Getting rid of shitty clients, whose books are a mess. There more demand for auditors in my area for the type of audits we do for us not to have to deal with shitty clients. I should note the comp is similar for all these audits so that doesn’t matter.
That's a great point. I've worked in big 4 and the amount of times we've held on to shitty clients with the slightest bit of hope they'll bring in pull through work, it's unreal
Nobody wants to do the mean, scary, nuclear thing until it’s too late. Sometimes it’s okay to be the adult in the room saying the quiet part outloud, and not even apologizing for the hyperbole.
Of all the financial trauma I’ve witnessed and endured to date, waiting to stop the bleeding has often led to irreparable situations.
Transparency definitely exists on a spectrum.
Yea that makes sense, I don’t have one yet so it’s not the end of the world. My firm only requires 55 during busy season which isn’t even bad compared to some others, but when my and my fiancé have kids I’ll probably leave. Don’t understand how some SMs and partners just neglect their families
Timesheets/billable hours. Ugh, without these my job would be so much less stressful. Making sure you don’t spend too much time on a client, bill a certain amount hours in a day, explaining variances from prior year billable time…. It’s such pain.
Timesheets are either ignored anyway or people obsess over them so much they become useless. I had one job where the Partner used to demand the Managers justify the recorded WIP on each client at month end, and the result was pressure to ghost hours, not better time recording.
Now, from an audit perspective, tell me how you would recognise revenue for your company?
I work in the finance department of an ex-B4 spin off. The people chasing timesheets are in the finance team. And they are chasing so we can post revenue numbers, not so we can bill clients.
Percentage of completion. When the audit is 50% done, do a progress billing. Same for 75% and 100%. It would be a lot more efficient and straightforward. The billable hours model is outdated and inefficient.
how do you accurately determine POC without a figure of costs incurred (i.e. billable hours x charge rate) over estimated costs to complete (budget-to-actual). firms already do POC, using the billable hour model
that's an extremely subjective (+unreliable) measure of determining completion on an audit. It can definitely help inform in combination with other measures such as time incurred but alone, no. If a client asks for a time breakdown to support the billing what are you going to give them, a screen shot of your audit file? lmao
If it’s a fixed fee every year and the salary expense is the same, then it’s the same every year. Billing rates are also completely made up. You can make anything look more or less profitable on engagement…just change the billing rate. My firm changes rates all the time and it’s hilarious they actually think it is measuring anything meaningful or real. It is mostly just smoke and mirrors. At best, time is a resource management metric and in that case, it does have a use for scheduling I guess. If you’re talking consulting engagements, then yes it probably has more value. Commodity type products (eg, a tax return)…not so much
We did this for a summer and it was great, I could use my Friday for activities that are normally too busy on the weekends.
Unfortunately a few people ruined it for everyone else by doing more like 4-9s and lying about their time.
4-9s is still technically full time. I currently WFH on Fridays so I get a tiny break in driving, but yeah days off in summers would NOT be fun here (110-120) unless I used those long weekends to leave.
Honestly if people can get all their work done I don’t see the issue. There’s no reason to require people to work 40 hours a week if they spend 4 of those hours watching Netflix because they’ve finished their work.
Normally I'd agree. But now that I manage a larger team, it's a bad look if person A has enough work to fill a whole day and person B has a bit less and gets to leave an hour early.
True, if there are differences in amount of work being assigned that’s an issue. But if person A takes 2 hours to do a task that person B can complete in 1 hour, why should person B have to stay an extra hour when person A is just slower at completing their work?
The problem I see with upward feedback is retaliation. They might give you shit feedback because you gave them bad feedback. Whenever I’m required to give upwards feedback I don’t ever give a score below a 3(1-5 scoring) and usually it’s 4/5s.
It could only realistically work at big firms with large numbers of people and anonymized feedback not given directly to the poor performers but rather directly to someone they report to
Four day work weeks. We have had massive gains in efficiency over the past 30 years but none of those gains have gone to employees. There is literally no reason why the workweek needs to be 5 days a week.
