The GAAPweb blog

Interview with an ACA

I caught up with one of my Accountant friends, Susie, who is a qualified ACA and currently studying for the CTA, who has given us an overview of her studies and career choices.

1. How did you decide to become an Accountant in the first place?

I studied economics at university. I chose this as I wasn’t quite sure exactly what job I wanted to go into and economics gave me the breadth needed. My academic strengths have always been in maths and business so it seemed the logical step to go into economics/accountancy.

2. Had you ever studied it at school (even as module within another subject)?

I had never studied accountancy at school but had always enjoyed maths.

3. Did you have parental/peer influence?

My cousin was also an Accountant - it seemed a strong and lucrative career to get into.

4. Did you choose it for a clear career path?

Not really. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after I graduated but knew I wanted to do something business related. Accountancy seemed a logical step and the ACA training gave a good grounding. So, I applied for graduate jobs with the Big 4 and got the first one I applied for.

5. Do you regret not doing another subject and then doing ACA/ACCA/CIMA afterwards, or were you pleased to get the head start?

I was one of the youngest people I trained with and many of my colleagues had tried other career paths before studying for ACA. I felt I had a head start in getting qualified early in my career. I don’t think doing another subject prior would have benefited me in any way.

6. Did you get many exemptions from your ACA, and how much time did this save?

Unfortunately not. Some accountancy degrees do offer get exemptions from certain papers, but my economics did not cover these options.

7. How would you recommend a current school student research accounting degrees?

Check to see if the course provides any exemptions to ACA/ACCA/CIMA as that would provide a good indicator as to the quality of the course.

8. How did you know what to expect if you had never studied accountancy before?

Nothing can really prepare you for the studying involved – you don’t know what to expect until you have tried it. It takes a lot of determination to get through it! I was happy studying at Sussex University, and the place you study is as important as the course you choose.

Penny Millionaire Project - Week 42

Short and sweet this week. I've been busy slaving over a hot PC for most of the time I've been awake. As a result, I haven't had as much opportunity as I'd like to get out and gather pennies. Woe is me.

Tuesday morning, Maz handed over a 5p she'd found on Sunday as she strolled down her street.

Wednesday, another one from Maz. She'd just gone out for a lunchtime walk and spotted a penny down the road that leads to and from our offices. Annoyingly for her, she was walking towards a gang of people at the time and since she still has a modicum of dignity, she couldn't bring herself to pick it up in front of them.

Luckily, Maz has a brilliant memory and managed to locate it with pinpoint precision and nab it on her walk back into work. She really is a wasted resource for the country. She should be snapped up by the military.

Thursday presented me with a real dilemma.

In my manifesto at the start of this project, I said I would pick any money up, no matter what the currency. Of course, when I said that I assumed I'd never find any foreign money - as if I'd be bothered to convert currency that's worth next to nothing!

Well Thursday morning Alex walked into work and handed me a Euro cent. For the moment, I've decided I'm not going to include it in the total. If I start finding foreign money everywhere, I'll have to reevaluate my stance.

Week Forty-two

How much found: 6p

Total found so far: £26.10

How it could now be spent: a Sunnflair Family Non Stick Cookset.

Magic Numbers

So, as a Finance Professional I’m going to take it for granted that you’re quite canny with numbers. And I suppose it stands to reason that a prospective employer would be pretty interested in your numerical abilities. But what if you discovered that the person who interviewed you last week was actually influenced by your numerology? Perhaps you’d think “Gosh I don’t want to work with weirdoes like that regardless of what they deduce.” Or maybe you’d be intrigued?

According to numerologist Sonia Ducie, various companies, large and small, have sought her help in recruitment decisions. In fact Samantha Roddick consulted Ducie when she the set up the highly successful Coco de Mer. Although she also, as you might hope, talked things through with her Accountant and Bank Manager. Her opinion on Numerology is that “It is there to inform you, not direct you, because you don’t really want to hire and fired based on someone’s numerology – that would be ridiculous”

I’m sorry if you’ve just read up until this point completely at a loss as to what numerology is…I should attempt to explain perhaps.

I’m no expert but from what I can work out, the basic premise is that the numbers 1 to 9 are each suffused with certain mystical meanings. So for example, Numerologists believe that if you add together the digits in your date of birth, you end up with a number which shapes the path that you’ll take in life. I’m a 6 so I am supposed to be idealistic and must feel useful in order to be happy…that actually isn’t too far off the mark. Perhaps there’s some truth in it…

In certain ways Numerology does seem to encapsulate what a lot of maths (or statistical analysis etc) is about - trying to spot trends and connections in numbers.
Or on a more universal level I guess it’s common for us to try to find patterns in things – it’s sort of how we make sense of the inexplicable. For example if you find yourself thinking about someone that you haven’t thought about for years and then seconds later you bump into them some would call this telepathy whilst others would call it coincidence.

