Audit Junior - Rawi Noah Basis

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 Rawi and I'm an audit junior for a small firm of accountants. Basically my role is to inspect the accounts of small businesses generally local to the firm I work for and I also prepare accounts for small businesses in the area as well.

What is Accountancy?

Accountancy basically is a very diverse career and there are so many different kinds of accountant but for me an accountant is someone who takes financial information and puts it together in a way that is meaningful and comparable so people can look at the data that has been compiled and compare it to other periods and other companies. Now how that's done and the form it takes and whether or not you are putting it together or inspecting it are really where the differences lie in different types of accountant.

What attracted you to this career?

I was always interested in understanding how businesses work and felt that accountancy gave me the opportunity to see how different business work and give me an idea about how one day I might be able to run my own business.

What does your job involve?

On a day to day business I would be involved in collecting data provided by clients to prepare information to be shown to the tax authorities and show them the amount of tax that has to be paid but also in theory show information for the shareholders of companies that reflect the financial position of the companies I am working for.

Describe the process of your work?

If I was preparing a set of accounts I would have information on the bank position of a company on all the money that the company holds and in various different forms be it in buildings, stock or money owed by its customers and also all the money that it owes to other people and find a way of showing that in very rigid format that is set by the government so that people can look at that and compare the financial position of that company to other companies and make a decision as to whether to invest in it or work for it or if their management make decisions that would help the company to grow in the future. A client produces large amounts of information on computers typically. Sometimes they will come in with a shoe box of information written on books. It will depend on the size of the client but largely it involves looking at the information in different ways and trying to understand how the client put together that information. It's always going to be slightly different because every client does things slightly differently. For example, where a client produces things on a computer software package, it's largely a matter of data entry and then checking the data and checking lists of information making sure that everything's been put in the right place and there haven't been any mistakes made by the client.

What do you do on a typical day?

Typically I would be involved with information that has been posted by the client or sent by email and a lot of that would be put into Excel but there are other software packages that help us put together accounts and make sure everything it done in the correct format. If there are queries then typically we will phone or email the client to get information we need. We don't normally have to visit the client because normally the issues we are dealing with aren't sufficiently complex but where we are for example, auditing the client, which would be checking the work of another firm of accountants or that business then we would have to visit the client.

What are differences between large and small practices?

I think when it comes to whether or not you want to go to a big or small firm you have to accept there is a trade off and if you want more money and more risk, go to a bigger firm. If you're not worried about the fact that if you fail one of your first exams you're going to lose your job and you're going to be working 60 hours a week, then a big firm is for you. If you want a bit more stability and you want to feel that if you do fail an exam you're not going to be kicked out the front door, and you don't mind the fact you're not going to earn as much but you get more free time in the evenings and at the weekends, then a small firm is going to be much more beneficial. I think in larger firms accounts prep tends to be something that's outsourced and there will be a specific department that deals with book-keeping and accounts preparation for clients. Auditors don't typical deal with anything other than audit and tend to be quite specialised, especially in bigger firms. In smaller firms because there is less staff compared to the amount of different types of work, there is less scope for specialism and people tend to do a bit of everything and get to see different stages. As an auditor you can't actually prepare the accounts of the client if you are auditing anyway so you would have to really have quite a large company to have a client who was being audited and having the accounts prepared for with very separate teams.

What are the speicialisms within your industry?

Practice accountants deal typically with the inspection of accounts on behalf of shareholders making sure there is nothing that's been prepared that makes the accounts look different to how the company actually is performing in any significant way. Management accountants create information that doesn't have any specific format but helps the management make decisions on how the company should be run or things should be costed or how a company can develop itself and public finance accountants deal with managing the finances of government institutions.

What are the best bits about your job?

I think for me the most fun part of the job is going to visit other clients, going to different offices, seeing how different businesses are run, how different people do their job and also meeting new people.

What are the worst bits about your job?

Sometimes meeting new people, when you're meeting new people you don't get on with quite as well and also because people are obviously in work mode and they're not necessarily happy to see someone snooping through all their financial records and looking for their mistakes. They don't always take that too well so that can be a bit testing, but you just have to sometimes bite your tongue.

What has been your greatest achievement?

Being qualified as an accounting technician and I managed to get through to that stage quite relatively quickly without having failed any exams and that was a bit of a milestone in my career up to this stage. Moving forward I'm very proud to be on the institute's chartered accountant track and I seem to be making progress towards becoming a chartered accountant and that makes you feel quite happy about where you are in your life.

Any regrets?

