies. Mentioning these two words to an auditor will either get them talking enthusiastically or crying endlessly – be prepared.

2) Exams – This is a classic question. Every auditor has gone / is going through exam trauma. Myriad questions can be asked: Which institute?; How many exams they have passed so far?; How many exams left?; How many attempts before getting fired?; Which calculator they use in an exam?

Be sure to mention that you couldn’t work and study full time and that they are making the noblest of sacrifices.

3) Longest hours worked – Every auditor will have their personal story of the nightmare client with the 100 hour week in a tiny conference room that smelled a bit. These are the scars of audit and are worn as badges of honour. Do ask an auditor about their worst job.

4) Funny audit room moments – Cramped conference rooms, long hours, stress and green pens have a strange effect on the auditor’s brain.

5) Cool clients – Not all clients are widget manufacturers. There are interesting audit clients. Just think, for every chocolate factory and theme park there is an auditor having fun.

Pens – the key to audit. Photo taken by atomicShed

Questions to be avoided

Certain questions will annoy the auditor. Use these with care:

1) Jokes about counting beans – This instantly shows your ignorance of what auditors actually do. Bean counters are actually “mere” bookkeepers. Audit is more interesting than that. We check that the annual bean report is correct in terms of number, size, type and weight. And only the larger beans are checked, the small beans are ignored.

2) Asking for confidential information – This is illegal. However, if the auditor acquiesces to you “well-intentioned” joke then immediately phone the Metropolitan Police on 0300 123 1212. Make sure you take a photograph and then run to the nearest safe house until the danger has passed.  

3) Mentioning the tax year – There is merit in knowing that the personal tax year runs until 05 April. However, this date is irrelevant to auditors because they are only concerned with companies. If you try to work this date into a conversation the auditor will start a long and uninteresting ramble on the meaninglessness of 05 April.

4) Posing maths questions – Friends have yelled a series of numbers at me and expected rapid mental arithmetic/calculus. This is a no-win situation for the auditor. Either we’ll get it correct and it is nothing special or get it wrong and look incompetent. Reality is that these days, auditors rely calculators and Excel spreadsheets, even mental calculations are double-checked using a calculator. 

5) Why audit? – Auditing is not a traditional childhood aspiration. This question might expose a graduate’s lack of imagination in choosing a career or a personal desire for a stable income. However, numbers are the great desire for some, but would that be admitted in public?

Do insider questions work?

Insider questions are useful. Last week, I tested out some over dinner with 11 junior doctors and a dentist. I asked questions about the hours and interesting/dangerous patients. After a while, I did try to move the conversation beyond work by asking about non-work activities.

This is important to avoid being exposed as a fraud. But more importantly, no-one really wants to talk so much about work. It’s a Western cultural quirk that the second question we ask is: “where do you work?”. We define ourselves by our work but it is not where our passions lie.

Sadly, the reply to the question was: “I don’t have any spare time”.

The insider questions idea is taken from “How to Talk to Anyone” by Leil Lowndes.

• Not leaving enough time to go to the post office and then finding a queue of ten people with only three staff working. This gives a ratio of 3.3. My personal rule is, if the ratio is more than 2 then it is not worth waiting. This rule does not apply at theme parks.
• I got to New Cross station and found late and cancelled trains. I really should have checked the National Rail website before I set off, but I had got used to the trains being very reliable. However, the combination of a new timetable and icy conditions meant that New Cross station had been like this all week. Ironically, the new timetable increased the frequency of trains.
• And I should have got a taxi back home. The train was slow and the walk home was covered in ice. Not easy with a suitcase.

Actually, writing about the journey home is an excuse for me to publish a photo which I took today:

While admiring the view, I asked the question: who got my work Secret Santa gift?

A bet for Liverpool to win the FA Cup AND for England to win the World Cup. I should be £125 richer at the end of July. As a clue, the accompanying card reads: “Miracles do happen at Christmas”.

I passed. If you don’t believe me, you can search for my name on the ICAEW website.

I celebrated by performing a petty cash count with my flatmate on his box of change. I initially offered him £10 for the box, which he rejected.

The total came to £86.68 – including 454 hand-counted pennies. I’ve included some bottles of beer in the photo to dispel rumours that accountants were unexciting.

For me, relief trumps happiness. It’s a hard road to become a chartered accountant. The next step for me is to ensure the controls around cashing the money at the bank are working correctly.

One working knee
Is all I have. I’ve been told to lay off the training for six weeks. I tried to cycle with one leg and found out it doesn’t really work at all. Struggled.

One year on
From living in London, from stating my job and from joining the church. I see the same faces and get to build relationships. Stable.

Playing guitar in church
I’ve been playing the guitar for about 10 years. I got to play at church last Sunday despite not learning any more chords in the past 5 years. Actually, I have learnt the strange John Mayer chords that require huge hands and ridiculous dexterity to play. However, they are obscure enough to be nameless. Anyway, all you need for church is D. Simple.

It went well. I lost feeling (or blood circulation) to my right hand but carried on playing. 80% of the chords were hit on time, and the ones I missed are inaudible to the human ear anyway.

What could disrupt this current peace and stability? Exam results on Friday. Sadness?

I’ve had two weekends without needing to study. It’s been great to spend the time reading, playing computer games and cooking proper meals. I spend time in some very esteemed company – five junior doctors shooting zombies at the arcade. This is why no-one makes shows about auditors.

I’m already looking towards the next milestone. I’m relearning the website building skills that I never actually had. Once again, I feel like I have to squeeze every productive second out of the day.

 
I’ve displayed a photo of the Sequoia tree at the Natural History Museum because it is 1500+ yeas old. Our lives are horribly slight in comparison. All that we aim for will not last and probably won’t deserve a place in the Natural History Museum.

