My Job as an Auditor is Literally Making Me Sick!!!!!

Before I majored in Accounting years ago, I had no clue about the downside of public accounting, and the stress level I would experience.  When I studied for the CPA exam, I was told time after time again I would make good money when I became a CPA.  Those were all lies. Driven by a false sense of hope and optimism, I studied very hard and became a CPA.

Looking back, I wish I had spent my time doing something else, like getting a job as an office manager in a Doctor's office or even an office manager in my CPA firm.  May be I should have gotten a job in the kitchen or dining room at a restaurant.  I would be making a salary not too different from what I am making now, but I would have more time with my family, to pursue my hobbies, and to sleep more, etc, etc.

I had recently found out that the office manager of my firm is paid $77K a year.  She is not a CPA, she only has an associate degree.  She is therefore incapable of providing any support at all, and if the professional staff aren't watchful, she will mess up their health insurance,  401K contributions,  paid vacation and sick days and underpay them, not intentionally but because of errors.  The worst part is she has such strong conviction of being correct that she doesn't address the mistake immediately, because she believes the professional staff are wrong!  We are all CPAs and she is an uneducated community college grad with no special skills. She can't even write an email that is more than 2 sentences long.  Yet, when there is a dispute in any calculation of benefits, she is so confident that she knows the math better than the CPAs. Unbelievable.

I am very resentful, because as an audit manager, I don't make any much more than her.  Because of her incompetence, I have to spend extra time fixing complaints from my audit staff about their time, their pay, their software problems and other administrative support issue.   Yet she gets to go home sharply at 5:30pm everyday.  When she goes home, she literally goes home.  When I go home at 7pm or 8pm, I literally am bringing work home to continue to work till midnight.  I have to do that because I have so many different engagements on hand and I am short of audit staff and also administrative support.  Many people said working in a small firm is less stressful than working in Big 4.  I had never worked in a Big 4, I foolishly turned down a senior associate position 3 years ago from one of them because they offered me a salary that was way less than what the office manager is making in my firm.  But I believe if I were a senior associate in a Big 4, I would not have to waste time dealing with administrative issues or correcting paid time off for the 1st year associates and I don't have to do anything about the quality control and ARs for the firm like I am doing now.

I can handle huge volume of audit and accounting work fine, but I can't handle  administrative work, billing, the firm's AR, computer support and also audit, all at the same time.  So before you join a small firm, think twice!!!

Meanwhile, I have been feeling shortness of breath, exhaustion, mood swings with my family, headaches etc... due to the fact that I have a lot of imminent deadlines I have to meet for my clients, and I also have no administrative support. Sometimes I woke up and I literally suffered panic attacks right before I left home for work. Like this memorial day long weekend, my firm's office manager gets to take a trip to San Diego, and I will be working at home because I have a deadline on Tuesday!! I rather take the job of an office manger in my firm because all she does is well, I really don't know what she is doing.  But the partners seem to like her.  As professional CPAs come and go, she has become the employee with the longest tenure in the firm.  No, she is not related to any of the partners. As to why she gets such a well paid position and is able to get away with her little contribution to the firm, I have been too busy to try to figure out.

Yes, I know what you are saying now, why don't I quit?  I have been so busy I have no time to even sleep, forget about finding another job.  I did manage to send several resumes out for corporate accounting positions, but have not heard anything back.  I am very eager to leave my firm and leave public accounting for good.   Until then, I can only wish myself to get well soon, physically and mentally:

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Controller Is No Accountant

Today while working at my client's office.  The controller shocked me when I proposed to reclassify cash advance into inventory in transit.  The controller told me not to bother because there was no difference between the two and they were all current assets on the balance sheet anyway.

So,  according to this controller, may be there is no need to report different types of current assets on the balance sheet, may be GAAP allows us to report all current assets in just one line under "CURRENT ASSETS"?????

This controller is a CPA who claimed to formerly have 2 years' audit experience in a local CPA firm that has over 150 employees. Shocking......If I have my own company, I will not hire this CPA firm because their auditors seem to have very different accounting standards....If you want to know if your company is using this CPA firm, type the firm's name in the comment box below and I will respond with a yes or no....

EPIC EMR's Inefficiency Is Costing My Clients Big Times

The only advantage for me being a CPA is the opportunity to see the dirt of other professions and industries. While I think my profession is suffering from all the huge loads of excessive documentation and reporting burdens passed down by the government's forever additions of more new laws and regulations,  I am not sure if I should find comfort when I see that the physicians and the medical profession are also being tortured by excessive regulations and inefficient mandates passed down  by the government.

