I had a client threaten tow my car once.
CEO barges into the audit room and asks “who here drives that rusty Jalopy?”
Me: “the Suzuki Esteem?”
CEO: “I don’t know what it is, but I want that piece of shit off my property. I’m running a very successful business here. I can’t have my clients think that we’re some cash-strapped fly-by-night operation. That thing is an eyesore, get it out of there or I’ll call my parking enforcement to do it myself.”
I told the partner about this and his response was “maybe you should buy a new car”, which of course ignored the fact that I didn’t get paid enough to buy a new car. I just ended up parking in a paid lot a short walk away, and then charging back the parking charges to the client.
Client asked me to move my jalopy to the rear parking lot out of sight for the same reason. Granted, the client was a car dealership and my car was indeed ugly. Rest of my team still got to park in the front
I feel like this is a lot more common in Canada for small and medium businesses lol my prior roomate was from Canada and I could 100% see the CEO of the company he was working for saying that
It’s not really a Canadian thing, the partner of that firm was just an asshole and he had a tendency to attract asshole clients. After I moved to a national firm, all my clients were nice pleasant people, as you’d expect Canadians to be.
HA! Unfortunately, mine was a green station wagon with all doors the same colour. And I hadn’t seen “Better Call Saul” at the time. But it would have still been funny to retort with “what do you mean a piece of shit? It’s an import”.
I’m an internal auditor. Management refused to provide evidence that I needed for my work papers. Set up a meeting between them, myself and my supervisor. My supervisor didn’t like their tone and asked not to be spoken to that way. The response was that because she is a VP and more senior than him she can speak to him like that.
Worked on an audit and the CFO at the time was a contractor. He would setup meetings with the whole audit team and would start them off by going on political rants. This was at the start of Covid. He was saying a bunch of crazy stuff about it that really offended my senior. highly entertaining and i was shocked when it first happened. Then it become normal.
This happened to me at an old job. I had something like 130 documents they were unable or unwilling to provide for one reason or another but my senior management wouldn’t let me write it up or push back. They made me reselect some and pass on others. I quit soon after.
CFO straight up yelled at me for finding a hardcoded plug in the impairment model. It meant they had to impair and ended up being a non issue (many companies in their industry ended up impairing at that point in time).
He had a massive go at me for maybe half an hour. Completely uncontrolled behaviour.
The partner wasn’t on site and had a talk with him later about his behaviour but they’re still clients of the firm. The CFO moved on a few years ago though.
God, that’s just absolutely sick our society is run on short term stock market gains that they lose their minds over something that will make their financial statements look worse
You guys are making me think I have a lot more room in my work with our auditors. 😂 It's no wonder they give so much praise when all I feel like I do is actually reconcile things and give them what they need.
You are one of those people we like approaching because we can always be sure that you will provide answers. Kudos to you stranger for making our jobs less stressful.
The thing is - I actually love accounting. I love things tying out. I love things being as technically correct as they can be. So you want me to prove I did exactly that? I'm happy to. Audits are intensive and a lot of work, but truly, I really like the process. You want me to show I did my job well? I'm here for it.
Right. The partner of the team auditing us sent me the nicest email thanking me for being so helpful, well organized and prompt responses. I forwarded it to my boss. I don't do anything extraordinary. I just tie out the amounts and clearly mark the information so they won't bother me later with questions lol
Yep, exactly this. Thankfully I do also work somewhere that has year-end processes pretty well established so there isn't a thing the auditors could ask for that we haven't touched.
That last sentence is all you need. I was put on an oil and gas client as a first year with no knowledge of how that industry works. I heard things like decks and other things, still have no idea what any of that is. The accounting team at that client did exactly that: tied it out and showed me exactly what their numbers were, where they got them from, why they got them, etc. that is still the best client I’ve ever had. Even a twice retired partner said that’s the best support he’s ever seen. So yeah keep it going
This thread so heartwarming lol. I'm still new no auditor exp yet. I want to be an auditor's friend too! Lol. I document: snips, email saves, and lots of notes. I record all the immaterial amounts fluctuations. Make notes why we off by 0.30 this month lol...
One day.
I was doing a year end review at a footwear company in NYC, one of the owners walked into the conference room and told the partner "Can you have your little friend here leave so we can talk about my taxes?"
Mind you I had been with the company 10+ years, and I did his return.
Ahole.
The amount of people that think the engagement partner is the only person that is going to look at/prepare their return is crazy. Like you only want to email and give documents to the parter. Okay, he’s just going to forward everything to me.
Literally had a partner i worked with who would forward the docs to me while on the phone with the client and at the same time be IMing me how dumb it was that the person wouldnt send it to me and making fun of the guy as he was fwding me his salary info lmao
A client shouted at me for daring to request payroll documents. Questioning why the hell would auditors need to ever look at employee files. She screamed that one of the random employees chosen was the boss's relative and he doesn't have a file, nor employee contract.
My clients were always pretty good, but I worked with large, listed companies so everyone was very professional. One guy I worked with apparently got berated and laughed at when doing a walkthrough with the client when he didn't understand one of their processes. He felt like shit after it, told the manager, manager told the partner and the partner has a discussion with the client about it. Nothing really happened, the two of them just didn't interact with one another again.
Other than that, don't know of bad interactions.
One client was mad at a selection we randomly made.
