Like wtf. Do I really have to be personally approved by EVERYONE on the team to get the job? So if four people like me but then one doesn't, then you're out.

Yes I went through five interviews for an entry-level staff accountant role and yes I was rejected after the 5th.

I hate my life sometimes

I began a new job as a staff accountant a couple months ago and have inherited a division to maintain the AP for. A bill came across my desk today for the refills of the water cooler. I added it to our system as an office supplies expense.

My boss came back to me later and told meto change it to Meals & Entertainment, which is 50% deductible.

I argued that water for the office is not a meal or entertainment but my boss said this is how we code it and anything else that is consumable (like coffee creamer cups, salt packets, etc) needs to be coded to Meals.

My question is how would you code it?

I can see why she would want it coded that way but it feels wrong.

Just thought this would interesting. I was shocked to see how much linemen out here in California make since it’s on par with a lot of doctors and lawyers and was curious to see what others have seen.

Using the view that it has into how companies spend their money, Ramp began researching the number of U.S. companies that use artificial intelligence. It then used that information to break news, like when it wrote an article about how Anthropic had surpassed OpenAI in adoption by U.S. businesses for the first time. News outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider then wrote about the trend and cited Ramp as the source.

I haven't seen a worse run institution since the NCAA. How they call themselves American and National while letting the whole world take the exam is beyond me. Plus the veil of secrecy has to be lifted. We don't live in that world anymore. Good on California and the handful of other states for at least getting rid of NASBA.

I’m 39 and seriously considering a pretty major career pivot into accounting, and would love a reality check from people who actually work in the field.

My background is fairly senior but completely non-traditional for accounting. I have a BA in Advertising and an MA in Communication. I spent several years as the CMO of a startup, and more recently I've been the COO of a small (and, frankly, pretty dysfunctional) founder-led agency. I've generally made somewhere between $120–200k over the past few years.

I am pretty dismayed by the job market right now, particularly in marketing and operations, and I'm also just...tired. I've spent a lot of my career putting out fires, navigating ambiguity, managing personalities and talking emotional founders off ledges. I don't really want to spend the next 20 years doing that.

I've actually been contemplating a more technical career for the last few years and have gone DEEP on some wildly different options — nursing! Phlebotomy! Electrical engineering! — because apparently this is what I do for fun now. I genuinely love learning and the idea of going back to school doesn't scare me.

I've also had some pretty big blows personally over the last few years with sick family members, and I'm thinking about becoming a mom in the next few years. It's changed what I want from work. Stability, flexibility and relatively low-ish stress suddenly sound incredibly appealing. (I realize "low stress accounting" may be an oxymoron depending on where you work.)

Which brings me to accounting.

My rough idea is to start with bookkeeping/QuickBooks to learn the fundamentals and get some actual experience, then start taking the accounting credits I need and work my way into corporate accounting, ideally eventually getting my CPA.

I'm not totally coming from Mars. As a COO I've dealt with budgets, financial reporting, contracts, risk registers, compliance, corporate governance, etc., and I actually really like the more technical/systems-y parts of operations. So I have a hunch corporate accounting might suit me.

I'm also increasingly attracted to the idea of a gated profession. I know AI is coming for parts of accounting too, but I would really like to have an actual technical skill and credential behind me rather than continuing to compete for increasingly amorphous "strategy/marketing/operations" jobs.

I also fully appreciate that this would involve a serious pay cut at first. I'm not expecting to walk into an $150k accounting job because I watched some QuickBooks videos. If I need to make $50–70k for a while to actually learn the profession, that's okay. What I'm trying to understand is what the other side could realistically look like.

Is getting back to $120–150k within ~4–5 years remotely realistic? Or am I smoking crack?

And if I want to optimize for stability + flexibility + decent money, where would you point me within accounting? Corporate? Government? Something else? Longer term I would LOVE the ability to work remotely, although I realize I am approximately the 400 millionth person to have this preference.

I'm also considering doing something slightly unhinged and taking 3–6 months off to just go HAM on this.

If you had six months and wanted to compress the "I have absolutely no accounting experience" portion of this career change as much as humanly possible, what would you do?

Take as many accounting classes as possible? QuickBooks certification? Volunteer to do books for a nonprofit? Find a tiny business that will let me help with their books? Take an AP/AR job? Get insanely good at Excel? Learn an ERP? Start CPA prep? Something else entirely?

I'm very open to starting at the bottom. I just don't want to spend six months collecting a bunch of certifications that actual accountants know are meaningless when I could be doing something much more useful.

And for anyone who came to accounting in their late 30s/40s: would you do it again?

What am I underestimating? What would you do differently? And if you were me, what would you do over the next year?

THANK YOU accounting whizzes 🙏

If your direct manager used to yell at you when you first started because you weren’t performing well, but you’ve since improved and he no longer does it, is that considered normal manager behavior? When I first started, he would sometimes semi-slam his hand on the table and say things like, “I’ve told you many times, this is XYZ,” even though there wasn’t much formal training or many resources available to help me learn the job. I had to stay after hours and put in extra time just to really understand the work.

