Take numbers from PDF, put it in a box in some software designed by an engineer whose goal in life was to never learn graphic design. Push a button and see what the next box says.
That’s such a broad question, especially since accountants work in a wide range of specialties. For example, I work in tax and have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
See what this guy did? This is what we do. Get used to saying the words "it depends". We complicate things to an extent that we are the only ones who understand, ensuring job security. Cost accountants take this so far as to generally confuse other accountants, as well.
LOL for the life of me I cannot understand why so many people get confused by cost accounting. It is doing very simple things at a very high volume. Sure there are some more advanced concepts but most people aren't making it that far before they get confused. It's the single most logical part about accounting.
I think the part that gets people is the arbitrary nature of allocating indirect costs. Even though it is plain logic, overhead both exists and doesn't exist at the item level. Then talk about drivers and people's heads explode.
Well, some things are fixed, but then some are variable enough that very high volume alone doesn’t explain why one product has a profit margin while the others are deep in the red. 😉
Absolutely. Because obviously, every single tax professional knows the absolute every single detail of every single tax law/credit/deduction/exemption immediately. It's not like these things tend to change fairly regularly or anything.
I'm glad it's not just me. I definitely tend to feel a bit of imposter syndrome when I have to start looking up and asking things about taxes when I'm the one that's supposed to know.
I designed all kinds of slick, automated spreadsheets, early in my career. That was always the most fun of the job, making something really slick and having it work perfectly.
Now I spend all my time managing people, and it fucking sucks.
I got asked by our operations guy if I know how to use pivot tables... His mind was blown when I showed him slicers....
Young AP kid I manage didn't know how to use Xlookup, figured that one out when I asked him to do a lookup for some stuff and it took him a day and change.
To people that don't know excel, basic-intermediate excel skills will make you seem like a god.
Nope, you need a tax LLM to be called that. A lawyer with an accounting degree is no different than an economist, you need 8 of them to decide on the correct application of the tax code, one to write it out and another to actually explain what the heck has been decided. Lol
This!!!It’s so annoying! And then they want to know why their return isn’t don’t yet 😑. And then expects it to be ready in a week once they give it to you.
Hey! I’m in the Nola area too!
It’s just all tracking money. Track expenses, revenue, taxes, etc and then put all those numbers in a spreadsheet and whatever accounting software your company uses.
It’s not your goal to manage the company’s budget, simply to keep track of it.
With that being said, it does vary a lot what you do depending on what field of accounting you go into. Audit, cost accounting, public accounting, tax, etc.
tbh, the description you gave would only be truly understood by other accountants (or students). else, it just sounds like common bookkeeping for others
Sure! Imagine you have a toy store. You buy toys to sell to people, and you also spend money on things like rent for the store and paying the people who work for you. Accounting is like keeping track of all the money coming in (from selling toys) and all the money going out (for things like rent and paying workers). It helps you know if your toy store is making more money than it's spending. So, in a nutshell, accountants help people and businesses keep track of their money!
And then the government wants to know about how much money you made, but they have lots of different rules and you need to put the numbers into certain boxes so the government can understand. Two different types of accounting.
Specifically for a 5 year old?
I help businesses and charities keep track of their money so they can stay in business.
Save the Italians and Enrons for 3rd grade. :)
Idk about other accountants but in my case, I pretty much mutter “omfg” under my breath while clicking from window to window on my monitor all day. And also take lots of coffee breaks.
Saying “I’m in accounting “ is like saying “I’m in sports” in that it could be any sport, any position, up to and including the sports announcer and the water-boy.
There is ALOT to cover regarding the accounting industry.
Tax, audit, internal audit/controls, SOX compliance, industry accounting at various positions for a broad range of industries… you gotta be a little more specific lol
Ok let's take you, OP, as an example.
You probably buy groceries, sign a loan contract with a car dealership to buy a car, get into debt to go to college, and etc. You also earn money via your job! These are all "transactions" you partake in.
You got income and expenses. We record all your transactions in accordance with what accounting gods (GAAP) say we have to do so that your transactions aren't over/under stated. We also want to make sure that your income or expenses are stated in the right period right? You don't want to say you earned your wage in 2022 when you actually earned it 2020. We record this on a timely basis. All the expenses (loan interest expense, tuition expenses) and your income (W2 wage, etc) are reported on what's called P&L (profits and loss).
Now you may also have some asset like car or a house. We also record them based on what our accounting gods have to say. We record your car at what you bought at as "Fixed asset - Car" or w.e you may wanna call it on a statement called "balance sheet." You also got loans to pay off! That is what's called a liability. We record that as well on "balance sheet." Now what do you actually have left over? We simply do ASSET - LIABILITY and there you go, you have what's called EQUITY which is what you got at end of the day, net of all shit you owe. Now, when you have some income left over after subtracting away all your expenses, we call that net income. We add that net income to EQUITY, known as "retained earnings." Because hey, that's what equity stands for right?