I think had I left university and been more aware of the nature of the firms of chartered accountants and how things worked, I think I would have made sure I'd got in there a bit earlier. I basically dilly-dallied and wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do when I first left university and left it until about a year after I graduated but had I known that it really is the early bird that catches the worm and it's very competitive to get into and if you can get in there earlier and you want a career in accountancy, it's much better to start looking for work as soon as possible and also find out about the nature of the job because it's not something many people understand and it's quite difficult to research. One of the best ways of finding out about accountancy is meeting accountants, even in interviews so I think that's probably the main difference I would have taken in approaching my career.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

Smaller firms will tend to pay about £5000 less when you're training and there will be slightly less corporate entertaining associated with the firm you are working for but the flip side is that you are starting work at 9 and you're leaving at 5.30 at the end of the day. Overtime is unheard of; you just don't have to do it. The only time you might have to do extra work during the day is on your lunch break when you are at an audit client, but even then if you finish the day slightly earlier because they have to kick you out at five you're not going to have time to go back to the office and subsequently making that half hour back at the end of the day so you're not really having to grind out the week.

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

It's a totally 9 - 5.30 job. I've never worked a weekend since I joined the firm 2.5 years ago and I may have worked 10 or 15 minutes after the end of the day on a couple of occasions when I felt I had to finish it because if I started it the next day I would be struggling to remember where I got to. It wasn't a case of someone standing over me saying they needed it done by the next morning. It's just not the same kind of deadline pressure you hear about at other big firms.

Is there much in the way of travel?

Travelling is pretty much restricted to the locality. Most of our clients are local and they'll have come to our firm because we're a local face and we've been in the community for 50 years and people will know the partners because they have lived here for their whole lives. A lot of the business the firm generates does tend to be by word of mouth. There are exceptions but because of that most of the travelling involved is within 20 minutes of the office.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

Accountants can be based anywhere in the world. When it comes to audit, that's slightly different because one would have to visit the client and that's an actual requirement. When it comes to accounts preparation and tax, as long as you can get the information you need either posted to you or emailed, there is absolutely no reason why you couldn't be on the dark side of the moon, it's really something you can do once you have got the information and post it off to the relevant authorities.

What is the working environment like?

The kind of people who would want to become chartered accountants tends to be slightly more seriously minded and a professional mind-set does tend to fit better with a suit and tie image. In terms of demographics and whether or not men and women become accountants, it's increasingly even, if anything there seems to be an increasing skew towards women joining the profession. In the past it has been more male dominated but I think firms have really moved to address that and have come to accept as has most of modern western society that women have an equal role in society and are just as capable of fulfilling those roles.

How did you get into your job?

I got a 2:1 in Archaeology in Durham University and joined the profession about a year after I graduated. It's fairly atypical, most people in accountancy will have got a financial or law related degree or slightly more science related degree but having said that there are a fair amount of people with art degrees and a sizable minority. It's not something that's essential to becoming a member of the profession. There are a lot of people who leave school at A-Level and take their association of accounting technicians which doesn't require that you have a degree although the institute of chartered accountants does require you either have AAT membership or a degree so when it comes down to it, it is important you study hard and that you put the work in before you even start thinking about joining the profession. Training is split into two parts. There's technical work experience requirements which means you have to fulfil 150 days of work on the job per year that is relevant to working for a client but there is also a large number of exams you have to sit over the course of 3 years which is the duration of time that a training contract lasts and that tends to be broken up into a 2 week period of studying followed by a break of about 6 to 8 weeks and then a 2 week period of revision immediately prior to the exams and that sort of pattern happens every six months so you tend to sit two exams every six months until you complete the profession. At the finals there are 3 exams but one of those encompasses all the knowledge from the exams you have sat up to that point so it's not really studied for in the same way as most subjects.

What's the application process like?

Applying for jobs with small firms of accountants tends to be more about finding employment agencies or looking on the internet for vacancies and just handing in your CV and then following the interview process. There is no real testing, or psychometric exams which you might associate with larger firms with many more candidates applying for jobs. There is still a fair amount of demand for people applying to smaller firms but there is in no way the same number of applicants as there would be for larger firms and that's in part because the kind of people who want to work for a larger firm will tend to a bit more of a shot gun approach for graduate employment. They're thinking, I've got a degree, I want to get a graduate job, accountancy is on my checklist, and they've got to a in the top 100 careers and that's the first one they've ticked off.

Are the Accountancy exams difficult?

Accountancy exams are unlike any exams anyone will have sat up to that point in their life. 80% of people will pass them but a one in 5 failure rate is still pretty high. Most people go into an exam and think they're going to pass it, it's whether or not you get an A, B, or C. In accountancy it's pass or fail and if you fail you have to retake, it's as simple as that. There is no choice about which exams you take especially from the institute, you have to sit all the exams. If you have a weakness, and most people seem to have one area where they're not very good at something, you have to struggle through it and there are some very wordy components to the course and there are some very maths oriented components of the course and different people have different skills.