However, please forget the trees because each day is important. With every second that passes we loose the chance to practice our audit skills by counting the tree rings.

I realise I’ve been insufferable over the past couple of weeks. I make no apologies.

The exams went OK. There were no major disasters:

• I woke up on time, ate a good breakfast and made my connections
• I found a Starbucks nearby and performed my pre-exam ritual of staring into space
• There were no weird accounting questions on the depreciation policy of Mexican Geese
• My pre-made lunch didn’t poison me
• I didn’t have to use my backup calculator or any of my two backup rulers. Disturbingly, I wasn’t the only one who had more than one calculator

I can now read my audit practices book in peace without the pressure of exams.

Except I can’t because the taxation exam is 3 hours away!

Posted by Wordmobi

Still better than the endless hours of taxation revision that I have to do. Why do people still asking me for advice?

Posted by Wordmobi

Nottingham
My sister graduated, which coincided with a return trip to Nottingham. It was surreal walking past students house that friends used to live in. Now there are faded stories about the time we lit a bonfire in the garden and burnt things. (OK, that was just the once on the corner of Faraday Road / Derby Road).

Liverpool
Always good to see the guys, despite our increasingly busy schedules. It’s the last summer before everyone starts their adult jobs. Yes, the six-year medical degrees have ended, but not before the drunken press up with a 75kg Indian standing on your back contest. Sam beat Graham 4-0.

Luton
Where I audit and fix printers.

Angel (North London)
Most sane people are finished with exams after university. I even had a sadistic enjoyment from setting my English students tests. But I decided that I needed three years of professional exams in my life. It’s a constant and unyielding pressure. I’ve spent three weeks at college in Angel. I just found out that I passed the mock exams from last week. I don’t feel any satisfaction – it’s just relief.

Why do I do it? Obscenely ridiculous post-qualification salary.

Karaoke
Actually, the my real motivation for work is the chance to sing karaoke on a regular basis. I’ve sung Take That’s “Back for Good” three times in July. Happy times.

Now I’m off to Canada for two weeks holiday. They say that Karaoke is banned there. Unhappy times.

Now that my boss is placated. I can finally talk about the work I’ve been doing: absolutely none. I’ve been in college studying for (yet) more exams. The days are shorter, but very intense. Still, the weather was quite beautiful, which made for relaxing lunch breaks in the park.

I have three exams in September. These are not walk in the park exams (economics degree) but reinforced concrete exams (GCSE English Literature).

• Financial Accounting – further use of the double entry dark arts in conjunction with the Accountant’s Bible (i.e. the International Financial Reporting Standards manual).
• Audit and Assurance – it’s not about bean-counting, it’s about checking if the beans have been counted correctly within a margin of error of 5% or 475 beans (whichever is larger). Drop in these random words to ensure that you pass the exam:
• Segregation of duties – you can’t count the beans and eat the beans
• Going concern – not enough beans
• Authorisation – who said you could count the beans?
• Corroborate – checking for further evidence that the beans have been eaten. Involves a rubber glove.
• Taxation  – when filling out your tax return, if it feels wrong then it’s probably immoral and definitely taxable.

Taxation is the hardest of the three. The syllabus is huge and there are a million little rules to learn. But it’s the subject that I find most interesting and useful. I can work if Mr Taxman is taking more of my money than he should. I can help friends avoid the wrath of Mr Taxman. I can also tell everyone that Mr Taxman is actually a fashionable, friendly and fun guy, who wants to help rather than hurt.

Not a photo of Mr Taxman, but an artist’s impression of how I will look in 12 month’s time.

Fun stuff I did apart from revising:

• Badminton

I picked it up again a finding a decent badminton court nearby. Believe me, South-East London is a badminton court desert. The only downside is the low ceiling with wide gaping holes where panels should be. I expect to lose one shuttlecock a week.

I haven’t lost any of my old skills. However, I range randomly from the sublime (running cross court smashes) to the incompetent (missing open courts and hitting my partner). Unfortunately, I still bias towards the latter. 

• Weekend away with church group

Great fun (wasn’t auditing). Delicious (eating the girls’ food). Humiliating (getting told off by an old lady for hitting her car with a ball). Disturbing (there’s a pheasant-killer in the church). Illuminating (you can’t rugby tackle in rounders).

• Ran a lot

I’m actually getting slower, but I still have my knees (unlike Graham {Graham is my running challenge [silly bet to run 100 miles (link)]competitor}).

So, 5 down and 10 to go. The next three are in September. The Exam Cycle Ends Only To Begin Again.

*Hoi Fung pointed out that I never mentioned if I passed or not. This is a late addition!

Liverpool Football Club

This season is the closest that Liverpool have come to winning the league that I can remember. It has been a great season – plenty of goals and insane comebacks. But the hope of a league title died in a pub in Bath on Tuesday night. A great game, eight goals, but a 4-4 draw wasn’t the result that we needed.I had dared to hope in the past month, but I was disappointed again. There’s still a mathematical possibility, but I don’t want to hope again.

I’ll have to go back my dream of audit tests that pass and numbers that add.

On Monday morning, Deptford was covered in several inches of snow. The trains and buses were cancelled and I struggled to get on the DLR (Docklands Light Railway). I did make it into the Canary Wharf office and found virtually no-one there. However, there was just about enough public transport running to meet up with an old uni friend. Who was now a TV reporter for the International Channel Shanghai. I did not order steak.

The rest of the week was spend in a (stupid) competition with my friend, Andrew, to see who could wake up within 30 seconds of the alarm. I’m leading by 1 – but my sanity is suffering. Only 20 more days to go.