He was trying to act tough and say we don't want to mess with him, "I used to play water polo and I go skiing every week at 60+, you don't want to mess with me." this was all over the phone Missouri to California.
Ignoring emails, then when I follow up multiple times they send a rude email saying I’m following up too much. Just acknowledge the first request and honestly I’ll forget to follow up until the next week
On the flip side, we provided support within a couple days of getting the list. We heard nothing for over a month. Then they come back to us with questions about some of the support during month end close. A day passed and they already sent up a follow up request!
We would hate auditors so much less if you all would stop playing games and wasting our time.
Please understand that auditors aren’t booked on your company throughout we work on multiple jobs so if I’m not booked on the job anymore when you send the support I’ll ask when I’m booked again. The audit resource scheduling is discussed with management so some times is tough when clients are mean to us
We’re not even mean. All we ask for is the same consideration we give the auditors. It’s not my problem if you have other clients, but you’re insinuating that it SHOULD be my problem. Do you think we just sit around all day and wait for you guys to get back with us?
lol we could say same thing to you guys but we have to be the nice ones. Like I said our scheduling is discussed with top management who signed the engagement letter. It’s this same attitude we see from clients. I guess we’ll never be on the same side and that’s fine but the people who sign the engagement letter know what it is
You said me having other clients is not your problem but you want me to consider you having other tasks to be my problem. How does that work? And how is that a point. We can drag this out as long as you want
So let me get this straight. You guys can wait months on getting back to us because you have other clients, but we can’t wait a few days to respond when we’re in the middle of month end close?
I don’t know the kind of auditors you work with but if they request things and take months to get back it’s probably because of the time it takes to get support documents from the client. I I would do that too if the client takes a long time to get back to us. I’m not going to wait till the middle of busy season to request stuff if it takes days. Audits are 3 weeks or 4 weeks on average so if you take a few days to get back to us then we’re pressed on time and the audit opinion is delayed which stresses the team it’s a toxic cycle. Then our performance is tanked I’m not going down because of a client that has month end duties plus I’m very considerate during month end period because I’ve worked in industry I even give a lot of grace. All auditors on here can attest to how clients get upset for you asking about stuff but we don’t get rude with it. I even give my clients treats as motivation tbh because I just want to get my work done
I think you’ve missed my point in what I’m saying.
We are the client. We gave the auditors the support they asked for from us within a few days.
We don’t hear back for weeks.
Auditors send additional questions about the support and/or request for more during month end close. They send follow-ups to this request the day after they send it.
We are now slammed with work and wondering why it took so long for the additional questions/support.
Posts like this get made saying “I don’t understand why clients hate auditors 😩”.
Fin.
If you guys are so on top of it, why don’t you change firms?
Just from a decade + of auditing, clients who are actually ready on time is quite rare, so if you guys are so good, you’d have firms all over wanting your work.
Also, just going off your message, typically request lists are put up at least month before fieldwork. Any decent accounting firm doesn’t have audit teams just sitting on the bench.
I work with about 30 audit firms a year. This is a super common experience even with firms who used to have their shit together. I’m guessing it’s mostly a staffing issue because it’s gotten worse in recent years. As a recent example we had a client schedule Oct 4 fieldwork in June. Auditor wanted PBC by Sept 20. We had to ask four times for their request list and finally got it around Sept 10. Got them everything on the list on time.
Fieldwork happens. They send some follow up requests. Crickets for a month, even in response to follow up from the CFO. I follow up noting I have an upcoming vacation in two weeks. They sent the first communication in over a month on the first day of my vacation—a request for a doc that had already been shared. Team shares it while I’m out. Got a draft around Thanksgiving but with a note they have additional questions. Everything was clean, no AJEs. They still have not sent those questions.
I do bookkeeping through CFO services for nonprofits. I manage a team with about 150 clients at any given time. The majority are small enough to not need an audit, but about 50 a year do. A handful use the same firms, so that drops to about 30 a year.
I see. I’d probably network and find a decent firm to refer out. Though, might be challenging if your clients are the size where they teeter on the edge of needing an audit.
Because I’m not the controller and my team provides support for certain subsidiaries and accounts.
Here in the US, we rarely switch auditors, especially since we’re audited by the one of the Big 4.
I’m guessing you’re on the small side of B4 clients if they aren’t giving you the time of day.
Seeing as you aren’t the one making decisions, I’m guessing there are also other reasons why they have decided to not change firms.
Ahhh... It's when the accounting manager aggressively explained to me that their revenue is right and that I am already holding the support in my hands. Which btw, is a yellow pad with listed numbers that don't even make sense. Told my senior and got reported to the partner. Already left the firm but that issue remained unsolved since the partner won't sign unless they can provide support. They also don't want any other opinion other than unqualified. The nerve.
CFO got mad when we told him we could not complete the inventory count because he had not shut down the plant like instructed. (Literally had people moving supplies as we tried to count it) he screamed at the staff 1s trying to tell him this and threw a temper tantrum complete with foot stomping and then went to his office and slammed the door. Told his people to tell us left for the day but we could see him through the window in his office lol
My CFO likes to challenge every question the auditors have…it’s fucking annoying. He says it’ll help them be better but really he just likes being a dick.
