Audit Manager - Gemma Yuill

Well, it turns out that accounting isn’t that boring after all. Although those considering audit might want to take a careful look at what’s involved.

Accountancy was cited by almost everyone as a brilliant place to get a solid understanding of business and many people exploit the training as a springboard into other careers both within finance and more broadly (such as management consultancy). This makes it a pretty good option for those who aren’t entirely sure which direction to take but who want a solid qualification from which to build.

The exact qualification you sign-up to will depend on what interests you and what slant you want your training to have. Typically at the big 4 you’ll be going for the ACA, which probably has the edge in terms of prestige. If you’re interested in being an accountant within a business then you’ll be heading in the direction of CIMA. Public service has its own specialised training and that’s CIPFA.

Something that may seem a little counter intuitive is that you don’t actually have to be a math geek to be successful in this industry. Whilst it might help for more specialized areas such as tax and actuarial work, most people we spoke to didn’t have a clue what the whole top row of a calculator does!

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Gemma Yuill, I'm an audit manager and I work for De Loitte LLP.

What is audit?

I would say that we help businesses to make sure that they are reporting the right numbers to people who own them. I think it's a very basic description not just of accountancy but specific towards audit.

What attracted you to this career?

Specifically I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated so I thought getting an additional qualification would be a good idea. My degree was in European management and I had done some finance modules and I had enjoyed those so that's why I pursued the more finance route and so I decided to apply to do my chartered accountancy qualification so that's what I applied to audit.

What does your job involve?

Pretty much our job is to make sure that our clients' statutory accounts are true and fair so they're not reporting anything that's incorrect that could affect their shareholder's decisions. What that entails means basically going out to client sites, looking at their numbers and performing certain procedures to ensure they're right. On a day-to-day basis you could be working in any different type of industry in any location and doing things specific to that client's industry, so it is a very varied job but we do have set rules and regulations and tasks that we have to do in a day.

What do you do on a typical day?

I generally get into the office between 8 and 8.30 and I would say every day is different but generally at least once a week my day would be like this. I get into the office about 8.30, check my emails and voicemails, have a look up at our engagement management system to assess the economics of my project that I have ongoing, which will look at time charge to it compared to what we are able to bill our clients and then I might do some invoicing to our clients. Once I've done that I will probably head out to one of my client sites where I've got a team out in the field. I will have a chat with them, see how the project is going, if there are any major issues, and then I'll review some of their work because I have to pretty much review everything they do before it goes to the partner for their review. I might take them out to lunch if I'm feeling kind and then I generally come back to the office, check up on my emails and voicemails again, deal with anything that's come in whilst I've been out at my clients and then head off about 6/6.30, go to the gym and get home about 8pm.

What kind of work does your team do?

As junior staff to me they will usually be out with the clients pretty much full time. They are generally within about an hour's drive from our office but there are occasions when they are further afield and they have to stay over. Out at the clients pretty much they are doing specific tasks to check that our client's financial statements are correct and there are no errors in them. For example, our clients say they have so many assets, it could be equipment, buildings, that sort of thing, one of the things we have to do is to go in a verify that these things actually exist, that the client actually uses them and they have value to the company. One of the things you have to do is go around the client's offices and various locations and check that they have these assets they say they have and they are using them and they are in a good working condition, that sort of thing. Another thing the guys will be doing is testing when a client makes a sale, a customer will owe them money, and we have to check that money is recoverable so we will check that the client has paid them subsequently. All that involves really is a lot of discussion and liaising with the clients so the teams that are out on the site are permanently having contact with the client and they are our face of DeLoitte as such and they are the first contact for our client because they are out in the field effectively.

Describe the process of your work?