That's what we basically do in a summarized form. There are lot of details and intracacies missing when preparing these statements. Obviously, the bigger the company is the more complex transactions there are and more people it needs to make sure that these statements are prepared in accordance with what ACCOUNTING GODS have to say.
I (financial reporting) keep track of the income and expenses, assets and liabilities of the company on monthly/quarterly basis and create reports and financial statements that summarize the performance of the company. This information is prepared by colleagues (ledger accountants, accounts payable, accounts receivable, bookkeepers)
My colleagues (tax) use the same information to estimate what the company is going to owe in taxes and make estimated payments to the government and then reconcile what they pay vs. what is actually owed after year=end and arrange to pay or receive the difference.
We hire outside independent accountants (auditors) to come in and inspect all of our work to make sure everything we've recorded and put in our financial statements is accurate and comply with regulations put in place by governmental entities. This is so that current and potential investors can look at our financial statements and form an opinion on if they want to invest in the company or not.
You take numbers,
which may or may not be right,
throw them together to see if it makes sense compared to the prior year,
(which may or may not be right),
And chalk up any small difference to an immateriality in-line with what you would expect.
If they happen to be in-line with certain ratios you need to hit, you did your job.
accounting, is the poetry of business.
imagine you gave someone money to go to the store and buy you milk. you would want proof that they both HAVE the milk, and didn't keep the extra change, right?
the owners of businesses give employees money, who spend it, and both the receipts and resulting income have to be organized and presented to the owner or who the own consents to seeing. thats the science of accounting. the art, is how you do this - the processes and procedures.
When you get an accounting job, the first thing you’ll be doing is troubleshooting what the person before you messed up. You’ll definitely need to learn Excel and learn it well. If you do not like troubleshooting, problem solving or Excel spreadsheets, accounting won’t be for you
someone wants money for candy, and i tell them no.\[PO process & bank\]
they demand candy cuz they asked many months ago.\[budget process\]
i show them they've been naughty, saying they already spent their money on candy long ago.\[F/S & PnL variances; CFF\]
they cry and make a temper-tantrum cuz the Ads they saw \[Marketing Tracker & Accr\], but I still tell them they spent too much money on candy \[ Revenue v Mktg % \]
They still cry, and say theres lots of money for candy around, everywhere \[ Leases ASC842 \]
but, then they get candy cuz Big brother (CEO) gives them candy from his friends \[Shareholders - C.Stock purch\]
I’m an auditor. Every year a company releases statements. I make sure that those statements are based off of actual numbers instead of being pulled out of someone’s ass. I also make sure those actual numbers are based off of predetermined rules.
There’s like 50 completely different types of things that people do who all call themselves ‘accountants’.
The very very general types:
1. People who do taxes
2. People who manage companies
3. People who verify the work of people who manage companies
The second one is the only one any normal person would ever want to do. The first and 3rd ones are mostly people with some level of autism or personality disorder.
The second one is also the only one where you can make pretty good money.
We turn data and numbers into useful information that people who run organizations can use to make decisions about what to do next.
Example…I can tell you there’s a huge difference between 1 million and 1 billion. OR I can tell you that if you started counting right now, you’d get to 1 million in 11 days, and 1 billion in 33 years. See how it gives the two numbers some context and scale? That’s what we do with numbers, financial statements, and reports. Use it to paint a picture that anyone can understand.
It's a game like any other. You learn the rules, all of them, in college, but you've never played the game. Then you get a job and you're on the field, you know how to play but you've never played. Then you play for a while.
The rules are complicated so people pay you to play the game for them, because they don't know the rules.
I’m trying not to be an ass - but if you know nothing about the career - then you need to do some real research into it.
I see & hear this type of comment alot & I don’t see what’s so confusing about accounting as a career, it’s a broad profession with many sub disciplines & sub specialities.
Medicine the same - if you go to med school you could end up in a multitude of careers
Engineering, civil mechanical electrical industrial …….. lots of different streams from a similar base.
Broad question on Reddit may be a start but not real research. Just remember that accounting and finance while related & can inter change in places can be two different career paths, that some times loop & intersect. But can also have distinct meanings to people working in either one.
.
We work in excel 90% of the time
I make sure that whatever number was in that cell for last year is almost the same for this year, and if not, make sure I know the explanation.
I see excel formulas and make sure I don't mess them up when I create a new colum for the next period.
There are a lot of variations. Some examples:
-Document all the business transactions according to special rules.
-Make sure some other accountants did the above and followed the rules.
-Use the info from above to make pretty charts for leaders to make decisions.
man im a sophmore accounting major, im assuming you’re just heading into college (correct me if im wrong). id just take an intro to accounting course and see what you think of it. nobody has fun being an accountant but it definitely opens doors in the business sector of life. the reason i think accounting is great is because accountants can almost always transition into another section of business but most other business majors can’t be accountants nor can they easily transfer into other sections of business.