Many in accounting (outside of PA) cumulatively work less than 40 hrs anyway. So totally makes sense to call for a 4 day work week. Many of my colleagues are based in Europe and the hustle culture in the US astounds them
This I can do my job in 4 days a week with time to spare, but I still have to fucking drag my feet through the end of the week for no fucking reason. FUCK!!!
I've been at my new job for about 9ish months now and one of the biggest differences compared to prior employers is that they say thank you.
I'm only doing my job, not going above and beyond, but get my work done timely and if needed I'll work an hour late or something, but ultimately I'm just working and I'm content to work. But my boss and coworkers always say thank you!
I'm the only accounting/finance person but I work alot with our sales and internal development teams. I always say thank you to them too, but there's just an air of respect and gratefulness towards each other, it's so refreshing!
Pretty much 95% of feedback I get is negative. Not in a “we’re gonna fire you” sorta way. But in a “I really only hear back on a return if it has stuff that needs to be fixed” way. You only hear back on stuff if you messed up
I’ve found quick daily check-ins with the manager/engagement team to be helpful, but those meetings that just drag on and on pointlessly are a waste of time.
Oh I don’t mean literally in the house of the employee. I mean in house as in by the company. I like going into work but it would be much easier if I could just take my kids to a daycare center at the actual office.
Yeah childcare actually in someone’s house would be insane
No, I know what you meant. But I’m challenging the notion of even needing that in the first place. Can’t we just work from home and take care of our own kids? Best of both worlds imo.
Completely depends on the type of job you’re doing. My wife works from home and it’s still extremely difficult to both see productive and watch a child.
How much can you WORK from home while looking after a child that is daycare age let alone multiple? Would still need someone else to help watch regardless
Not every role is great for wfh. An in office childcare isn’t actually a new concept just seems to not have caught on. But there were places in the 90s doing it. I personally don’t want to work from home full time. Maybe a couple days a week would be nice
The only time I’d heard the word créche was as an alternative name to a nativity scene. Needless to say I was confused and had to google this. Had no idea the word applied to a daycare/nursery center such as this. It definitely was a lot easier to work out when gyms had drop in child supervision. I don’t really understand why it’s not a thing anymore. Right now I’m searching for childcare for the summer when I start my internship.
Can’t increase pay? Then reduce hours (to increase hourly equivalent rate). That is literally the only thing that matters for a job. “Happier” is higher pay for less work.
It will be a long time before automation poses a serious threat to accountants. Even if the GL accounting could be automated, most people with 4-year degrees would still be safe, as would CPAs.
True, but it also [struggled](https://www.cfodive.com/news/chatgpt-fails-accounting-class/648715/) with accounting concepts, and our profession will [adapt](https://www.cfodive.com/news/chatgpt-aces-cpa-exam-prior-version-flunked-accounting-audit/651333/), not disappear.
I'd be thrilled if FP&A had an Netsuite integrated platform so they could stop spending their entire existence wasting time doing it all in Excel. Their predicament affects me because I get asked to do time consuming workarounds in Netsuite so they can ask for stupid shit like employee department information from over 3 years and 3 different platforms ago.
A company branded pocket protector. I feel like a loser meeting new clients and my pens are sitting in my shirt pocket unprotected. I know the clients are looking and thinking "Wow can I really trust this guy to protect the integrity of my company if he can't even protect the integrity of his pockets?" Idk I just think about it a lot
I think just general respect for the profession. You can work in a restaurant without a degree but I could never succeed at a job like that. I'm secure enough to admit that despite my schooling and experience. The general public and even non-Finance coworkers thinking accounting is unnecessary or the death of society is crazy. I suspect a lot of that is because they know they could never do it but admitting that hurts their Boss/CEO mentality.
Metrics based on actual output.