Also, some people have lucky numbers. Or, and I’m sure he’ll thank me for telling you this, but my boyfriend, who is as it happens, a Risk Manager, doesn’t like the number 13. I’ve known him to skip song number 13 on a CD or indeed move the volume control to 12 or 14 rather than have it rest on 13. This really intrigued me when I first discovered it; especially as in other instances he is quite dismissive of ritual or superstition.

I guess it’s common to try to impose order on the random.
However when looked upon as a way to make sense of the world, numerology seems to have its shortcomings because people living in different societies throughout the world ascribe different meanings to numbers.

For example, the number 4, according to Western numerology, is associated with the four corners of the globe – it denotes home and stability. To the Chinese, it means death.

I think I’ll wait until another time to ponder the intricacies of international cultures – I hope I’ve given you something to think about as it is :-).

Marathon Finances

Charity Accounting is my financial area of interest this month after a wonderful friend of mine, Sally, ran the London Marathon for Macmillan. 

Sally had been jogging around the South Downs for several years when she decided to take up the challenge of the London Marathon.  She wanted to give something back to the charity that was helping her mum with her fight against cancer. Sally set herself a typically modest goal in her fundraising, but soon delighted everyone by topping £5,000 - a whole £2,000 over target.  This was gained from sponsorship for the run, and a somewhat out of the ordinary night out in the local village pub.

This charity auction caused a real buzz, and the bidders’ generosity was overflowing as much as the Pinot Grigio as the lots were called and the frenzied bidding began (I was an overexcited and early winning bidder of a Reiki session).  Lots went into hundreds of pounds (luckily I got in early – even though I would have loved a professional chef cook dinner for me, or a weekend away in a Cornish holiday cottage!)  The hard work paid off – literally and personally – and Sally had a great result.

Over 800 people ran for Macmillan this year, and thousands more for other charities.  And, of course, people are fundraising or making charitable donations to all sorts of organisations, all of the time.   

But what brings together the huge range of charities – from the huge multinationals like Oxfam, through to smaller local charities such as the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team – is the need for Accountants with integrity. 

As a Charity Accountant, you will be there to ensure that the money donated, from both public bodies and individual benefactors or fundraisers, is managed ethically and honestly.  This is a financial arena in which you can thrive by maximising the charity’s social impact while maintaining and developing your financial professionalism and sharp business acumen.  The best of both worlds, perhaps.

You can find out more about gaining a Diploma in Charity Accounting from the ICAEW. With this qualification, not only will the letters DChA appear after your name, but you will gain the skills to help a charitable organisation flourish. 

Or if that job’s not up your alley (although you might change your mind after seeing these jobs on GAAPweb), try jogging the streets of London and get training for next year: London Marathon countdown.

Penny Millionaire Project - Week 41

Hmm. Not to worry. I realise I had probably been getting a little carried away over the last couple of weeks anyway, waxing lyrical about spring and how the streets would soon be paved with, maybe not gold, but little nuggets of cupro-nickel, nickel-brass and copper-plated steel.

This week, however, has brought me firmly back down to earth.

Just a couple of finds this week, and both on Wednesday.

In the morning, Kirsty breezed over to my desk and, with a theatrical flourish, handed me a 5p from the floor behind my chair.

And then after work, on my walk to the bus stop, I had my eyes glued to the floor, not because of the project but for an altogether different reason.

Over the previous 2 days, walking to and from my bus stop, I'd become aware of a dead baby rat, flat on its little back, legs in the air, lying on the pavement and I had become absolutely fascinated by it.

Not only do you not see dead rodents that appear to have died of natural causes very often, but you hardly ever see dead baby rodents.

So I was looking for the little rat again, when my brain registered on some primeval level that my eyes had seen something I was meant to be looking for. A flicker of disappointment when my conscious brain realised what I'd seen was a penny, and not the rat I was holding out for, but never mind. Keeps the project ticking over.

Week Forty-one

How much found: 6p

Total found so far: £26.04

How it could now be spent: A Karsten Kirchner fine art print, "Delightful Pottery".

Getting quizzed down the pub

First there was the penny millionaire…

Then there was yogurt hangman…

But the latest craze to hit the web team is by far the most exciting…

We’re quizzing!

Everyone loves to quiz right? The inexplicable success of the unbearably charmless Chris Tarrant is a testament to this fact. That said I must explain that we’re not about to appear on 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' – Kez has got that base covered. Our new target is much more focused on short-term joy – we’re winning free alcohol in pub quizzes.

Unfortunately our quizzing has shown up some serious shortcomings within the team. It hasn’t stopped us from winning our last two quizzes - but this week we’re raising the bar and attending a potentially trickier pub quiz – we could be in trouble.