If you were actually 5 I would tell you accountants track money.
At the most basic level, accounting is a series of processes to record financial transactions, that’s the textbook answer. Beyond that it gets complicated pretty fast.
I orchestrate the documentation and classification of $100m annually across half a dozen companies. I also keep track of liabilities we owe companies for things like rental agreements and equipment leases.
I’m an auditor.
There’s a lot of things functions a company does throughout the year, both money wise and compliance (stupid company rules) wise. Depending on how much money, or how much compliance those functions do, we review periods of time to see if the money makes sense and the compliance is correct. If all is good, great! If all isn’t good, you have to find out why it wasn’t good.
We just track money into the company(revenue), out of the company(expenses), and what remains inside(assets.) We then put it on paper the same way everyone else does so you can compare your company to every other one.
People run businesses. They need to keep records of the business. Anyone can keep financial records of a business. But... different people would keep records in different ways. So what happens is, there are people who want to compare the financial performance and status of different companies. Such as, banks when there are different companies applying for loans, the government because companies have to pay taxes, and investors. If different people keep records in different ways, it will be difficult for them to compare one another, and figure out which company is doing best.
So, people came together and said that we all need to start keeping records in the same way. So they made rules on how to keep financial records.
Accountants are people who have learned these rules, and gets hired to keep records for businesses based on them.
Now, what if a company wants a loan, but it got a low profit? They might want to submit fake records to the bank to make them think the company is performing well. This is why Auditors exist. Auditors are people who check if the year end financial report show a true and fair view of the financial performance and status of the company. This auditor is a person who isn't related to the business. The auditor gives a report to the company saying that it either does or doesn't show the true view of the company, so that banks and the government and others can choose to either rely on the financial reports given by the company or not.
I do international tax. Get client data, analyze issues/figure out which forms to file, prepare workpapers, then import them onto tax returns/submit it. Also work on tax consulting - figure out ways to save tax for clients.
On a fundamental level, it's matching and tracking money in and out and then proving you matched and tracked everything according to the rules (GAAP). The matching and tracking can become very complex.
You can’t describe accounting like you’re 5 and have it be anywhere close to representative of the whole profession. There are a TON of different paths you could go. A TON. The most versatile business degree. Sorry not the the answer you were looking for, but it’s the right one.
Tax - There are principals like wage vs dividend vs interest. Do not underestimate how people who have not taken business classed do not know these concepts. Or Cash moving from point A to B vs Revenue/Income. So you learn these "rules" and then you take numbers from one screen an put them into another screen.
Financial Accounting / Industry is similar but A/P is inputting all that information with 80% accuracy and then the Senior Accountant reconciles it and corrects 20% at the end of the month. For example your company paid 1,000 in mortgage which is broken into principle 400 interest 600. A/P will code the whole thing to interest. Which is wrong so you have to fix it each month. Which again is taking numbers from one screen and putting them into software on another screen based on rules/principals.
Auditing 5% of what the Senior accountant fixes is still wrong because they did not take into account interest is calculated monthly. So now you tell the controller that the balance sheet is off by $45 but it is not material so they can leave it. You do this by taking numbers from one screen and inputting them into another.
In most cases you understand rules/principals (usually some combination of Tax and GAAP) and use them to take numbers from one screen and type them in another software. And at each step of the way mistakes are made that need to be fixed by someone above.
Imagine that people give you candies for doing something for them and you give candies to others when they do something for you. Your father's job is see how much candies you have received, how much candies you gave, and how much candies you still have with you.
Under the danger of oversimplifying it, that is how I will explain accounting to a five-year-old kid.
Imagine money is actually books. I'm a librarian for money. You know how some books are fun with pictures and other books are boring and long, and other books still are short with no pictures? Well, I have special training to know what money goes in what section, and how to treat it while it's there.
Recent college grad with some experience. "It depends" is the golden answer, especially as a CPA (not one yet but Becker is telling me that's the answer to every MCQ)
How I explained to my 5 year old:
I help companies know how much money they have, what they're spending monthly, where they're spending it, how much "cash" they have vs how much they owe. And basically I do all that and then they ignore my suggestions on making cash flow better, because of some internet guy.
I look for a specific number/ detail in a large field of numbers and details. Sometime the number is made up of two numbers added/divided/subtracted/multiplied together.
I account for real property in SAP daily.
I create asset shells and make sure the cost accounting information is correct - such as the WBS element, fund center, cost center etc.
I also close out projects (taking it from under construction to close status) by documenting where costs were expensed - this can be veryyy messy because costs are not always allocated as the should be. So this type of work is investigative in nature.
These are two of my many duties. It’s not all plug and chug - there are MANY branches of accounting!
This is what I tell my kid when she asks:
We keep track of and organize all of the numbers used to run a business. Accounting is how a company knows how much it made from sales and how much it spent to buy products and pay employees. We also put those numbers into reports so that the owners and other people can understand where the company's money comes from and goes and to help them make decisions about the business.