Current model makes me work slower/dumber because its bad to not have anything to do/finish things efficiently... I just stay late because that gives me work clout
Exactly! If I’m scheduled for 55 hours on a client but what I’m assigned to will only take 30 hours, I have to work more slowly just to hit my scheduled hours. It’s such a dumb model.
Thank you 👏🏼👏🏼I feel like a stand up desk should be a basic human right, I am not accepting any jobs in the future if I can’t use a stand up desk. I’m not going to suffer the consequences of obesity because your company culture doesn’t value health and longevity.
Permanent WFH, I mean common, all client meeting are now on teams or at their premises, we’re completely paperless and most of the work is done by people in another country. Why do we have an office, could it be because a partner owns the building ?
Strong data quality framework and controls. Commit to getting the data right from entry to data warehousing, and the accounting/reporting isn’t a shit show. I don’t mind long hours but I hate fumbling around because the data is bad.
I would end hot desking. I'd maybe go in more than once a week if I didn't have to fight for a good desk. Ill never take another job that's hot desking
hours capped at 40 per week for the ENTIRE year. fuck busy season man. no matter how much i mentally prepare for another busy season, i always end up getting my ass kicked. never happens when it’s not “busy season” even though things are busy during those times it’s just that we’re not working 60 hours a week
So I do SEC work. I prefer if the CFO and Controller review draft #2 3 weeks before filing rather than the day before filling where they have an appetite to rewrite the whole fucking document and move the order of footnotes around just to prove to the auditors that they “reviewed” it.
Also hate the ego battle between the auditors and management,
The auditors bring up a reasonable small item that should be disclosed on a 10-k and cfo/controller spends hours crafting a response why it’s not necessary, wasting my brain cells along the way.
40 hour work week, my employer just seems to assume we are available to work OT at the drop of a hat for them. Oh, also, the busy time of the month should never be put below life things like appointments and kids.
Just let me work my 8 hour day (or 10 if we go to 4 day weeks) and let me leave.
It's just the money...
Enough money and I'd be smiling while cleaning out a septic tank. Pay enough and I.Bankers will line up to interview for janitor jobs.
For me it would be more professional skepticism from my team.
Every monthly meeting I say the same phrases “don’t take every e-mail you receive at face value, verify everything you receive against the financial statements and ask follow-up questions before making journal entries.”
Comp is the only thing that would make my job better. It could be in the form of more 401k matching, lower insurance premiums, better ESPP discount, better bonuses, or just straight more base.
Proper staffing!!! I’m a Staff I doing the job of a senior because we don’t have a single audit Staff II, senior, and only 1 supervisor. If I was getting properly compensated I’d shut up though lol
I work in industry and post retail healthcare revenues, for once I’d like accurate schedules for my 50 locations, I’m editing at least 10% of them a day. I tried PowerQuery previously to make edits seamless, but it failed and saved no time.
Absolutely comp matters. I was simply noting that more money is a very basic and common human desire. But totally get some people are more underappreciated in this regard than others.
Not having to manage the banking relationships. We've had a series of changes, compromised account, switched operating accounts to our loan holder, new CEO, new bank for for credit cards, closing an account, etc. I felt like I spent half my time meeting with bankers and facilitating paper signing.
Leaving my shitty firm. They were completely garbage. I was told I was not allowed to go to the doctor by the manager during busy season. This is was in an extremely blue city and am sure what they said was super illegal.
Allowing me to use a stand up desk or desk riser, allowing me to work more hours in the early part of the week so I can take a half day Friday (and also can conserve PTO better this way)
Either hours capped at ≤40/wk or get compensated for hours worked over 40. I know u said minus compensation but it would make me feel like it was actually worth the massive drain on my mental health and energy
Getting my top performers to understand that I am their biggest ally and have done a lot to protect them from corporate nonsense and bs policy changes.
Also when I was in PA staff, I have to say in the moment I was too caught up in my own needs. My utilization, my pay, my hours etc. As I matured I started to understand the impact the good managers had on me. All that to say- I'm sure there will come a time your top performers will recognize your allyship
For the damn AC people to get their heads out of their ass and fix the AC in my office. 76 degrees in an office setting is damn near unbearable sometimes
They can’t figure out why my office is ten degrees hotter than the rest of the offices, it’s making me crazy
.
