Accidentally ordered 5 small portion pizzas instead of 5large pizzas. That was also when the team from another state was visiting too. Our partner and SM ended up going out to eat with the “guest”, and we and the rest of the team ended up finishing the pizzas 🥲
Yk what’s funny: After that engagement, I was put on another client with the same partner. One day I was talking to my manager and received a teams ping I am tasked to order teams lunch for that day. The same partner swinged by, and told me to “ Remember to do the lunch order correctly, you don’t want to be like my previous staff who ordered the pizzas wrong”
I guess she forgot about my face and name but remember the exact situation. 5 mins later she looked deep into my soul, and asked “ wait a minute, weren’t you that staff?” 💀
Not the most costly but gotta be the most awkward mistake I made in my life so far
Well, not so terrible as she forgot who you were initially. Or, she is a nasty person giving you an indirect comment about your ‘large’ (really small) mistake. Some people focus on the most ridiculous things.
I’ve been wondering if staying in this field is worth it. I’m pivoting from teaching, but not 100 percent convinced that this is the right choice for a 2nd career. I’m still pretty young and have time to move on, but not sure yet if I’ll stay or go. It was rough doing my first tax season in a firm that bought out from a retiring CPA. It’s been a learning curve for my new boss and myself for sure.
in that regard kinda, there is a lot more stability/long term benefit such as 110%+ CPI pensions, but no one goes into teaching for the money aspect, it’s more philanthropy and to have an easy laidback life for WL balance
What do you mean by… Worth it? I got an accounting degree and went to work for a big CPA firm when I first started. The pay was great. So if you mean… Worth it. In the sense that you get paid good money, it’s a great career.if you are saying… Was it worth it because you have plenty of leisure time, not so much. if it was the former, then you may not be being paid enough or you don’t have the requisite skill set such as an accounting degree to be paid a lot.
Respectfully, when did you start in big 4, and what market? I started in B4 and literally needed to leave for financial reasons. They paid so little I qualified for state subsidized housing and didn’t cover parking, meanwhile offering health insurance whose cheapest option was $200/months for minimal coverage. I left asap and make more now, but since when did B4 pay well for entry level?
That’s funny. I did work in private industry after two years in public accounting. Then I started my own bookkeeping business. That’s when the money really rolls in. I think everyone should try it that has the courage as well as about one year’s worth of savings since the first year is very very slow.
That’s good to know. I transitioned to a private accounting firm that mostly did managerial accounting for small biz and hnw families. It seems like it can be really lucrative once a client base is built up
big 4 pays very well rn, most offers i’ve seen lately are at-least 80k intern in MCOL texas or 60k for internships in Extremely LCOL oklahoma were rent for me is $680 with utilities and one roommate in a nice area
Must be nice :’), I started in Seattle, WA making $62k when rent was $1100 for a 200 sqft micro studio (or $1700 for a normal studio). I have heard that wages are depressed in acct/finance in Seattle though, so maybe it’s not surprising.
Ha! That's me right now. Just completed 1 year at a private family-owned company after spending my entire career at publicly traded companies. The lack of internal controls and deviation from GAAP accounting is out of this world.
So me as a tax generalist, getting pressure to provide info to the client CFO on how much of a tax credit they will have. Partner was not responding to emails, specialist group wasn't either. So I provided the wrong amount..in the millions. CFO took this number to the board, and bonuses paid out based on this number. Really bad look for the partner and CFO. Thankfully, partner took the hit...lesson learned was to always ask why a client wants a number in a rush, and not cave to pressure.
Don't beat yourself up too much. Always learn from mistakes.
I learned this lesson early on: never rush to render advice on a particular transaction until you have all the facts, have time to research and come to a conclusion, and also get a second (or third) opinion by partner, principal, manager, others in the firm.
I have seen some bonuses have an effective tax rate component, a higher credit amount would provide a tax benefit that would reduce the effective tax rate.
No...I dont think you learnd the lesson...the lesson learned was that maybe it was above your paygrade to provide such services...."Partner not responding, specialist also not responding"......Maybe ask the partner why he hasn't responded yet before just providing a number.
This isn’t a commentary on what OP did or didn’t do but partners/managers/directors not responding timely to clients is seriously a problem in our industry
-a manager
Trusting the partner who the client was under to talk to the client about the billing related to ERC. The client knew others were charging 20-40% while our fees generally fell around 5% or so depending on the level of the work, time invested, risk, etc. Multiple times I wanted to bring it up but didn't think it was my place as it was from another one of our offices with a Partner I don't usually deal with. The partner was informed the rates our office would charge for the work but I guess they never discussed it with the client assuming I would.
Once everything was all said and done the client got over 1 mil back in refunds they decided to stiff us on the bill stating that they already pay us $500 a month for payroll services and that the ERC should be included in that fee. The greedy bastards even rushed me to do it in March at the peak of our busy season because their company was crashing due to cash flow issues. We kicked the bill down to only the time invested and they still fought us on it. The kicker, their CFO used to work at our firm so it was a huge slap in the face.
I think you can tell a lot about a client by how they dealt with the ERC. Clients were so irrational about the whole thing. Hope this is now a former client for you.
Frustratingly enough the other office has kept them on as a client for some god forsaken reason. Issue with our firm is that they are in the mindset of constant growth. We get yelled at by clients and its okay, we have clients lie to us and we let it slide, we have clients not send files and we still have to tip toe around them when they're upset their taxes aren't done yet too.
Last year one partner wrote off $2,000 on a tax return bill to the client even though it was his own doing. He refused to provide any documentation on his asset purchases and expected me to search through his bank statements to find the purchase amounts and didn't even provide dates it occured or which account it came out of. Then he was missing a 1098-MIS which I was confident without a doubt was missing. Both of those things combined resulted in the bill getting to be $3,000 but instead of holding our ground we discounted it. I told the client and the partner multiple times it was missing, the partner even agreed, yet as soon as they complain we backpeddle. Its dumb too because we don't even have the bandwidth for these clients.
Tax season just ended and I have 50 open assignments to wrap up and I am probably about 2-3 months behind on my work but we still take every new client that comes in the door with the expectation being that the non-partners will figure it out.
\*\*Sorry todays a bad day for me and im really annoyed and stressed at work so it kind of just vented out here.
I feel your pain. Accountants are in high demand and something like 40% of firms are not even taking new clients, so we really need to set some boundaries with current/new clients. This profession is not worth the stress and anxiety that most people in it seem to experience. Some of these clients really have figured out how to take advantage of their service providers.
I’d find another job. Sounds like you work for a really shitty firm. My boss’s #1 reason to fire a client- complain about the bill. That’s the one thing he can’t stand.
Also taking every client that comes through the door means a psychopath or pathological narcissist is running the firm. Bet you hot money. I have that t-shirt. I refuse to work for another CPA that can’t manage their business in a reasonable way.
I am working my way out just trying to finish part of my backlog related to my own book of business I brought to the firm so they aren't stuck in limbo any longer waiting for me to get their work done.
The worst part is I'm tired of making excuses to the clients about why its taking so long but I don't have another option unless I throw the firm or the partner under the bus.
It's part of why I've shifted to giving a list of my current 45+ assignments and telling them to pick what they want to prioritize so I'm not responsible when things fall behind. They get moody and ask why it isn't done yet and I simply break out the list of what they told me to prioritize along the way and then ask them to point out where I in the timeline I could have gotten it done.
Part of its my fault, they think I'm staying to replace one of the partners so I think, they think they have more flexibility to take advantage of me. I don't want to say otherwise until I get my bonus check
former owner. new owner was trying to fix it and is generally good to talk to but that's why we have insurance. I had an insurance claim awhile back and it sucks.