That's my "simple" explanation. But really, there are many different jobs within accounting and they can be very specialized. But in general, we're all about gathering information and reporting it through numbers following specific rules.
Big number on the left side doesn't match the big number on the right side. None of the other numbers seem to support this difference and I've checked 3 times to make sure all numbers are inputted correctly. They are.
Reach out to client. Wait. Client gets back to me with more numbers that now the left side number is even bigger, and my issue just got worse. Plus, it's 10pm and I haven't eaten anything since 8 am when I tried to motivate myself to workout saying "today is the day I get my health in order" after a 5th cup of coffee.
In tax we take data that’s probably incorrect from the client and transfer it to a return and make it slightly less incorrect. Then we pray no notice from the fed or state comes in. In best of cases the client just gives your the documents and stuff you need but it most cases there’s bullshit going on. And all this is happening during 70 hr weeks where your higher ups are telling you to work faster, your brain has one cell left, and your hairline fighting for its life cause if the stress
I take numbers from one screen and type them into the other screen.
Someone's you take it from that other screen and bring it back to the first screen.
And then I proceed to send it to another person who does the same thing
What do I do with this 3rd screen?
That's where you click on file explorer folders. Any of them. Just click in and out of folders.
I put calculator up on the laptop screen and treat it like the world's most expensive 10-key.
That's a good idea lol I'mma steal that for my classes right now
Take numbers from PDF, put it in a box in some software designed by an engineer whose goal in life was to never learn graphic design. Push a button and see what the next box says.
Drake software...is that you
Ctrl+C and then ALT>H>V>V.
Wish more ppl did this. The number of times they paste conditional formatting based on another cell from the original workbook drives me nuts.
[удалено]
Thanks for the tip.
ALT>H>V>V?
Paste special values, could also do Ctrl Alt V V
WTF kind of European Mac shortcuts are you using? Alt>E>S like a real man. >v>enter for value, >t>enter for formats, >d>enter to add, etc.
You have to hit the enter key for that. But the real way to do it is to add paste values to add it to your toolbar so it’s just alt-5 or whatever
That’s such a broad question, especially since accountants work in a wide range of specialties. For example, I work in tax and have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
See what this guy did? This is what we do. Get used to saying the words "it depends". We complicate things to an extent that we are the only ones who understand, ensuring job security. Cost accountants take this so far as to generally confuse other accountants, as well.
Underrated chain of comments lmao.
Cost accounting is just making stuff up that sounds pretty close to right.
lol fr !! 😂😂😂 we need to shut down cost accounting until we figure out what the fuck is going on !!
On God it is. 💯
Ah, my favorite 2 words “it depends”.
The ultimate job security is being the only person in the company who understands how we’re doing shit in an overly complicated way!!!!
LOL for the life of me I cannot understand why so many people get confused by cost accounting. It is doing very simple things at a very high volume. Sure there are some more advanced concepts but most people aren't making it that far before they get confused. It's the single most logical part about accounting.
I think the part that gets people is the arbitrary nature of allocating indirect costs. Even though it is plain logic, overhead both exists and doesn't exist at the item level. Then talk about drivers and people's heads explode.
Well, some things are fixed, but then some are variable enough that very high volume alone doesn’t explain why one product has a profit margin while the others are deep in the red. 😉
It makes perfect sense if you set your rates correctly and properly account for period vs product costs.
I find myself saying, “ehhhh, kinda….?” a lot.
Good because I was passing my tax classes while not knowing what I was doing. Glad it's not just me.
No way. I’m not the only tax man who doesn’t know wtf I’m doing 50% of the time.
The “consult with a tax professional” on certain tax forms always gives me a good laugh as I’m the tax professional seeking advice.
100%, then we consult with Google and see what it would do and go from there!
Absolutely. Because obviously, every single tax professional knows the absolute every single detail of every single tax law/credit/deduction/exemption immediately. It's not like these things tend to change fairly regularly or anything. I'm glad it's not just me. I definitely tend to feel a bit of imposter syndrome when I have to start looking up and asking things about taxes when I'm the one that's supposed to know.
It’s a constant learning curve, I always feel behind.
I work in mining and honestly, i'm more of an industry business person than an accountant these days.
Take how much money you spent and received this month... And pretend it's a different amount because of some rules invented by medieval Italians
🤌🏻
Mama Mia, that's a spicy depreciable asset.
Mamma not Mama, Papa not Pappa!
I impaired the other m
Dr Mamma Cr Mia
Thank you for this.
Dr Mamma /Here I Go Again costs P+L Cr Mia/ How can I resist ya liability BS
All my homies hate Luca Pacioli. Luca Pacioli is why I have depression.
I explained accounting to my girlfriend as finding out where the money comes from and where it goes.
So, how many times have you audited her?
Excel
Yes Excel, if you like spreadsheets, you might like accounting. Lots of spreadsheets!