As a CPA, I was told by my doctor that I was a very respectful and one of the best patients he had because of the following:

1. I never went to my doctor trying to squeeze a dozen complaints in one single appointment and expected him to take care of them all in 15-20 minutes.
2. I never called my doctor in the middle of the night or on weekends to complain about my medical conditions and demand him to phone in a prescription for me without even seeing me.
3. I never gave my doctor a no-show on my appointment and I am always polite and respectful of him during the short 15-20 minutes section he sees me in the exam room.
4. I always pay my doctor's bill on time and he is always on top of my Christmas Gift list.

As a CPA, I have clients who are physicians and medical practices.  I provide them with accounting, tax planning and advisory services and I help them keep track and manage their finances.  Because of this, I know how medical practices operate.  I know how they bill to make money and where they spend the money they received from Medicare and insurance companies.  Such knowledge had made me realize that many doctors work really hard and yet they aren't getting paid for what their years of training, education and hard work deserve.  Specialists and Surgeons are in better position even though they also experience huge stress and litigation risks.  Primary care medicine that serves the majority of people like myself, is not a good profession to be in. If I have children, I will tell them not to go to medical school if they want to practice primary care medicine. I will not pay for medical schools if their goal is to become an internist or primary care physician.  They just don't make much money at all.  I have hair stylists clients who make more than these doctors on an hourly basis.

In America, the public expects that healthcare to be free, and they complain more about their $10 copay for a doctor's visit than their coffee break at Starbucks. They expect doctors to work free at nights and weekends to listen to their complaints and phone in medicines for them.  Meanwhile, these same people don't expect to go to see a movie for free. They don't expect to talk to their lawyers for free either.

When a doctor spends time at night and weekend taking phone calls from patients doing re-fills, he doesn't make a dime because health insurance and Medicare don't pay for service like this.  The doctor who does this can't bill it.  

If you think your primary care doctors are making a lot of money because you pay your insurance premium. It's not true.   There are lots of restrictions to restrict a doctor on how much to bill for what.  As their accountant, I feel sorry for the primary care doctors because most of them can only occasionally bill  $200 top for a visit. The average 20 minute visit time with patient creates an extra 2-3 hours of paperwork and documentation, thanks to EPIC EMR. When a doctor bills $200, he has to pay himself the salary, office rent, medical assistants' salary, malpractice insurance and other bills to run a medical practice.  As an accountant and tax payer and patient, it makes me sick to see how most of the money spent are not on taking care of the patients but on legal compliance and other regulatory mandated documentation garbage that is totally irrelevant to my health.

There are too many non-medical functions and incompetent people making money in between the doctors and the patients.  As if dealing with these are not enough, the doctors are forced to use this really clumsy, cluttered and totally awkward electronic medical record called EPIC.  As an accountant, I see doctors' productivity drops drastically with increase work hours by looking at the numbers since they implemented EPIC.  As a patient, I was shown by my doctor how he uses EPIC to maintain my electronic record after my visit.  I was shocked to actually see how  time consuming it is for my doctor to update my chart, and to close it.  And I am not a patient who has complicated issues.  I am a healthy young professional who is only there for my checkup...

As an auditor and accountant, the way that doctors operate with EPIC is shockingly inefficient and ineffective to me.  The only winners in this are really the company which makes the software and the non-medical people the company hires to promote,  run, maintain and train doctors how to use this tedious counter-productive electronic medical record.  There got to be a better EMR out there, is there?  

If you are a doctor who hates EPIC, you are not alone, many of my physician clients hate them too. I hate it too because as a patient, I don't want my doctor to spend more time on working the EPIC charts than spending time with me. Click the link below to see how other doctors feel about EPIC:

http://www.electronicink.com/a-better-system/an-epic-morning-in-the-exam-room-2/

So, if you are a physician currently using EPIC, and your practice's bottom line is negatively affected by it as a result of more unpaid hours, please feel free to drop me a comment and share your nightmare with me.

My First Attempt in Getting My First Tax Client

A while back I met a lawyer at  my first and last happy hour for 2012.  He recently referred to me someone who needs a CPA to back file several years of tax returns.  I was so very excited and I started to dream about quitting my current job and having my own tax practice.  Well, such a dream turned out to be very short-lived.  This person whom the lawyer referred to me turned out to be a total flake.

After wasting my time emailing with this person and talking to him on the phone, I was so excited that he agreed to come into my office with his accounting records.  I was so looking forward to the appointment.  But he never showed.  He totally stood me up. I called his office several times and he just dodged my phone calls.  I left messages with his employees but he never called back.  I emailed him few times also trying to re-schedule his "missed" tax appointment.  He never emailed me back.