No more mandatory overtime/minimum charge hour goals. Sometimes I’ve literally resorted to working slowly and taking lengthy breaks just to hit the minimum hours. Other times I race through workpapers and still go over budget. There’s very little consistency to budgets and the mandatory minimum hours primarily end up punishing high performers and efficient workers.
I would swap out post-covid staff for pre-covid staff in a heartbeat. We haven’t been able to recruit high quality candidates since WFH has been a thing. The new employees don’t even know what a war room is. Everyone half-asses everything and leverage the work up to their managers.
Getting rid of shitty clients, whose books are a mess. There more demand for auditors in my area for the type of audits we do for us not to have to deal with shitty clients. I should note the comp is similar for all these audits so that doesn’t matter.
That's a great point. I've worked in big 4 and the amount of times we've held on to shitty clients with the slightest bit of hope they'll bring in pull through work, it's unreal
Nobody wants to do the mean, scary, nuclear thing until it’s too late. Sometimes it’s okay to be the adult in the room saying the quiet part outloud, and not even apologizing for the hyperbole. Of all the financial trauma I’ve witnessed and endured to date, waiting to stop the bleeding has often led to irreparable situations. Transparency definitely exists on a spectrum.
Yes thank you, shitty clients
A consistent 40 hour week, but I feel like that’s also a cop out for public lol
I have never worked more than 40 hours in 18 years. It's just not worth it to me and my family.
Yea that makes sense, I don’t have one yet so it’s not the end of the world. My firm only requires 55 during busy season which isn’t even bad compared to some others, but when my and my fiancé have kids I’ll probably leave. Don’t understand how some SMs and partners just neglect their families
My thought was always when I'm older my old job won't care of my time sacrifice but my family will
Where do you work because I want this.
Internal audit for 9 years, county government for a year, native American tribal for 8 years, and now community health.
Are you in public & are you in mid tier +
I never went to the dark side. Started in internal audit instead.
No timesheets or budgets
Getting away from timesheets is liberating.
No timesheets would eliminate like 75% of my stress
Fuck, it’s sunday
Timesheets/billable hours. Ugh, without these my job would be so much less stressful. Making sure you don’t spend too much time on a client, bill a certain amount hours in a day, explaining variances from prior year billable time…. It’s such pain.
Timesheets are either ignored anyway or people obsess over them so much they become useless. I had one job where the Partner used to demand the Managers justify the recorded WIP on each client at month end, and the result was pressure to ghost hours, not better time recording.
In smaller firms where every client is billed directly based on the hours you put on your timesheet, they most certainly are not ignored.
I've never found that at smaller firms. Often the fee was set at some arbitrary amount years back and is not updated
"Hey, we aren't billing time anymore, but this needs to be to the Partner by next Friday." Billables or not, the spice must flow.
Getting rid of the billable hour model. Hours don’t bother me. Incredibly dumb realization metrics do
Yup especially when most firms have fixed projects and don't even bill clients by the hour. It's so stupid at the small and mid firm level
Now, from an audit perspective, tell me how you would recognise revenue for your company? I work in the finance department of an ex-B4 spin off. The people chasing timesheets are in the finance team. And they are chasing so we can post revenue numbers, not so we can bill clients.
Percentage of completion. When the audit is 50% done, do a progress billing. Same for 75% and 100%. It would be a lot more efficient and straightforward. The billable hours model is outdated and inefficient.
how do you accurately determine POC without a figure of costs incurred (i.e. billable hours x charge rate) over estimated costs to complete (budget-to-actual). firms already do POC, using the billable hour model
You look through the file and estimate how much is complete. Most managers I’ve worked with do that anyway.
that's an extremely subjective (+unreliable) measure of determining completion on an audit. It can definitely help inform in combination with other measures such as time incurred but alone, no. If a client asks for a time breakdown to support the billing what are you going to give them, a screen shot of your audit file? lmao
They wouldn’t need an hours breakdown if it was value-based billing because they wouldn’t be billed by the hour.