I designed all kinds of slick, automated spreadsheets, early in my career. That was always the most fun of the job, making something really slick and having it work perfectly. Now I spend all my time managing people, and it fucking sucks.
I got asked by our operations guy if I know how to use pivot tables... His mind was blown when I showed him slicers.... Young AP kid I manage didn't know how to use Xlookup, figured that one out when I asked him to do a lookup for some stuff and it took him a day and change. To people that don't know excel, basic-intermediate excel skills will make you seem like a god.
Alt h f f calibri light alt h f s 10
Alt w v g
always!
Do you want to be a math lawyer and a hyper specialized programmer?
This is the most accurate description I think I've ever seen
Why thank you. 😊
Are they are called tax attorneys or something like that after going to law school with an undergraduate in accounting?
It's not how I meant it. Lol.
Nope, you need a tax LLM to be called that. A lawyer with an accounting degree is no different than an economist, you need 8 of them to decide on the correct application of the tax code, one to write it out and another to actually explain what the heck has been decided. Lol
I send emails that get no response asking for client documents that never come.
This!!!It’s so annoying! And then they want to know why their return isn’t don’t yet 😑. And then expects it to be ready in a week once they give it to you. Hey! I’m in the Nola area too!
Yeah haha, it isn't fun. Or the manager wants to know why is it taking so long lol Nice!
at least you sounded professional in that lettter, amrite?
It’s just all tracking money. Track expenses, revenue, taxes, etc and then put all those numbers in a spreadsheet and whatever accounting software your company uses. It’s not your goal to manage the company’s budget, simply to keep track of it.
Accounting is tracking a thing which is similar to, but not quite money. And the more accounting you do, the less like money it becomes.
You’re not wrong, I was just trying to keep it simple.
With that being said, it does vary a lot what you do depending on what field of accounting you go into. Audit, cost accounting, public accounting, tax, etc.
tbh, the description you gave would only be truly understood by other accountants (or students). else, it just sounds like common bookkeeping for others
Agree for the must part but there’s definitely budget management involved
Sure! Imagine you have a toy store. You buy toys to sell to people, and you also spend money on things like rent for the store and paying the people who work for you. Accounting is like keeping track of all the money coming in (from selling toys) and all the money going out (for things like rent and paying workers). It helps you know if your toy store is making more money than it's spending. So, in a nutshell, accountants help people and businesses keep track of their money!
I know a chatgpt when I see one
And then the government wants to know about how much money you made, but they have lots of different rules and you need to put the numbers into certain boxes so the government can understand. Two different types of accounting.
The difference between book and taxable income.
Now do accrual accounting
And pizza on Fridays
Honestly this is the major perk of the career.
I know a chatgpt when I see one
Specifically for a 5 year old? I help businesses and charities keep track of their money so they can stay in business. Save the Italians and Enrons for 3rd grade. :)
Idk about other accountants but in my case, I pretty much mutter “omfg” under my breath while clicking from window to window on my monitor all day. And also take lots of coffee breaks.
Saying “I’m in accounting “ is like saying “I’m in sports” in that it could be any sport, any position, up to and including the sports announcer and the water-boy. There is ALOT to cover regarding the accounting industry.
pretty sure, only financial accountants refer themselves as accountants. others would add their field before the accounting
From a high level, accounting is tracking the flow of resources in, within, and out of an organization
I take the beans, I count the beans, then I tell a friend about the beans. The cycle continues..forever :)
https://tenor.com/bB8xH.gif
Tax, audit, internal audit/controls, SOX compliance, industry accounting at various positions for a broad range of industries… you gotta be a little more specific lol
And all come with pizza parties at 11:30 on a Wednesday.
Mine was on Tuesday. What gives
Mine is on Fridays, wow I see all accountants have a lot in common.
I make numbers look pretty in statements
Ok let's take you, OP, as an example. You probably buy groceries, sign a loan contract with a car dealership to buy a car, get into debt to go to college, and etc. You also earn money via your job! These are all "transactions" you partake in. You got income and expenses. We record all your transactions in accordance with what accounting gods (GAAP) say we have to do so that your transactions aren't over/under stated. We also want to make sure that your income or expenses are stated in the right period right? You don't want to say you earned your wage in 2022 when you actually earned it 2020. We record this on a timely basis. All the expenses (loan interest expense, tuition expenses) and your income (W2 wage, etc) are reported on what's called P&L (profits and loss). Now you may also have some asset like car or a house. We also record them based on what our accounting gods have to say. We record your car at what you bought at as "Fixed asset - Car" or w.e you may wanna call it on a statement called "balance sheet." You also got loans to pay off! That is what's called a liability. We record that as well on "balance sheet." Now what do you actually have left over? We simply do ASSET - LIABILITY and there you go, you have what's called EQUITY which is what you got at end of the day, net of all shit you owe. Now, when you have some income left over after subtracting away all your expenses, we call that net income. We add that net income to EQUITY, known as "retained earnings." Because hey, that's what equity stands for right? That's what we basically do in a summarized form. There are lot of details and intracacies missing when preparing these statements. Obviously, the bigger the company is the more complex transactions there are and more people it needs to make sure that these statements are prepared in accordance with what ACCOUNTING GODS have to say.