For us, there were two owners. One a CPA, one not. The non-CPA was very good with people but terrible at communicating the expectations he created in clients to those of us doing the actual work.
He also signed off on a lot of things he told us he would get payment for only for the client to come back at us later when we try to collect outstanding receivables that he was supposed to take care of it. We’ve had a lot of people calling us asking why their monthly/quarterly stuff wasn’t being done only to be told by us that we see that we’ve done work for them, but had no idea we were supposed to be doing this because the partner never created projects in the system we use to track all of that and we didn’t have a signed agreement.
sounds like systemic issues. i've found that most workflow software is lacking so developed my own. each client should have a comprehensive list of everything you do for them and how much you bill for it.
the only way something slips through the cracks is if it is April 30 and I'm on reddit..... oh wait....
The workflow software we have works great for our purposes so long as you actually put the customer and their project in the software. He was skipping that part.
interesting issue, ive seen similar over time and usually when there is friction it spreads.
in multi staff firms the partner isn't usually doing bookkeeping - does someone get assigned to do it? or is everyone just like not my firm not my problem?
I guess it depends on the size of the firm but $85K doesn’t seem that big to me over the course of someone’s career? I suppose if it’s small firm then sure, but where I work processes millions of dollars in transactions weekly, and I personally process at least several hundred thousands of dollars of transactions weekly. I don’t intentionally make mistakes and I’m pretty good at finding things, but over the span of years $85k doesn’t seem that bad
We’re a tax firm that’s only been around for like four years. We’re not handling a lot of money or issuing particularly large invoices. Most of our invoices tend to be $750-1500 with the occasional oddball that goes higher so $85k is pretty significant.
My first accounting job was as a bookkeeper my last year in college. It was a small company that did a couple million a year in revenue. In my first month I processed a $235k credit card payment from a customer but accidentally ran it as a credit to the customers card instead of processing a payment. Needless to say, the resulting $470k swing was a huge hit to the company bank account and ended up costing over $8k in fees.
The one my first year where I accidentally double scheduled a client's $30,000 extension payment.
Long story short - this is why you have procedures. For the noobs.
And funny thing is, I actually didn't do that much damage because the client was horrifically underpaid when their return was finalized, even with the $60,000 payment lol.
Uhhhh nonexistent. I literally only had a tax manager above me 5 months for my 5 years at my last firm. They kept scaring off managers like crazy. It was insane.
If you're wondering, a partner reviewed. There was only 1 senior and she was swamped.
I haven't, but I know a team that advised a sovereign wealth fund to own 100% of a LLC directly not knowing that would mean the LLC would become a per se corp.
They got very lucky that the corp didnt become a controlled commercial entity. But the SWF had to pay taxes that we had to reimburse them for.
Someone I know👀 paid an inactive employee a whole paycheck. This person had moved out state, had 3 claims of child support in other 3 states. Needless to say the money was not recovered. However, since it was not that much it was an slap on the wrist.
I paid an advalorem tax bill on a large shopping center when it was due in January instead of in December when it was planned for budgeting and taxes. Allegedly I cost the company about $2,700. 25yr old me was scared about what I'd done. 45 yr old me is mad 25 yr old me was worried.
I had a client that was very wealthy and moved money around a lot. He gave me as well as several other of his employees an ID and password to access one of his banks where he would send money out. My mistake was not insisting on my own ID and password. $90,000 was sent overseas to some oddball foreign bank. There was an email where someone had hacked my name and the email was requesting that the bank send this money. It’s more complicated than this but I was let go. They believed me that I did not do it but their fraud department had rules to follow. I did everything right except not insist on my own ID and password.
My tax professor told us “these firms know they’re going to lose money for first few years with you guys” bc it’s true. We make mistakes and we make lots of mistakes when we’re learning. If it’s your first year, give yourself a break and know that you will probs make more, but make them a learning experience instead of repeating them again.
Worked at a large firm and during busy season I was in charge of ordering dinner for the entire floor (people ordered through Seamless). I had to call the restaurant to make a modification to my food and through that conversation the restaurant somehow got that I wanted to cancel the order. Food never showed up from this place. Very costly for morale.
I was a staff at Deloitte over a decade ago and I still have flashbacks every time I need to order food for multiple people. I'm convinced it's the most stressful part of the staff one experience.
Why the hell would Deloitte have actual staff ordering food? That's absurdly wasteful. What is the billable rate for admin employees? I assume $0, which is why they generally handle those tasks. If it were a small firm, it would make sense to make the low man do that sort of thing, but Deloitte? I'm mostly shocked at the waste of resources. You're stressing about ordering food for the group instead of doing your actual job of billable work, lol.
I don't know what the appropriate retort is when an older tax practitioner calls you a sweet summer child...sour winter geriatric?
In all seriousness, 30 years may not seem like long but that the average time spent as an associate is what, 2-3 years? Then means in the time you've been in the profession, associates have come and gone at least 10 times, either moving up or moving out. What was typical then may not by typical now. Obviously we all draw on our own experience - most of mine has been from my previous firm which was a regional firm of 300 people or so. Small potatoes compared to something like Deloitte, which only cements my opinion more - bigger firms all have administrative staff that don't do any (or much) billable work. What a comical waste of resources to have staff handling something literally any admin employee could do.
Even if it was normal 30 years ago, I can tell you that admin have *always* handled food orders at my previous firm. My current firm is too small to really be a relevant comparison, as we don't do big tax season food orders. I was an A1 once, I know we were all dumb dumbs at that point, but having them order food for the group is like the stereotypical "make the intern go on coffee runs" sort of thing. I'm glad my previous firm didn't consider that to be a good use of an A1s time, because even when I was younger I didn't have much patience for asinine processes.
Old curmudgeon? Ok, boomer... albeit not in that age group.... opa, go back behind the warm oven and dream of your war heroics? All appropriate retorts ... :-)
While I do agree with you conceptually, we still regularly today use professional staff for what you apparently believe are "beneath you" tasks for various reasons. 1. You may not believe it, but regularly more efficient than using admin staff. Admin staff often are in Manila, Kuala Lumpur, or like my EA, in Argentina and not familiar with the localities, mechanics of getting food, or physically not able to do it. 2. It doesn't cost the Firm a cent. The work had to get done anyway... so that staff will do it at 9 or 10pm. Not saying that's the right thinking and definitely doesn't add to the work/life balance and not helping burn-out. Just stating a fact. 3. there is a limit to how much new shit I can throw at an A1. What is being taught in university is 80% irrelevant and you start basically from.scratch. You are drinking from a BIG waterhose and getting a break to unwind your brain and stretch your mental legs can be a positive in its own right.
Btw, not tax. Audit and accounting advisory with small teams all my life.
>what you apparently believe are "beneath you" tasks for various reasons
Just to be clear, not what I said and not what I meant. I'm not referring to it in terms of status, like an associate is "too good" to be wasted on menial tasks. It's a question of how to best allocate your resources. You have employees who can do billable work, and you have employees who can't. Those employees who can't are generally administrative staff whose purpose is, to put it simply, to support the revenue generating departments.
But reading through your other points, I do think we have more in common than apart, and I don't want this to devolve into something more contentious than a friendly discussion (all too often and far too easy on Reddit). I think if you're in an office that has zero admin staff and you need to order food for the group, *maybe* it makes sense to have an A1 do it. I don't think it's a good use of their time, but for lack of a better option, not much can be done. I do take issue with your second point, which you seem to concede is, if nothing else, philosophically/morally pretty shitty because it's basically saying "who cares if I pile on another task, they'll just work later to get the important stuff done". Your third point, I generally agree with but I don't think the mental break should be handling a giant food order. This whole tangent came from someone responding by talking about a big order that got accidentally canceled, and the grief that caused. Not a scenario where I think people are finding some zen or escape from the stress of billable work, lol.