Being the flighty, English/Philosophy/Literature students we all are we’re having some trouble remembering useful figures. Important dates, sizes of pool tables and football pitches etc are all just too difficult to remember – so we don’t.

Unfortunately this leaves an important gap in our knowledge which may thwart our chances of total domination of the London pub-quiz scene (one pub down – a few hundred to go). So we thought we’d turn to you finance and accounting types and see if you had any useful tips for remembering number facts – or even any useful number facts you think we should remember?!

In return we’re always happy to share our areas of expertise: literature; eighties pop music, cannibalism and the history of banana stickers.

And while we’ve got you thinking, we’re also looking for suggestions for our team name. Preferably something that won’t get us beat up at the pub and would make a good film title (think the pub quiz version of Cool Runnings).

Right…time to get back to revision.

Penny Millionaire Project - Week 40

As we hit Week 40 of the project, I could by now have become the owner of a newborn baby, but, happily, instead of one of those I've acquired more than £26.

As predicted, the finds are getting ever more frequent as we hurtle toward summer. True enough, there haven't been any big single finds this week, but there have been a lot of nice little ones.

Wednesday - I had a penny from Maz she'd found in the communal hall of her flat.

Thursday - a penny from outside the corner shop by my allotment, once again.

Friday - a walk out at lunchtime, where I came across an absolutely trashed penny on the pavement. Good enough for me.

After work on Friday - this is getting ridiculous - a 5p on the floor as I passed the corner shop by my allotment to get to the car park.

So at risk of sounding evangelical, not only is the allotment a free gym, a source of cheap organic vegetables, and the absolute best place to get away from everyone, switch off and listen to my thoughts, it is fast becoming a loose change hotspot.

On Sunday, I was faced with my most unsavoury find yet. A penny on the toilet floor in the gym changing room. A toilet within a changing room, a Venn diagram of yuck. I steeled myself and picked it up.

Later on Sunday, I went to pick my friend Steph up for a jaunt to see Heathrow Terminal 5 (we didn't see any evidence of chaos, but that may have been because most flights had been cancelled...), and as we came out of her house to get in my car I spotted a penny in the gutter. Fortune favours the designated driver.

Week Forty

How much found: 10p

Total found so far: £26.04

How it could now be spent: a pot of Clarins Energising Morning Cream.

What would you do if you found £135?

Whilst it is not my intention to tread on the toes of a certain Ms “Penny Millionaire” Greasley, I’ve got a tale of found riches to share with you all. It’s rather a convoluted story but basically it all began on 14th of January 2007. It was a Sunday and, without wishing to sound too homes and gardens about it, I was in pursuit of some groceries to make Sunday dinner.

After doing the bulk of the shopping I popped into M and S at Clapham South for some wine. I noticed some that was on promotion, displayed in the centre of one of the aisles. Always keen to grab a bargain, I went over and crouched down to get a closer look. As I did so, I spotted a crumpled up £5 note on the ground. On reaching over to pick it up I noticed a £20 note followed by another and then a further clump.

It’s odd because at this point my pulse had sky rocketed…as if I was doing something wrong. Then I sort of went into autopilot, found the nearest security guard and handed my findings over. He passed it on to another employee who put it in the safe. Still shaking, I continued my shopping. It was funny because I imagined how devastated I’d be if I lost what turned out to be £135. In all fairness I don’t think I’d have it loose on my person, but still. It must have been quite devastating for the poor person when they discovered that they had lost it. Although in saying that, knowing nothing about the original owner, it’s possible that they were fantastically rich and didn’t even notice it was missing. Either way it was all a bit odd.

I asked a handful of people if they’d lost any money before I left the store but nobody had. Off I went into the night, made the dinner and pondered the potential moral dilemma that I had faced. I felt that because it was on the grounds of a shop I was completely obligated to hand the money in. I considered what I would have done had I found the money in the street, but quickly concluded that I would have handed it in to the police station. I knew that I really wouldn’t have felt good about spending the money if I had kept it. In fact when I was little I found 2 pound notes on the ground and handed them in immediately… Still, the whole situation nagged me and in the following week I got curious about whether or not anyone had claimed the money.

I wrote a quick letter to the shop manager to find out what had happened. She called me back a week or so later saying that nobody had claimed the money and that she had handed it in to the local police station, giving me all the details of how it was logged and how I could claim it if no one else comes forward. So, after the required 6 weeks had elapsed, I contacted Brixton Lost Property office and gave them all the details in order to claim the money. It was all rather exciting but at the same time I felt uneasy about it. I’d done nothing to earn the money and thus felt that I didn’t really deserve it. And as if the fates had known my predicament, when I tried to claim the money the Police had no record of my having been the finder. This is where it gets convoluted (in case it hasn’t in your mind already). With no record of me, despite having all the details and being the rightful claimer, I had no right to the money. For about 8 weeks I wrote to and phoned M and S explaining about the red tape and that they had to verify all the details before I could claim the money and absolutely nothing came of it.