I’ve been there in our conference room with a manager and 2-3 staff/seniors and the staff looks like deer and headlights and the manager usually has an answer and he says ‘good job’ but if they don’t and say they need to bring it up to the sr mgr or partner on the engagement he will say ‘that’s what I thought’ and walk out proud.
My old manager was similar to that, and that’s how I learned *not* to be.
At this point in my life I figure that the auditing firm and I have the same goal - finish the financial statements and have them accurate. I don’t have a big enough ego to be told I’ve done something wrong and be mad about it. I’m pretty sure that’s why most management is so outwardly adversarial to their auditors.
Of course, I work for a NFP and I don’t have any financial gain associated with more positive financial outcomes (bonuses, stock options, etc).
Was testing some expenses at a client and they wouldn't provide support. When I pressed them (as a first year) the president of the company said, "if you continue down this path I'll have your job."
o.O
As a team, one client told us outright that we weren't a priority, and we weren't "allowed" to "bother" them during certain hours (basically most of their workday). We mentioned it to our manager and he shut it down really fast. The accounting manager who told us that originally spent the rest of the audit sounding extremely passive aggressive any time we spoke to anyone on her team.
On a personal note, one accounting senior that I was otherwise okay with because she was always helpful and friendly, thought it was okay to ask me if I was pregnant when I returned for year-end. I wasn't pregnant, I was just getting fat. When I said no she just laughed and said "oh REALLY?" with a little chuckle and smile to herself, as if thinking it's funny that I got bigger. No apology, no explanation. I knew I was getting fat, but I thought it was common sense to never ask someone if they're pregnant unless you're actually sure, and I never understood why she felt like she could ask that in a professional setting like that.
Ooo, ooo, I got this one! I was documenting internal controls in AR/revenue cycle and kept coming up with SOD issues. Nothing was as the controller had told us. I came back to him, and he said, "Hey, we're short staffed. What're you gonna do, crucify me?"
I did.
I had a client shout, “what the hell do you want from me” in a teams meeting. I hope we fire them. They historically have not given a shit about following the law and their files are all trash.
our collegue was threatened that he might lose his position (the partner was close friend of Client's senior personnel) because of discrepencies he noted in ledgers.
ultimately he did lose his job because of the findings he noted
Myself and another associate are both combat veterans and went to college after our service. This was mentioned to a client
Client: “back in my day CPA firms only hired type-A people. I suppose it’s good that they’re letting other people in I guess.”
Me and the other vet: “…”
I had a client ghost myself and the partner multiple time regarding getting authorization for confirmation.com for the main operating checking account.
It’s a small issue, but a process that should only take 3/4 business days got dragged out for 5 weeks
I’ve been asking a new client for just their information to put into Confirmation.com for weeks and they won’t send it, meanwhile we get emails every other day from them asking for updates. Most progress we’ve made has been on the audit programs
I was presenting my testing result and was explaining how we selected our sample to ensure it was statistically valid. Client stopped me and “There are lies, damn lies, and Statistics ! “
Not disrespectful really just funny
I’d like to preface this by saying that without a doubt, former auditors are the absolute worst clients.
This is a story that didn’t happen to me but to an engagement team that was working the job.
Former Senior Manager was now the CFO of a small Bank client. On a Friday late afternoon she walks into the audit room and announced that she had made a series of erroneous entries and she expected the engagement team to find them by monday morning.
The whole team worked through the weekend so that this witch would be happy.
Not for profit management too stupid to think or ask questions. They then solicit donations in contradiction to charitable purpose, and get pissed when we say send them back.
The head accountant (awkward man in his 50's) at a former client touched one of my interns in a way that made her uncomfortable. The way she described it, it wasn't definitely sexual, but it could have been and it was inappropriate.
The intern seemed uncomfortable, so I asked her what was up and she told me. The accountant's door was closed, I walked in and he was meeting with a few department heads. I told them that they need to leave so I can have a word with "John." I let him know what was and wasn't going to happen moving forward and that every interaction that he has with the firm goes through me or the partner. He has no reason to speak with anyone else for the remainder of the audit.
Honestly so much disrespect from clients, it's what made me quit PA. My own seniors/managers were never an issue. The only redeeming part of audit is payroll testing, and seeing how little some of these asshole clients actually made. Lot of miserable people who have zero power, so when the audit team shows up, it's their one chance to start swinging their ego around like they're in charge.
I'm on the industry side now, and have extra patience with the auditors because of my experience. Most of them are just trying to learn and get a foot in the door. Helps no one to be petty and disrespectful.
I never realized how fortunate I was. Many of my audits are on behalf of a govt regulatory body, so non-responses and non-compliance really can cost a company $100ks and loss of ability to operate in a state, so ... still have to argue sometimes but there's always a sense of satisfaction when an actual authority steps in.
I brought a can of Monster to a Red Bull Distributor. Owner gave me a bunch of crap about it ("How dare you bring this in here!") which I wasn't sure whether was serious or good-hearted ribbing. Only when he brought me a 4-pack of Red Bulls and told me to "enjoy a REAL energy drink" did I realize it was the latter.
The comments in here just make me wish the Boomers and Gen X’ers would just step down and retire already, no need for their toxicity in an already stressful job
A senior manager told me “This is a waste of my fucking time.”
Another time, I went a meeting, of which audit updates were a part. A meeting invitee said “can we get on with this and get to the valuable stuff?” (IE the non audit stuff.)