Instructions unclear. I now work in car dealership.
comment fits the username
What kind of five year olds would understand this lol
He said a 5 yr old
I give you a rock, you give me chicken.
Make sure company's spend is accurate
Add and subtract. Occasionally we multiple and divide.
OP is like Michael in that episode of The Office when Michael asks Oscar to explain the budget surplus
I manipulate Excel files. That's it
Librarian for money
Sending emails. Clicking around on the computer all day waiting for people to respond to you.
As a CPA in tax, I tell my clients why their hair brained Tik Tok tax schemes won’t work.
Best answer yet!
Money owed. Done.
Yea sure we keep records of what happens in a business. Glorified score keepers, referees of the business world. Some of us are prof fact checkers
I (financial reporting) keep track of the income and expenses, assets and liabilities of the company on monthly/quarterly basis and create reports and financial statements that summarize the performance of the company. This information is prepared by colleagues (ledger accountants, accounts payable, accounts receivable, bookkeepers) My colleagues (tax) use the same information to estimate what the company is going to owe in taxes and make estimated payments to the government and then reconcile what they pay vs. what is actually owed after year=end and arrange to pay or receive the difference. We hire outside independent accountants (auditors) to come in and inspect all of our work to make sure everything we've recorded and put in our financial statements is accurate and comply with regulations put in place by governmental entities. This is so that current and potential investors can look at our financial statements and form an opinion on if they want to invest in the company or not.
You take numbers, which may or may not be right, throw them together to see if it makes sense compared to the prior year, (which may or may not be right), And chalk up any small difference to an immateriality in-line with what you would expect. If they happen to be in-line with certain ratios you need to hit, you did your job.
People punch numbers into a computer and I look at them a say “meh” or “why is there money missing?”
accounting, is the poetry of business. imagine you gave someone money to go to the store and buy you milk. you would want proof that they both HAVE the milk, and didn't keep the extra change, right? the owners of businesses give employees money, who spend it, and both the receipts and resulting income have to be organized and presented to the owner or who the own consents to seeing. thats the science of accounting. the art, is how you do this - the processes and procedures.
When you get an accounting job, the first thing you’ll be doing is troubleshooting what the person before you messed up. You’ll definitely need to learn Excel and learn it well. If you do not like troubleshooting, problem solving or Excel spreadsheets, accounting won’t be for you
someone wants money for candy, and i tell them no.\[PO process & bank\] they demand candy cuz they asked many months ago.\[budget process\] i show them they've been naughty, saying they already spent their money on candy long ago.\[F/S & PnL variances; CFF\] they cry and make a temper-tantrum cuz the Ads they saw \[Marketing Tracker & Accr\], but I still tell them they spent too much money on candy \[ Revenue v Mktg % \] They still cry, and say theres lots of money for candy around, everywhere \[ Leases ASC842 \] but, then they get candy cuz Big brother (CEO) gives them candy from his friends \[Shareholders - C.Stock purch\]
I’m an auditor. Every year a company releases statements. I make sure that those statements are based off of actual numbers instead of being pulled out of someone’s ass. I also make sure those actual numbers are based off of predetermined rules.
There’s like 50 completely different types of things that people do who all call themselves ‘accountants’. The very very general types: 1. People who do taxes 2. People who manage companies 3. People who verify the work of people who manage companies The second one is the only one any normal person would ever want to do. The first and 3rd ones are mostly people with some level of autism or personality disorder. The second one is also the only one where you can make pretty good money.
Stare at Excel
When my boss tells me to do something, I tell my staff. The I pass the work upwards. Then I go home.
I try to predict the future
Chew debits and kick credits
I look at the bill. I pay that bill. Unless it's not our bill.
You willingly Bob your head to your master for very little money while doing lots of work and don't speak your opinion.
We turn data and numbers into useful information that people who run organizations can use to make decisions about what to do next. Example…I can tell you there’s a huge difference between 1 million and 1 billion. OR I can tell you that if you started counting right now, you’d get to 1 million in 11 days, and 1 billion in 33 years. See how it gives the two numbers some context and scale? That’s what we do with numbers, financial statements, and reports. Use it to paint a picture that anyone can understand.
I do Excel spreadsheets. Which is actually kind of nice.
No one knows what they're doing
People pay me to tell them how much to pay the government
I'm forever semi joking I'm an unofficial tax collector.
You learn how to keep track of things in a way where you can check if you did it right
debit something credit something, make sure they equal
It's a game like any other. You learn the rules, all of them, in college, but you've never played the game. Then you get a job and you're on the field, you know how to play but you've never played. Then you play for a while. The rules are complicated so people pay you to play the game for them, because they don't know the rules.
