Is Accounting boring?

[Lee B]

"The most common reason students didn't major in accounting is that they just didn't find it interesting —

but very close to that is the ability to make more money faster in other fields, and the burden of the 150-credit-hour requirement."

To be honest, when I was a staff auditor for Coopers & Lybrand, it was very boring!

[mcb39]

Not boring at all!  The deadlines are what drive me crazy.

[MDCPA]

Probably very boring in the "large" firms where you are "pigeonholed" when you first come out of school vs. the variety of working for a smaller firm.  At least that's my experience.

[Margaret CPA in OH]

I began in a 4 person firm and found auditing incredibly boring.  I thought I had made a serious career mistake.  Then tax season rolled around... Made my days!  Master's in Tax and never looked back. 

[Randall]

Accounting is my first love.  I think I'm an accountant by education, profession and nature.  I think I was born an accountant.  But I don't do much accounting anymore.  Tax prep seems little to do with accounting.  Some maybe for business clients.  I once heard it said that any endeavor needs four things:  vision, planning, engineering and accounting.  I think that's true.  Accounting gets short shrift.  I tell people I'm an old school accountant stuck in fourth grade arithmetic. 

[Lee B]

I agree, the most enjoyable part of my work is the monthly small business accounting  tasks, second is payroll.

For me tax preparation is a necessary evil, which probably explains why I don't do any estate and trust related work.

 

[BulldogTom]

I consider myself a Management Accountant.  I love putting processes and procedures into place so the owners and management get their KPIs reported timely and accurately so they can be acted upon before there no chance to change the operational outcome.   

The GAAP and Tax Reporting are important, but profits and cash flow rule the business world.   

Tom
Longview, TX

[Patrick Michael]

I found auditing very boring too so opted out from going the CPA route.  After a couple of staff accounting jobs at private business's I landed a position as an accounting manager with the 3rd largest vegetation management company in the country.  They also owned a Canadian company and I found the international component and consolidation work very interesting.  They even paid for me to get my CMA with a nice raise when I passed. 

[Randall]

15 hours ago, Patrick Michael said:

I found auditing very boring too so opted out from going the CPA route.  After a couple of staff accounting jobs at private business's I landed a position as an accounting manager with the 3rd largest vegetation management company in the country.  They also owned a Canadian company and I found the international component and consolidation work very interesting.  They even paid for me to get my CMA with a nice raise when I passed. 

When I was young (way back), I thought auditing was THE thing.  As I got older and jaded and what took place out there in the world, I began to think of auditing as more meaningless, just glossing over things.  Not that it should have been but what it had become.  Maybe that's just me.  Maybe there is still something to it.  But I wonder how can you really audit these big organizations?

[Lee B]

Yes, there seems to be an ongoing stream of Audit Firms getting fined for substandard work.

[Patrick Michael]

On 8/22/2023 at 10:48 AM, Randall said:

When I was young (way back), I thought auditing was THE thing.  As I got older and jaded and what took place out there in the world, I began to think of auditing as more meaningless, just glossing over things.  Not that it should have been but what it had become.  Maybe that's just me.  Maybe there is still something to it.  But I wonder how can you really audit these big organizations?

I had a class mate who ended up working for Grant Thornton.  She was assigned to the team auditing the Social Security Administration and she told me the materiality threshold was in the ten's of millions (can't remember the exact amount).  Leaves a lot of room for errors and fraud.

[schirallicpa]

I started out in tax, but was able to be part of a few audits.  Overall it is all boring to me.  The clients make it interesting.  I'm not smart enough to find something else and have done this for so long I don't think I could quit.  Clients are like gum stuck to your shoe.

 

[Lee B]

"Statistics from the AICPA suggest that 75 percent of current CPAs will retire in the next 15 years, leaving a huge vacuum in the industry."

The outsourcing of accounting tasks to countries like India and The Phillipines will accelerate combined with AI enhancements. 

[Sara EA]

A woman I knew who was the bookkeeper for a nonprofit said she fell in love with bookkeeping in high school.  When they'd pass out those practice packets with journals, checkbook registers, and fake bills for the cash, she'd take it home and complete it all in one night.  Another woman was a scientist at a cosmetics company until she discovered Quickbooks.  It was love at first sight.  She abandoned her science degree, and now does bookkeeping for many small businesses.  Some people are just born to compute, just like some are born to make music or race fast cars.  Have people changed so much that fewer are being born to compute, or is the political/education system telling them that only STEM degrees count?  Not everyone has that aptitude, ya think?  Good thing, or who would make the music?