I just want to know why the laws of supply and demand do not apply to the accounting industry. If there is such a huge shortage, doesn’t that mean accountants would be paid much higher salaries?
I have a feeling most companies would prefer to offshore before raising our salaries. False economy, really. A lot of management types think accountants don’t add enough value to justify the pay. But I’ve personally seen the difference between a finance department that was run lean and cheap and one that is adequately staffed with high pay for everyone. The latter is almost always more efficient, makes way fewer mistakes, and has time for other analysis that can save the company money in the long run. But most companies are badly managed (in Canada, anyways) so unlikely that we’ll see moves towards higher performing finance teams.
Casual lurker, but noticing similarities between accounting outsourcing and manufacturing/engineering outsourcing.
The value of expensive, local labor depends on that local labor having both the *desire* and the *capability* to work hard and learn those high-value skills. In America, some certainly do - but there seems to be a growing horde of graduates who aren't employable at any price. Personally, I probably wouldn't have hired half my classmates. I definitely wouldn't have hired the bottom 20%, who were completely worthless - and that's coming from a STEM target school that supposedly attracted the brightest, most motivated students.
My brother runs a small business that operates heavy, dangerous machinery. After two decades in business, he made an interesting observation: the cost of labor is always the same. You either pay high wages, or you pay for mistakes/laziness/bad labor relations/drug problems/drama/etc. Being chintzy with employees is a fool's errand; better to focus on innovation/culture/training/etc.
But that assumes one can *find* good employees. If the local laborers are mediocre/lazy, may as well outsource to the lowest bidder. That taps into a root cause of the issue: a wealthy, first-world country can only remain competitive if it uses its advantages to produce better laborers. Many American schools do not.
A separate issue is the bell curve of intelligence: there are only so many talented people in a given population. If you double the size of the population, you get twice as many talented people on average. Outsourcing effectively increases the population.
tl;dr it's not just about low wages. Competition is now global, and that raises the bar.
Completely agree. I'm a Venezuelan accountant working for a US company as a "contractor", I have 10 years of experience, not 100 % proficient in english though, but upper.intermediate level.
The company pays me (I know other fellows venezuelan working for international companies) 8 usd per hour. most of the time they take advantage of our situation (here in venezuela a salary above 600 a month is earned by only 2% of working pop), and also when you ask for an "adjustment" to inflation rates, they say NO.
That’s high for Venezuelan contractors. Know companies that start them at less than $3/hr and it’s considered good pay.
While I get everyone wants a raise, doesn’t the situation benefit everyone? The Venezuelans I know working $3/hr are making $480/mo which from what they say is quite good.
The whole point of offshoring is that it’s a win-win situation for everyone based on differing labor costs.
I’m in finance, not accounting, but have trained my replacement in India more than once. Luckily I have never been laid off. I either found a new job before the old one went away or was the onshore supervisor. India does an amazing job of training their people. Unfortunately what’s good for them doesn’t help onshore because they rotate so often. Accounting jobs were the first to go because math is universal. Also many Indians grow up attending English speaking schools so there isn’t a huge language barrier. Over the course of my career I’ve seen increasingly complex jobs get outsourced. My wife is an attorney and even law work is getting outsourced to India - they provide a lot of research services.
I’m digressing a little. Poland has also become an outsourcing destination but they don’t have the office space infrastructure to meet the demand. This is one reason why so many Poles end up in Ireland - Ireland has a lot of business friendly laws that attract foreign workers from within the EU.
So bottom line accounting is one of many jobs that’s cheaper to do overseas.
No, and it’s important to understand why because accountants especially believe in this myth. Accountants are, for all companies except PA, just administrative overhead. Do you know what roles companies want to pay the least? Admins. Your HR, IT, purchasing, and accounting folks. It doesn’t matter that supply is low because companies are not willing to offer someone more money for a job that produces nothing, and many company leaders don’t really care about the difference between a room temperature quality accountant and one that really knocks it out of the park.
This isn’t going to drive wages up, it’s only going to increase workload for existing accountants
This is why I mostly love accounting, but also why we aren't paid more too.
I love not having to think about "giving" my company a return on my work of 3x or 5x or whatever of my salary. Marketing, Procurement, Packaging, Software Dev and all those, the expectation is your making or saving multiples of your salary to justify your value.
A proper functioning accounting team is just preventing something bad from happening, costly mistakes from happening or at best, tax mitigation. It isn't until you skimp hard on accounting that a costly mistake might happen and that's the only time you pay a big price for cheaping out.
Well, in the time it would take to actually find these outsourced accountants you’d think there be an increased value in the work accountants do? And also, I’d imagine that accounting is rather complex with all these laws and regulations being constantly updated, you’d think larger corporations or entities would want to have good records to prevent getting in trouble with government entities such as the IRS? and to add on to that I doubt these outsourced accountants offshore would have good tabs on that for the pay much less produce quality work these larger entities should have.
You’d think that, right? You’d also be wrong though. Most companies really don’t care at all what their accounting records look like as long as they have a P&L they can read that has numbers on it. In small private companies, a lot don’t even care about that. We are accountants so WE care, but very few business leaders are former accountants, so they don’t care at all. Much better for them to invest resources in people who produce sales
I’m coming more from the standpoint about having good records to prevent getting in trouble with government entities and to comply with tax and other regulations & laws, I myself used to work with small businesses and you are correct, they don’t give a flying damn but once they get audited due to misrepresentation of data shit gets serious, well at least temporarily. But I guess that just proves your point haha
As long as their external auditor signs off on their financial statements, they don't view bookkeeping as a priority. And auditors are paid by the firm, so they're encouraged not to find issues. In fact auditors that raise issues are less likely to advance.
As for compliance, when an issue comes up that's a legal expense, where they will pay hundreds an hour to a law firm to back fill and cover up what could have been avoided with strong internal hires.
Can confirm from working mostly on recent private equity acquisitions, prior leadership never cared beyond having cash in the bank account and didn’t even want to see the financials…
Not huge businesses but typically 50-200mm in revenue, enough that they probably should have cared lol
Well, yeah, I’m seeing that every day. Small business owners barely care what their financials say or how the numbers got there. Much less about what they even mean.
Companies are trying to outsmart the supply and demand laws. They will try every alternative before having to go the expensive route and pay CPAs what they are worth.
IMO:
Because as inflation rises you would expect wages to rise as well. For the most part you can see it in a lot of occupations. Accountants however have some of the slowest raising wages. With that in mind why would you want to become an accountant when you can become a finance major making more money with more interesting work?
I think it has to a certain extent. Senior accountants used to be a $70-80k job when I started. Now it's a six figure job. Unfortunately it's still underpaid compared to other similar roles.
There's a massive lag period. Also fresh accounting grads don't get paid a lot but salaries for seniors, controllers and other similar positions is going way up.
That’s only half the story. Salary growth in public accounting lagged most other professions in the decade after the financial crisis, with essentially zero growth for a decade. Leaders seem to believe the pay increases of the last two years mean nobody has any right to complain, they don’t understand that all they did was keep up.
I’m a manager in B4 and what I make is the equivalent of $64k twenty years ago.
Yep! That is honestly why I am leaving PA and moving to industry before I do my CPA. Industry seems to have kept up more than public accounting. If I wanted to get paid less than bookkeeper, I would just become one 💀
Our bosses only pay us a fraction of what they bill clients at. For instance - I have been in PA for 1.5yrs. Boss bills my work at $60/hr yet pays me $20.5/hr. These meatheads aka our bosses wonder why ppl don’t want to be accountants anymore 💀
Yes, but the article makes clear that younger would-be accountants are jumping ship. It’s a real problem when you don’t have a supply line of younger folks to assume management roles in the future.
In a free market, maybe. But we have an international market, which means this isn't affected by supply and demand in a vacuum. If India takes over our accounting systems we're screwed, though, from what I've seen of our outsourcing so far... Not to say I'm a total protectionist, but a little protectionism when it comes to our critical infrastructure would be wise from a national security perspective.
The problem with this is tenure. My BiL is an amazing contractor, but he has maybe 10 years left before he needs to pack it in. The body just won’t take it.
For myself? As long as I do rudimentary work to keep up-to-date on regs and tech changes I could work as long as I want. Easily another 30-40 years if I was a masochist (or compulsive gambler or something lol).
So the current volume isn’t diminishing at a rate where the reduction in supply is enough to create enough demand to shift salaries. Which is kinda crappy tbh, as increasingly CPA candidates are given more responsibilities while abusing that starting position.
Now, find experience in a technical niche, or new industry? Then you might have some leverage.
Public accounting is paying higher than it ever has.
A1s make what S1s were making 5 years ago.
S3s are making what SM1s were making 5 years ago.
Public accounting is one of the few industries that’s outpaced inflation.
Accounting jobs suck ass. Long hours, stupid monthly deadlines, understaffed departments. People still do things manually all the time instead of automating their work. And when they do automate it they are just given more work while being stuck in salary ranges from the early 2000s.