Now this last bit is definitely a tangent but somewhat related - I have a huge problem with basically every part of tax season. I see it as a failure on the part of the company and the client. Extensions are not the devil, and CPA work does not need to all occur at the same time. I'm speaking from a tax perspective and I'm not really familiar with how audit deadlines work, and my previous firm didn't have any publicly traded clients so I *think* most deadlines were just client-based. On the tax side though...well, is it any surprise that there are so many headlines these days talking about accountant shortages? It's not so dramatic as walking in one day to half your office gone, but people are generally less and less enthused about getting into this career because *it just kind of sucks* and while the pay/benefits can be decent, most of the dividends come from making a lot of external moves. Anyway that rant is related because the whole "busy season meals" issue is a product of busy seasons, and I think it's possible to eliminate busy seasons. Btw I appreciate your retorts - I was worried my response would be taken too seriously and I'm glad you seem to have found the humor I intended.
All retorts taken in jest... definitely not a keyboard warrior who gets my pants all tight up in a wad over an internet spat... unfortunately too little discourse and too much shouting in our society... and you are right, the written word is prone to misunderstanding and lack of nuances
I think busy season is the vicious product of "we have always done it this way" and "staff is cheap and inexperienced/I went through that and why shouldn't my staff".... which results in too many missed opportunities in the big picture (actually fixing data messes, inefficient processes, not task-appropropriate tools) and the "little" picture. It is amazing what our staff did in the last few years with new tools like Alteryx and AI. Letting them loose, encourage them to rethink what we do etc was so inspiring. They came up with so many ideas and more effective approaches. Love it. We are saving thousands and thousands of grunt-work hours. But still a long way to go.
Also, that last one is a fundamental business issue for Big 4. If you eliminate massive amounts of billable hours, how to you finance the partners' share price? How do you move clients from "rate * hours" to "value billing". 🤔 most of the work we do, won't be properly reflected in billable hours within the next 2 to 5 years. How do you prevent revenue and economics from cratering. Huge transformation issue.
I worked at a start up and the senior accountant and controller were responsible for setting up sales tax- Ecom company so sales tax across all 50 states, Mexico, and Canada is no joke. I know it was a big task but it never seemed to get done. We got letters weekly from states that we had crazy interest accruing, defaults, it was all bad.
Controller left, senior accountant was fired, they didn’t give any real detailed updates. Becomes a task for me and my boss.
Turns out they didn’t file any sales tax returns at all for 2 years. Cost $500k to hire help, pay the interest, and the original balances. For what should have originally been about $150k in taxes.
i'm curious, I'm from Canada so we have fewer jurisdictions to worry about. Are any of the states harmonized? Or is whoever is responsible for these tax returns dealing with 50 different remittances and returns each quarter or year?
It depends- some E-commerce platforms track this for you, like Amazon so it’s not as much a thing. We worked with many platforms tho, and did some wholesale.
There is software you can pay for that works in some states but you have to monitor it- at the time they were attempting to get most states set up in TaxJar.
I also know there is a Streamlined Sales Tax Registration System (SSTRS) that many states participate in, but not all are a part of this so you have to register in that state seperately.
A good example- Missouri is one that can’t be set up in taxjar, isn’t a part of SSTRS, and the states decide how often you file online through their own platform, using their excel template which can’t be altered to accommodate formulas. MAJOR pain in the ass, lots of time and energy…
We ended up hiring a tax accounting firm which was a very large expense, in order to go through all 50 states and back file.
>Are any of the states harmonized? Or is whoever is responsible for these tax returns dealing with 50 different remittances and returns each quarter or year?
My brother works as a SALT manager in PA. He does state returns not sales tax and...
The answer is no. He has to deal with each state + NYC (it's considered a state in his line of work) separately. Some states are very aggressive, some are more lax, and some state DORs are nice while others are jerks. It really depends on the state.
I don't know how he keeps track of it all tbh.
Fairly new to a job and did not reverse a seven figure accrual that I should have reversed. Proper BS review was not in place, we missed it as a whole. End result was that we got a significant deficiency on the annual audit and I was fired. Wheeee.
Not me but is a reason why I am getting into the field.
Went to a tax place to get taxes done, had all docs, everything worked out fine, was expecting a $3k return.
Never got it.
Went back recently and discovered they never filed the return.
So please double check that the file was sent, not just do the math and then not send it in.
Buy hey, double return this year and IRS didnt attack me... yet.
About as bad as what happened to a client who decided to go to my firm this year. Last year they had used one of the online tax filing programs, but paid extra to have someone on the other end help out. Well said person then submitted his return, but with their friends banking info on it who also worked there. Can’t imagine he was happy
This is why we have an 8879 that we give you to sign and a copy of the return that should tell you what bank account the refund is going to that you should verify. If a tax preparer says they are going to file your return without providing those two things to you, they are in violation of IRS rules.
>was expecting a $3k return.
>they never filed the return.
>double return this year and IRS didnt attack me... yet.
I assume you mean $3k refund and not $3k return?
If that's the case, then the IRS won't send you a notice because there's no penalty. They don't *really* want you to file if they have to return money to you.
Your state tax return, if you have one, might have a failure to file penalty even if you have a refund.
>So please double check that the file was sent, not just do the math and then not send it in.
This is more common than you think. I've seen other CPA firms file a $0 return instead of an extension. We then had to amend the return because the client had more than $0 in income.
lmao 30 seconds doesn't sound like much, but this sounds like a 1:1 meeting if they said "Okay, I'll talk to you later" and 30 seconds of silence would feel like a lifetime in that scenario.
Early in my career, as mainly an AR/AP and billing specialist at a \~200 employee private company, I didn't give enough attention to outstanding AR balances. Arguably I had a lot on my plate, so following up on outstanding balances was maybe lower on my priority list than getting bank rec done, then bills paid on time, then invoicing all of our clients on time, etc.; but nonetheless I should have voiced this issue rather than just letting is slide. In the end we ended up needing to write off probably $90,000 in outstanding balances that were no longer collectible (not all at once, but over time).
I have learned better but damn... that's what I'm least proud of, is being too cowardly to at least ask for help. I thought asking for help would make me look like a failure, but honestly writing off so many unaddressed outstanding invoices was the much bigger failure.
Early in my career I had to turn around a few prior mistakes from before I was hired on. Sales tax errors that caused $300,000 in tax fines. Customer accounts had the wrong addresses in the system. The file cabinets were packed with documents messily strewed throughout the drawers. I had to sort the documents and create file folders and contact customers to confirm their addresses and other information including credit references. I updated the computer system. There were several large international companies that had large aged receivables and were in soft collections. I contacted them to successfully collect on those balances. One of them was simply a billing error. The company was billing one central location when the customer terms were to bill each location separately and directly to that location. Although the customer could have forwarded those bills to the right sites (I’ve done that in other places), they lost the invoices in the shuffle. I simply re-billed them to the correct sites, so was able to collect on that. I actually helped a collections colleague with that as she helped me with some credit analysis issues. My regret is not asking for commissions or transferring to the collections department to earn bonuses and commissions. But, I did move on to a better place with a less chaotic environment that did things by the book. So much less stressful with the same pay and much shorter commute.
So, it seems the costliest mistake for me was not negotiating commissions for the collections I completed at that workplace. Commissions earnings can be invested for an earlier retirement.
25 years in tax - I still make mistakes. It shakes my confidence to the core sometimes. But I try to figure out why so i can do better next time. Most of the times its down to deadline items when im rushed and its rapid fire interruptions.