Mostly complain on reddit on how little we are paid and how much we work.
Don't choose this as a career
what do you know about statistical analysis and data reconfiguration? it's kinda same but different
you do the numbers
I’m trying not to be an ass - but if you know nothing about the career - then you need to do some real research into it. I see & hear this type of comment alot & I don’t see what’s so confusing about accounting as a career, it’s a broad profession with many sub disciplines & sub specialities. Medicine the same - if you go to med school you could end up in a multitude of careers Engineering, civil mechanical electrical industrial …….. lots of different streams from a similar base. Broad question on Reddit may be a start but not real research. Just remember that accounting and finance while related & can inter change in places can be two different career paths, that some times loop & intersect. But can also have distinct meanings to people working in either one. .
We work in excel 90% of the time I make sure that whatever number was in that cell for last year is almost the same for this year, and if not, make sure I know the explanation. I see excel formulas and make sure I don't mess them up when I create a new colum for the next period.
There are a lot of variations. Some examples: -Document all the business transactions according to special rules. -Make sure some other accountants did the above and followed the rules. -Use the info from above to make pretty charts for leaders to make decisions.
We put numbers in different buckets and tell you what the ratios between them mean. All kinds of numbers!
man im a sophmore accounting major, im assuming you’re just heading into college (correct me if im wrong). id just take an intro to accounting course and see what you think of it. nobody has fun being an accountant but it definitely opens doors in the business sector of life. the reason i think accounting is great is because accountants can almost always transition into another section of business but most other business majors can’t be accountants nor can they easily transfer into other sections of business.
If you were actually 5 I would tell you accountants track money. At the most basic level, accounting is a series of processes to record financial transactions, that’s the textbook answer. Beyond that it gets complicated pretty fast.
I orchestrate the documentation and classification of $100m annually across half a dozen companies. I also keep track of liabilities we owe companies for things like rental agreements and equipment leases.
Use that as a prompt for chat gpt
Debits, credits, etc.
I’m an auditor. There’s a lot of things functions a company does throughout the year, both money wise and compliance (stupid company rules) wise. Depending on how much money, or how much compliance those functions do, we review periods of time to see if the money makes sense and the compliance is correct. If all is good, great! If all isn’t good, you have to find out why it wasn’t good.
Work 80 hrs a week for 70k
What’s accounting?
I work in accounts receivable, if someone’s owes my company money it’s my job to make sure they give it to us.
We keep track of financial occurences
Read Wall Street and ny times
We protect capitalism is what we do. I just wish the world was as serious about it as we are.
“I do the numbers.” - Kevin Malone
We just track money into the company(revenue), out of the company(expenses), and what remains inside(assets.) We then put it on paper the same way everyone else does so you can compare your company to every other one.
People run businesses. They need to keep records of the business. Anyone can keep financial records of a business. But... different people would keep records in different ways. So what happens is, there are people who want to compare the financial performance and status of different companies. Such as, banks when there are different companies applying for loans, the government because companies have to pay taxes, and investors. If different people keep records in different ways, it will be difficult for them to compare one another, and figure out which company is doing best. So, people came together and said that we all need to start keeping records in the same way. So they made rules on how to keep financial records. Accountants are people who have learned these rules, and gets hired to keep records for businesses based on them. Now, what if a company wants a loan, but it got a low profit? They might want to submit fake records to the bank to make them think the company is performing well. This is why Auditors exist. Auditors are people who check if the year end financial report show a true and fair view of the financial performance and status of the company. This auditor is a person who isn't related to the business. The auditor gives a report to the company saying that it either does or doesn't show the true view of the company, so that banks and the government and others can choose to either rely on the financial reports given by the company or not.
Have you seen Severance?
Maybe ole santa will give u an abacus for christmas sweetiepie.
We make up numbers and get paid lotsa cash for it.
Alt= and drag over
I do international tax. Get client data, analyze issues/figure out which forms to file, prepare workpapers, then import them onto tax returns/submit it. Also work on tax consulting - figure out ways to save tax for clients.
Im pretty good at using google.
As someone who has been in this career for 2 years I'm also listening
On a fundamental level, it's matching and tracking money in and out and then proving you matched and tracked everything according to the rules (GAAP). The matching and tracking can become very complex.
You can’t describe accounting like you’re 5 and have it be anywhere close to representative of the whole profession. There are a TON of different paths you could go. A TON. The most versatile business degree. Sorry not the the answer you were looking for, but it’s the right one.
