Tax Season

We are about to enter into the eighth week of tax season. W-2's have been completed and next week we will wrap up 1099's and business licenses. I successfully completed the annual account with over four hundred checks to enter and the tax return has been completed. What seemed like it took me three days, the account actually only took me about nine hours total. I have also prepared fifteen financials which are ready for the tax return preparation stage. There are other accounts which I am through December; however I am still waiting on information from the client to complete the process. I do not complete tax returns as that is the job of the CPA.

One pet peeve of mine as a writeup accountant is when a client purchases Quickbooks and tries to do the bookkeeping on their own. Even though Quickbooks is an accounting software which is user friendly and not too difficult to learn, most of the clients that try to use it have no concept of accounting. Using Quickbooks does not make anyone an accountant. The thing that amuses me the most, is they are really good at creating their own accounts to code checks and often miscode them. Our job is to clean up their mess.

Then there are those that want the accountant to set it up for them and teach them accounting. I love what my boss says about this. "I do not take my car to the mechanic and ask him to explain to me how to fix my vehicle." Let the mechanic fix cars and the accountants do the accounting.Also there are those that complain about their bill for the tax return, because they think they have done the work necessary for them to do the return. They do not understand the work involved in cleaning up the account and properly preparing the statements. There are times when it would have been easier to enter the checks ourselves from the beginning rather than click and change.