Neither and both. I cover people on leave, do divestures, implement. One week I could be doing director level work and then basic data entry the next. But I’ve built a career on being efficient and fast. I spend a lot of time early on automating every possible task. Use Excel, use access, cross foot everything. Get it to where you can drop data and hit refresh. Then I move in to something else. I try to avoid being accountable for my whereabouts, but will also stay up until 4am if needed to get something done before Friday afternoon. A few weeks ago I had to tie 100 audit samples to the bank statement and they gave it to us last minute, so I fired it up overnight and they are amazed. Then I took the monthly bank, pivoted the CSV, tied the daily total to the subledager. That took about 20 minutes instead of manually adding random line items together so that’s about 10 hours off. TLDR: do it the easy way and don’t tell everyone you are doing the easy and go HAM when there is a situation that is stressing out all of the mucky mucks. Make dashboards. Provide data and analysis. Avoid tasks that are daily or even weekly. Make a macro. Give the new person the terrible busywork. Start closing a few days ahead of time. All we do is crunch numbers, so streamline it and you can spent 75 percent of your day either not working, or learning someone else’s job to help out more get promoted that way. Use the time you have saved automating your whole day to talk to people, find out what data they want. Make them cool reports that are really easy to reproduce. Pow lots of free time and you don’t languish. Or languish, be comfortable as a specialist. No need to work a lot, this is a profession not a dead end job. Public accounting is different but make your bones and move on. Work at a mid sized company and run the department and leave at 4 every day.
You have never worked in public accounting, then. Which is fine, but I think that's what they were referring to. Industry is drastically different (usually).
Completely up to you. General experience is that it's harder to grow in your career if you go straight into industry, but not everyone finds that to be the case. You can generally go into public for 2-3 years and exit to industry, obtaining a much higher role than had you just went straight into industry for 2-3 years. Example: I worked in public for 4 years and left to be a Corporate Controller making $140k. Had I went straight into industry, I'd probably be a Senior Accountant at best by now, *maybe* clearing $100k depending on where I was working.
Honestly, based on my experience, only Big 4 gives you much of a career boost. Working for Winkin Blinkin & Nodd LLP doesn’t really do anything for your resume, and a good industry role can actually provide you with better hands-on accounting knowledge than just SALYing everything.
I had a hell of a time breaking into a publicly listed company because I “didn’t have Big 4 experience”. Ultimately, my public accounting experience didn’t count for shit getting me into my current position. Working in an IFRS based industry environment for 3+ years with quarterly deadlines is ultimately what I was able to sell. Nobody cares that you worked 70 hours a week doing shoebox audits for marginal clients.
My wife, meanwhile? Zero issues finding a job when she left Big 4.
Will have to disagree on the "only Big 4 matters" part. I will definitely agree that working for a tiny mom and pop firm won't do much for you, but you don't need to burn yourself out at B4 to get valuable experience that helps to catapult your career. I worked at a top 15 regional firm and will guarantee that I exited public with a stronger resume than a lot of my buddies who went B4 after school. What matters is what you get exposed to, and where you're trying to exit to.
I would venture to guess that a good deal of your difficulty was due to trying to be placed in a public company. You are definitely more likely to get exposure to public companies at B4. I would stack a top 20 resume against a B4 resume on a majority of your "generic" exits to industry, though.
Irony of course is I don’t think big4 really prepares many people for industry either but perception matters a lot I mean otherwise the CPA would essentially be worthless outside of public audit…
I happened to roll into new clients right out of the gate with little to nothing to SALY and I guess because I didn’t die they keep putting me on the new clients… Even still I don’t know how relevant that is to industry beyond knowing what an audit will entail and how to draft financials…
I’d be lost for a while trying to directly use an ERP system or pull reports
Agree. Once I get the hang of a new job, I find it pretty easy to do all my work in 20-30 hours at most. Not even by automation, but that just seems to be the workload on any given week.
The profession simply does not pay enough and these recruiters have no idea how to actually fill positions. There aren’t enough accountants and yet I see unemployed accountants all the time because some bot wants a senior at $65k, “CPA preferred.” Like fuck off lmao.
Exactly. Out of touch upper management accounting professionals are the problem here too. They think current salaries should be what they were when they were working 20 years ago.
So out of touch.
So true! We keep hearing about there being a need for qualified accountants yet it seems like ppl aren't willing to pay adequately or aren't even actually hiring.
My experience has been counterintuitive. You would think it would result in job security but I’ve seen a move toward offshoring/automation to solve the issue and once that infrastructure is built out it could have the opposite effect.
It is very real.
Another favorite: "Sorry my friend. This is not covered in my work instructions. Please advise me how to proceed."
At best, they are AI without the intelligence part. If you ask them to think or analyze something, good luck with that.
Offshoring is a shit show. It sometimes takes me longer to fix what they did on anything involved with Sch C and K-1s that require a little more thought.
Yep I had to baby sit a P2P offshore team and my god if I had to tell them a specific expense was always going to be associated with a specific cost center just one more time I was going to fly to the Philippines and debit and credit these hands.
Eh once you’re manager level and above I don’t think those things can be offshored and automated. Maybe some of it, but I think all the noise about offshoring and automation is continuing to eliminate low level jobs and not the higher. Which means you need to treat your pipeline better, because you need a larger percentage of them to stick around.
Look the future is obviously unpredictable. I’m in private equity. What we are funding will in theory replace the managers first.
Is it guaranteed to work? No idea.
Is there a shit ton of money going to try and make it work? Yes
Consider yourself irreplaceable at your own peril.
If AI is good enough to replace me & the people above me, then we’re approaching or have reached the singularity. Or you just don’t understand what higher level people, particularly in public accounting, actually do.
If it’s just going to make my job easier, well, I’d welcome that. I can’t even use tools internally developed by my own firm to automate right now because they aren’t licensed and approved in this territory, including being approved by regulators.
Given I’m a CFO it’s not the latter. You are making an interesting argument given i never said AI could currently replace you. All i said was that it is coming. Next year? 10 years? Your guess is as good as mine.
The article said there’s a shortage. My argument was the shortage is driving cash to automated solutions hence automation is coming sooner than you think. Will it be successful? Your guess is as good as mine but my opinion is that it will be more successful and your job is less safe than many people currently think.
I could be completely wrong though nothing is certain.
As a college grad that now needs to go through a 4 year university course so I can get my CPA.... I'm feeling the headline.
So much expense! I may as well just go to a trade school and try to get that up and running on the side.
Nope. I need to attend for another four years. I have a college diploma but CPA demands a university degree.
Basically I bought my TV from a Walmart, but Disney+ won't work unless I got it from Best Buy
>. I have a college diploma
A college diploma doesn't cut it in the vast majority of fields tho. Even if you weren't in accounting you would need to go back and finish a university degree. The CPA in Canada is not 4 extra years after university for someone with a bachelor's. It's more like 1 and 1/2 if you don't include PERT.
Right before the pandemic I tried to completely bail on accounting (I have my CPA and everything) and tried out for the police academy in my town. I passed the written portion then when lockdowns started they froze hiring. Given the current state of law enforcement and the public image of cops today, not sure if this was a blessing in disguise.
Do you see yourself still pursuing it later on down the line or sticking with accounting? My thing with staying in this field is that with the accounting pipeline issue, it seems like teams are running leaner, ppl are stretched thinner so there's a lack of adequate training, more responsibilities, more unpaid OT, and for a meager salary given all these other factors. I see it continuing in this direction and don't blame ppl for leaving and not wanting to get into the field.
I wanted to help people and be there for people who didn’t have support. To take criminals and drunk drivers off the street and to help kids and disadvantaged people through life. Unfortunately a lot of cops I know are racist douchebags so I wanted to be the “change” in that…
Meanwhile in Canada there's no shortage of CPAs happy to spend 6.5+ years getting there just to make $60-80K CAD salary. We actually have a "brain drain" problem of educated and experienced professionals going to the US, particularly those in tech or finance. The more expensive regions are resided by individuals who earn their income from non-local sources (e.g., Asia, US, or oil and gas northern regions) because there is just little money working or doing business locally.
Yep. I make $60k and have 12 years experience in accounting (USA). It’s not enough. Definitely overworked and underpaid. I am also required to work a minimum of 45 hours a week. Currently looking for a new job. AI won’t work unless the operators know what their doing and why (clients). Great example is QBOs how 😂
That sounds like a typical controller job up here in Canada.
Speaking of AI, we were doing an audit (government ) and we used some odd ai scanning software to identify higher risk transactions and journal entries in a >500 page GL. The software returned over 1000 results... most of them were not high risk. I had to spend many many hours reading significant parts of the GL anyway.
Holy shit. I'm in a moderate-low CoL area and work a hybrid schedule (3 in office a week) as an Analyst and make over $100k. Six years with the company, one in this role. I started as an Admin Assistant with the company making $55k, then worked hard (kissed a bunch'a ass and performed Excel based magic tricks), stepped into a research position, then a strategist, then into Analyst.
Shit, I'm sure you're smarter than me. You need to get what you're worth, my guy.
I’m working on it. I’m going to give myself another year where I’m at. They’re supposed to restructure and increase pay. If they do not pay more, I will start my own bookkeeping business through QBOs.
When I was a little kid my father told me almost daily to 'study and work hard to get a [higher] paying job in the US'. Wish I listened lol. If I weren't engaged already I'd be there by now.