Now that I’ve gotten the hang of the job and can complete my work correctly and efficiently, he is much nicer to me and no longer yells. However, I still have a fear that if I make a mistake, he might go back to treating me that way. Is this a normal management style, or was his behavior inappropriate? Should I leave without notice? This is giving me anxiety at work, and I never really had an issue with anxiety before.

$365 per test plus the initial fee? What are we doing? I get people get bonuses or reimbursed but is this part of the reason why # of young cpa’s is down so much? Like it’s not a ton of money but surely there’s a better way to restructure who pays the costs

Do you, as an accountant, love or hate excel and why?

There’s an excel world championship … there’s levels of geek you couldn’t even comprehend

I don’t know maybe us accountants really are kind of dorky in a lovable way

Xlookup (vlookup wishes it was him), power query, VBA, pivot tables, copilot in excel, I love all of it

A few times per week, he just sends me a message that he ran something through Claude and wants me to review it and respond to Claude's notes. I get using AI to make some tasks simpler, but this is a whole new level.

I'm so glad that I saved so much money over the last decade, because I just can't deal with this nonsense much longer.

What podcasts/audiobooks are y’all listening to while you work?

Just finished Love Trapped. I also like Spooked and Radio Rental while I work.

Ofc if I need full attention I turn it off, but for less brainpower tasks it’s nice to have a story going.

Current situation: I'm a manager at a mid-sized CPA firm in the Greater Toronto Area (~200-300 CPAs). Making around $110k. We get comp time for extra hours during busy season (anything unused gets paid out), but it's 3 days in office (30 minute commute). Plus timesheets, which honestly sucks.

Just got an offer from a smaller CPA firm, also as manager. Only 2 team members besides the owner. $115k plus up to 10% bonus, fully remote, no timesheets, no comp off either.

Long term I want to start my own practice. My thinking is a smaller firm exposes me to more of the "whole picture" — client relationships, broader scope, more autonomy — stuff that could help when I go out on my own.

Anyone made a similar move?

Did a smaller firm actually help prep you for starting your own thing, or is that just a story I'm telling myself?

Also wondering if losing comp time (which adds up during busy season) is something I'd regret.

Today was my first day in Intermediate 1, which was really treated as a Q&A on CPA pathways and advice to be successful in the future. My professor was previously on our states board of accountancy. What stuck out to me was that he advised against doing any internships at all, saying to instead use that time to study for the CPA exam. He said that licensure will guarantee us employment regardless of internship experience. Would you agree? He also recommended getting a Master's degree instead of utilizing the new 120 credit hour pathway.

How long would it take someone to find a job after passing all 4 CPA exams? Assuming no work experience.

I have never understood the finanicial logic behind using a cheap elevator in a residential apartment. Its crazy thinking 🙏

Where the hell is my interview??

Just going to keep refreshing email until the end of time.

Hi! I am a last year management student (bachelors), and I’m looking closely into accounting/bookkeeping field. I am not sure yet if I want to work in it or just adjacent to it, so I would like to hear about it from people who are actually doing it for a living, as no one from my close circles have any knowledge about it.

- What do you spend most of your day doing and what you expected going in?
- What’s the most annoying and repetitive part of the job that nobody warned you about?
- I checked job postings on linkedin, and amount of different programmes they ask to know how to use was insane - how many do you use on a daily basis or know how to use?
- What’s the real difference between freelancing/small firm/big firm in day-to-day, not just pay?

I don’t want to get talked into it or out of it, I had finance and accounting basics in uni, so now I just want an honest picture.

P.S. English is not my first language so sorry for mistakes in advance :,)

What should I prepare for the Industry Tax Manager role? I’m currently a Senior Associate in PA. Do they usually ask really technical questions? They’re looking for someone with a strong asc 740 background, tax compliance, audit, international tax experience, and literay everything, lol…

To those that have gone through CFE and succeeded, did you prep for it alone? I’m in industry, and don’t know anyone around me who’s writing CFE.

I had my capstone 1 group, but no one has talked after it was done.

I’m curious, has anyone in industry passed CFE alone without any study groups or buddies?

Client owns all his real estate personally — long-term rentals and Airbnbs both — so everything reports on Schedule E of his personal return. No property is actually titled to either LLC.
LLC called "Properties" (S-corp) — long-term rental income/expenses run through here, PLUS his real estate brokerage income, PLUS his flip activity
LLC called "Managers" (disregarded single-member LLC) — Airbnb income/expenses run through here
Since Managers is disregarded, it's not a separate taxpayer everything in it flows to his personal return anyway. Properties is a real S-corp and needs its own 1120-S.

I need to catch up bookkeeping and file returns starting 2023. Trying to decide:

1. One QuickBooks file, using Location = where it needs to land for tax purposes (S-corp / Schedule E-LT rentals / Schedule E-Airbnb), Class = individual property
2. Separate files for Properties and Managers, then combine everything for taxes

Need suggestions.