I was quite indignant latterly. If I’d just handed the money in to the police station myself things wouldn’t have been so complicated. Eventually, whilst smarting with the injustice of it all, I sort of gave up.

That is until a couple of weeks ago I decided to make one last ditch attempt to claim the money. I wrote a letter both to the lost property office and also to M and S and a little while later I got a phone call telling me of some good news.. I do feel pleased that I followed the correct procedures but I know for certain that if by some freakish coincidence a similar thing were to happen again I would take the matter into my own hands and hand it into the police myself.

So. Happy endings all round. I’ve arranged to pick up the money on Saturday.
Kerry has kindly offered to work her magic to decide how it could be spent and she has come up with this: I could rent out a cupboard for a week.
So, I think I’ve got a subject for my next blog already. Hurrah.

Penny Millionaire Project - Week 39

The clocks have gone forward (hoorah!), the weather's a bit milder, folk are taking to the streets in their droves, feeling carefree and frivolous, and luckily for me they are losing their money everywhere.

Wednesday - Alex rummaged around in his pocket then presented me with a penny he'd found on the way to the bus stop in East Acton.

Thursday - Maz came back from the loo with a 2p she'd found carelessly dropped by the lift.

Saturday - having decided to do my bit for the environment and, more truthfully, my own fitness, I left the car at home and went for a trek to Tesco. I was walking home and was just passing the bookies (why didn't I think of hanging around outside these before?), when I saw a silvery flash on the floor.

There was a man close by loading things into a car boot and he cast a curious glance my way as I set my bags down and bent to examine the pavement. Annoyingly, the silvery flash turned out to be some kind of rivet, not the 5p I'd set my heart on.

I was just about to pick up my bags and trudge home with legs heavy with disappointment, when out of the corner of my eye I saw another silvery flash near the kerb. Surely now this was 5p?

I approached and saw that, far from the 5p I'd dared to hope it might be, it was a 20 pence piece!

In the words of Churchill, "This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never..."

Week Thirty-nine

How much found: 23p

Total found so far: £25.94

How it could now be spent: a pair of wraparound shades.

For All Your Banking Needs

Banks. A lot can be said, none of it good. I don’t want to start making wide sweeping general statements but who doesn’t love to have a good ol’ rant about their bank?

Take mine for example, a highly influential and international bank, with branches worldwide you would think or at least hope that they could perhaps organise a functional operation in what could be considered one of their main consumer markets. But, alas, even that would be asking too much from an international, multi-billion dollar financial institution.

Well of course, it’s understandable, I mean, calculating what percentage of million dollar profits goes to which CEO, or practising your swan dive into a pool of gold coins reminiscent of Scrooge McDuck, can distract you from providing basic services to the customers that made you that money in the first place.

You see, the first incident happened on an overseas trip, while trying to make a credit card purchase. Okay, so I haven’t exactly been a saint when it comes to credit management so when I was embarrassingly declined I thought nothing of it, and resolved to ring the bank that night to find the problem. According to the bank there was no problem, it should have worked fine. But it didn’t. Their advice: try again. So I did, and I was embarrassingly declined again. So I did what any normal human would do when confronted by obstacles – I gave up.

That is until two months after my return, when a rogue cash machine viciously digested my debit card without word or warning. It seems during my two week absence, the bank had received returned mail on my behalf and had assumed I changed address, subsequently blocking my account for ‘security reasons’.

Security reasons? After two months?? Okay, security can only be a good thing, right? So when I went to a branch with my old cheque book (with an old address), no ID and no signature and ask for a fat hundred quid, I’m thinking no way in hell will I get this money. No ID check, no signature verification and no address confirmation, but a lovely hundred pounds plump in my hand. I should have been worried about the sheer ease with which I just got one hundred pounds from my account without any ID, but I was too excited that I had just got one hundred pounds from my account without any ID!

This seemed oddly strange since the bank had made specific strict instructions that I must sign when receiving my new debit card as security processes dictated. So I carefully arranged for the card to be sent to the plush GAAPWeb offices, received the call and promptly went to sign for it at reception.

What I found was the new receptionist looking at me blankly. She handed me my letter. What? No signature, no verification, no security check, no secret handshake, nothing?? She shrugged her shoulders empathetically. Apparently, if the new receptionist knew of ‘someone by that name’ it was secure enough for the bank to leave my sensitive card details with her.

And just as you heave a sigh of relief that you won’t have to deal with your bank again, they slap you with a £25 administration fee imposed while you were blocked from your account. Typical, they push your hand out of your own pocket, while they just keep digging deeper. What’s not to love about banks!