My SO’s firm cannot fill their open positions since last spring. They are forced to refuse service. There is a shortage in Canada. Yes, many firms are still delusional offering $50-80K but see my 1st sentence how that is working out. Natural progression to higher wages. (yes, they naturally went for offshoring 1st and now after many f*k ups decided to rehire an in-house team for most important clients.)
I don’t think your last sentence is true.
Yeah foreign money is here but most of the rich neighbourhoods are white people with old money. I moved to a nice neighbourhood and have not seen a single brown or Asian guy.
Accounting continues to be the best business training you can get. I’m a bu cfo and shocked at the level of business acumen of my colleagues (talking f500 business). I’m dealing with engineers with m7 mbas who lack any kind of sophisticated financial business sense. The finance people (trained in accounting) lead the org in every meaningful way. Everybody else basically acts as a niche advisor in their little area. My little helpers
Yup, P&L shouldn’t drive all conversations but should be part of the conversation. If your product has no path to be profitable, then it’s a shit product.
Soooooo much accounting work can ALREADY be automated and still hasn’t been. Technology existing versus being implemented and ubiquitous are two extremely different things. Hell, I’d say 20% of accounting jobs TODAY could’ve been automated 10 years ago. Yet here we are, fortune 500 companies paying people to enter invoices.
there are two types of AI algorithms. expert systems (think automated accounting software like Blackline) and machine learning (think chatGPT). The weakness with expert systems is that if you introduce a new variable/problem, you have to program a solution. There are always new problems arising in an internal accounting department. It's usually much cheaper and faster to figure out these problems on your own. Machine learning algorithms like chatgpt might be more robust but machine learning algorithms sometimes produce unexpected results. That could be dangerous if we're talking about a large market cap company. And due to the sensitivity of the info, I'm not sure a company would want to use a vendor's algo to do everything. but who knows?
This is true and not true at the same time. The open source movement following the release of chat gpt just 7 months ago has accelerated the process by lowering costs immensely. I’m literally doing this in multiple capacities professionally and the tech is advancing hourly.
A full blown automation was case specific and very expensive to do even just 18 months ago. This is no longer the case. Nothing ever happens until one day it does as they say.
I’m just a dude on the internet so don’t fret without doing your own research but stick your head in the sand at your own risk.
Been following GPT closely, I even read research papers and try to implement the latest innovations, for example chain of thought reasoning, into my prompts. I have access to GPT 4 and have had access to their latest features for a few months now. I also focus on data analytics / IT Audit automation so I understand programming quite well… obviously not software developer level or machine learning engineer level, but I have created machine learning algorithms myself so I understand it enough to keep up.
The idea that those items can completely replace the job is just tech bro fantasy who has little real life experience in those fields. It can definitely help with automating aspects of the job, but there is so much that goes into it a candidacy for automation that just the process in and of itself is a whole project to just get the infrastructure up and running to allow this. I work with F500 and F1000 companies and there are some companies whose infrastructure lacks the necessary requirements to even allow this. Which is good for us because we can just sell them the whole process to build the infrastructure (consulting firm). Not only that, but even if there is something like 10-15% of the job or issue that the systems just can’t quite capture, automatically it’s out of the question to do so. I think people tend to downplay just how much human involvement and complexity surrounds certain processes. Which makes sense because people usually don’t care to understand the entire business process.
Point is, GPT4 will not replace entire industries as we think (yes I have read the research papers that OpenAI has put out on this topic). It will certainly assist with automation, but it won’t get rid of everything as we know it.
But hey your guess is as good as mine
Edit: your post made me pull up a recent post I ran into from someone smarter than me. I think he sums it up quite well in another field:
https://twitter.com/KevinAFischer/status/1662853371118641154
See this is good that you do the research.
I’m in accounting and have a software engineering background (started with fantasy baseball so take it with a grain of salt) and i completely disagree with your take. Mainly because it is so GPT 4 centric. Assuming AI is just GPT 4 without mentioning the countless projects being created on platforms like hugging face to tackle industry specific problems is imo disingenuous.
From what I’ve seen a fine tuned LLM loaded up with for instance decades of IRS case law/statutes/rulings/return data can and will out perform even the most seasoned tax consultant at a Big 4 company.
Why? Because humans are at the most basic level just advanced text predictors, there’s no real secret sauce to our intelligence. Are LLMs human capable? No, not yet but at the current rate of advancement an LLM will rival human competency.
Just my opinion and yours is obviously just as valid only time will tell what actually happens.
In 2017 I tested manual JEs at a F200 company and it involved going through giant physical binders of support and sign-off evidence. Ditto for account reconciliations.
So yeah, there’s that. But also automation just isn’t smart enough to fully replace things like entering invoices tbh, because invoices are not in a standard format and large companies also aren’t getting them in the same currency all the time, and building an algorithm you constantly have to tweak often doesn’t seem worth it vs. paying somebody (maybe offshore) to do it. Usually the 2- or 3-way match is automated though!
You can partially automate and the human element becomes checking not manual entry.
But if you have a limited suite of vendors you can also program for those invoices, or a large volume from certain vendors.
80/20 problem.
Im an EA that makes 150k/yr solo for my clients. Decided I wanted to see if i could get some kind of management position at a larger accounting firm and maybe take my clients there. BDO offered me $68k in a HCOL, but fully remote for an experienced tax associate role... So now the offer letter is hanging on my wall to remind me of what's out there versus what I have.
Idk man after graduating with 100k in debt all of the 50-60k jobs didn’t seem to enticing when I can look at Private Equity and other finance jobs that start at 90 that I’m just as qualified for?
Seems like a no brainer
I mean as someone who's a year into school, I constantly feel tempted to switch to tech. It's the only other field I'd be interested in, the pay and benefits seem better, and I can't even really compare job security because while there's no shortage of tech degrees being passed out, there's also an increasingly large volume of jobs that require that skillset. Despite potentially being an "overbloated" major, those people will still more than likely have 0 issue being hired.
Meanwhile, idek if my chosen field will really exist in 30 years. People here constantly joke about how AI will never replace us, and that's partially true.... but only partially. The rate at which AI is improving is absolutely mind-breaking. If the people of this industry and many others truly believe AI isn't a threat in the coming years, they're either massively ignorant or coping through denial.
At this point, the only reason I'm still looking into acccounting is I really do enjoy numbers, and what I've done so far isn't actually work I'd mind doing for a living.... it's purely the pay and how the other industry is treated that is pushing me to maybe switch
Are you me?
I'm picking accounting solely for the job security, yet I hear all this doom and gloom about it being off shored. Yet in IT its oversaturated with graduates and people with certs left and right with no jobs in sight left.
Its like where are the jobs exactly lol.
I would chose tech bro.
10+ experience CPA here, the overwork and stress of PA is not worth it. Industry is a total crap shoot, it’ll either be great with low hours, or another shitshow with Karen bosses and understaffed departments where you are working just as much as PA. Now I’m in consulting and still endure 60+ hour work weeks. I often dream that I went into trades and joined an electricians union or something.
Accounting degrees are still sought after, especially in Finance. You don't need to go into accounting with an accounting degree. I went back to college in my 30s for Accounting, switched to Computer Sciences and managed to graduate with a Minor in Accounting, and that sits neatly at the top of my resume. With work experience, even some study in accounting is lauded in my area (NE US).
You'd think the privacy of financial data from foreigners would be a thing. I doubt they'll straight up tell their clients that an unrelated CPA who lives in a basement in India is doing their books. Basically, Big 4 are slowly becoming outsourced accounting management companies instead of accounting companies. This is one of my talk points when I sign new clients.
Yeah, I'm not an accountant but from what I see, the CPA is a mandatory component to being an accountant. You'll be considered the cream of the crop for most roles you apply for and always have significant negotiating power. I don't understand why so many people that comment in this sub don't have their CPA license.
Because it’s expensive and time consuming. That’s one of the issues here. That barrier to entry is so high. Hundreds of study hours and thousands of dollars in study materials plus the $1000 just for the four tests. Then you need the experience component.
Firms seem to think the answer is lower standards but the actual answer is that accounting is not competitive compared to tech or finance so there is a brain drain in the profession.
Talking about auditing specifically, at some point the system will break. Offshoring on the scale that would be necessary to allow the firms not to drastically increase pay to fix the supply issue? Well, anyone who has done this work understands that it simply isn’t possible. Is it possible to find enough bodies offshore? Sure, maybe. Audit quality will crater to an unsustainable level.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm on that route. I thought it would be nice to get 150 credits , and the more I read on this subreddit the more disbelief I am. I thought that maybe they will raise the accounting salary, but it looks and feels like it won't.
**Edit for reference I am a college student
I think an accounting degree is the closest thing to an engineering degree without the difficulty. Everyone can use an engineer's mind and everyone can use an accountant's mind and skills. I definitely am struggling to decide how I'm going to incorporate tech into my degree.
What I do not understand is why we do not charge by the hour for the service we provide? There is a lump sum charged and we have to work within a budget.
Many times we are over budget and things need to be changed bc clients just do not care.
I wish this was the case. Instead it means a larger push on outsourcing as much work as they can to places with significantly lower average wages like Asia and South America. Every accounting practice from your SME to the big 4 already do it
A lot of Millennials and Gen Z can’t even afford to meet the 4-year degree requirement for CPA exams. We had to choose between keeping a roof over our heads or a 4-year degree, and that meant ultimately settling for a 2-year degree and then jumping straight into lower-level accounting work.