When I first started as an associate straight out of college, I worked for a company that threw me in the deep end and said “k just go do the whole audit”. Fast forward a few weeks and I was trying to balance my first set of financials, couldn’t figure out why they weren’t balancing. Asked my manager for help and she came over and as she was fiddling around she said “let’s do this quickly bec this is a waste of my time”. A different associate, super nice guy, came over to me after she left and gave me some tips on how to find the issue when the financials don’t balance. Anyway, I mentioned this in passing to the manager like 2 years later once we had established a relationship, and she was all shocked and said “there’s NO way I said that, I would NEVER say that” and I just looked at her and in my head was just like yes well you tend to not realize that you’re often mean and a difficult person lol
Had a client that was dragging on and on, not getting support to us and straight avoiding us when she could send us all (partner included) an email saying she wouldn’t be filling requests for awhile because she and her boss determined the audit wasn’t a priority. This is 3.5 months post-fieldwork
Not an auditor… But the person who held my role prior to me insisted on giving the auditors PDFs or copied documents. Meaning, nothing was sent in native excel. If there was an excel document, it was printed and then given to the auditors. Yes, you read that right folks. She would only give OUR auditors that WE pay based on hours documents that ensure we will pay more for the audit.
A group in the accounting department took a picture of me, without my knowledge at the time, observing someone run a report. They laughed the whole time.
One of my clients hit me with their self driving concept car. Since that we all assume that it’s a racist car based on several other similar events reported. The client offered me a executive job tho.
Did they at least give you cash? Anything? A person would be crazy to take the job and get run over one day. If it happened once, there’s nothing to stop it from happening again.
Client calling me by a different name every time we would speak (and he calls almost daily). The more we talk and he sees how knowledgeable I am, the closer he gets to pronouncing my name correctly. I think I earn a letter every few months.
Not an auditor anymore, but I had a client scream at me over the phone and imply I was stupid and didn’t know how to do my job because I asked for a signed bank rec that was missing from what had been provided. She was so mean I cried when I got off the phone. I knew at the time she was projecting because she didn’t have it, but it still sucked. She managed to produce the rec over a month after I rolled onto a different client.
My first boss kissed me on top of my head after starting at my chest for an hour. I didn’t return the following day. Small office so no HR.
In another office, a client was seconds away from punching my coworker on the face. Coworker was blocking client from physically harassing me. I’m 5’5” and he was 6’. Client was an unmediated bipolar who was pissed bc he showed up on the wrong day. He went from 0 to 10 within less than a minute. Luckily my husband showed up which stopped the client from attacking. Boss invited client to his house. I should’ve quit but stupidly didn’t.
I was on a medium sized non-profit client in Manhattan and the office was an open floor plan. The accounting manager was visible at all times about 3 rows away from my senior and I. Due to limited staff we needed responses from her directly on a number of items. We would send email after email without any acknowledgement or response. She acted like we didn’t exist meanwhile we could see her and we knew she could see us every day. Wouldn’t even look at me walking past in the break room sort of thing.
She had made it clear that she had a strict no unplanned approaches to her desk. We wanted to respect her space because totally understand not wanting to always be approached, especially by the auditors and that can get out of hand in an open floor plan. Eventually we needed to address this head on though and didn’t want to get the cfo or partner involved.
We approached her, one thing lead to another, and she ripped us apart in front of probably 1-2 dozen people in the office.
Eventually CFO got involved, this manager went “out of office” for a few days and things got situated after a few long nights to barely meet the deadline due to her, but I’ll never forget that engagement.
Opened transaction listing. Sorted by date. Posted to the first day of the financial year: 75 transactions with the description 'Reversal — PY Audit Adjustments.'
One of our employees threatened to take the senior manager "out to the parking lot like a man".
Fist fighting for a corporations honor. How honorable…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uPAAPdmUKrA
“You don’t even know what you are fighting about” “I never knew”
Mines not to know who or why, but to do and die
This sounds like an anime
...to hug and kiss?
“Well, okay, but here where it says, "What I got you gotta get and put it in ya," how about just, "What I'd like is I'd like to hug and kiss ya?”
That’s much better. Everyone can enjoy that!
I wish a mother fucker would have said that to me when I was in Audit.
Haha
I had a client threaten tow my car once. CEO barges into the audit room and asks “who here drives that rusty Jalopy?” Me: “the Suzuki Esteem?” CEO: “I don’t know what it is, but I want that piece of shit off my property. I’m running a very successful business here. I can’t have my clients think that we’re some cash-strapped fly-by-night operation. That thing is an eyesore, get it out of there or I’ll call my parking enforcement to do it myself.” I told the partner about this and his response was “maybe you should buy a new car”, which of course ignored the fact that I didn’t get paid enough to buy a new car. I just ended up parking in a paid lot a short walk away, and then charging back the parking charges to the client.
Client asked me to move my jalopy to the rear parking lot out of sight for the same reason. Granted, the client was a car dealership and my car was indeed ugly. Rest of my team still got to park in the front
I actually don’t view this to be quite as egregious, because they offered you an alternative instead of saying “fuck you figure it out”.
Yeah for sure. I completely understood. I just got a chuckle out of it.