What would happen is we would try and win a client and that would probably involve doing some tender and bid work, gaining information, doing research on the client, networking with them in order to win the business in the first place. Once we've won the business then we have to set out our terms of engagement so we will draft an engagement letter and agree a fee with them. Within that process we have to do some background checks on the client to ensure there's no risk of money laundering so we have these specific forms to fill in to make sure we're happy that the client is who they say there are and there isn't any underlying issues which could affect the work we're doing. We do those, the client would then sign their engagement letter. Once that's done we can then start proceeding with the work we need to do. So audit-wise we would schedule a time that's suitable with the client when we can go out on site. We would request that they prepare certain documents ready for our review and have certain people in their team accessible to us when we're out there. Once we've decided when we're going to do it we will have an internal planning meeting with the team. We will then during that planning meeting discuss potential fraud risks of the client and we will document that in our file. Then the team will go out to the client site, perform the specific procedures that we need to do so testing all the balances and testing the income statements and then once that's done the manager will then review the work, raise review points where they think they need to go back and do some more work or clarify specific situations and then the partner will go and review it once all the managers notes have been addressed. Once the partner is happy that the file is complete we will get a copy of the client's draft statutory accounts - sometimes the client will draft them, sometimes we will draft them depending on how good the client is - and then we will go about tying in the statutory accounts to the work we performed. We will review the accounts, make sure there are no obvious errors, and make sure they are in compliance with our UK gap or international gap or whatever which is our accounting regulations and then it has to go through a quality review process. Everything that we submit to the client or is available publicly has to go through a quality review to make sure that we've been consistent in the way that we produce the work that we're doing, so it will go to someone completely independent of the project, might be someone in another office. They will review specific documents that have to be reviewed depending on the nature of the engagement. They will raise further review points which we then have to clear. Once they're happy that we've addressed them all they will sign off and then the accounts will able to be signed by us and the clients so we'll get the accounts signed and then they'll normally be filed with Companies House. The tax guys will basically help us in auditing the tax or in some engagements the tax guys will prepare for our client their tax figures because it's quite a complex area and sometimes the client doesn't have the expertise and therefore our tax department will help the client prepare their tax numbers and do their annual tax returns to the government, that sort of thing. Generally what happens when you have an audit you will have a tax manager assigned as well and you will discuss timings, schedules, that sort of thing and they will provide us with a final memo to say they are happy with the tax numbers.

What are the speicialisms within your industry?

There are oodles of different roles within our organisation so I'll start within audit specifically. Generally there is audit and then we are classed as external auditors so we go in and check what our client is doing. You could work in a professional services firm in internal audit so you go in and help clients set up their internal controls procedures, and then there is IT audit where you help out the external auditors but specifically with the IT systems that are in place for the clients. So that's generally audit but within that you can specialise into different industries. Our office in Cambridge is quite technology and biotech based clients although we do have others but that is our general client base. In London you can work in 4 or 5 different departments. You can work in financial services which would mean you would pretty much be working with the banks and insurance companies. Also in London you have TMT which stands for technology, media and telecommunications. They have a department called Products and Services which doesn't really fit into any other category so again, within audit there are other areas you can go to to be in a more specialised role. On top of that we have our audit specialists who would be very good technically accounting-wise so they might specialise in valuations or they might be a contact for when you have technical queries. We have a hotline that we ring up and people are there who are quite clever or very into their technical accounting to give you advice on how to deal with certain situations. So that's within audit. If we go to tax we have corporate tax, VAT department, personal tax, so again we do tax for businesses, tax for individual people who have a large need for tax help, we have a corporate finance department who help out with transactions, mergers and acquisitions, that sort of thing, we have a consulting department who help clients input new systems, make changes, a variety of different things. We have support for all these different people, human resources, IT support, we have our own finance department, we have admin assistants and I'm sure I've missed lots of people out!

What are the best bits about your job?

I think the fact that every day is different. There are obviously set things I do within a day but I have a variety of clients ranging from hi-tech software clients to luxury cosmetics so depending on what clients we have teams at I could be doing something completely different, discussing something completely different with my clients because of the nature of their businesses is so diverse. So really, I like the variety and the fact that I'm not always in the office, I could be out at different places and you learn a lot about different businesses from the job that I do so I think that's the key benefit and sort of thing I look forward to. It's nice knowing that there is a right answer but with the nature of our job and the regulations and accounting rules there is a certain amount of interpretation and therefore things aren't always set in stone, so we always have to do a lot of fact finding, reviewing guidance, really making a judgement as to how they are accounting for things and whether they are doing it appropriately. So although a certain amount of it is, yes, this is the right answer, a lot of it comes down to your understanding and professional judgement as well so we get to do a bit of both there.