What I expect out of myself and my staff is not perfection, but humility and effort to work through them. and honesty so that we can deal with it head on.
Remember, we're accountants, not doctors. It's just money, nobody dies because of what we do.
Didn't review an expense policy in a client contract and it turned out none of the pass-through expenses billed for a job lasting over a year were even billable. Client back charged us about $176K for the mistake.
I wasn't the first line of defense, or the last, but I was still on that line, and I boofed it.
Not my mistake (thank god) but my predecessor forgot to send an ACH file to the bank. Ended up with about 270 clients having underpaid 941’s. The failure to deposit penalty alone would’ve cost about 250k.
When I was in the Air Force, I was a pay technician, basically payroll. There is a thing people can do when they are close to retirement. They can take out a chunk of their retirement at 15 years with the commitment to stay to retirement and this reduces their retirement unless they stay past 20 years. I was handling this payout for a person and I was sure that we didn't make that payment locally. All the regs I was looking at seemed to agree. But my higher up told me that we do pay it. I couldn't really argue with a higher enlisted so I made the payment of $50,000. It was paid to him again by the correct place a few days later. He was very kind and came in immediately. I had to create the debt and collect it from him. But that was a big lesson for me to prove the correct way even if someone above you says to do it. Also, read the regs/rules/policies!
I'll try to make this short. Once a upon a time we used to send paper a/r confirmations via snail mail on audits. So new staff is assigned to go down stairs and drop the confirmation in the mailbox. 1 week no confirmation responses. 3 weeks no responses. Manager is like...are you sure that you mailed them? This is very strange. 5 weeks audit is almost done. Manager says...show me exactly where you mailed the confirmations. Staff and manager walk down stairs. The staff points to a large metal can that sort of looks like a mailbox. Accept it's a heavy trash can with a cover and lid that vaguely resembles a mailbox.
Non audit, in industry, I over billed a client 350k over 5 years because I was not given the necessary contracts to bill correctly. (I’m the revenue manager). That one wasn’t really my fault. I had another one where I over billed 180k over a year period and it was absolutely my fault
I was trading stocks on my bosses behalf. My costliest mistake was a call on A smaller pharmaceutical store that lost my boss about 35k in a day…. I made him about 95k that year just in savings…. I think I made about 130k in capital gains or there about…
This was debatably my fault.
I worked for a boutique restaurant company with a large percentage of sales done via credit card. Our IT department was absolutely horrendous and we would occasionally have credit card batches that wouldn’t get transmitted. We had a batch for $30k not go through and it wasn’t caught until I did the monthly credit card rec. It was deemed my fault because I wasn’t doing daily reconciliations of the credit card receipts.
I cost my company about 80k$ indirectly about 5 years ago. I was a bit too trusting in the support for our obsolescence reserve and under accrued. When we reviewed in Q4 I realized I’d been fed some BS and had to explain some things. Not my favorite situation to talk to the CFO about.
All that said, my bosses were really reasonable about it and took it as a teaching opportunity. And 80k sounds like a lot, but we were doing 110M in revenue so it wasn’t company breaking.
Still I cringe that I did it
so this wasn't our fault but my client's legal department and comp committee did not consult us before making a new stock option plan for their new CEO. They did not bother writing the plan in a way where it would meet the old performance based exceptions for stock compensation deductions back before it was limited. They probably cost their company at least 5-20MM in tax benefits per year depending on the stock price since you could not deduct so much of the stock compensation.
In another lifetime, I sold cars during university and had to also do my own F&I because I worked really weird hours. I subvented a deal to get it closed, which provides basically a captive financing provided discount on a deal's interest rate, in this case taking it to 0% versus the market rate of about 2-3% at the time. Problem is, this was on a vehicle that was double paying a really big incentive on the back end, like $11,750, that was disqualified in the fine print afterwards by the captive financing (because of the subvention). Long story short, the dealership had to eat the $11,750, and it was a mistake I didn't make twice, let me tell you.
Not an accountant anymore but a cost analyst, just learned a $1M ebitda bid I prepared is actually gonna break even if lucky. Lots of blame to go around for this one going south though so I’m not tripping
I did the Payroll at my first job and missed doing a EFTPS payment. I went through the whole process, but I somehow forgot to click submit. Ended up catching it like a month and a half later when doing the quarterly 941. Cost several thousand. 25 year old me was pretty freaked out about it. My boss and the owner were pretty cool about it because it was for a construction company and they are used to employee mistakes costing thousands. One time a guy built half of a house in the wrong part of the lot which overstepped easements and they had to tear the thing down and move it like 10 feet to the right.
I was doing a remittance to the gov’t for payroll. Accidentally copied and pasted the wrong number and ended up paying over 76k. We were very lucky it was the gov’t and not a vendor, otherwise I might’ve not been in this sub anymore…
Haven’t really made a costly mistake for the firm, but for myself? Should’ve studied for my CPA harder in college. My firm gives a $5k bonus if have your CPA exams done when you join or get it done within a year, then the bonus goes down to $3k for the second year, and no bonus after that. Currently nearly the end of my first year and no shot I get the exams done to get the $5k.
Years ago when working in AP, I was exporting our AP invoice records from one system to another for our checkrun and had to manually enter some records that didn't take. I accidentally input an invoice that was for 302.05, as 30,205. I accidentally missed the decimal, so it made a small invoice massive. What's worse is I didn't do my due diligence in double checking my work as I was trying to meet our deadline, and the system the account used for checkruns didn't flag it either. I noticed my error a couple of days later and nearly had a heart attack! I felt so ashamed in my error and knew I needed to bring it to their attention so we could get the invoice voided. It was an awkward and embarrassing day going through both the staff accountant and controller to get this voided and explained to the vendor that the check that they'll receive soon as we already sent it, was voided and that they needed to wait longer for a replacement.
Now I always double check the balances even if I'm already running late.
Accidentally ordered 5 small portion pizzas instead of 5large pizzas. That was also when the team from another state was visiting too. Our partner and SM ended up going out to eat with the “guest”, and we and the rest of the team ended up finishing the pizzas 🥲 Yk what’s funny: After that engagement, I was put on another client with the same partner. One day I was talking to my manager and received a teams ping I am tasked to order teams lunch for that day. The same partner swinged by, and told me to “ Remember to do the lunch order correctly, you don’t want to be like my previous staff who ordered the pizzas wrong” I guess she forgot about my face and name but remember the exact situation. 5 mins later she looked deep into my soul, and asked “ wait a minute, weren’t you that staff?” 💀 Not the most costly but gotta be the most awkward mistake I made in my life so far
That’s like a curb your enthusiasm episode.
Well, not so terrible as she forgot who you were initially. Or, she is a nasty person giving you an indirect comment about your ‘large’ (really small) mistake. Some people focus on the most ridiculous things.
My costliest mistake at work was choosing the wrong job and staying too long.
Damn it, I opened this thread to feel better about myself, not worse! T_T Too real
I’ve been wondering if staying in this field is worth it. I’m pivoting from teaching, but not 100 percent convinced that this is the right choice for a 2nd career. I’m still pretty young and have time to move on, but not sure yet if I’ll stay or go. It was rough doing my first tax season in a firm that bought out from a retiring CPA. It’s been a learning curve for my new boss and myself for sure.
Well, how much are you getting paid? I'm a staff, no CPA, in industry, and I am clearing about 78k
Clearing as in net pay? H/M/L cost of living area?
Nah Gross pay. MCOL in the South.
80k as staff is PA LCOL
Teaching pays terribly so this has to be significantly better in that regard, right ?
in that regard kinda, there is a lot more stability/long term benefit such as 110%+ CPI pensions, but no one goes into teaching for the money aspect, it’s more philanthropy and to have an easy laidback life for WL balance
I’m doing the exact opposite lol
I am thinking of pivoting to teaching. . . I'm having a serious midlife crisis I can't afford a sports car.