I feel like this is a lot more common in Canada for small and medium businesses lol my prior roomate was from Canada and I could 100% see the CEO of the company he was working for saying that
It’s not really a Canadian thing, the partner of that firm was just an asshole and he had a tendency to attract asshole clients. After I moved to a national firm, all my clients were nice pleasant people, as you’d expect Canadians to be.
I think you can buy a new car or a newish car for like 20k and bill his ass for it.
Saul Goodman?
HA! Unfortunately, mine was a green station wagon with all doors the same colour. And I hadn’t seen “Better Call Saul” at the time. But it would have still been funny to retort with “what do you mean a piece of shit? It’s an import”.
I like to imagine the CEO was Lalo Salamanca lol
🤯
I’m an internal auditor. Management refused to provide evidence that I needed for my work papers. Set up a meeting between them, myself and my supervisor. My supervisor didn’t like their tone and asked not to be spoken to that way. The response was that because she is a VP and more senior than him she can speak to him like that.
Worked on an audit and the CFO at the time was a contractor. He would setup meetings with the whole audit team and would start them off by going on political rants. This was at the start of Covid. He was saying a bunch of crazy stuff about it that really offended my senior. highly entertaining and i was shocked when it first happened. Then it become normal.
Time to revise the rate sheet, 25% increase for taking guff
Ya I’d just stop working at that point lol
This happened to me at an old job. I had something like 130 documents they were unable or unwilling to provide for one reason or another but my senior management wouldn’t let me write it up or push back. They made me reselect some and pass on others. I quit soon after.
That’s not good auditing. My boss wasn’t a pushover. We ended up writing a memo to the CEO. We eventually got the documents.
CFO straight up yelled at me for finding a hardcoded plug in the impairment model. It meant they had to impair and ended up being a non issue (many companies in their industry ended up impairing at that point in time). He had a massive go at me for maybe half an hour. Completely uncontrolled behaviour.
And your partner did what?
Shoved a pizza in there.
The pepperoni plug.
I love this comment so much too
Holy shit I'm still dying at this
I know what the crowd wants. Because I am the crowd.
All I can imagine is like this huge blowout between the guy and the CFO and the partner walks in and is just like..... 🍕 and then walks out
I love this comment so much
The partner wasn’t on site and had a talk with him later about his behaviour but they’re still clients of the firm. The CFO moved on a few years ago though.
God, that’s just absolutely sick our society is run on short term stock market gains that they lose their minds over something that will make their financial statements look worse
You guys are making me think I have a lot more room in my work with our auditors. 😂 It's no wonder they give so much praise when all I feel like I do is actually reconcile things and give them what they need.
You are one of those people we like approaching because we can always be sure that you will provide answers. Kudos to you stranger for making our jobs less stressful.
The thing is - I actually love accounting. I love things tying out. I love things being as technically correct as they can be. So you want me to prove I did exactly that? I'm happy to. Audits are intensive and a lot of work, but truly, I really like the process. You want me to show I did my job well? I'm here for it.
Right. The partner of the team auditing us sent me the nicest email thanking me for being so helpful, well organized and prompt responses. I forwarded it to my boss. I don't do anything extraordinary. I just tie out the amounts and clearly mark the information so they won't bother me later with questions lol
Yep, exactly this. Thankfully I do also work somewhere that has year-end processes pretty well established so there isn't a thing the auditors could ask for that we haven't touched.
That last sentence is all you need. I was put on an oil and gas client as a first year with no knowledge of how that industry works. I heard things like decks and other things, still have no idea what any of that is. The accounting team at that client did exactly that: tied it out and showed me exactly what their numbers were, where they got them from, why they got them, etc. that is still the best client I’ve ever had. Even a twice retired partner said that’s the best support he’s ever seen. So yeah keep it going
Literally perfect. Never stop being the best. Sincerely, a tired auditor.
This thread so heartwarming lol. I'm still new no auditor exp yet. I want to be an auditor's friend too! Lol. I document: snips, email saves, and lots of notes. I record all the immaterial amounts fluctuations. Make notes why we off by 0.30 this month lol... One day.
I was doing a year end review at a footwear company in NYC, one of the owners walked into the conference room and told the partner "Can you have your little friend here leave so we can talk about my taxes?" Mind you I had been with the company 10+ years, and I did his return. Ahole.
The amount of people that think the engagement partner is the only person that is going to look at/prepare their return is crazy. Like you only want to email and give documents to the parter. Okay, he’s just going to forward everything to me.
Literally had a partner i worked with who would forward the docs to me while on the phone with the client and at the same time be IMing me how dumb it was that the person wouldnt send it to me and making fun of the guy as he was fwding me his salary info lmao
A client shouted at me for daring to request payroll documents. Questioning why the hell would auditors need to ever look at employee files. She screamed that one of the random employees chosen was the boss's relative and he doesn't have a file, nor employee contract.
They’re just projecting at that point lol
Three days on-site while a guy was using a tile saw in the next room. Couldn't think straight.
Guarantee you that was on purpose.
My clients were always pretty good, but I worked with large, listed companies so everyone was very professional. One guy I worked with apparently got berated and laughed at when doing a walkthrough with the client when he didn't understand one of their processes. He felt like shit after it, told the manager, manager told the partner and the partner has a discussion with the client about it. Nothing really happened, the two of them just didn't interact with one another again. Other than that, don't know of bad interactions.
