Work at a Big-4 auditor is a lot different from my perceptions before I joined. It’s not a boring 9-to-5 tie-wearing job. Every week has been different from the last. In fact, audit is a lot more like high school than anything else.

1. Exams

Never before has a generation been examined so much: Key Stage exams, GCSEs, A Levels, university and now the ICAEW exams. If I stack my accumulated textbooks and notes, it would reach one 232,830,406th of the way to the moon, i.e. 5’5”.

The exams are horrific but going to college is a refreshing change from work. It harks back to a simpler time in our lives: classrooms of 30; a teacher at the front; registers; morning, lunch and afternoon breaks; homework; and (best of all) finishing early. Also, we get paid for attending, and I get bullied less.

2.  Pencil Case

Despite being adults, we still need to carry a pencil and calculator. You don’t notice that it is odd until you produce a calculator when the dinner bill arrives.

3. Bully the 1st Years

New trainees start not knowing which way to hold a pen and thinking that “casting” is a way to listen to a briefly popular 90s indie band from Liverpool. Although, they are impeccably dressed.

In order to teach them the ways of accounting for a part disposal of a foreign subsidiary using the fair value method of non-controlling interest under International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by South Sudan**, they must endure endless hours of photocopy and confusion.

Please note that this blog does not condone bullying. The 1st years are valuable, but the first year is always a hard learning experience.

Audit combines a genuinely open work atmosphere (reference to the last blog post about partners serving tea) with a clear hierarchy. Mistaking someone’s grade is a mild faux pas. A while ago I was mistaken for an intern and got asked to do some printing! The distinction is important because each year’s experience is worth a lot. Knowing someone’s grade gives an easy guide to the level of work that he/she can do.

4. Day Trips

Auditors lead a very active social life and the firm subsidises social events throughout the year. Except, your legal guardians won’t be phoned if you get lost on a night out. The post-social drop in productivity is balanced by department bonding.

5. Cliques

The value of professional firms is in its employees. How else can a audit report, which is just a some paragraphs stating that the financial statements are true an fair, be worth so much? Good relationships are vital for working effectively. Some interesting cliques do develop:

• Infernos – a club in London for the young professional who wants to relive their university partying days. Unfortunately it costs a lot more and you will run into other auditors.
• Geeks – these previous social outcasts become sought after for their intimate knowledge of auditing standards and Excel.
• Asian Kids – Recently, audit firms have recruited from Mainland China. The group is large enough for me to apply a meaningless label to them.
• Wantaways – Those who decided that audit was not for them and are just waiting to pass their exams and leave. Every auditor will go through this phase after a few hard weekends of work.
• Audit Lovers – A rare breed indeed.
• Jocks – A good deal of auditors play sports and go to the gym. Intra-department matches are popular, except the opposition may wear pink tutus.

Real-life auditors don’t necessarily fit into these categories. The audit lovers do still go to Infernos and the Asian kids aren’t always geeks.

Except

Audit is like high school, except for the work, which means the high school analogy isn’t appropriate. I have responsibilities and deadlines. If I stop working then I won’t be able to live in London. However, that is true of any job. Audit has its faults but you cannot say that it is not varied.

**For those who are interested, the answer to the problem in part three is a combination of IAS 27 and IAS 21. The South Sudanese accounting standards have not been written yet.

An army would not go to war without a full complement of weapons, munitions, food and maps. Similarly, an auditor would not go into the audit room without some essential kit.

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.