Accounting for a Detoured Economist

In a few months I will want to strangle myself for saying this…but I want to get out of the office and do some field work. In the past two weeks I have done almost 50 hours of CPE. Yuck! With a lack of billable time from clients, in anticipation of June 30 clients getting info to us soon, I have been banished to the world of CPE time filling.

Since I am the new guy I have had the joy of countless hours of Independence, Revised Audit Standards (especially in GASB land), and all the other crap the firm want me to learn so they can cover their ass if anything ever goes wrong (you know the we had him take 10 hours of CPE on this audit standard so he knew what he was doing was wrong). Needless to say a cash reconciliation is looking mighty interesting at the moment. Board minutes?…anyone have board minutes for me to read?…please!

Mahalanobis has discovered an interesting benefit of the auditors employment act …also known as Sarbanes-Oxley…

Sarbanes-Oxley (aka Sarbox) is a poorly written law created in response to several high-profile accounting frauds: Enron, Tyco, WorldCom. The act is wide ranging, and mandates auditor independence and enhanced financial disclosure, especially of any conflicts of interest.

The latest scandal in financial aid, where low-paid workers who determine which lenders get which loans were paid bribes of $10-$80k to push paper their way, would have been caught under Sarbox.

This just reinforces the notion that good laws can have great unintended consequences and bad laws can have good unintended consequences. I never thought of this angle…too bad government agencies don’t have to go through 404 audits.

Krupo recently mentioned a topic I have been thinking about lately. “Why does getting an important document you need for an audit take so long to get?” Anyone who has spent a few months auditing knows this scenario. You ask for a simple bank statement, reconciliation, schedule or answers to an analytical workpaper and it takes the client all day to get it to you. Krupo has noticed that many times the lack of immediacy of a reply is not due to the massive workload of the client…

If the person you’re waiting for is working with other people, maybe it’s because they spent half the day chit-chatting.

…if you want something done, sit next to the person who owes you the information until you get it. You may think standing is a good option but it’s not - you’ll get tired, and they’re probably sitting. Make yourself comfortable - that way they know they won’t be able to stall you out by dragging out their response with myriad stalling tactics.

Heck yeah! I do a fair share of government agency audits…so let me tell you from ample experience how correct Krupo is. I have taken to bringing my laptop to the desk of my contact and working in front of them until I get the information I need to continue my work. Client’s hate auditors hovering! If they insist on continuing there non-work conversations I just keep asking for more info. Every few minutes I am at their desk waiting for my documents I ask for a new piece of information. Eventually they get the hint. I don’t hate down-time…breaks are a good thing…but some people take 15 breaks a day. When I am depending on them to complete my audit…and they know it…and they go on with there leisurely work schedule it makes me mad. I already work many more hours then the client knows on their audit….Saturdays…nights…Holidays…while I am at other jobs…to get THEIR audit done. Every minute they stall my work means I spend one less minute with my new baby on Saturday….to hell with that!

When my company prepares for an audit we send the client a 7 to 10 page list of items we will need. If I walk into the client’s office and they have a stack of stuff waiting for me, then they will probably not have to deal with me for 85% of the time I am at their offices. But people that organized usually aren’t the type of people that chit-chat all day…so the point is rather moot.

Client’s aren’t the only time stealers at a job-site. Other auditors can kill your productivity as well. I bring an ipod to every job. In the morning I usually get to the clients site, turn on and set up my laptop, say pleasant morning greetings to my co-workers, and put the earbuds in. I do this so that chit-chat with my coworkers is kept to a minimum. It’s not that I don’t like my co-workers….quite the contrary, most of them are amiable, pleasant, and interesting…but if I talk to them at the job or listen to their stories I find that my Saturday and night workload increases proportionally to the length of those conversation. So the ipod actually makes me multiple times more productive by eliminating distracting time stealing conversations. It sounds anti-social, I know, but it’s the truth.

The last major time stealer is the damn internet…this blog is a prime example…I love to hear a client has internet access for me when I am at their site….but the lure is such a strong pull. I can’t seem to stop myself from checking email, blog comments, news, and various other internet distracters a few times a day. I am getting better about this…but this time stealer is my weakness.