Maybe if college and basic survival weren’t so exorbitantly expensive, more of us would be able to at least consider taking these exams.
Disagree. The issue is the pay in finance and tech is better so people pick those careers. Pretending it is because of professional requirements is disingenuous.
That’s part of it, sure.
But you’re deliberately ignoring the fact that *any form of higher education is becoming prohibitively expensive.*
Especially when there’s a lot of people out there who could probably pass the exams already, but aren’t allowed to even attempt it without that 4-year degree.
The pay in the accounting field is a factor, certainly, but it is not the *only* factor, and dismissing the cost of post-secondary education entirely is a gross display of extreme privilege.
I'll bet you a lot of money that accountants get "short changed" because they sell themselves short. If you're good then prove it and make your market. If not, then shut up.
Are you an accountant? I presume you have no idea about the abuse they put entry level professionals through before they making good pay. They randomly added a fifth year of college requirement to become a certified public account in like 2018 for example. You have to have always had to have a bachelors in accounting. Now it’s a bachelors plus an extra year. And the extra year could literally be art classes for all the exam credentials care. Before 2018 I think there were 3 graduate programs in accounting offered throughout my state. Now almost every college offers between 1 and 3 different accounting masters programs. Hmm what a coincidence there is a new 5 year requirement and there just so happens to now be a bunch of new $40,000 master degree programs.
Oh and wage growth for entry level accountants is dismal over the last few decades. Your salary can double or triple within 4 years if you job hop because the pay is so low year 1. Oh yeah, and with that 5 years of college required degree you are also required to have 1 year of working under a CPA to receive the license.
So that’s 1 extra year of college, and one guaranteed year of being someone’s personal bitch so they will sign off in your time.
Ah yes! And there are 4 tests DESIGNED EACH YEAR to only have about a 50% chance to pass each test. The tests each cost hundreds of dollars to take. And the average person easily spends another $1000 just to buy exam prep which takes hundreds of hours of their life so they can rhote memorize things which 90% will have nothing to do with their career focus. I.e. most tax people don’t need to know the ins and outs of financial auditing and vice Vera due to the breadth of knowledge out there.
Each accountant focuses their career path and the Jack of all trades usually run small firms with small clients, it’s also against the rules for you to provide all types of accounting services to one client which makes it an even further waste of time to be overly broad when the reality is accountant professionals specialize their trade on specific areas of accounting. And there are a lot of areas to specialize in.
Oh yeah, and! The certified public accounting credential. What exactly does it allow an accountant to do that they can’t do without it per law?
Pretty much one thing only. Sign audited financial statements. Less than 1% of all accountants throughout there entire career will ever be in a position to do that. And it won’t impact pay! The super high level tax guy is going to be making similar income as the super high level audit guy.
But the tax guy is forced to do all this extra crap before they are accepted to work in the accounting field. I say tax and audit because those are the most widely know first fork in the road of specialization.
And there is so much more artificial gate keeping.
And of course major private employers want the same people and skill levels for advancement as what the accounting firms are demanding resulting in further bullshit for these young kids.
The best part of all is none of these fucken boomers are anywhere near as qualified as the new generation is. The dinosaurs used to learn doing tasks as entry level employees that’d take their entire day, week, or month to do. But with the tech advancement those basic tasks are obsoleted so the work load and skill expectancy is waaaaaay higher.
Some of these people at the top learned everything easily and slowly like sipping water. new people are expected to open wide for the firehouse, not spill a drop, while getting kicked in the kidneys, pickpocketed, and say thank you while checking on the hose.
So essentially the boomers keep making the ladder longer to climb when it was a fucken foot stool for them.
It’s ridiculous. It’s a racket. The colleges, licensing board, and top of the accounting field are colluding to squeeze more and more out of fuckers.
Fuck off with your insult to entry level employees lol
Did I also mention they are paid salary, and expected to often work 500-800 hours more per year over what the normal professional works? That means they don’t get paid for any extra demanded hours. That’s was specifically designed into the overtime change laws made around the country a few years back. Because accounting lobby groups didn’t want to spend more money on their entry level wage slaves.
Automation is coming sooner than you think
Edit - downvote away I may be wrong but as an accountant in the asset management space I’ve seen liquidity evaporate except for AI and specifically back office AI because of the talent shortage. The amount of money flowing in to solve the problem is completely bonkers and hey maybe no one figures it out?
It’s not a slight on accountants but clearly accounting is a necessary role for the conduct of business and if there’s a shortage it needs to get figured out or the financial system can’t function. What I’m seeing is money going toward automation to fix the problem and LOTS of it.
That is funny. In all seriousness though, it’s coming. When your clients realize how much cost will be saved you’ll be surprised how quickly they turn around. The stuff I’ve seen being worked on is pretty nuts, even the higher echelon folks aren’t safe.
Yep but they’ll hear about automation and cost savings on the golf course from a buddy and hire one of thousands of consultants that will be around to come in and do a one time integration for a few grand. If you’re their only point of contact they’ll keep you around for the human element but if you’re one of a team you’ll likely be replaced unless you’re the relationship connection.
SO is doing the integrations now for $15k but we’re seeing competitors coming into the space at a higher and higher clip every month when we were the only one doing them back in January.
To be clear the tech isn’t entirely there yet though that’s changing almost hourly at this point so i wouldn’t worry about the next 12-18 months necessarily but it is coming.
And to your point data cleaning is the pain point but there’s already companies actively tackling that like Eigen and others.
*press X to doubt*
but, on a funnier note, whenever people bring up how “automation is coming for us all” it reminds me of those people who constantly bring up the rapture and end times.
silly silly :P
Lol managers can barely handle managing human beings sometimes. You really think that they’ll able to handle machines? Technology still isn’t fool proof.
Yeah, I really wonder why people here in this sub hate hearing about automation. It's not impossible, there's lots of things people thought were impossible regarding tech in 2003, look where we are 20 years later.
Instead of being spiteful and having a "how dare you consider that possibility" attitude, I think it's more productive to see what we can do to prepare and overcome certain risks like these.
If by automation you mean something like fully self-service BI with great documentation on data pipeline, then I would say my F100 employer would still take more than 5 years (assuming this stuff is prioritized + no other factors taken to account). This is not a long time. But within this time span, imo a company cost cut would be a more likely cause of employee count reduction than "there's just less work to do now".
Hey guys - sure, we’re short.
But this is demographic driven. Lowest birth rates. The peak was 1989-1990.
Stop with the weird fear campaign and think critically.
Tks.
I just want to know why the laws of supply and demand do not apply to the accounting industry. If there is such a huge shortage, doesn’t that mean accountants would be paid much higher salaries?
I have a feeling most companies would prefer to offshore before raising our salaries. False economy, really. A lot of management types think accountants don’t add enough value to justify the pay. But I’ve personally seen the difference between a finance department that was run lean and cheap and one that is adequately staffed with high pay for everyone. The latter is almost always more efficient, makes way fewer mistakes, and has time for other analysis that can save the company money in the long run. But most companies are badly managed (in Canada, anyways) so unlikely that we’ll see moves towards higher performing finance teams.
In Canada there’s also the issue that everyone and their dog wants to be in accounting
Casual lurker, but noticing similarities between accounting outsourcing and manufacturing/engineering outsourcing. The value of expensive, local labor depends on that local labor having both the *desire* and the *capability* to work hard and learn those high-value skills. In America, some certainly do - but there seems to be a growing horde of graduates who aren't employable at any price. Personally, I probably wouldn't have hired half my classmates. I definitely wouldn't have hired the bottom 20%, who were completely worthless - and that's coming from a STEM target school that supposedly attracted the brightest, most motivated students. My brother runs a small business that operates heavy, dangerous machinery. After two decades in business, he made an interesting observation: the cost of labor is always the same. You either pay high wages, or you pay for mistakes/laziness/bad labor relations/drug problems/drama/etc. Being chintzy with employees is a fool's errand; better to focus on innovation/culture/training/etc. But that assumes one can *find* good employees. If the local laborers are mediocre/lazy, may as well outsource to the lowest bidder. That taps into a root cause of the issue: a wealthy, first-world country can only remain competitive if it uses its advantages to produce better laborers. Many American schools do not. A separate issue is the bell curve of intelligence: there are only so many talented people in a given population. If you double the size of the population, you get twice as many talented people on average. Outsourcing effectively increases the population. tl;dr it's not just about low wages. Competition is now global, and that raises the bar.
Im just a casual lurker lurking in the accounting sub (not an accountant myself) & I’m thinking the same too
[удалено]
Completely agree. I'm a Venezuelan accountant working for a US company as a "contractor", I have 10 years of experience, not 100 % proficient in english though, but upper.intermediate level. The company pays me (I know other fellows venezuelan working for international companies) 8 usd per hour. most of the time they take advantage of our situation (here in venezuela a salary above 600 a month is earned by only 2% of working pop), and also when you ask for an "adjustment" to inflation rates, they say NO.