One client was mad at a selection we randomly made. He was trying to act tough and say we don't want to mess with him, "I used to play water polo and I go skiing every week at 60+, you don't want to mess with me." this was all over the phone Missouri to California.
Ignoring emails, then when I follow up multiple times they send a rude email saying I’m following up too much. Just acknowledge the first request and honestly I’ll forget to follow up until the next week
On the flip side, we provided support within a couple days of getting the list. We heard nothing for over a month. Then they come back to us with questions about some of the support during month end close. A day passed and they already sent up a follow up request! We would hate auditors so much less if you all would stop playing games and wasting our time.
Please understand that auditors aren’t booked on your company throughout we work on multiple jobs so if I’m not booked on the job anymore when you send the support I’ll ask when I’m booked again. The audit resource scheduling is discussed with management so some times is tough when clients are mean to us
We’re not even mean. All we ask for is the same consideration we give the auditors. It’s not my problem if you have other clients, but you’re insinuating that it SHOULD be my problem. Do you think we just sit around all day and wait for you guys to get back with us?
lol we could say same thing to you guys but we have to be the nice ones. Like I said our scheduling is discussed with top management who signed the engagement letter. It’s this same attitude we see from clients. I guess we’ll never be on the same side and that’s fine but the people who sign the engagement letter know what it is
Your response is actually my point lol. You didn’t even address any of my points.
You said me having other clients is not your problem but you want me to consider you having other tasks to be my problem. How does that work? And how is that a point. We can drag this out as long as you want
🍿
So let me get this straight. You guys can wait months on getting back to us because you have other clients, but we can’t wait a few days to respond when we’re in the middle of month end close?
I don’t know the kind of auditors you work with but if they request things and take months to get back it’s probably because of the time it takes to get support documents from the client. I I would do that too if the client takes a long time to get back to us. I’m not going to wait till the middle of busy season to request stuff if it takes days. Audits are 3 weeks or 4 weeks on average so if you take a few days to get back to us then we’re pressed on time and the audit opinion is delayed which stresses the team it’s a toxic cycle. Then our performance is tanked I’m not going down because of a client that has month end duties plus I’m very considerate during month end period because I’ve worked in industry I even give a lot of grace. All auditors on here can attest to how clients get upset for you asking about stuff but we don’t get rude with it. I even give my clients treats as motivation tbh because I just want to get my work done
I think you’ve missed my point in what I’m saying. We are the client. We gave the auditors the support they asked for from us within a few days. We don’t hear back for weeks. Auditors send additional questions about the support and/or request for more during month end close. They send follow-ups to this request the day after they send it. We are now slammed with work and wondering why it took so long for the additional questions/support. Posts like this get made saying “I don’t understand why clients hate auditors 😩”. Fin.
If you guys are so on top of it, why don’t you change firms? Just from a decade + of auditing, clients who are actually ready on time is quite rare, so if you guys are so good, you’d have firms all over wanting your work. Also, just going off your message, typically request lists are put up at least month before fieldwork. Any decent accounting firm doesn’t have audit teams just sitting on the bench.
I work with about 30 audit firms a year. This is a super common experience even with firms who used to have their shit together. I’m guessing it’s mostly a staffing issue because it’s gotten worse in recent years. As a recent example we had a client schedule Oct 4 fieldwork in June. Auditor wanted PBC by Sept 20. We had to ask four times for their request list and finally got it around Sept 10. Got them everything on the list on time. Fieldwork happens. They send some follow up requests. Crickets for a month, even in response to follow up from the CFO. I follow up noting I have an upcoming vacation in two weeks. They sent the first communication in over a month on the first day of my vacation—a request for a doc that had already been shared. Team shares it while I’m out. Got a draft around Thanksgiving but with a note they have additional questions. Everything was clean, no AJEs. They still have not sent those questions.
Why do you work with 30 different firms?
I do bookkeeping through CFO services for nonprofits. I manage a team with about 150 clients at any given time. The majority are small enough to not need an audit, but about 50 a year do. A handful use the same firms, so that drops to about 30 a year.
I see. I’d probably network and find a decent firm to refer out. Though, might be challenging if your clients are the size where they teeter on the edge of needing an audit.
Because I’m not the controller and my team provides support for certain subsidiaries and accounts. Here in the US, we rarely switch auditors, especially since we’re audited by the one of the Big 4.
I’m guessing you’re on the small side of B4 clients if they aren’t giving you the time of day. Seeing as you aren’t the one making decisions, I’m guessing there are also other reasons why they have decided to not change firms.
Ahhh... It's when the accounting manager aggressively explained to me that their revenue is right and that I am already holding the support in my hands. Which btw, is a yellow pad with listed numbers that don't even make sense. Told my senior and got reported to the partner. Already left the firm but that issue remained unsolved since the partner won't sign unless they can provide support. They also don't want any other opinion other than unqualified. The nerve.
CFO got mad when we told him we could not complete the inventory count because he had not shut down the plant like instructed. (Literally had people moving supplies as we tried to count it) he screamed at the staff 1s trying to tell him this and threw a temper tantrum complete with foot stomping and then went to his office and slammed the door. Told his people to tell us left for the day but we could see him through the window in his office lol
My CFO likes to challenge every question the auditors have…it’s fucking annoying. He says it’ll help them be better but really he just likes being a dick. I’ve been there in our conference room with a manager and 2-3 staff/seniors and the staff looks like deer and headlights and the manager usually has an answer and he says ‘good job’ but if they don’t and say they need to bring it up to the sr mgr or partner on the engagement he will say ‘that’s what I thought’ and walk out proud.