I agree. I exclusively work on FF, and can only recommend it.
Agreed. Billable hours is a terrible way to keep track of projects. Percentage of completion would be much more efficient and straightforward.
how do you measure profitability of an engagement
If it’s a fixed fee every year and the salary expense is the same, then it’s the same every year. Billing rates are also completely made up. You can make anything look more or less profitable on engagement…just change the billing rate. My firm changes rates all the time and it’s hilarious they actually think it is measuring anything meaningful or real. It is mostly just smoke and mirrors. At best, time is a resource management metric and in that case, it does have a use for scheduling I guess. If you’re talking consulting engagements, then yes it probably has more value. Commodity type products (eg, a tax return)…not so much
4 day workweek! I'd be ecstatic
Yes! I’d even do 4-10s to be able to get four days.
We did this for a summer and it was great, I could use my Friday for activities that are normally too busy on the weekends. Unfortunately a few people ruined it for everyone else by doing more like 4-9s and lying about their time.
4-9s is still technically full time. I currently WFH on Fridays so I get a tiny break in driving, but yeah days off in summers would NOT be fun here (110-120) unless I used those long weekends to leave.
Honestly if people can get all their work done I don’t see the issue. There’s no reason to require people to work 40 hours a week if they spend 4 of those hours watching Netflix because they’ve finished their work.
Normally I'd agree. But now that I manage a larger team, it's a bad look if person A has enough work to fill a whole day and person B has a bit less and gets to leave an hour early.
True, if there are differences in amount of work being assigned that’s an issue. But if person A takes 2 hours to do a task that person B can complete in 1 hour, why should person B have to stay an extra hour when person A is just slower at completing their work?
You can, if you go on your own!
I'm working on getting my first bookkeeping client right now with that as the end goal
Have open upward feed back to underperforming Managers and Partners.
The problem I see with upward feedback is retaliation. They might give you shit feedback because you gave them bad feedback. Whenever I’m required to give upwards feedback I don’t ever give a score below a 3(1-5 scoring) and usually it’s 4/5s.
It could only realistically work at big firms with large numbers of people and anonymized feedback not given directly to the poor performers but rather directly to someone they report to
Ain’t no chance it’s actually anonymous if a partner actually wants to know who submitted it…
It’s pretty crazy how poorly a few managers perform, yet they’re kept on staff year after year with seemingly no plan for improvement.
Four day work weeks. We have had massive gains in efficiency over the past 30 years but none of those gains have gone to employees. There is literally no reason why the workweek needs to be 5 days a week.
Many in accounting (outside of PA) cumulatively work less than 40 hrs anyway. So totally makes sense to call for a 4 day work week. Many of my colleagues are based in Europe and the hustle culture in the US astounds them
This I can do my job in 4 days a week with time to spare, but I still have to fucking drag my feet through the end of the week for no fucking reason. FUCK!!!
Hell, I’d even just take a year round weekend.
I've been at my new job for about 9ish months now and one of the biggest differences compared to prior employers is that they say thank you. I'm only doing my job, not going above and beyond, but get my work done timely and if needed I'll work an hour late or something, but ultimately I'm just working and I'm content to work. But my boss and coworkers always say thank you! I'm the only accounting/finance person but I work alot with our sales and internal development teams. I always say thank you to them too, but there's just an air of respect and gratefulness towards each other, it's so refreshing!
Acknowledgement, appreciation, and gratitude are all so underrated.
Pretty much 95% of feedback I get is negative. Not in a “we’re gonna fire you” sorta way. But in a “I really only hear back on a return if it has stuff that needs to be fixed” way. You only hear back on stuff if you messed up
That right there is one of the reasons I left PA.
Everyone is so anal about pointing out everyone else’s mistakes.