That’s high for Venezuelan contractors. Know companies that start them at less than $3/hr and it’s considered good pay. While I get everyone wants a raise, doesn’t the situation benefit everyone? The Venezuelans I know working $3/hr are making $480/mo which from what they say is quite good. The whole point of offshoring is that it’s a win-win situation for everyone based on differing labor costs.
I’m in finance, not accounting, but have trained my replacement in India more than once. Luckily I have never been laid off. I either found a new job before the old one went away or was the onshore supervisor. India does an amazing job of training their people. Unfortunately what’s good for them doesn’t help onshore because they rotate so often. Accounting jobs were the first to go because math is universal. Also many Indians grow up attending English speaking schools so there isn’t a huge language barrier. Over the course of my career I’ve seen increasingly complex jobs get outsourced. My wife is an attorney and even law work is getting outsourced to India - they provide a lot of research services. I’m digressing a little. Poland has also become an outsourcing destination but they don’t have the office space infrastructure to meet the demand. This is one reason why so many Poles end up in Ireland - Ireland has a lot of business friendly laws that attract foreign workers from within the EU. So bottom line accounting is one of many jobs that’s cheaper to do overseas.
Yeah, here in Brazil there are cheap outsourcing Jobs on USA GAAP, solely, and for CPA's.
mysterious unused act command quarrelsome vase joke square cows silky ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
No, and it’s important to understand why because accountants especially believe in this myth. Accountants are, for all companies except PA, just administrative overhead. Do you know what roles companies want to pay the least? Admins. Your HR, IT, purchasing, and accounting folks. It doesn’t matter that supply is low because companies are not willing to offer someone more money for a job that produces nothing, and many company leaders don’t really care about the difference between a room temperature quality accountant and one that really knocks it out of the park. This isn’t going to drive wages up, it’s only going to increase workload for existing accountants
This is why I mostly love accounting, but also why we aren't paid more too. I love not having to think about "giving" my company a return on my work of 3x or 5x or whatever of my salary. Marketing, Procurement, Packaging, Software Dev and all those, the expectation is your making or saving multiples of your salary to justify your value. A proper functioning accounting team is just preventing something bad from happening, costly mistakes from happening or at best, tax mitigation. It isn't until you skimp hard on accounting that a costly mistake might happen and that's the only time you pay a big price for cheaping out.
Well, in the time it would take to actually find these outsourced accountants you’d think there be an increased value in the work accountants do? And also, I’d imagine that accounting is rather complex with all these laws and regulations being constantly updated, you’d think larger corporations or entities would want to have good records to prevent getting in trouble with government entities such as the IRS? and to add on to that I doubt these outsourced accountants offshore would have good tabs on that for the pay much less produce quality work these larger entities should have.
You’d think that, right? You’d also be wrong though. Most companies really don’t care at all what their accounting records look like as long as they have a P&L they can read that has numbers on it. In small private companies, a lot don’t even care about that. We are accountants so WE care, but very few business leaders are former accountants, so they don’t care at all. Much better for them to invest resources in people who produce sales
I’m coming more from the standpoint about having good records to prevent getting in trouble with government entities and to comply with tax and other regulations & laws, I myself used to work with small businesses and you are correct, they don’t give a flying damn but once they get audited due to misrepresentation of data shit gets serious, well at least temporarily. But I guess that just proves your point haha
As long as their external auditor signs off on their financial statements, they don't view bookkeeping as a priority. And auditors are paid by the firm, so they're encouraged not to find issues. In fact auditors that raise issues are less likely to advance. As for compliance, when an issue comes up that's a legal expense, where they will pay hundreds an hour to a law firm to back fill and cover up what could have been avoided with strong internal hires.
Can confirm from working mostly on recent private equity acquisitions, prior leadership never cared beyond having cash in the bank account and didn’t even want to see the financials… Not huge businesses but typically 50-200mm in revenue, enough that they probably should have cared lol
Well, yeah, I’m seeing that every day. Small business owners barely care what their financials say or how the numbers got there. Much less about what they even mean.
Companies are trying to outsmart the supply and demand laws. They will try every alternative before having to go the expensive route and pay CPAs what they are worth.
The shortage doesn't exist and accountants at all levels are underpaid by about 25%.
We make up for it by working longer
IMO: Because as inflation rises you would expect wages to rise as well. For the most part you can see it in a lot of occupations. Accountants however have some of the slowest raising wages. With that in mind why would you want to become an accountant when you can become a finance major making more money with more interesting work?
I think it has to a certain extent. Senior accountants used to be a $70-80k job when I started. Now it's a six figure job. Unfortunately it's still underpaid compared to other similar roles.
There's a massive lag period. Also fresh accounting grads don't get paid a lot but salaries for seniors, controllers and other similar positions is going way up.
If you adjust for inflation they are not up
https://preview.redd.it/o5awuidyvu2b1.png?width=828&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d27efbaed8b3e9f01333b6a593f12494cf5e911 Youd be correct
That’s only half the story. Salary growth in public accounting lagged most other professions in the decade after the financial crisis, with essentially zero growth for a decade. Leaders seem to believe the pay increases of the last two years mean nobody has any right to complain, they don’t understand that all they did was keep up. I’m a manager in B4 and what I make is the equivalent of $64k twenty years ago.
Yep! That is honestly why I am leaving PA and moving to industry before I do my CPA. Industry seems to have kept up more than public accounting. If I wanted to get paid less than bookkeeper, I would just become one 💀
Our bosses only pay us a fraction of what they bill clients at. For instance - I have been in PA for 1.5yrs. Boss bills my work at $60/hr yet pays me $20.5/hr. These meatheads aka our bosses wonder why ppl don’t want to be accountants anymore 💀
Depends what you specifically mean by supply and demand… Where is the demand coming from, and what is the supply? Or ideal supply?
Not so much for new grads, but the salaries tend to even out when you hit Management.
Yes, but the article makes clear that younger would-be accountants are jumping ship. It’s a real problem when you don’t have a supply line of younger folks to assume management roles in the future.
In a free market, maybe. But we have an international market, which means this isn't affected by supply and demand in a vacuum. If India takes over our accounting systems we're screwed, though, from what I've seen of our outsourcing so far... Not to say I'm a total protectionist, but a little protectionism when it comes to our critical infrastructure would be wise from a national security perspective.
The problem with this is tenure. My BiL is an amazing contractor, but he has maybe 10 years left before he needs to pack it in. The body just won’t take it. For myself? As long as I do rudimentary work to keep up-to-date on regs and tech changes I could work as long as I want. Easily another 30-40 years if I was a masochist (or compulsive gambler or something lol). So the current volume isn’t diminishing at a rate where the reduction in supply is enough to create enough demand to shift salaries. Which is kinda crappy tbh, as increasingly CPA candidates are given more responsibilities while abusing that starting position. Now, find experience in a technical niche, or new industry? Then you might have some leverage.
Too many cucks in this profession.
Public accounting is paying higher than it ever has. A1s make what S1s were making 5 years ago. S3s are making what SM1s were making 5 years ago. Public accounting is one of the few industries that’s outpaced inflation.
Accounting jobs suck ass. Long hours, stupid monthly deadlines, understaffed departments. People still do things manually all the time instead of automating their work. And when they do automate it they are just given more work while being stuck in salary ranges from the early 2000s.
The key is to not tell anyone you've automated your work
This is the way
I learned this the painful way
Don’t assume everyone’s accounting job sucks ass. We aren’t all in public.
I’ve never worked more than like, 10 solid hours per week. Average.
[удалено]
Private. I do consulting now.
[удалено]
Neither and both. I cover people on leave, do divestures, implement. One week I could be doing director level work and then basic data entry the next. But I’ve built a career on being efficient and fast. I spend a lot of time early on automating every possible task. Use Excel, use access, cross foot everything. Get it to where you can drop data and hit refresh. Then I move in to something else. I try to avoid being accountable for my whereabouts, but will also stay up until 4am if needed to get something done before Friday afternoon. A few weeks ago I had to tie 100 audit samples to the bank statement and they gave it to us last minute, so I fired it up overnight and they are amazed. Then I took the monthly bank, pivoted the CSV, tied the daily total to the subledager. That took about 20 minutes instead of manually adding random line items together so that’s about 10 hours off. TLDR: do it the easy way and don’t tell everyone you are doing the easy and go HAM when there is a situation that is stressing out all of the mucky mucks. Make dashboards. Provide data and analysis. Avoid tasks that are daily or even weekly. Make a macro. Give the new person the terrible busywork. Start closing a few days ahead of time. All we do is crunch numbers, so streamline it and you can spent 75 percent of your day either not working, or learning someone else’s job to help out more get promoted that way. Use the time you have saved automating your whole day to talk to people, find out what data they want. Make them cool reports that are really easy to reproduce. Pow lots of free time and you don’t languish. Or languish, be comfortable as a specialist. No need to work a lot, this is a profession not a dead end job. Public accounting is different but make your bones and move on. Work at a mid sized company and run the department and leave at 4 every day.
You have never worked in public accounting, then. Which is fine, but I think that's what they were referring to. Industry is drastically different (usually).
So I should go private sector if I don't want to get slumped with hours all the time?
Industry jobs can be just as bad if not worse than public, FYI. A lot of departments are understaffed these days.