Is there much variety in audit?

Once you've learned how to do specific tasks and specific tests - we do those at every client - but the interesting thing is that every client is different, the reports that you get, the way their systems work all varies so you therefore have to adapt the way you do things and talk to the client in order to understand the most efficient and effective way to get to the same answer. After that, your client is doing different things every year, they might buy a company and therefore there's very specific accounting we have to do for that, so you might have to go and do some research on how they should be treating it. Their business will change pretty much every few years and so you have to kind of relearn and understand where they're going in order to try and ensure we are getting the right answers and doing our work in the most efficient work so it is always changing.

What are the worst bits about your job?

There are obviously a lot of checklists and forms to fill in which is not fun and we obviously have certain protocol we have to do so that is definitely my least favourite bit because I think it's a very set job we have to do and we have to make sure we do these things otherwise we're not covered if we face any risk but at the same time they're quite inflexible so sometimes you're doing this check list and really it's not really that relevant to the client but you just have to do it because it has to be done and that is the frustrating part about our job.

What has been your greatest achievement?

One of the things I did was I went over to the US for 18 months and I set out and had a goal and wanted to go to San Jose which is in Silicon Valley because I really like technology industry, it's quite fast paced and interesting so I really wanted to get some good industry experience so I set out to arrange my secondment to go there and I achieved that and I was out there 18 months and I've just come back, so that's definitely the best thing that I've done.

Any regrets?

I think when you're new to a job in an environment it's very difficult to say no to people when you've got enough work to do. You feel like you always want to help people out and do as much as you can but you've got to learn to say no at some point in time and that took me quite a long time to do, so I would have tried to become more assertive earlier on.

So how do you say no diplomatically?

I find the best way to do it is to say that at the moment I don't have time but maybe next week I can help you out, or say, I can give you an hour of my time. Rather than saying I'll take on everything, I'll say, I haven't really got much time at the moment but I'll offer an alternative, or maybe say, I know that this person doesn't have much on at the moment. So rather than saying the word "no", deflect the situation by saying either this person's got more time, or I can help you out next week, so it's not really saying no. I think that's the way to do it. It's just good to say you are willing to help out but that now is not necessarily the best time.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

We're not supposed to but we do tend to get samples and that sort of thing. We're not allowed to accept generous gifts because it can affect our independence. Salary-wise DeLoitte pay a competitive salary. They have what's called a flexible benefit system so you get a certain amount to spend on benefits so you can either take the money or use it to put towards private health insurance, dental insurance, a company car when you get to manager level. You can buy an extra week's holiday and child care vouchers as well. So depending on what your needs are you can have a certain amount of your salary you can put towards the benefits that you may or may not want. So that's quite good because they're not forced on you if you don't think you really need them but they're also quite competitive to buy if you do want them, so that's good. Other perks, working in a practice compared to being an accountant in industry, as we are fee earners there are definite perks with taking clients out to dinner, having meals out, that sort of thing, we have quite good social events as well, so because we are fee-earners and not an overhead that's quite a good perk. As a manager you do get a bonus, as an associate when you start there are things called outstanding achievement awards so if you perform really well on a job they'll give you a bonus and those happen every quarter so there is an element of bonus but it's not a large proportion of your total package.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

It's very dependent on what's going on so we have a busy season which is January to March and we generally work more hours during that time and that would probably be later on in the evening you'd have to work and possibly you'd have to work some of the time over the weekend. Saying that you probably won't be working out of a client site during the weekends; I generally would just do some work from home and again in the evenings where possible I would go home, have my tea and then might have to do some work after that basically. So although we do have to work long hours it doesn't necessarily have to be in the office or out at the client, you could be doing some work at home or reviewing, something like that. Also, we have to do transaction work as well. If you're helping a client to list on the stock market or they want to buy another company, because there's normally short time periods for delivery of that you are going to have to work longer hours but they're not every week so it's just dependent on what you've got going on but generally you're in the office between 8 and 8.30 and try to leave around 6.

Is there much in the way of travel?