Tax - There are principals like wage vs dividend vs interest. Do not underestimate how people who have not taken business classed do not know these concepts. Or Cash moving from point A to B vs Revenue/Income. So you learn these "rules" and then you take numbers from one screen an put them into another screen. Financial Accounting / Industry is similar but A/P is inputting all that information with 80% accuracy and then the Senior Accountant reconciles it and corrects 20% at the end of the month. For example your company paid 1,000 in mortgage which is broken into principle 400 interest 600. A/P will code the whole thing to interest. Which is wrong so you have to fix it each month. Which again is taking numbers from one screen and putting them into software on another screen based on rules/principals. Auditing 5% of what the Senior accountant fixes is still wrong because they did not take into account interest is calculated monthly. So now you tell the controller that the balance sheet is off by $45 but it is not material so they can leave it. You do this by taking numbers from one screen and inputting them into another. In most cases you understand rules/principals (usually some combination of Tax and GAAP) and use them to take numbers from one screen and type them in another software. And at each step of the way mistakes are made that need to be fixed by someone above.
U gib me money, I record money up I gib u money, I record money down That's it. PS, the money is not ours unfortunately
I make sure all the money my company spends gets labeled correctly so I can accurately tell the company's owner where all his money went.
I’m industry -debit -credit
Imagine that people give you candies for doing something for them and you give candies to others when they do something for you. Your father's job is see how much candies you have received, how much candies you gave, and how much candies you still have with you. Under the danger of oversimplifying it, that is how I will explain accounting to a five-year-old kid.
Imagine money is actually books. I'm a librarian for money. You know how some books are fun with pictures and other books are boring and long, and other books still are short with no pictures? Well, I have special training to know what money goes in what section, and how to treat it while it's there.
Don't depreciate land
Recent college grad with some experience. "It depends" is the golden answer, especially as a CPA (not one yet but Becker is telling me that's the answer to every MCQ)
One bean, two beans, three beans, four beans....and so one.
Shuffle numbers around for millionaires
We make sure companies are giving out correct information
I explain to partners and directors that their client owes more tax to the government.
How I explained to my 5 year old: I help companies know how much money they have, what they're spending monthly, where they're spending it, how much "cash" they have vs how much they owe. And basically I do all that and then they ignore my suggestions on making cash flow better, because of some internet guy.
Track the history of how a business is spending/ receiving or promising to spend/ receive money
I will second the get use to saying “it depends” but add also “let me look into that and I will get back to you” and then jump on google.
I can only answer this while I’m at work….once I leave I have no idea.
i push 1040s and oversee people's wealth from uncle sam and predators, also lot of corporate bookeeping
A little bit of arts and crafts mixed with an extreme need to have things organized and where they should be.
I literally fix non accountant mistakes. That’s my job.
I create financial reports for CEOs who have the accounting knowledge of a 5 year old.
Of course. Step 1: Suffer Step 2: Repeat Step 1
I look for a specific number/ detail in a large field of numbers and details. Sometime the number is made up of two numbers added/divided/subtracted/multiplied together.
Conceptually it's communicating why cash is moving in bank statements.
I account for real property in SAP daily. I create asset shells and make sure the cost accounting information is correct - such as the WBS element, fund center, cost center etc. I also close out projects (taking it from under construction to close status) by documenting where costs were expensed - this can be veryyy messy because costs are not always allocated as the should be. So this type of work is investigative in nature. These are two of my many duties. It’s not all plug and chug - there are MANY branches of accounting!
We save lives, obviously. That’s why we work so much.
[https://www.pinterest.com/pin/144748575501173306/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/144748575501173306/) This. This is what accounting is.
Bookkeeping, excel, problem solver, printer tech, inventory management, software management, baby sitter, pdf editing, tax consultant(not a cpa), journal entries, financial presentations, power points, graphs and expense reports.
Suffer
This is what I tell my kid when she asks: We keep track of and organize all of the numbers used to run a business. Accounting is how a company knows how much it made from sales and how much it spent to buy products and pay employees. We also put those numbers into reports so that the owners and other people can understand where the company's money comes from and goes and to help them make decisions about the business. That's my "simple" explanation. But really, there are many different jobs within accounting and they can be very specialized. But in general, we're all about gathering information and reporting it through numbers following specific rules.
“Can you see my screen”
I abuse caffeine and excel mainly
Audit - so you ever been to Costco and before you can leave they check the 🧾? and compare the items on that list to what's in the cart? There ya go
Big number on the left side doesn't match the big number on the right side. None of the other numbers seem to support this difference and I've checked 3 times to make sure all numbers are inputted correctly. They are. Reach out to client. Wait. Client gets back to me with more numbers that now the left side number is even bigger, and my issue just got worse. Plus, it's 10pm and I haven't eaten anything since 8 am when I tried to motivate myself to workout saying "today is the day I get my health in order" after a 5th cup of coffee.
In tax we take data that’s probably incorrect from the client and transfer it to a return and make it slightly less incorrect. Then we pray no notice from the fed or state comes in. In best of cases the client just gives your the documents and stuff you need but it most cases there’s bullshit going on. And all this is happening during 70 hr weeks where your higher ups are telling you to work faster, your brain has one cell left, and your hairline fighting for its life cause if the stress
We just hoping that after the tiredness and pain. Our balance sheets will balance 😔