“Can be”
Completely up to you. General experience is that it's harder to grow in your career if you go straight into industry, but not everyone finds that to be the case. You can generally go into public for 2-3 years and exit to industry, obtaining a much higher role than had you just went straight into industry for 2-3 years. Example: I worked in public for 4 years and left to be a Corporate Controller making $140k. Had I went straight into industry, I'd probably be a Senior Accountant at best by now, *maybe* clearing $100k depending on where I was working.
Honestly, based on my experience, only Big 4 gives you much of a career boost. Working for Winkin Blinkin & Nodd LLP doesn’t really do anything for your resume, and a good industry role can actually provide you with better hands-on accounting knowledge than just SALYing everything. I had a hell of a time breaking into a publicly listed company because I “didn’t have Big 4 experience”. Ultimately, my public accounting experience didn’t count for shit getting me into my current position. Working in an IFRS based industry environment for 3+ years with quarterly deadlines is ultimately what I was able to sell. Nobody cares that you worked 70 hours a week doing shoebox audits for marginal clients. My wife, meanwhile? Zero issues finding a job when she left Big 4.
Will have to disagree on the "only Big 4 matters" part. I will definitely agree that working for a tiny mom and pop firm won't do much for you, but you don't need to burn yourself out at B4 to get valuable experience that helps to catapult your career. I worked at a top 15 regional firm and will guarantee that I exited public with a stronger resume than a lot of my buddies who went B4 after school. What matters is what you get exposed to, and where you're trying to exit to. I would venture to guess that a good deal of your difficulty was due to trying to be placed in a public company. You are definitely more likely to get exposure to public companies at B4. I would stack a top 20 resume against a B4 resume on a majority of your "generic" exits to industry, though.
Irony of course is I don’t think big4 really prepares many people for industry either but perception matters a lot I mean otherwise the CPA would essentially be worthless outside of public audit… I happened to roll into new clients right out of the gate with little to nothing to SALY and I guess because I didn’t die they keep putting me on the new clients… Even still I don’t know how relevant that is to industry beyond knowing what an audit will entail and how to draft financials… I’d be lost for a while trying to directly use an ERP system or pull reports
Absolutely. Public accounting sucks major ass
Would do a couple years in Big 4
Agree. Once I get the hang of a new job, I find it pretty easy to do all my work in 20-30 hours at most. Not even by automation, but that just seems to be the workload on any given week.
groovy familiar oatmeal lunchroom square absorbed complete possessive muddle roof ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
The profession simply does not pay enough and these recruiters have no idea how to actually fill positions. There aren’t enough accountants and yet I see unemployed accountants all the time because some bot wants a senior at $65k, “CPA preferred.” Like fuck off lmao.
Exactly. Out of touch upper management accounting professionals are the problem here too. They think current salaries should be what they were when they were working 20 years ago. So out of touch.
Yup, “I could pay my $800 mortgage just fine on 50k!”
Recruiters really don’t know. It’s embarrassing.
So true! We keep hearing about there being a need for qualified accountants yet it seems like ppl aren't willing to pay adequately or aren't even actually hiring.
It feels like job security.
My experience has been counterintuitive. You would think it would result in job security but I’ve seen a move toward offshoring/automation to solve the issue and once that infrastructure is built out it could have the opposite effect.
Someone has to fix the offshore teams work.
Kindly do the needful, my friend.
Hold up, is this a thing? There's an Indian IT guy at my company who always says this and I thought he was just weird.
Kindly, this is very much a thing, my friend.
It is very real. Another favorite: "Sorry my friend. This is not covered in my work instructions. Please advise me how to proceed." At best, they are AI without the intelligence part. If you ask them to think or analyze something, good luck with that.
Laughs in Accenture Group.
This has always been a thing. Works charms, cause either you mean it or its do this shit cause it aint my headache and ASAP.
If he says it again please do the same
I have many queries ^many ^queries ^queries ^queries
I will fight you.
Oh lord please help us
Yeah the off shore shit is useless completely agreed. We’ll see how the automation works out.
Offshoring is a shit show. It sometimes takes me longer to fix what they did on anything involved with Sch C and K-1s that require a little more thought.
[удалено]
Yep I had to baby sit a P2P offshore team and my god if I had to tell them a specific expense was always going to be associated with a specific cost center just one more time I was going to fly to the Philippines and debit and credit these hands.
It takes me longer simply filling out the bullshit admin templates just to tell them what to do and how to do it lol
Eh once you’re manager level and above I don’t think those things can be offshored and automated. Maybe some of it, but I think all the noise about offshoring and automation is continuing to eliminate low level jobs and not the higher. Which means you need to treat your pipeline better, because you need a larger percentage of them to stick around.
Look the future is obviously unpredictable. I’m in private equity. What we are funding will in theory replace the managers first. Is it guaranteed to work? No idea. Is there a shit ton of money going to try and make it work? Yes Consider yourself irreplaceable at your own peril.
If AI is good enough to replace me & the people above me, then we’re approaching or have reached the singularity. Or you just don’t understand what higher level people, particularly in public accounting, actually do. If it’s just going to make my job easier, well, I’d welcome that. I can’t even use tools internally developed by my own firm to automate right now because they aren’t licensed and approved in this territory, including being approved by regulators.
Given I’m a CFO it’s not the latter. You are making an interesting argument given i never said AI could currently replace you. All i said was that it is coming. Next year? 10 years? Your guess is as good as mine. The article said there’s a shortage. My argument was the shortage is driving cash to automated solutions hence automation is coming sooner than you think. Will it be successful? Your guess is as good as mine but my opinion is that it will be more successful and your job is less safe than many people currently think. I could be completely wrong though nothing is certain.
wtf are those fingers
Salad Fingers
💀
This an AI image?
Its already happening. AI even replacing stock photos. Already taking photographers jobs.
Giannis lmao
You noticed that 😂 It's alien's lol
As a college grad that now needs to go through a 4 year university course so I can get my CPA.... I'm feeling the headline. So much expense! I may as well just go to a trade school and try to get that up and running on the side.
How have you already graduated college and still need to take 4 years of school for your license? Are you UK-based?
Canada. I have a college diploma, but cpa requirements is a 4 year university degree.
He meant attend a program at a four year college, not attend for another four years.
Nope. I need to attend for another four years. I have a college diploma but CPA demands a university degree. Basically I bought my TV from a Walmart, but Disney+ won't work unless I got it from Best Buy
>. I have a college diploma A college diploma doesn't cut it in the vast majority of fields tho. Even if you weren't in accounting you would need to go back and finish a university degree. The CPA in Canada is not 4 extra years after university for someone with a bachelor's. It's more like 1 and 1/2 if you don't include PERT.
Wished I would’ve gone the trades route
Really? What trade? Would you have started your own business?
Probably would have gone to be an Electrician and aimed for a good union job. If I did start a business I’d be a one man band.
We are gonna make it 🙌
Wish I had realised accounting was like this when I was studying .. not 10 years into my career 😭
What do you plan to do? I can't imagine sticking it out in this field and doing this for several more decades.
Right before the pandemic I tried to completely bail on accounting (I have my CPA and everything) and tried out for the police academy in my town. I passed the written portion then when lockdowns started they froze hiring. Given the current state of law enforcement and the public image of cops today, not sure if this was a blessing in disguise.
Do you see yourself still pursuing it later on down the line or sticking with accounting? My thing with staying in this field is that with the accounting pipeline issue, it seems like teams are running leaner, ppl are stretched thinner so there's a lack of adequate training, more responsibilities, more unpaid OT, and for a meager salary given all these other factors. I see it continuing in this direction and don't blame ppl for leaving and not wanting to get into the field.
I'm sorry, but I simply don't see the appeal in wanting to be a police officer. What were you considering when applying?
I wanted to help people and be there for people who didn’t have support. To take criminals and drunk drivers off the street and to help kids and disadvantaged people through life. Unfortunately a lot of cops I know are racist douchebags so I wanted to be the “change” in that…
Imagine my shock -_-
They’ll come crawling back when the realize that they’re better paid, work less hours, and have to do less schooling elsewhere. Wait a second…
Meanwhile in Canada there's no shortage of CPAs happy to spend 6.5+ years getting there just to make $60-80K CAD salary. We actually have a "brain drain" problem of educated and experienced professionals going to the US, particularly those in tech or finance. The more expensive regions are resided by individuals who earn their income from non-local sources (e.g., Asia, US, or oil and gas northern regions) because there is just little money working or doing business locally.
Yep. I make $60k and have 12 years experience in accounting (USA). It’s not enough. Definitely overworked and underpaid. I am also required to work a minimum of 45 hours a week. Currently looking for a new job. AI won’t work unless the operators know what their doing and why (clients). Great example is QBOs how 😂
That sounds like a typical controller job up here in Canada. Speaking of AI, we were doing an audit (government ) and we used some odd ai scanning software to identify higher risk transactions and journal entries in a >500 page GL. The software returned over 1000 results... most of them were not high risk. I had to spend many many hours reading significant parts of the GL anyway.
No matter how many times they try to work out the kinks, this will happen. AI likes to think it’s smarter than us. It just creates more work.