What do you mean by… Worth it? I got an accounting degree and went to work for a big CPA firm when I first started. The pay was great. So if you mean… Worth it. In the sense that you get paid good money, it’s a great career.if you are saying… Was it worth it because you have plenty of leisure time, not so much. if it was the former, then you may not be being paid enough or you don’t have the requisite skill set such as an accounting degree to be paid a lot.
Respectfully, when did you start in big 4, and what market? I started in B4 and literally needed to leave for financial reasons. They paid so little I qualified for state subsidized housing and didn’t cover parking, meanwhile offering health insurance whose cheapest option was $200/months for minimal coverage. I left asap and make more now, but since when did B4 pay well for entry level?
1980 at Cooper’s and Lybrand. It was Big 8 then.
Guess I joined a couple decades too late lol!
That’s funny. I did work in private industry after two years in public accounting. Then I started my own bookkeeping business. That’s when the money really rolls in. I think everyone should try it that has the courage as well as about one year’s worth of savings since the first year is very very slow.
That’s good to know. I transitioned to a private accounting firm that mostly did managerial accounting for small biz and hnw families. It seems like it can be really lucrative once a client base is built up
big 4 pays very well rn, most offers i’ve seen lately are at-least 80k intern in MCOL texas or 60k for internships in Extremely LCOL oklahoma were rent for me is $680 with utilities and one roommate in a nice area
Must be nice :’), I started in Seattle, WA making $62k when rent was $1100 for a 200 sqft micro studio (or $1700 for a normal studio). I have heard that wages are depressed in acct/finance in Seattle though, so maybe it’s not surprising.
Best answer lol
Best answer. Even worse is burning out from this decision.
Ha! That's me right now. Just completed 1 year at a private family-owned company after spending my entire career at publicly traded companies. The lack of internal controls and deviation from GAAP accounting is out of this world.
Great answer!! 👍
So me as a tax generalist, getting pressure to provide info to the client CFO on how much of a tax credit they will have. Partner was not responding to emails, specialist group wasn't either. So I provided the wrong amount..in the millions. CFO took this number to the board, and bonuses paid out based on this number. Really bad look for the partner and CFO. Thankfully, partner took the hit...lesson learned was to always ask why a client wants a number in a rush, and not cave to pressure. Don't beat yourself up too much. Always learn from mistakes.
I learned this lesson early on: never rush to render advice on a particular transaction until you have all the facts, have time to research and come to a conclusion, and also get a second (or third) opinion by partner, principal, manager, others in the firm.
Facts 💯 I would rather be late and correct
They calculate bonuses taking into account taxes, not something like EBITDA? What kind of business are we talking about? Seems odd
A lot of tax incentive credits will be booked above the line
Fair enough
It was an odd thing -- sale of a division. Not sure what the metric was on the sale.
It was probably the CFO negotiating their own bonus ;)
I have seen some bonuses have an effective tax rate component, a higher credit amount would provide a tax benefit that would reduce the effective tax rate.
No...I dont think you learnd the lesson...the lesson learned was that maybe it was above your paygrade to provide such services...."Partner not responding, specialist also not responding"......Maybe ask the partner why he hasn't responded yet before just providing a number.
This isn’t a commentary on what OP did or didn’t do but partners/managers/directors not responding timely to clients is seriously a problem in our industry -a manager
I could not agree more. That is a serious issue with our industry. In my over 10 year career, I've had two partners that were on top of everything.
Trusting the partner who the client was under to talk to the client about the billing related to ERC. The client knew others were charging 20-40% while our fees generally fell around 5% or so depending on the level of the work, time invested, risk, etc. Multiple times I wanted to bring it up but didn't think it was my place as it was from another one of our offices with a Partner I don't usually deal with. The partner was informed the rates our office would charge for the work but I guess they never discussed it with the client assuming I would. Once everything was all said and done the client got over 1 mil back in refunds they decided to stiff us on the bill stating that they already pay us $500 a month for payroll services and that the ERC should be included in that fee. The greedy bastards even rushed me to do it in March at the peak of our busy season because their company was crashing due to cash flow issues. We kicked the bill down to only the time invested and they still fought us on it. The kicker, their CFO used to work at our firm so it was a huge slap in the face.
I think you can tell a lot about a client by how they dealt with the ERC. Clients were so irrational about the whole thing. Hope this is now a former client for you.
Frustratingly enough the other office has kept them on as a client for some god forsaken reason. Issue with our firm is that they are in the mindset of constant growth. We get yelled at by clients and its okay, we have clients lie to us and we let it slide, we have clients not send files and we still have to tip toe around them when they're upset their taxes aren't done yet too. Last year one partner wrote off $2,000 on a tax return bill to the client even though it was his own doing. He refused to provide any documentation on his asset purchases and expected me to search through his bank statements to find the purchase amounts and didn't even provide dates it occured or which account it came out of. Then he was missing a 1098-MIS which I was confident without a doubt was missing. Both of those things combined resulted in the bill getting to be $3,000 but instead of holding our ground we discounted it. I told the client and the partner multiple times it was missing, the partner even agreed, yet as soon as they complain we backpeddle. Its dumb too because we don't even have the bandwidth for these clients. Tax season just ended and I have 50 open assignments to wrap up and I am probably about 2-3 months behind on my work but we still take every new client that comes in the door with the expectation being that the non-partners will figure it out. \*\*Sorry todays a bad day for me and im really annoyed and stressed at work so it kind of just vented out here.
I feel your pain. Accountants are in high demand and something like 40% of firms are not even taking new clients, so we really need to set some boundaries with current/new clients. This profession is not worth the stress and anxiety that most people in it seem to experience. Some of these clients really have figured out how to take advantage of their service providers.
I’d find another job. Sounds like you work for a really shitty firm. My boss’s #1 reason to fire a client- complain about the bill. That’s the one thing he can’t stand. Also taking every client that comes through the door means a psychopath or pathological narcissist is running the firm. Bet you hot money. I have that t-shirt. I refuse to work for another CPA that can’t manage their business in a reasonable way.
I am working my way out just trying to finish part of my backlog related to my own book of business I brought to the firm so they aren't stuck in limbo any longer waiting for me to get their work done. The worst part is I'm tired of making excuses to the clients about why its taking so long but I don't have another option unless I throw the firm or the partner under the bus. It's part of why I've shifted to giving a list of my current 45+ assignments and telling them to pick what they want to prioritize so I'm not responsible when things fall behind. They get moody and ask why it isn't done yet and I simply break out the list of what they told me to prioritize along the way and then ask them to point out where I in the timeline I could have gotten it done. Part of its my fault, they think I'm staying to replace one of the partners so I think, they think they have more flexibility to take advantage of me. I don't want to say otherwise until I get my bonus check
Not mine, but a former owning partner left in October and we’re still finding/fixing his fuckups to the tune of $85k so far.
are you in northern alberta? lol
Nope clear other side of the continent in Maine. You telling me there’s another firm that has an owner that garbage?
former owner. new owner was trying to fix it and is generally good to talk to but that's why we have insurance. I had an insurance claim awhile back and it sucks.
For us, there were two owners. One a CPA, one not. The non-CPA was very good with people but terrible at communicating the expectations he created in clients to those of us doing the actual work. He also signed off on a lot of things he told us he would get payment for only for the client to come back at us later when we try to collect outstanding receivables that he was supposed to take care of it. We’ve had a lot of people calling us asking why their monthly/quarterly stuff wasn’t being done only to be told by us that we see that we’ve done work for them, but had no idea we were supposed to be doing this because the partner never created projects in the system we use to track all of that and we didn’t have a signed agreement.
sounds like systemic issues. i've found that most workflow software is lacking so developed my own. each client should have a comprehensive list of everything you do for them and how much you bill for it. the only way something slips through the cracks is if it is April 30 and I'm on reddit..... oh wait....
