Tie in the Retained Earnings

In the perfect world of public accounting (I know that does not exist), the client should send you the trial balance. You should be able to punch in the numbers. You get to the correct book income number and your balance sheet would tie in.

But more often than not, that is not the case.
My mantra for doing any corporate tax return. First tie in the retained earnings, before doing anything else.

A small little smile comes on the face when it ties in the first go. :)

The artless art of emails.

I always thought I am good at writing emails. I always made my point clear. I always checked the tone of my email, and I always spell checked.

Recently, there were same changes at work. That gave me an opportunity to work with other people in the firm.

The other day, we were discussing a client, who had a lot of issues. We wanted to tell a lot of things to that client, which I was sure that the client would not like.

I was pleasantly surprised to see an email I was cced on the other day. It was such a well drafted email. So professional. So tactful. It made all the points clear and was not at all offensive. I was just wondering if writing emails is also an art in itself.

Sometimes, some things happen for a reason, and most of the time, the reason is a good one :)
I am so looking forward to learning so much in the near future! Including writing better professional emails!

Avoid the SALY method

SALY: Same as last year.

Public account is fun. We do get challenging tasks to do every year. Some things change and some do not.

I learnt it the hard way. But SALY method is just not the way to go about it.

Initially, when I started in public accounting, the most common answer for all my questions was" Follow last year". After a point of time, my mind went on auto pilot and instead of asking questions, I just started following last year blindly. But as I said, some things do not change, but some things do. It was then I realized that it is not about following last year. It is about knowing what you are doing.

The best way to learn is to read and research. That is what I resorted to. Although, for public accountants, not all the answers are on web, but there is a literature for everything somewhere. You just need to know where to find the answers from.

After 5 years in public accounting, I now, never tell my juniors to Follow last year.

CPA by Chance!

When you dont know what to do, follow others. Probably that is what my thought process was when I was 16.

It was after my X exams. I had to decide between Maths, Science and Commerce. Some of my cousins had taken commerce and were doing MBA that time. MBA. Sounded great back then in 1995. I said I will take Commerce.

I did not know what I was getting into back then. Choosing commerce lead me to a bachelor's degree in Commerce, and an MBA in Finance.

All said and done, I landed up in a job that needed neither Science, Math or Commerce. It just needed good PR skills and good English.

After around 10 months later, I got married and moved to United States.

And I was again at the same juncture. What to do now. This time, I had fewer choices because of my VISA status. One of them was a CPA certification. It sounded perfect as it allowed me to study on my VISA status, It was related to "Commerce" and I was qualified enough to sit for the CPA exams.

18 months and 4 exams later, I was a CPA.
A Certified Public Accountant.