Tricks of the trade

I must start todays blog post with a sincere apology.  I did not write anything yesterday which is a fact that has not gone unnoticed by several of my finance colleagues. Whilst they have all been very been very understanding that yesterday, especially yesterday morning, was a particularly bad day in terms of comfort levels and so writing something on the blog was not a priority, the V woman and the Yorkshire Pudding specifically felt a little let down that I had not provided the necessary respite in written form from their arduous day of preparing the latest forecast.  For this I am truly sorry.

The reason I understand their disappointment, is because I know the pain of the monthly forecast. It is quite possibly the most soul destroying experience you can go through, and it normally can be summarised like this.  Humble accountants spend ages preparing the accounts with all the relevant details so they are a true and fair reflection of reality. This is then presented to the boss, (who we shall refer to as TD because as the V woman pointed out today everyone knows there is only one TC) who then tells the humble accountants what he (or she) wanted the accounts to look like all along, and so the humble accountants spend the next two days redoing all of the numbers trying to get all the details to add up to the right totals.  As I said soul destroying.

Whilst I am disclosing all the tricks of the trade, I might as well reveal my other bug bear about accounting;  Controls testing.  As an auditor we used to have to go to clients and test all of their internal controls.  If the client passed the controls testing phase then it meant we would be able to rely on the output final numbers that were generated by the systems linked to the internal controls. WHAT?? Just because some junior auditor has done a third party debtors check doesn't mean that the numbers aren't all just made up.  Having done auditing for a few years and even having a certificate in it, I think I am qualified enough to confirm that auditing is just a cunning rouse by accountants (and increasingly by other professions now as well) to make a quick buck out of their clients. There is no way that a group of inexperienced trainees and third part consultants can possibly understand enough about a business in a two to three week period to be able to assess whether the statutory accounts are 100% accurate. Further more as the proud owner of a pair of eyes and a brain, I can also confirm that in every business in the land has at some point or other managed the expectations of their management or shareholders by presenting their accounts in a way which is deemed to be more acceptable than just what comes out of the system.

I am not suggesting that all accounts cook the books - far from it - but I am of the ardent opinion that finance people up and down the land are making life a lot harder for themselves than it should be because they are bowing to the pressure from "management" in what ever form it takes to meet certain targets and achieve certain goals. Often these goals are out of date, and in many cases were unrealistic to start with.  I remember seeing a sketch once about creative accounting, where the managing director asks the finance director how the numbers were looking.  The finance director thinks about it for a second, before replying "How would you like them to look?"  This is the epitomy of creative accounting.

If this current experience has taught me anything, it is that life is hard enough already without anyone making it even harder for themselves, either by accident or design. Goals, dreams and targets need to change as unexpected things happen.  You can either pretend to yourself that everything is ok, and make sacrifices and cuts to still meet those goals and targets or you can adjust them to reflect your current reality.  This is not to say you are discarding your orginal goals and dreams, but just changing your route slightly along the way.  If your original goals, dreams and targets are going to be achieved, you have to accept that obstacles will come along from time to time. How you choose to negociate these obstacles will be the difference between ultimate success and the alternative, but one thing is very clear; for any goal, dream or target to become a reality you have to really believe in it and be able to picture it happening. Anything less is like admitting defeat, and in my world this is not an option.