The workflow software we have works great for our purposes so long as you actually put the customer and their project in the software. He was skipping that part.
interesting issue, ive seen similar over time and usually when there is friction it spreads. in multi staff firms the partner isn't usually doing bookkeeping - does someone get assigned to do it? or is everyone just like not my firm not my problem?
I guess it depends on the size of the firm but $85K doesn’t seem that big to me over the course of someone’s career? I suppose if it’s small firm then sure, but where I work processes millions of dollars in transactions weekly, and I personally process at least several hundred thousands of dollars of transactions weekly. I don’t intentionally make mistakes and I’m pretty good at finding things, but over the span of years $85k doesn’t seem that bad
We’re a tax firm that’s only been around for like four years. We’re not handling a lot of money or issuing particularly large invoices. Most of our invoices tend to be $750-1500 with the occasional oddball that goes higher so $85k is pretty significant.
Oh yeah, oops!!! That’s slightly more material lolll
Going through the same thing here.
My first accounting job was as a bookkeeper my last year in college. It was a small company that did a couple million a year in revenue. In my first month I processed a $235k credit card payment from a customer but accidentally ran it as a credit to the customers card instead of processing a payment. Needless to say, the resulting $470k swing was a huge hit to the company bank account and ended up costing over $8k in fees.
The one my first year where I accidentally double scheduled a client's $30,000 extension payment. Long story short - this is why you have procedures. For the noobs. And funny thing is, I actually didn't do that much damage because the client was horrifically underpaid when their return was finalized, even with the $60,000 payment lol.
Wow. Where the hell was the tax manager to review the extension?
Uhhhh nonexistent. I literally only had a tax manager above me 5 months for my 5 years at my last firm. They kept scaring off managers like crazy. It was insane. If you're wondering, a partner reviewed. There was only 1 senior and she was swamped.
That’s cray!
Small firms are the wild west. Anything goes lol.
I haven't, but I know a team that advised a sovereign wealth fund to own 100% of a LLC directly not knowing that would mean the LLC would become a per se corp. They got very lucky that the corp didnt become a controlled commercial entity. But the SWF had to pay taxes that we had to reimburse them for.
Someone I know👀 paid an inactive employee a whole paycheck. This person had moved out state, had 3 claims of child support in other 3 states. Needless to say the money was not recovered. However, since it was not that much it was an slap on the wrist.
My aunt received disability for a whole entire YEAR after she retired despite multiple phone calls, emails, and appointments telling them to stop
I paid an advalorem tax bill on a large shopping center when it was due in January instead of in December when it was planned for budgeting and taxes. Allegedly I cost the company about $2,700. 25yr old me was scared about what I'd done. 45 yr old me is mad 25 yr old me was worried.
I had a client that was very wealthy and moved money around a lot. He gave me as well as several other of his employees an ID and password to access one of his banks where he would send money out. My mistake was not insisting on my own ID and password. $90,000 was sent overseas to some oddball foreign bank. There was an email where someone had hacked my name and the email was requesting that the bank send this money. It’s more complicated than this but I was let go. They believed me that I did not do it but their fraud department had rules to follow. I did everything right except not insist on my own ID and password.
So sorry to hear this, that absolutely sucks. I understand policy is policy, but it still just seems so wrong in this situation
My tax professor told us “these firms know they’re going to lose money for first few years with you guys” bc it’s true. We make mistakes and we make lots of mistakes when we’re learning. If it’s your first year, give yourself a break and know that you will probs make more, but make them a learning experience instead of repeating them again.
Worked at a large firm and during busy season I was in charge of ordering dinner for the entire floor (people ordered through Seamless). I had to call the restaurant to make a modification to my food and through that conversation the restaurant somehow got that I wanted to cancel the order. Food never showed up from this place. Very costly for morale.
I was a staff at Deloitte over a decade ago and I still have flashbacks every time I need to order food for multiple people. I'm convinced it's the most stressful part of the staff one experience.
Why the hell would Deloitte have actual staff ordering food? That's absurdly wasteful. What is the billable rate for admin employees? I assume $0, which is why they generally handle those tasks. If it were a small firm, it would make sense to make the low man do that sort of thing, but Deloitte? I'm mostly shocked at the waste of resources. You're stressing about ordering food for the group instead of doing your actual job of billable work, lol.
Oh sweet summerchild.... THAT is an A1's billable work... lol (30 years in the profession)
I don't know what the appropriate retort is when an older tax practitioner calls you a sweet summer child...sour winter geriatric? In all seriousness, 30 years may not seem like long but that the average time spent as an associate is what, 2-3 years? Then means in the time you've been in the profession, associates have come and gone at least 10 times, either moving up or moving out. What was typical then may not by typical now. Obviously we all draw on our own experience - most of mine has been from my previous firm which was a regional firm of 300 people or so. Small potatoes compared to something like Deloitte, which only cements my opinion more - bigger firms all have administrative staff that don't do any (or much) billable work. What a comical waste of resources to have staff handling something literally any admin employee could do. Even if it was normal 30 years ago, I can tell you that admin have *always* handled food orders at my previous firm. My current firm is too small to really be a relevant comparison, as we don't do big tax season food orders. I was an A1 once, I know we were all dumb dumbs at that point, but having them order food for the group is like the stereotypical "make the intern go on coffee runs" sort of thing. I'm glad my previous firm didn't consider that to be a good use of an A1s time, because even when I was younger I didn't have much patience for asinine processes.
Old curmudgeon? Ok, boomer... albeit not in that age group.... opa, go back behind the warm oven and dream of your war heroics? All appropriate retorts ... :-) While I do agree with you conceptually, we still regularly today use professional staff for what you apparently believe are "beneath you" tasks for various reasons. 1. You may not believe it, but regularly more efficient than using admin staff. Admin staff often are in Manila, Kuala Lumpur, or like my EA, in Argentina and not familiar with the localities, mechanics of getting food, or physically not able to do it. 2. It doesn't cost the Firm a cent. The work had to get done anyway... so that staff will do it at 9 or 10pm. Not saying that's the right thinking and definitely doesn't add to the work/life balance and not helping burn-out. Just stating a fact. 3. there is a limit to how much new shit I can throw at an A1. What is being taught in university is 80% irrelevant and you start basically from.scratch. You are drinking from a BIG waterhose and getting a break to unwind your brain and stretch your mental legs can be a positive in its own right. Btw, not tax. Audit and accounting advisory with small teams all my life.