This flake wasted my time talking to him on the phone, answering his tax questions only to later pull a no-show on a scheduled tax appointment.  He didn't have the courtesy to call or email to cancel.  He didn't have the decency to even return my phone call or email to apologize for his no-show.

I am going to black list this guy's company and him and I swear to never give his company any business or pay my visit at any business that he is affiliated with.  I will warn my clients about this guy if any of them have the misfortune to be solicited by this guy's company.  A flake like this can't be fit for any one to do business with or to even work with.  This explains why he and his company haven't filed taxes for the last few years.

Now that I realize how hard it is to get a client, I have more respect for my current and former bosses for getting enough clients to pay for my salary and benefits.  Building a small accounting firm is definitely no easier task than getting a job from a Big 4.......Why is it so hard to get tax clients?  How can I get my own tax clients? Until I can answer these questions, I guess I better be back to job hunting instead of client hunting....

Big 4 Firms Are Too Snobbish

I had applied online for a senior associate job with one of the big 4s back in May.  I haven't heard anything from them, as if I had thrown my application in a black hole.  I have been licensed as a CPA for several years now and I think I more than qualify to be a senior associate.  Either this big 4 form is snobbish or the firm is so dysfunctional that its hiring system is incapable of observing even the basic etiquette of recruiting.   By the way, its online job application site really sucks big times and is clumsy.  That website belongs with the 90s when Netscape dominated the internet search technology. I can't believe how a big 4 firm is so not up-to-date with technology. How does it audit clients that have 21 century accounting systems and IT technology is beyond me.....

Dealing With People Is Much Harder Than Dealing With Numbers

Today is another day that is filled with aggravation. When I was a college student,  I chose to major in accounting thinking that I could make a  living doing what I was better at, which is, working with numbers and rationality. I avoided majors like marketing or law because jobs in those fields involves too much human interaction than I can handle.

The reality is, dealing with people, particularly annoying and aggravating people accounts for most of my working hours as  a CPA in public accounting.  All the emails, phone calls, in-person meetings, video conferencing with people  have taken up most of my working hours each day.

Working with numbers is easy, but dealing with people is way too stressful and aggravating.  There are so many aggravating people that I have to deal with everyday that it's sickening.  There are people who have too much ego.  There are people who are too dumb.  There are people who are too lazy. There are people who are too incompetent.  There are people who are too sensitive. There are people who are too rude and self-absorbed.  Then there are people who are too demanding.

The people that a CPA  in a small firm has to deal with are at very different levels than the people that an associate at a Big 4 firm has to deal with. I have a feeling that the people that I am dealing with everyday have to be much less educated, or literate (in accounting, business, or taxes)   The is one of the cons that I find from my years working with small CPA firms.

Tired of Working With Incompetent CPAs

I'm the only person in my firm who is working today even though it's Sunday.  It's not because I am the only one who doesn't go to Sunday Service at Church. It's because I have to review the audit workpapers of my fellow CPA co-workers.

I'm really pissed off because if these people are the slightest bit of being competent, I won't be sitting here today and correcting their sloppy and unacceptable audit documentation.

How can CPAs who have been licensed for five and more years be giving me this kind of sloppy audit workpapers.  It is as if they don't give a damn.  All the test procedures are without explanation, without definition of test objective, test procedures.  All of the documentations are so sloppy that the only documentation that shows their audit work is a tick mark right next to each line item on the reports provided by the clients, and the one line at the bottom that says  "Vouched without exception".  Excuse me, what does this really mean???  It's shocking.   Their audit programs are even more shocking, they just filled out the cookie-cutter programs from PPC and just put their initials on each procedure and wrote "Done" on the column where specific audit workpaper of the work done is supposed to be referenced. "Done" where? "Done" how?

So after spending an entire Sunday reviewing and putting comments and questions on their sloppy workpapers, I will have to spend probably the next few days to go over with them exactly what they did.  I was told by the Partner that the clients weren't going to paid for that.  Too bad. If only the Partner hired more competent CPAs, he wouldn't have to worry about all these wasted hours that clients won't pay for.  I am the one who is the real victim here because here I am stuck in this office alone on a Sunday writing all these comments and review issues. Both the labor law and the firm policy don't entitle positions like mine for overtime pay.

I'm so sick and tired of working with these people that I am so going to look for better pastures.  These CPAs are hopeless and they shouldn't be doing auditing.  It's too scary that they are.  I bet this kind of aggravation doesn't happen in the Big 4 firms because I guess they probably have more competent accountants there.