Professional mistake level 2

As most companies close their book in December, January is the month where slaves in the finance department a.k.a. accountants slog out the late nights to produce the relevant numbers for the year. Before I left for London, I had to go through a week of such torture, right after my wedding.
This is my 2nd year end reporting with my current company and I must say this so called peak period, is indeed the peak of the ‘professional mistake’ accountants make. While those who have read my entry on professional mistake will accountants are the ultimate modern slaves, going through 2 rounds of year end reporting further strengthen the notion.

So what exactly is this year end reporting period, or year end closing; or peak period, whatever you may call it? To me, the entire process can be summarised into 3 main processes.

The first is the time where accountants have to clean up the mess in the accounts. And yes, it’s ALWAYS in a mess. Who causes the mess? Well, some are made my accountants themselves but most are made by people from the operation department. Stuff like expenses wrongly classified cause some salesman treat some customers to some hookers but came back and call it ‘meals for customers’ or some sales which the customers promised while screwing the hooker and after screwing, decided otherwise but sales were recorded in the accounts. Ya’ know, stuff like that.

So yeah, accountants will have to hunt down all these mess in the accounts and rectify them. Who created those mess and gets to probably share the ‘meals’ with the customers? Those people in operations, ya’ know; those who don’t have professional qualifications like accountants. And who has to work their ass off to clean up the mess? Who else but accountants?

After cleaning up the mess; and it’s usually not fully cleaned; then comes the time to beautify the accounts. This means, if targets of certain departments are not met, accountants will have to make the numbers look as though it’s met. When certain expenses exceeded the budget or when a company spent dodgy expenses (remember the hooker meals for customers?), accountants are to make such expenses valid.

Yes, this is the time when accountants do the very thing they are employed for… to work their magic.

After the mess have been cleaned and the relevant numbers beautified ‘made to look reasonable’… then comes the time for accountants to con-vince the external auditors that the figures shown in the accounts are ‘real’. External auditors for big corporations are usually hopeful graduates of magic school and they are supposed to audit and certify that the relevant numbers are ‘real’.

As such, accountants in the said company will have to make sure the un-cleaned mess are not found and the ‘magic’ performed are not ‘overly excessive’; thus begins a game of hide and seek. Of course, auditors will sometimes find out all the ‘hidden’ things but with the said company being the customer of the auditor; the company is always right.

The beautiful thing about this process is that this is the time where auditors will learn how to clean up the mess and work the magic. This is crucial because… after all, auditors are future full fledge accountants. See the link?

Finally, when the auditors are con-vinced, the numbers are finalised. This usually happens after accountants have gone through after days and days of late nights, skipping lunches, eating unhealthy food for dinner… basically treating themselves like thrash in doing what they believe is ‘something only smart and intelligent professional people can do’.

Why is this the next step of professional mistake?

Because at the end of it all, the company will show an ‘excellent result’, and the people duly rewarded for those excellent results are the operations people. Those who couldn’t make it to become accountants or lawyers because they are not smart enough and ended up doing sales… these are the people who will get a fat bonus because the numbers have been cleaned and made reasonable by the smart people.

What do the smart accountants get then? They will be picked on the mess which were not cleaned, the magic that were not done properly, the parts where the auditors were not con-vinced. Basically, accountants will be told that they didn’t do good enough.

Isn’t this a new level of professional mistake?