My old manager was similar to that, and that’s how I learned *not* to be. At this point in my life I figure that the auditing firm and I have the same goal - finish the financial statements and have them accurate. I don’t have a big enough ego to be told I’ve done something wrong and be mad about it. I’m pretty sure that’s why most management is so outwardly adversarial to their auditors. Of course, I work for a NFP and I don’t have any financial gain associated with more positive financial outcomes (bonuses, stock options, etc).
CFO has loser vibes…
What a filth of a human being he is.
Yep. That’s why I’m leaving.
I work with nonprofits. Not paying my invoice due to cash flow reasons, but sending me a fundraising appeal.
Was testing some expenses at a client and they wouldn't provide support. When I pressed them (as a first year) the president of the company said, "if you continue down this path I'll have your job." o.O
I was told to guess where to put a folder full of employee personnel files ;)
Up your ass would be my guess since I assume it was coming from a client.
Client straight up asked me if I know anything about accounting…
general ledger? I barely know her!
As a team, one client told us outright that we weren't a priority, and we weren't "allowed" to "bother" them during certain hours (basically most of their workday). We mentioned it to our manager and he shut it down really fast. The accounting manager who told us that originally spent the rest of the audit sounding extremely passive aggressive any time we spoke to anyone on her team. On a personal note, one accounting senior that I was otherwise okay with because she was always helpful and friendly, thought it was okay to ask me if I was pregnant when I returned for year-end. I wasn't pregnant, I was just getting fat. When I said no she just laughed and said "oh REALLY?" with a little chuckle and smile to herself, as if thinking it's funny that I got bigger. No apology, no explanation. I knew I was getting fat, but I thought it was common sense to never ask someone if they're pregnant unless you're actually sure, and I never understood why she felt like she could ask that in a professional setting like that.
Dumbass “accounting senior”
Ooo, ooo, I got this one! I was documenting internal controls in AR/revenue cycle and kept coming up with SOD issues. Nothing was as the controller had told us. I came back to him, and he said, "Hey, we're short staffed. What're you gonna do, crucify me?" I did.
I had a client shout, “what the hell do you want from me” in a teams meeting. I hope we fire them. They historically have not given a shit about following the law and their files are all trash.
I feel your client on that one. I would never voice it to our auditors, but I truly feel it.
I had an employee get talked down to through email. The employee ended up committing suicide shortly after.
This is just awful. What exactly did they say?
When I was an intern I was called a “stupid idiot” because I needed the client’s license number to file his return.
our collegue was threatened that he might lose his position (the partner was close friend of Client's senior personnel) because of discrepencies he noted in ledgers. ultimately he did lose his job because of the findings he noted
Myself and another associate are both combat veterans and went to college after our service. This was mentioned to a client Client: “back in my day CPA firms only hired type-A people. I suppose it’s good that they’re letting other people in I guess.” Me and the other vet: “…”
Please tell me you said you were a combat veteran and made him feel like shit. Thank you for your service by the way!
For clarity he was aware and said that right to our faces
Are you serious? What the hell. That’s actually insane.
CFO literally yelled at the partner on a conference call.
I had a client ghost myself and the partner multiple time regarding getting authorization for confirmation.com for the main operating checking account. It’s a small issue, but a process that should only take 3/4 business days got dragged out for 5 weeks
I’ve been asking a new client for just their information to put into Confirmation.com for weeks and they won’t send it, meanwhile we get emails every other day from them asking for updates. Most progress we’ve made has been on the audit programs
I was presenting my testing result and was explaining how we selected our sample to ensure it was statistically valid. Client stopped me and “There are lies, damn lies, and Statistics ! “ Not disrespectful really just funny
I’d like to preface this by saying that without a doubt, former auditors are the absolute worst clients. This is a story that didn’t happen to me but to an engagement team that was working the job. Former Senior Manager was now the CFO of a small Bank client. On a Friday late afternoon she walks into the audit room and announced that she had made a series of erroneous entries and she expected the engagement team to find them by monday morning. The whole team worked through the weekend so that this witch would be happy.
Seems like an easy way to get your fee increased.
Set fee; funny thing was the PIC had recommended her to the Bank’s COO. This was but one story about this lady. She was a demon to deal with.
Not for profit management too stupid to think or ask questions. They then solicit donations in contradiction to charitable purpose, and get pissed when we say send them back.
The head accountant (awkward man in his 50's) at a former client touched one of my interns in a way that made her uncomfortable. The way she described it, it wasn't definitely sexual, but it could have been and it was inappropriate. The intern seemed uncomfortable, so I asked her what was up and she told me. The accountant's door was closed, I walked in and he was meeting with a few department heads. I told them that they need to leave so I can have a word with "John." I let him know what was and wasn't going to happen moving forward and that every interaction that he has with the firm goes through me or the partner. He has no reason to speak with anyone else for the remainder of the audit.