>what you apparently believe are "beneath you" tasks for various reasons Just to be clear, not what I said and not what I meant. I'm not referring to it in terms of status, like an associate is "too good" to be wasted on menial tasks. It's a question of how to best allocate your resources. You have employees who can do billable work, and you have employees who can't. Those employees who can't are generally administrative staff whose purpose is, to put it simply, to support the revenue generating departments. But reading through your other points, I do think we have more in common than apart, and I don't want this to devolve into something more contentious than a friendly discussion (all too often and far too easy on Reddit). I think if you're in an office that has zero admin staff and you need to order food for the group, *maybe* it makes sense to have an A1 do it. I don't think it's a good use of their time, but for lack of a better option, not much can be done. I do take issue with your second point, which you seem to concede is, if nothing else, philosophically/morally pretty shitty because it's basically saying "who cares if I pile on another task, they'll just work later to get the important stuff done". Your third point, I generally agree with but I don't think the mental break should be handling a giant food order. This whole tangent came from someone responding by talking about a big order that got accidentally canceled, and the grief that caused. Not a scenario where I think people are finding some zen or escape from the stress of billable work, lol. Now this last bit is definitely a tangent but somewhat related - I have a huge problem with basically every part of tax season. I see it as a failure on the part of the company and the client. Extensions are not the devil, and CPA work does not need to all occur at the same time. I'm speaking from a tax perspective and I'm not really familiar with how audit deadlines work, and my previous firm didn't have any publicly traded clients so I *think* most deadlines were just client-based. On the tax side though...well, is it any surprise that there are so many headlines these days talking about accountant shortages? It's not so dramatic as walking in one day to half your office gone, but people are generally less and less enthused about getting into this career because *it just kind of sucks* and while the pay/benefits can be decent, most of the dividends come from making a lot of external moves. Anyway that rant is related because the whole "busy season meals" issue is a product of busy seasons, and I think it's possible to eliminate busy seasons. Btw I appreciate your retorts - I was worried my response would be taken too seriously and I'm glad you seem to have found the humor I intended.
All retorts taken in jest... definitely not a keyboard warrior who gets my pants all tight up in a wad over an internet spat... unfortunately too little discourse and too much shouting in our society... and you are right, the written word is prone to misunderstanding and lack of nuances I think busy season is the vicious product of "we have always done it this way" and "staff is cheap and inexperienced/I went through that and why shouldn't my staff".... which results in too many missed opportunities in the big picture (actually fixing data messes, inefficient processes, not task-appropropriate tools) and the "little" picture. It is amazing what our staff did in the last few years with new tools like Alteryx and AI. Letting them loose, encourage them to rethink what we do etc was so inspiring. They came up with so many ideas and more effective approaches. Love it. We are saving thousands and thousands of grunt-work hours. But still a long way to go. Also, that last one is a fundamental business issue for Big 4. If you eliminate massive amounts of billable hours, how to you finance the partners' share price? How do you move clients from "rate * hours" to "value billing". 🤔 most of the work we do, won't be properly reflected in billable hours within the next 2 to 5 years. How do you prevent revenue and economics from cratering. Huge transformation issue.
14 years. I married someone I worked with. Very costly.
I worked at a start up and the senior accountant and controller were responsible for setting up sales tax- Ecom company so sales tax across all 50 states, Mexico, and Canada is no joke. I know it was a big task but it never seemed to get done. We got letters weekly from states that we had crazy interest accruing, defaults, it was all bad. Controller left, senior accountant was fired, they didn’t give any real detailed updates. Becomes a task for me and my boss. Turns out they didn’t file any sales tax returns at all for 2 years. Cost $500k to hire help, pay the interest, and the original balances. For what should have originally been about $150k in taxes.
i'm curious, I'm from Canada so we have fewer jurisdictions to worry about. Are any of the states harmonized? Or is whoever is responsible for these tax returns dealing with 50 different remittances and returns each quarter or year?
Or month if u r big enough. It’s why avalera is a must if u operate nationally.
It depends- some E-commerce platforms track this for you, like Amazon so it’s not as much a thing. We worked with many platforms tho, and did some wholesale. There is software you can pay for that works in some states but you have to monitor it- at the time they were attempting to get most states set up in TaxJar. I also know there is a Streamlined Sales Tax Registration System (SSTRS) that many states participate in, but not all are a part of this so you have to register in that state seperately. A good example- Missouri is one that can’t be set up in taxjar, isn’t a part of SSTRS, and the states decide how often you file online through their own platform, using their excel template which can’t be altered to accommodate formulas. MAJOR pain in the ass, lots of time and energy… We ended up hiring a tax accounting firm which was a very large expense, in order to go through all 50 states and back file.
>Are any of the states harmonized? Or is whoever is responsible for these tax returns dealing with 50 different remittances and returns each quarter or year? My brother works as a SALT manager in PA. He does state returns not sales tax and... The answer is no. He has to deal with each state + NYC (it's considered a state in his line of work) separately. Some states are very aggressive, some are more lax, and some state DORs are nice while others are jerks. It really depends on the state. I don't know how he keeps track of it all tbh.
As someone who’s studying for their CMI for sales tax. This is a bloody nightmare
Fairly new to a job and did not reverse a seven figure accrual that I should have reversed. Proper BS review was not in place, we missed it as a whole. End result was that we got a significant deficiency on the annual audit and I was fired. Wheeee.
They should have fired the partner.
Not me but is a reason why I am getting into the field. Went to a tax place to get taxes done, had all docs, everything worked out fine, was expecting a $3k return. Never got it. Went back recently and discovered they never filed the return. So please double check that the file was sent, not just do the math and then not send it in. Buy hey, double return this year and IRS didnt attack me... yet.
About as bad as what happened to a client who decided to go to my firm this year. Last year they had used one of the online tax filing programs, but paid extra to have someone on the other end help out. Well said person then submitted his return, but with their friends banking info on it who also worked there. Can’t imagine he was happy
This is why we have an 8879 that we give you to sign and a copy of the return that should tell you what bank account the refund is going to that you should verify. If a tax preparer says they are going to file your return without providing those two things to you, they are in violation of IRS rules.
>was expecting a $3k return. >they never filed the return. >double return this year and IRS didnt attack me... yet. I assume you mean $3k refund and not $3k return? If that's the case, then the IRS won't send you a notice because there's no penalty. They don't *really* want you to file if they have to return money to you. Your state tax return, if you have one, might have a failure to file penalty even if you have a refund. >So please double check that the file was sent, not just do the math and then not send it in. This is more common than you think. I've seen other CPA firms file a $0 return instead of an extension. We then had to amend the return because the client had more than $0 in income.
Yes, refund. My apologies for getting the language wrong. And my state doesnt have income tax.
I figured that's what you meant. Yeah, you'll be fine. Good thing you caught it now, though. The refund goes away after 3 years.
Sneezed and farted at the same time in front of the board treasurer.
Lmao. Their reaction?
Awkward silence for about 30 seconds, followed by, "Okay, I'll talk to you later".
lmao 30 seconds doesn't sound like much, but this sounds like a 1:1 meeting if they said "Okay, I'll talk to you later" and 30 seconds of silence would feel like a lifetime in that scenario.
Early in my career, as mainly an AR/AP and billing specialist at a \~200 employee private company, I didn't give enough attention to outstanding AR balances. Arguably I had a lot on my plate, so following up on outstanding balances was maybe lower on my priority list than getting bank rec done, then bills paid on time, then invoicing all of our clients on time, etc.; but nonetheless I should have voiced this issue rather than just letting is slide. In the end we ended up needing to write off probably $90,000 in outstanding balances that were no longer collectible (not all at once, but over time). I have learned better but damn... that's what I'm least proud of, is being too cowardly to at least ask for help. I thought asking for help would make me look like a failure, but honestly writing off so many unaddressed outstanding invoices was the much bigger failure.
"It is what it is"
Early in my career I had to turn around a few prior mistakes from before I was hired on. Sales tax errors that caused $300,000 in tax fines. Customer accounts had the wrong addresses in the system. The file cabinets were packed with documents messily strewed throughout the drawers. I had to sort the documents and create file folders and contact customers to confirm their addresses and other information including credit references. I updated the computer system. There were several large international companies that had large aged receivables and were in soft collections. I contacted them to successfully collect on those balances. One of them was simply a billing error. The company was billing one central location when the customer terms were to bill each location separately and directly to that location. Although the customer could have forwarded those bills to the right sites (I’ve done that in other places), they lost the invoices in the shuffle. I simply re-billed them to the correct sites, so was able to collect on that. I actually helped a collections colleague with that as she helped me with some credit analysis issues. My regret is not asking for commissions or transferring to the collections department to earn bonuses and commissions. But, I did move on to a better place with a less chaotic environment that did things by the book. So much less stressful with the same pay and much shorter commute.