As a manager you probably spend more time in the office but before you get to manager grade you spend a lot of your time at client sites and our clients can vary in location. We have a lot within the Cambridge vicinity so it can be 10 minutes drive or you could bike to, where possible I try and do that because the traffic in Cambridge is pretty bad, but equally you might have a client that's an hour way. If you're not fond of travelling or you don't want to, you can say you want to have clients closer to home and they will try and take that into account when giving you your portfolio of clients, but additionally we also have quite a lot of jobs where we have to go overseas as well so again some people really want to do that, some people have other commitments which means they'd rather not travel overseas so again, you just have to try and make it clear what you want and they will take that into account when they are assigning projects and clients.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

To be an accountant you can pretty much be anywhere because it varies from being self-employed, you could have that option, not necessarily as an auditor but as an accountant, or you could work with one of the big four firms in which case you're probably going to be based in a bigger city. DeLoitte has practices all over the UK, generally based in the bigger cities, but within Cambridge there are more regional firms and smaller practices and in smaller towns you are always going to have smaller practices and so you pretty much have quite a lot of flexibility depending on what your goal is or where you want to work. You could become an auditor for a medium size practice in your home town.

What is the working environment like?

This is dependent - when I'm in the office it's generally informal business casual. When I'm at a client it actually depends on the own client's culture because some of our clients want us to wear suits and the guys to wear ties, that sort of thing. Some of our clients come in shorts and t-shirts so if we come in suits we look really out of place, so you just dress appropriately. With regards to demographics I mean we have a whole mix of people here. I think the standard age range would be between mid-20 to late 30's and then obviously the partners are a bit older than that but generally the rest of the group is around that age range and we have a mix of men and women. It's still a relatively male-dominated industry but there is definitely a change in that and they want you to address that as much as possible, for example DeLoitte have a women's networking event and that sort of thing to try and encourage women to move up and stay with the firm, that sort of thing.

How did you get into your job?

You don't need to have an accounting or finance degree. You have to have a 2:1 in your degree choice but there are specific qualification requirements and it's all detailed on our website and depending on which department you want to work in there are different education requirements so you don't have to have a specific accounting and finance degree.

What qualifications can you take?

I did ACA. In Cambridge we have an audit department and an entrepreneurial business department and they tend to deal with our smaller growing clients. Within that you have the opportunity to do ACCA or ACA but in audit you have to do ACA so that means that you become a chartered accountant so the qualification works out that you have to take a number of exams over a 2.5 year period and DeLoitte will sponsor you through that and arrange your tuition, that sort of thing and you have to do 3 years work experience as well. After that you can apply to the Institute of Chartered Accountants. I wouldn't say content-wise the exams are massively difficult, they're very different. For example if you've done a history degree it's completely different from what you've been doing previously. What is difficult is the actual amount of learning that you have to do so although it's not massively difficult it's just a lot of content to learn and also it's having to revise and study whilst you are working as well which is a difficult thing to get used to coming out of university where you just have 14 or 15 hours per week of lecturers and you can fit you studying in around then. Having to do a full day's work and then coming back and trying to do a couple of hours study is probably the most difficult thing and you have to be very organised and pretty dedicated to get through it because it's quite a hard slog.

What's the application process like?

I applied online and I think that's basically how all the applications are done now. The first stage is you do an application form and then they invite you in for an interview and to do some verbal reading tests and mathematical tests and if you get through those then they'll invite you back for an "e-tray" exercise which is where you have a laptop computer and you have emails coming into your inbox and you have to deal with them and you have files on the computer which help you answer the questions, that sort of thing. Then you have to give a presentation at the end of that to one of the managers who is interviewing you. Then you will have another interview with one of the partners and they will ask you about specific competencies and that's it.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

I think first of all apply early because a) that ensures space is available and you're more likely to get the location you want to work in because for example, if you wanted to work in London it generally fills up quite quickly so if there wasn't a space there they might push you to another office; b) it's not just about academics. We need to have people who have competencies in other areas and specifically in the department I work in we really look for evidence of working in a team, those sort of skills, so I think you really need to be thinking about not only your academics but other stuff you do within or outside of university which shows you have other strings to your bow.

What are the key skills required for your job?