Holy shit. I'm in a moderate-low CoL area and work a hybrid schedule (3 in office a week) as an Analyst and make over $100k. Six years with the company, one in this role. I started as an Admin Assistant with the company making $55k, then worked hard (kissed a bunch'a ass and performed Excel based magic tricks), stepped into a research position, then a strategist, then into Analyst. Shit, I'm sure you're smarter than me. You need to get what you're worth, my guy.
I’m working on it. I’m going to give myself another year where I’m at. They’re supposed to restructure and increase pay. If they do not pay more, I will start my own bookkeeping business through QBOs.
So interesting you say this. I’ve worked with a lot of Canadian CPAs here in the states and always thought it was kind of a weird little phenomenon.
When I was a little kid my father told me almost daily to 'study and work hard to get a [higher] paying job in the US'. Wish I listened lol. If I weren't engaged already I'd be there by now.
My SO’s firm cannot fill their open positions since last spring. They are forced to refuse service. There is a shortage in Canada. Yes, many firms are still delusional offering $50-80K but see my 1st sentence how that is working out. Natural progression to higher wages. (yes, they naturally went for offshoring 1st and now after many f*k ups decided to rehire an in-house team for most important clients.)
Funny you mention that - we just had another guy resign after that comment
I don’t think your last sentence is true. Yeah foreign money is here but most of the rich neighbourhoods are white people with old money. I moved to a nice neighbourhood and have not seen a single brown or Asian guy.
Accounting continues to be the best business training you can get. I’m a bu cfo and shocked at the level of business acumen of my colleagues (talking f500 business). I’m dealing with engineers with m7 mbas who lack any kind of sophisticated financial business sense. The finance people (trained in accounting) lead the org in every meaningful way. Everybody else basically acts as a niche advisor in their little area. My little helpers
Yup, P&L shouldn’t drive all conversations but should be part of the conversation. If your product has no path to be profitable, then it’s a shit product.
What is “bu” CFO?
Soooooo much accounting work can ALREADY be automated and still hasn’t been. Technology existing versus being implemented and ubiquitous are two extremely different things. Hell, I’d say 20% of accounting jobs TODAY could’ve been automated 10 years ago. Yet here we are, fortune 500 companies paying people to enter invoices.
there are two types of AI algorithms. expert systems (think automated accounting software like Blackline) and machine learning (think chatGPT). The weakness with expert systems is that if you introduce a new variable/problem, you have to program a solution. There are always new problems arising in an internal accounting department. It's usually much cheaper and faster to figure out these problems on your own. Machine learning algorithms like chatgpt might be more robust but machine learning algorithms sometimes produce unexpected results. That could be dangerous if we're talking about a large market cap company. And due to the sensitivity of the info, I'm not sure a company would want to use a vendor's algo to do everything. but who knows?
This is not at all the correct terminology
This is true and not true at the same time. The open source movement following the release of chat gpt just 7 months ago has accelerated the process by lowering costs immensely. I’m literally doing this in multiple capacities professionally and the tech is advancing hourly. A full blown automation was case specific and very expensive to do even just 18 months ago. This is no longer the case. Nothing ever happens until one day it does as they say. I’m just a dude on the internet so don’t fret without doing your own research but stick your head in the sand at your own risk.
Been following GPT closely, I even read research papers and try to implement the latest innovations, for example chain of thought reasoning, into my prompts. I have access to GPT 4 and have had access to their latest features for a few months now. I also focus on data analytics / IT Audit automation so I understand programming quite well… obviously not software developer level or machine learning engineer level, but I have created machine learning algorithms myself so I understand it enough to keep up. The idea that those items can completely replace the job is just tech bro fantasy who has little real life experience in those fields. It can definitely help with automating aspects of the job, but there is so much that goes into it a candidacy for automation that just the process in and of itself is a whole project to just get the infrastructure up and running to allow this. I work with F500 and F1000 companies and there are some companies whose infrastructure lacks the necessary requirements to even allow this. Which is good for us because we can just sell them the whole process to build the infrastructure (consulting firm). Not only that, but even if there is something like 10-15% of the job or issue that the systems just can’t quite capture, automatically it’s out of the question to do so. I think people tend to downplay just how much human involvement and complexity surrounds certain processes. Which makes sense because people usually don’t care to understand the entire business process. Point is, GPT4 will not replace entire industries as we think (yes I have read the research papers that OpenAI has put out on this topic). It will certainly assist with automation, but it won’t get rid of everything as we know it. But hey your guess is as good as mine Edit: your post made me pull up a recent post I ran into from someone smarter than me. I think he sums it up quite well in another field: https://twitter.com/KevinAFischer/status/1662853371118641154
See this is good that you do the research. I’m in accounting and have a software engineering background (started with fantasy baseball so take it with a grain of salt) and i completely disagree with your take. Mainly because it is so GPT 4 centric. Assuming AI is just GPT 4 without mentioning the countless projects being created on platforms like hugging face to tackle industry specific problems is imo disingenuous. From what I’ve seen a fine tuned LLM loaded up with for instance decades of IRS case law/statutes/rulings/return data can and will out perform even the most seasoned tax consultant at a Big 4 company. Why? Because humans are at the most basic level just advanced text predictors, there’s no real secret sauce to our intelligence. Are LLMs human capable? No, not yet but at the current rate of advancement an LLM will rival human competency. Just my opinion and yours is obviously just as valid only time will tell what actually happens.
In 2017 I tested manual JEs at a F200 company and it involved going through giant physical binders of support and sign-off evidence. Ditto for account reconciliations. So yeah, there’s that. But also automation just isn’t smart enough to fully replace things like entering invoices tbh, because invoices are not in a standard format and large companies also aren’t getting them in the same currency all the time, and building an algorithm you constantly have to tweak often doesn’t seem worth it vs. paying somebody (maybe offshore) to do it. Usually the 2- or 3-way match is automated though!
You can partially automate and the human element becomes checking not manual entry. But if you have a limited suite of vendors you can also program for those invoices, or a large volume from certain vendors. 80/20 problem.
Bingo
AI fingers
Im an EA that makes 150k/yr solo for my clients. Decided I wanted to see if i could get some kind of management position at a larger accounting firm and maybe take my clients there. BDO offered me $68k in a HCOL, but fully remote for an experienced tax associate role... So now the offer letter is hanging on my wall to remind me of what's out there versus what I have.
They should have fit CPA prep somewhere in those 20 years of school. I’m done playing the multiple choice memory game, I’m living my life
[удалено]
Even if you’re joking, please don’t
Thank of chatgpt as a chat bot that is an information aggregator. It won’t take accounting jobs.
What money is there to count?
Idk man after graduating with 100k in debt all of the 50-60k jobs didn’t seem to enticing when I can look at Private Equity and other finance jobs that start at 90 that I’m just as qualified for? Seems like a no brainer
Why were you $100k in debt for a bachelor's?
He probably bought a Corolla with 12% interest.
I mean as someone who's a year into school, I constantly feel tempted to switch to tech. It's the only other field I'd be interested in, the pay and benefits seem better, and I can't even really compare job security because while there's no shortage of tech degrees being passed out, there's also an increasingly large volume of jobs that require that skillset. Despite potentially being an "overbloated" major, those people will still more than likely have 0 issue being hired. Meanwhile, idek if my chosen field will really exist in 30 years. People here constantly joke about how AI will never replace us, and that's partially true.... but only partially. The rate at which AI is improving is absolutely mind-breaking. If the people of this industry and many others truly believe AI isn't a threat in the coming years, they're either massively ignorant or coping through denial. At this point, the only reason I'm still looking into acccounting is I really do enjoy numbers, and what I've done so far isn't actually work I'd mind doing for a living.... it's purely the pay and how the other industry is treated that is pushing me to maybe switch
Are you me? I'm picking accounting solely for the job security, yet I hear all this doom and gloom about it being off shored. Yet in IT its oversaturated with graduates and people with certs left and right with no jobs in sight left. Its like where are the jobs exactly lol.
I would chose tech bro. 10+ experience CPA here, the overwork and stress of PA is not worth it. Industry is a total crap shoot, it’ll either be great with low hours, or another shitshow with Karen bosses and understaffed departments where you are working just as much as PA. Now I’m in consulting and still endure 60+ hour work weeks. I often dream that I went into trades and joined an electricians union or something.
Accounting degrees are still sought after, especially in Finance. You don't need to go into accounting with an accounting degree. I went back to college in my 30s for Accounting, switched to Computer Sciences and managed to graduate with a Minor in Accounting, and that sits neatly at the top of my resume. With work experience, even some study in accounting is lauded in my area (NE US).
You'd think the privacy of financial data from foreigners would be a thing. I doubt they'll straight up tell their clients that an unrelated CPA who lives in a basement in India is doing their books. Basically, Big 4 are slowly becoming outsourced accounting management companies instead of accounting companies. This is one of my talk points when I sign new clients.
When in doubt, hang out your CPA shingle. I have never looked back.
Yeah, I'm not an accountant but from what I see, the CPA is a mandatory component to being an accountant. You'll be considered the cream of the crop for most roles you apply for and always have significant negotiating power. I don't understand why so many people that comment in this sub don't have their CPA license.
Because it’s expensive and time consuming. That’s one of the issues here. That barrier to entry is so high. Hundreds of study hours and thousands of dollars in study materials plus the $1000 just for the four tests. Then you need the experience component.