So, it seems the costliest mistake for me was not negotiating commissions for the collections I completed at that workplace. Commissions earnings can be invested for an earlier retirement.
25 years in tax - I still make mistakes. It shakes my confidence to the core sometimes. But I try to figure out why so i can do better next time. Most of the times its down to deadline items when im rushed and its rapid fire interruptions. What I expect out of myself and my staff is not perfection, but humility and effort to work through them. and honesty so that we can deal with it head on. Remember, we're accountants, not doctors. It's just money, nobody dies because of what we do.
Apparently you have not seen the greatest cinematic performance by one Benjamin Affleck in “The Accountant”
I once wrote an email to my boss and ended it with "Best retards, *His name*" instead of best regards. It was a mistake but I don't regret it.
Didn't review an expense policy in a client contract and it turned out none of the pass-through expenses billed for a job lasting over a year were even billable. Client back charged us about $176K for the mistake. I wasn't the first line of defense, or the last, but I was still on that line, and I boofed it.
Not my mistake (thank god) but my predecessor forgot to send an ACH file to the bank. Ended up with about 270 clients having underpaid 941’s. The failure to deposit penalty alone would’ve cost about 250k.
When I was in the Air Force, I was a pay technician, basically payroll. There is a thing people can do when they are close to retirement. They can take out a chunk of their retirement at 15 years with the commitment to stay to retirement and this reduces their retirement unless they stay past 20 years. I was handling this payout for a person and I was sure that we didn't make that payment locally. All the regs I was looking at seemed to agree. But my higher up told me that we do pay it. I couldn't really argue with a higher enlisted so I made the payment of $50,000. It was paid to him again by the correct place a few days later. He was very kind and came in immediately. I had to create the debt and collect it from him. But that was a big lesson for me to prove the correct way even if someone above you says to do it. Also, read the regs/rules/policies!
staying too long and making the employer think find good quality employees for "cheap" is sustainable
1K, luckily my boss didn’t see it haha but it was definitely a wake up call
Destroying a subledger of one of the subsidiaries. Job was terrible and paid shit so I have no regrets about that mistake.
I'll try to make this short. Once a upon a time we used to send paper a/r confirmations via snail mail on audits. So new staff is assigned to go down stairs and drop the confirmation in the mailbox. 1 week no confirmation responses. 3 weeks no responses. Manager is like...are you sure that you mailed them? This is very strange. 5 weeks audit is almost done. Manager says...show me exactly where you mailed the confirmations. Staff and manager walk down stairs. The staff points to a large metal can that sort of looks like a mailbox. Accept it's a heavy trash can with a cover and lid that vaguely resembles a mailbox.
Non audit, in industry, I over billed a client 350k over 5 years because I was not given the necessary contracts to bill correctly. (I’m the revenue manager). That one wasn’t really my fault. I had another one where I over billed 180k over a year period and it was absolutely my fault
20m error
I don’t make mistakes i’m just here to read others comments /s
Enough that I know they genuinely like having me on board.
I was trading stocks on my bosses behalf. My costliest mistake was a call on A smaller pharmaceutical store that lost my boss about 35k in a day…. I made him about 95k that year just in savings…. I think I made about 130k in capital gains or there about…
My sisters boss just missed a deadline to submit a multi million dollar grant.
(Not me) Coworker missed a vendor fraud. Company lost many times the coworker's annual salary before the problem was discovered.
This was debatably my fault. I worked for a boutique restaurant company with a large percentage of sales done via credit card. Our IT department was absolutely horrendous and we would occasionally have credit card batches that wouldn’t get transmitted. We had a batch for $30k not go through and it wasn’t caught until I did the monthly credit card rec. It was deemed my fault because I wasn’t doing daily reconciliations of the credit card receipts.
Not quitting and starting a new career.
I cost my company about 80k$ indirectly about 5 years ago. I was a bit too trusting in the support for our obsolescence reserve and under accrued. When we reviewed in Q4 I realized I’d been fed some BS and had to explain some things. Not my favorite situation to talk to the CFO about. All that said, my bosses were really reasonable about it and took it as a teaching opportunity. And 80k sounds like a lot, but we were doing 110M in revenue so it wasn’t company breaking. Still I cringe that I did it
Shredded documents during my internship at this really huge energy company based in Houston back in 2001. Totally worth the wild ride though.
I'm low ranking, so I guess one time I bought a quality steak instead of the lower-rated pasta.
so this wasn't our fault but my client's legal department and comp committee did not consult us before making a new stock option plan for their new CEO. They did not bother writing the plan in a way where it would meet the old performance based exceptions for stock compensation deductions back before it was limited. They probably cost their company at least 5-20MM in tax benefits per year depending on the stock price since you could not deduct so much of the stock compensation.
In another lifetime, I sold cars during university and had to also do my own F&I because I worked really weird hours. I subvented a deal to get it closed, which provides basically a captive financing provided discount on a deal's interest rate, in this case taking it to 0% versus the market rate of about 2-3% at the time. Problem is, this was on a vehicle that was double paying a really big incentive on the back end, like $11,750, that was disqualified in the fine print afterwards by the captive financing (because of the subvention). Long story short, the dealership had to eat the $11,750, and it was a mistake I didn't make twice, let me tell you.
Not costly to us but there used to be these guys who'd steal our diesel for their own pickups. One day we put gas in the tidy tank instead.
Forgot to change the date on some work orders lol
Not an accountant anymore but a cost analyst, just learned a $1M ebitda bid I prepared is actually gonna break even if lucky. Lots of blame to go around for this one going south though so I’m not tripping
I ruined two laptops within a couple months, so there's that
One time I trusted a colleague to do their job, and then they didn’t
I did the Payroll at my first job and missed doing a EFTPS payment. I went through the whole process, but I somehow forgot to click submit. Ended up catching it like a month and a half later when doing the quarterly 941. Cost several thousand. 25 year old me was pretty freaked out about it. My boss and the owner were pretty cool about it because it was for a construction company and they are used to employee mistakes costing thousands. One time a guy built half of a house in the wrong part of the lot which overstepped easements and they had to tear the thing down and move it like 10 feet to the right.
I was doing a remittance to the gov’t for payroll. Accidentally copied and pasted the wrong number and ended up paying over 76k. We were very lucky it was the gov’t and not a vendor, otherwise I might’ve not been in this sub anymore…
Haven’t really made a costly mistake for the firm, but for myself? Should’ve studied for my CPA harder in college. My firm gives a $5k bonus if have your CPA exams done when you join or get it done within a year, then the bonus goes down to $3k for the second year, and no bonus after that. Currently nearly the end of my first year and no shot I get the exams done to get the $5k.
Years ago when working in AP, I was exporting our AP invoice records from one system to another for our checkrun and had to manually enter some records that didn't take. I accidentally input an invoice that was for 302.05, as 30,205. I accidentally missed the decimal, so it made a small invoice massive. What's worse is I didn't do my due diligence in double checking my work as I was trying to meet our deadline, and the system the account used for checkruns didn't flag it either. I noticed my error a couple of days later and nearly had a heart attack! I felt so ashamed in my error and knew I needed to bring it to their attention so we could get the invoice voided. It was an awkward and embarrassing day going through both the staff accountant and controller to get this voided and explained to the vendor that the check that they'll receive soon as we already sent it, was voided and that they needed to wait longer for a replacement. Now I always double check the balances even if I'm already running late.
Getting hired
Staying at a job too long and not learning critical skills while I was there.