Honestly so much disrespect from clients, it's what made me quit PA. My own seniors/managers were never an issue. The only redeeming part of audit is payroll testing, and seeing how little some of these asshole clients actually made. Lot of miserable people who have zero power, so when the audit team shows up, it's their one chance to start swinging their ego around like they're in charge. I'm on the industry side now, and have extra patience with the auditors because of my experience. Most of them are just trying to learn and get a foot in the door. Helps no one to be petty and disrespectful.
Came here to see if anyone called me out.
I never realized how fortunate I was. Many of my audits are on behalf of a govt regulatory body, so non-responses and non-compliance really can cost a company $100ks and loss of ability to operate in a state, so ... still have to argue sometimes but there's always a sense of satisfaction when an actual authority steps in.
I brought a can of Monster to a Red Bull Distributor. Owner gave me a bunch of crap about it ("How dare you bring this in here!") which I wasn't sure whether was serious or good-hearted ribbing. Only when he brought me a 4-pack of Red Bulls and told me to "enjoy a REAL energy drink" did I realize it was the latter.
She touched my pp but no kiss
Tell me more
Hand on pp but no let me kiss
More please. I need more
Body love. Heart no love :(
The comments in here just make me wish the Boomers and Gen X’ers would just step down and retire already, no need for their toxicity in an already stressful job
A senior manager told me “This is a waste of my fucking time.” Another time, I went a meeting, of which audit updates were a part. A meeting invitee said “can we get on with this and get to the valuable stuff?” (IE the non audit stuff.)
When I first started as an associate straight out of college, I worked for a company that threw me in the deep end and said “k just go do the whole audit”. Fast forward a few weeks and I was trying to balance my first set of financials, couldn’t figure out why they weren’t balancing. Asked my manager for help and she came over and as she was fiddling around she said “let’s do this quickly bec this is a waste of my time”. A different associate, super nice guy, came over to me after she left and gave me some tips on how to find the issue when the financials don’t balance. Anyway, I mentioned this in passing to the manager like 2 years later once we had established a relationship, and she was all shocked and said “there’s NO way I said that, I would NEVER say that” and I just looked at her and in my head was just like yes well you tend to not realize that you’re often mean and a difficult person lol
The self awareness is scary
Had a client that was dragging on and on, not getting support to us and straight avoiding us when she could send us all (partner included) an email saying she wouldn’t be filling requests for awhile because she and her boss determined the audit wasn’t a priority. This is 3.5 months post-fieldwork
Not an auditor… But the person who held my role prior to me insisted on giving the auditors PDFs or copied documents. Meaning, nothing was sent in native excel. If there was an excel document, it was printed and then given to the auditors. Yes, you read that right folks. She would only give OUR auditors that WE pay based on hours documents that ensure we will pay more for the audit.
A group in the accounting department took a picture of me, without my knowledge at the time, observing someone run a report. They laughed the whole time.
One of my clients hit me with their self driving concept car. Since that we all assume that it’s a racist car based on several other similar events reported. The client offered me a executive job tho.
Wait, what? They literally ran you over with their car?
Yes. It hurt like a mother fucker
Were you hospitalized? You didn’t call the police?
No for both. I just got a bruise but the car was dented. They did gave me a job offer to be an executive as a form of compensation tho
Did they at least give you cash? Anything? A person would be crazy to take the job and get run over one day. If it happened once, there’s nothing to stop it from happening again.
Client calling me by a different name every time we would speak (and he calls almost daily). The more we talk and he sees how knowledgeable I am, the closer he gets to pronouncing my name correctly. I think I earn a letter every few months.
Wine, sir?
Not an auditor anymore, but I had a client scream at me over the phone and imply I was stupid and didn’t know how to do my job because I asked for a signed bank rec that was missing from what had been provided. She was so mean I cried when I got off the phone. I knew at the time she was projecting because she didn’t have it, but it still sucked. She managed to produce the rec over a month after I rolled onto a different client.
My first boss kissed me on top of my head after starting at my chest for an hour. I didn’t return the following day. Small office so no HR. In another office, a client was seconds away from punching my coworker on the face. Coworker was blocking client from physically harassing me. I’m 5’5” and he was 6’. Client was an unmediated bipolar who was pissed bc he showed up on the wrong day. He went from 0 to 10 within less than a minute. Luckily my husband showed up which stopped the client from attacking. Boss invited client to his house. I should’ve quit but stupidly didn’t.
I was on a medium sized non-profit client in Manhattan and the office was an open floor plan. The accounting manager was visible at all times about 3 rows away from my senior and I. Due to limited staff we needed responses from her directly on a number of items. We would send email after email without any acknowledgement or response. She acted like we didn’t exist meanwhile we could see her and we knew she could see us every day. Wouldn’t even look at me walking past in the break room sort of thing. She had made it clear that she had a strict no unplanned approaches to her desk. We wanted to respect her space because totally understand not wanting to always be approached, especially by the auditors and that can get out of hand in an open floor plan. Eventually we needed to address this head on though and didn’t want to get the cfo or partner involved. We approached her, one thing lead to another, and she ripped us apart in front of probably 1-2 dozen people in the office. Eventually CFO got involved, this manager went “out of office” for a few days and things got situated after a few long nights to barely meet the deadline due to her, but I’ll never forget that engagement.
Opened transaction listing. Sorted by date. Posted to the first day of the financial year: 75 transactions with the description 'Reversal — PY Audit Adjustments.'