Why did you choose the ACA qualification?

There are number of different accountancy qualifications. There is ACCA, ACA, CIMA and CIPFA all dealing with different areas of industry and government and working for clients outside of it as an outsider looking into industry. For me, I wanted to get an idea of how different companies worked and that made the ACA by far the best choice because in effect you are inspecting and looking at the accounts and the way different companies are run with lots of different types of companies. If one went down the CIMA or ACCA route typically one would be working at the same company for a protracted period of time and maybe not get as much an idea of how different companies are run and if one went down the CIPFA route you would be working for government or public institutions so again it's not quite where I wanted to be.

What are the key skills required for your job?

I think mainly an eye for detail, being able to spot where things had been done incorrectly or how things can be done slightly better but also the ability to be able to explain that in simple plain English to your client you are working for so that they can understand why the way you spot is the right or wrong way to do things. Being aware as well that not everything is right or wrong in accountancy, despite the fact that people might have this perception that it should be done in any one way, sometimes there are different benefits, advantages and disadvantages to doing things in different ways and being able to explain in a simple way to clients what options are available so they can make an informed decision.

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

I think if you want to get into the industry, being confident and brash are not necessarily going to be the things get you in. Being careful and surefooted are probably going to win the day and in the interview if you are going to make claims about knowledge or pretending to knowledge I think you are going to come unstuck very quickly. You need to research the profession as much as you can, have as big a knowledge of what you are getting yourself into because so many people just don't understand what accountancy is and if you're one of those people who just wants to get a graduate job you're going to be spotted very quickly. If you're someone who's actually found out about the job you're applying for and the company you're applying for you're going to stand out above those who don't know what they're really getting into.

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

From the point of joining the firm to the point of qualification it takes 3 years. It can't take less than 3 years and if you're unfortunate enough to fail your final exams a couple of times it might take you 6 months or a year longer but by and large it should take 3 years and at that point you become an audit senior. After that really it depends on the size of the firm you work for and how you see yourself using the accountancy qualification you've just gained. If you want to stay in practice and that is preparing accounts and auditing accounts for clients, then you're looking at spending about 5 to 10 years working towards a management position and then maybe another 10 years working towards a partner role, but that's going to vary from firm to firm and there are stories about people making partner 2 years after qualifying having done so tremendously well, but again sometimes smaller firms you might be in dead mans' shoes and that's not always going to be feasible. Having said that there are a lot of people in the accountancy profession who decide they don't want to remain in practice anymore and they're going to go into either industry, which is to say working for larger companies and working for their finance department, or maybe going into banking and find a role or just do further qualifications that they feel can enhance the accounting qualification they've already got. Another popular route is to become self-employed and work either as a consultant or sole practitioner and then you are your own boss. You're not really responsible for other people; your promotions are dependent on other people spotting your talent, your career is entirely in your hands. I think as people move up in accounting and I think this is true regardless of which area of counting you move into, your role becomes less involved with detail of preparing accounts and preparing financial information and inspecting and more managing other people and making sure they do it in a timely manner and do it properly. It does become a more people management role with complex issues being passed to you because you have more experience but by and large actually having a much more of a hand off approach and leaving other people to it.

Where do you see the industry going?

Obviously there's the credit crunch going on at the moment and all kinds of issues with supply costs, i.e. oil costs have gone up a lot in the last couple of weeks even and where that goes should really be followed if you want to understand how companies in Britain are going to be going to continue functioning and are being affected by the current situation. It's useful to understand which firms and which services are going to be more useful to involve yourself in. For example, solvency is likely to be quite a large area in the coming year if Britain does get into recession or there's a global recession then there are going to be more accountants involved in dealing with clients who are running into financial difficulties.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

It's an incredibly versatile qualification. The number of industries that you can move into isn't even restricted to finance. Because it's seen as a business advice qualification you can go into a personnel role or even just show to other people that you have got this qualification. It means they have confidence in your ability to understand complex matters and deal with them regardless of whether or not they're numbers or people based.

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

I regularly read the FT and the Economist. They don't necessarily focus specifically on accountancy but it is useful to have a general overview of the way the economy is working and functioning but there are also a number of other journals produced by the institute. There's Audit and Beyond and also Accounting Magazine which are bi-monthly and these give you an idea of the areas where we need to develop ideas about how to deal with the job and see where things are going.

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

I have actually two years prior to wanting to become a chartered accountant applied to become an air traffic controller and got to the final interview stage but having failed that would have had to wait another year to sign on so perhaps if I'd got that first time around and got through the training then that's where I'd be now, otherwise I'm not really sure.