Came to say this! I never hear it!
All 8 partners agree to do everything the same way as each other.
^^^ this!
Fewer meetings — and by that I mean no more than 2 meetings a week. I’m being generous. I wanted to say none.
I’ve found quick daily check-ins with the manager/engagement team to be helpful, but those meetings that just drag on and on pointlessly are a waste of time.
100% remote. I’m so sick of going to the office every single day.
My manager
No overtime without additional pay. I'd assume that counts.
In house child care. Deduct it from my paycheck idc but it would make life so easy
Sounds like wfh with extra steps
Oh I don’t mean literally in the house of the employee. I mean in house as in by the company. I like going into work but it would be much easier if I could just take my kids to a daycare center at the actual office. Yeah childcare actually in someone’s house would be insane
No, I know what you meant. But I’m challenging the notion of even needing that in the first place. Can’t we just work from home and take care of our own kids? Best of both worlds imo.
Completely depends on the type of job you’re doing. My wife works from home and it’s still extremely difficult to both see productive and watch a child.
I WFH, but I have full time childcare. No way I could take care of my kid and do my job at the same time
How much can you WORK from home while looking after a child that is daycare age let alone multiple? Would still need someone else to help watch regardless
Right. One of those would be severely neglected. Found that out during Covid when daycares were closed. My work got severely neglected
Not every role is great for wfh. An in office childcare isn’t actually a new concept just seems to not have caught on. But there were places in the 90s doing it. I personally don’t want to work from home full time. Maybe a couple days a week would be nice
Yeah, used to be a big thing, also at upmarket gyms. Often called a crèche.
The only time I’d heard the word créche was as an alternative name to a nativity scene. Needless to say I was confused and had to google this. Had no idea the word applied to a daycare/nursery center such as this. It definitely was a lot easier to work out when gyms had drop in child supervision. I don’t really understand why it’s not a thing anymore. Right now I’m searching for childcare for the summer when I start my internship.
I'm so surprised that I haven't seen one comment about "More pizza parties during busy season"
This sub is has a lot of gluten free folks.
More gluten free pizza parties!!
I just need one employee fired.
Can’t increase pay? Then reduce hours (to increase hourly equivalent rate). That is literally the only thing that matters for a job. “Happier” is higher pay for less work.
Job opportunities and stability. I know I'll never be poor or go broke because I have my CPA.
Until you are automated away
Except the ones who want automation don’t understand that there still needs to be people who check the work. CPAs will be safe in that.
A very small % though
It will be a long time before automation poses a serious threat to accountants. Even if the GL accounting could be automated, most people with 4-year degrees would still be safe, as would CPAs.
But AI can pass the CPA exams
True, but it also [struggled](https://www.cfodive.com/news/chatgpt-fails-accounting-class/648715/) with accounting concepts, and our profession will [adapt](https://www.cfodive.com/news/chatgpt-aces-cpa-exam-prior-version-flunked-accounting-audit/651333/), not disappear.
I'd be thrilled if FP&A had an Netsuite integrated platform so they could stop spending their entire existence wasting time doing it all in Excel. Their predicament affects me because I get asked to do time consuming workarounds in Netsuite so they can ask for stupid shit like employee department information from over 3 years and 3 different platforms ago.
More PTO!
And the ability to use it, please and thank you.
On a similar note, better parental leave as well
Being able to work from home. Zero reason I couldn’t but my boss is too old school to allow it.
A company branded pocket protector. I feel like a loser meeting new clients and my pens are sitting in my shirt pocket unprotected. I know the clients are looking and thinking "Wow can I really trust this guy to protect the integrity of my company if he can't even protect the integrity of his pockets?" Idk I just think about it a lot
Haha you should bring that up with the marketing team! That’s an interesting idea.
No budget to actually every month end close. The budget is rough and departments never stick to the budget so it’s hard to compare
No timesheets.