To be good at our job you have to have good personal and communication skills because from day one you go out to your clients and you have to be able to set up a good rapport with them so I think that is really important and people don't actually realise that necessarily when they think about our profession. The other thing is to be relatively well organised to be flexible and also to juggle a number of things in one go because quite often you have to do two or three different projects at one time so you have to remember what's going on with each one. Those are probably the key skills you need. Obviously being relatively numerate helps but more about your personal skills and your communication to be honest because that's what you're doing on an everyday basis is talking to our clients.

Is there anything you would have liked to have known before getting into Accountancy?

I was surprised at how early on you go on and meet your clients. That was one thing that surprised me that pretty much from your first day you are out at a client site and you have to be a professional person and it is quite difficult going from a university student environment to going to be a professional representative for your firm and you have to obviously completely change your behaviour. For some people that's very easy but for some people that's quite a big change so they struggle with it a bit more. Also, it was quite difficult coming and going questioning your client about things when you yourself are very junior and don't really understand what you're doing as well but you have good support with you out at your client sites so it's not as if you're left alone so it is quite daunting but you normally get over that within a month.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

It is quite a structured system. In your first year you're called an associate and then you'll get promoted to a senior associate, assistant manager, manager and after that it's senior manager, director, and partner. The first four years you get promoted pretty much every year as long as you're performing as you should be and also as long as you pass your exams as well because they won't promote you to a manager unless you've got your qualification. Based on that it's pretty much every year you get promoted. After you get to manager it's two years at manager, a couple of years at senior manager, a couple of years at director and then partner but again, once we get to manager level it's very much performance based so there's no guarantee you will get promoted to senior manager or director or partner, it's very much about how you perform. As an associate to an assistant manager you spend most of your time out at client sites. As an associate you are responsible for doing more basic testing, the easier less judgemental stuff. As you get more senior you get to take on more technically challenging work and you have more responsibilities, you start to review the more junior people's work and you are responsible for liaising with the client and sorting out their accounts, that sort of thing. You tend to become more of a field manager, managing the project out at the client site. When you become a manager you are in charge of managing the project, not directly at the site but helping the client with any specific enquiry they have, sorting out billing, invoicing, setting up engagements and keeping in touch with your client when you're not out at sites. It's very much more about your client relationships. It then really as you progress it gets to the stage where it's about trying to win new business, targeting companies you want to work for and networking with those people to win the business.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

I think the skills you do get are very transferable. We have to do presentations, you get skills in that. We have to do other roles apart from our auditing, for example, I am involved in graduate recruitment so I've been trained in interviewing. There is also the option to get trained as a trainer so you train other person which is obviously a different skill you have. In addition to that if you want to move into industry as an accountant then your skills are very much in demand. Working for the big four is very good to have on your CV, people in the industry look for that and obviously you've got to have your qualification to work in the big four so you will have your Chartered Accountant qualification and accountants are very much in demand. If you've worked at the big four you pretty much have a very good chance of getting a good job in the industry if you wanted to do that.

Why did you choose to work for a large practice?

You can go and work in industry so normally you would go and get your CIMA qualification which would be more management based accounting but for me I wanted a variety of working for different clients and I think also DeLoitte are very supportive with getting you through your exams as well because they have so many students starting at the same time, they're very organised and they make it pretty easy for you to get through and go to college so that's why it attracted me more to practice than to industry.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

Reading the FT is quite a good idea because you get an idea of what's going on in finance, it really helps. Also if you are specifically wanting to do your chartered accountancy qualification looking at the ICAEW website, which is our website, they have tons of information on what the exams and qualifications entails so that's a really good starting point to get a better overview of what you would be signing up to.

Where do you see the industry going?

As a professional service firm, things are changing. We are becoming much more about how we provide a whole range of services to our client, not just very focused on the audit. Sometimes when we win the audit we win other business so it's much more about being able to provide a whole range of services to our clients but also that has to be in the realm of our independence clause that we have. That's kind of where the industry is going now is that our clients want us to do a lot more things for them.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

One thing I always wanted to be was a marine biologist because I love sharks and I wanted to go off and study Great White Sharks - so completely different.