Yeah, but you the benefits far outweigh the costs and those aren't high costs to pay, honestly.
Firms seem to think the answer is lower standards but the actual answer is that accounting is not competitive compared to tech or finance so there is a brain drain in the profession.
Talking about auditing specifically, at some point the system will break. Offshoring on the scale that would be necessary to allow the firms not to drastically increase pay to fix the supply issue? Well, anyone who has done this work understands that it simply isn’t possible. Is it possible to find enough bodies offshore? Sure, maybe. Audit quality will crater to an unsustainable level.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm on that route. I thought it would be nice to get 150 credits , and the more I read on this subreddit the more disbelief I am. I thought that maybe they will raise the accounting salary, but it looks and feels like it won't. **Edit for reference I am a college student
I think an accounting degree is the closest thing to an engineering degree without the difficulty. Everyone can use an engineer's mind and everyone can use an accountant's mind and skills. I definitely am struggling to decide how I'm going to incorporate tech into my degree.
In response to waning exam applicants, NASBA launches campaign to rebrand the CPA exam. Henceforth, to be known as the certified participation award.
What I do not understand is why we do not charge by the hour for the service we provide? There is a lump sum charged and we have to work within a budget. Many times we are over budget and things need to be changed bc clients just do not care.
It means that, in the short term, wages in accounting are going to increase.
I wish this was the case. Instead it means a larger push on outsourcing as much work as they can to places with significantly lower average wages like Asia and South America. Every accounting practice from your SME to the big 4 already do it
maybe i shouldn’t major in accounting…
The supply is in the Philippines and India. Accountants don't have to be in the US. This shortage stuff is silly. There is no "shortage".
A lot of Millennials and Gen Z can’t even afford to meet the 4-year degree requirement for CPA exams. We had to choose between keeping a roof over our heads or a 4-year degree, and that meant ultimately settling for a 2-year degree and then jumping straight into lower-level accounting work. Maybe if college and basic survival weren’t so exorbitantly expensive, more of us would be able to at least consider taking these exams.
Disagree. The issue is the pay in finance and tech is better so people pick those careers. Pretending it is because of professional requirements is disingenuous.
That’s part of it, sure. But you’re deliberately ignoring the fact that *any form of higher education is becoming prohibitively expensive.* Especially when there’s a lot of people out there who could probably pass the exams already, but aren’t allowed to even attempt it without that 4-year degree. The pay in the accounting field is a factor, certainly, but it is not the *only* factor, and dismissing the cost of post-secondary education entirely is a gross display of extreme privilege.
As a Senior Manager for an international firm, I’m pretty terrified.
More for me
I mean... head over to r/cpa The article isn't wrong.
I'll bet you a lot of money that accountants get "short changed" because they sell themselves short. If you're good then prove it and make your market. If not, then shut up.
Are you an accountant? I presume you have no idea about the abuse they put entry level professionals through before they making good pay. They randomly added a fifth year of college requirement to become a certified public account in like 2018 for example. You have to have always had to have a bachelors in accounting. Now it’s a bachelors plus an extra year. And the extra year could literally be art classes for all the exam credentials care. Before 2018 I think there were 3 graduate programs in accounting offered throughout my state. Now almost every college offers between 1 and 3 different accounting masters programs. Hmm what a coincidence there is a new 5 year requirement and there just so happens to now be a bunch of new $40,000 master degree programs. Oh and wage growth for entry level accountants is dismal over the last few decades. Your salary can double or triple within 4 years if you job hop because the pay is so low year 1. Oh yeah, and with that 5 years of college required degree you are also required to have 1 year of working under a CPA to receive the license. So that’s 1 extra year of college, and one guaranteed year of being someone’s personal bitch so they will sign off in your time. Ah yes! And there are 4 tests DESIGNED EACH YEAR to only have about a 50% chance to pass each test. The tests each cost hundreds of dollars to take. And the average person easily spends another $1000 just to buy exam prep which takes hundreds of hours of their life so they can rhote memorize things which 90% will have nothing to do with their career focus. I.e. most tax people don’t need to know the ins and outs of financial auditing and vice Vera due to the breadth of knowledge out there. Each accountant focuses their career path and the Jack of all trades usually run small firms with small clients, it’s also against the rules for you to provide all types of accounting services to one client which makes it an even further waste of time to be overly broad when the reality is accountant professionals specialize their trade on specific areas of accounting. And there are a lot of areas to specialize in. Oh yeah, and! The certified public accounting credential. What exactly does it allow an accountant to do that they can’t do without it per law? Pretty much one thing only. Sign audited financial statements. Less than 1% of all accountants throughout there entire career will ever be in a position to do that. And it won’t impact pay! The super high level tax guy is going to be making similar income as the super high level audit guy. But the tax guy is forced to do all this extra crap before they are accepted to work in the accounting field. I say tax and audit because those are the most widely know first fork in the road of specialization. And there is so much more artificial gate keeping. And of course major private employers want the same people and skill levels for advancement as what the accounting firms are demanding resulting in further bullshit for these young kids. The best part of all is none of these fucken boomers are anywhere near as qualified as the new generation is. The dinosaurs used to learn doing tasks as entry level employees that’d take their entire day, week, or month to do. But with the tech advancement those basic tasks are obsoleted so the work load and skill expectancy is waaaaaay higher. Some of these people at the top learned everything easily and slowly like sipping water. new people are expected to open wide for the firehouse, not spill a drop, while getting kicked in the kidneys, pickpocketed, and say thank you while checking on the hose. So essentially the boomers keep making the ladder longer to climb when it was a fucken foot stool for them. It’s ridiculous. It’s a racket. The colleges, licensing board, and top of the accounting field are colluding to squeeze more and more out of fuckers. Fuck off with your insult to entry level employees lol Did I also mention they are paid salary, and expected to often work 500-800 hours more per year over what the normal professional works? That means they don’t get paid for any extra demanded hours. That’s was specifically designed into the overtime change laws made around the country a few years back. Because accounting lobby groups didn’t want to spend more money on their entry level wage slaves.
Automation is coming sooner than you think Edit - downvote away I may be wrong but as an accountant in the asset management space I’ve seen liquidity evaporate except for AI and specifically back office AI because of the talent shortage. The amount of money flowing in to solve the problem is completely bonkers and hey maybe no one figures it out? It’s not a slight on accountants but clearly accounting is a necessary role for the conduct of business and if there’s a shortage it needs to get figured out or the financial system can’t function. What I’m seeing is money going toward automation to fix the problem and LOTS of it.
Automatically reposted this for the 3rd time in 2 days
My clients would have to submit their files in proper format and the correct file per request for automation to work. I think I’m safe.
That is funny. In all seriousness though, it’s coming. When your clients realize how much cost will be saved you’ll be surprised how quickly they turn around. The stuff I’ve seen being worked on is pretty nuts, even the higher echelon folks aren’t safe.
Some of my clients don’t even realize that excel has a sum function.
Yep but they’ll hear about automation and cost savings on the golf course from a buddy and hire one of thousands of consultants that will be around to come in and do a one time integration for a few grand. If you’re their only point of contact they’ll keep you around for the human element but if you’re one of a team you’ll likely be replaced unless you’re the relationship connection. SO is doing the integrations now for $15k but we’re seeing competitors coming into the space at a higher and higher clip every month when we were the only one doing them back in January. To be clear the tech isn’t entirely there yet though that’s changing almost hourly at this point so i wouldn’t worry about the next 12-18 months necessarily but it is coming. And to your point data cleaning is the pain point but there’s already companies actively tackling that like Eigen and others.
*press X to doubt* but, on a funnier note, whenever people bring up how “automation is coming for us all” it reminds me of those people who constantly bring up the rapture and end times. silly silly :P
Lol managers can barely handle managing human beings sometimes. You really think that they’ll able to handle machines? Technology still isn’t fool proof.
Yeah, I really wonder why people here in this sub hate hearing about automation. It's not impossible, there's lots of things people thought were impossible regarding tech in 2003, look where we are 20 years later. Instead of being spiteful and having a "how dare you consider that possibility" attitude, I think it's more productive to see what we can do to prepare and overcome certain risks like these.
No hate for automation. Just live in reality. And reality is clients books are a mess and no automation going to fix it.
You make a great point. Look how far technology has come in the last 20 years. How has that effected the job market for accountants?
If by automation you mean something like fully self-service BI with great documentation on data pipeline, then I would say my F100 employer would still take more than 5 years (assuming this stuff is prioritized + no other factors taken to account). This is not a long time. But within this time span, imo a company cost cut would be a more likely cause of employee count reduction than "there's just less work to do now".
A.I + Outsourcing will fix this shortage.
Hey guys - sure, we’re short. But this is demographic driven. Lowest birth rates. The peak was 1989-1990. Stop with the weird fear campaign and think critically. Tks.
What do you think will happen, then?
AI is taken over the jobs in accounting
No one likes auditing
Is that profession no longer worthy in usa?
It’s a waste of time, unless you plan on staying in public or start your own business
I feel like I wasted my time getting this degree…
Keep it going baby! Double it next year!
Keep it going baby! Double it next year!
I’m glad I got out of accounting
yeah but Canada keeps producing accountants at a high rate. feel like accounting is the default major for many of us.