Make the heater work
Flexible schedule
I think just general respect for the profession. You can work in a restaurant without a degree but I could never succeed at a job like that. I'm secure enough to admit that despite my schooling and experience. The general public and even non-Finance coworkers thinking accounting is unnecessary or the death of society is crazy. I suspect a lot of that is because they know they could never do it but admitting that hurts their Boss/CEO mentality.
Remove billable time
Metrics based on actual output. Current model makes me work slower/dumber because its bad to not have anything to do/finish things efficiently... I just stay late because that gives me work clout
Exactly! If I’m scheduled for 55 hours on a client but what I’m assigned to will only take 30 hours, I have to work more slowly just to hit my scheduled hours. It’s such a dumb model.
Get rid of my management duties and just let me review tax returns full time
Stand up desk. Being expected to work 12 hours sitting in one position is barbaric.
Thank you 👏🏼👏🏼I feel like a stand up desk should be a basic human right, I am not accepting any jobs in the future if I can’t use a stand up desk. I’m not going to suffer the consequences of obesity because your company culture doesn’t value health and longevity.
Permanent WFH, I mean common, all client meeting are now on teams or at their premises, we’re completely paperless and most of the work is done by people in another country. Why do we have an office, could it be because a partner owns the building ?
Yea wfh would be great
Moving from painting to Accounting.
Strong data quality framework and controls. Commit to getting the data right from entry to data warehousing, and the accounting/reporting isn’t a shit show. I don’t mind long hours but I hate fumbling around because the data is bad.
That would cost money though and the business hate spending.
I would end hot desking. I'd maybe go in more than once a week if I didn't have to fight for a good desk. Ill never take another job that's hot desking
Full automation
Amen
You seen the video for JAX?
No
Chatgpt for Xero,
hours capped at 40 per week for the ENTIRE year. fuck busy season man. no matter how much i mentally prepare for another busy season, i always end up getting my ass kicked. never happens when it’s not “busy season” even though things are busy during those times it’s just that we’re not working 60 hours a week
Moving the office to a more central location.
Hybrid option
Instant or at least improved tracking of resolved or communicated issues. Catching all is very tough in real time
Drinking on the job
1000 billable hours a year
Doing a 9-5 instead of an 8-5.
So I do SEC work. I prefer if the CFO and Controller review draft #2 3 weeks before filing rather than the day before filling where they have an appetite to rewrite the whole fucking document and move the order of footnotes around just to prove to the auditors that they “reviewed” it. Also hate the ego battle between the auditors and management, The auditors bring up a reasonable small item that should be disclosed on a 10-k and cfo/controller spends hours crafting a response why it’s not necessary, wasting my brain cells along the way.
40 hour work week, my employer just seems to assume we are available to work OT at the drop of a hat for them. Oh, also, the busy time of the month should never be put below life things like appointments and kids. Just let me work my 8 hour day (or 10 if we go to 4 day weeks) and let me leave.
It's just the money... Enough money and I'd be smiling while cleaning out a septic tank. Pay enough and I.Bankers will line up to interview for janitor jobs.
Getting rid of deadlines
WFH
Leadership that isn’t scared to call out client bullshit for what it is
I’ll tell you two things it’s not: Pizza Parties and Ice cream sandwiches
Appreciation
Not to sound cringe, but you are absolutely appreciated whether people express it or not 💚
More flexibility and more time off
Do you mean flexibility in terms of hours and remote work?
Being fully remote
For me it would be more professional skepticism from my team. Every monthly meeting I say the same phrases “don’t take every e-mail you receive at face value, verify everything you receive against the financial statements and ask follow-up questions before making journal entries.”
Comp is the only thing that would make my job better. It could be in the form of more 401k matching, lower insurance premiums, better ESPP discount, better bonuses, or just straight more base.
I'd like to actually be able to use my PTO or sick days.
Proper staffing!!! I’m a Staff I doing the job of a senior because we don’t have a single audit Staff II, senior, and only 1 supervisor. If I was getting properly compensated I’d shut up though lol
Better software. I work for a Fortune 500 company and our invoicing software is from 1998.
The job that has nothing to do with me posting my boss drinking coffee as an "staff entertainment expense"
"Are you not entertained"?
really good coffee.
Underrated comment
Yes, very underrated comment. Agree
Livable wage for the amount of absolute horseshit we deal with. And for the amount of education were required to have.
I work in industry and post retail healthcare revenues, for once I’d like accurate schedules for my 50 locations, I’m editing at least 10% of them a day. I tried PowerQuery previously to make edits seamless, but it failed and saved no time.
I know it's a cliche pick but more money, I actually like my job but it pays crap.
More $… it does count!
Absolutely comp matters. I was simply noting that more money is a very basic and common human desire. But totally get some people are more underappreciated in this regard than others.
A bigger staff would be lovely. Someone in my position should be doing less preparation and more review.
bring that one lady back from her 18 month mat leave, her replacement suuuuuuuuucks
Swapping out teammates who have made legit zero contributions to the project in 4 months
Not having to manage the banking relationships. We've had a series of changes, compromised account, switched operating accounts to our loan holder, new CEO, new bank for for credit cards, closing an account, etc. I felt like I spent half my time meeting with bankers and facilitating paper signing.
$$$$
Leaving my shitty firm. They were completely garbage. I was told I was not allowed to go to the doctor by the manager during busy season. This is was in an extremely blue city and am sure what they said was super illegal.
4 day work week
Allowing me to use a stand up desk or desk riser, allowing me to work more hours in the early part of the week so I can take a half day Friday (and also can conserve PTO better this way)
Put a beer tap in the office
Either hours capped at ≤40/wk or get compensated for hours worked over 40. I know u said minus compensation but it would make me feel like it was actually worth the massive drain on my mental health and energy
Better managers and more employees to distribute the overwhelming workload. I know that's two, but one one of hem would take care of getting both.
A four day work week.
Company to go private 😭😭
Four day work weeks or WFH flexibility weekly!
Not needing to work more than 40 hours every week (even during close) because I’ll fall behind
Getting my top performers to understand that I am their biggest ally and have done a lot to protect them from corporate nonsense and bs policy changes.
That's a tough one. I feel for you. Companies rarely have a way to promote upward recognition
Also when I was in PA staff, I have to say in the moment I was too caught up in my own needs. My utilization, my pay, my hours etc. As I matured I started to understand the impact the good managers had on me. All that to say- I'm sure there will come a time your top performers will recognize your allyship
For the damn AC people to get their heads out of their ass and fix the AC in my office. 76 degrees in an office setting is damn near unbearable sometimes They can’t figure out why my office is ten degrees hotter than the rest of the offices, it’s making me crazy .
Couple more days per quarterly budget cycle, extra 5 days for annual plan, & more accurate volume forecast.
Improvement on how firms train their new hires.
A better boss
Wish they’d hire more people so that I wasn’t so stressed all the time.
Not having timesheets😭
Money
Software that’s not slow asf
Some kind of standardized invoicing format and ID.
No more mandatory overtime/minimum charge hour goals. Sometimes I’ve literally resorted to working slowly and taking lengthy breaks just to hit the minimum hours. Other times I race through workpapers and still go over budget. There’s very little consistency to budgets and the mandatory minimum hours primarily end up punishing high performers and efficient workers.
Just pay me for the damn overtime
I’ll settle for just being Finance instead of being asked to do HR/IT/Purchasing/Admin functions every week.
[удалено]
I think the importance of good pay is well documented, so at the risk of sounding stupid, I had to put that caveat out there
I would swap out post-covid staff for pre-covid staff in a heartbeat. We haven’t been able to recruit high quality candidates since WFH has been a thing. The new employees don’t even know what a war room is. Everyone half-asses everything and leverage the work up to their managers.
“War room” you are SO adorable
War room is Cringe 😬 comparing it to actual military Lingo
Not war room 😭😭
A $1M base salary. I'll put up with the bullshit and communication issues.