I’ve added a new poll to the sidebar so we can see which hobbies are most popular among accountants. I’m being facetious here, because I threw in all of the stereotypical hobbies I could think of, based on my personal experiences at recruiting events. So, quick, add your hobby to the results (you can check as many as you like, and add your own.)

For a profession that claims to value teamwork, it seems to be the new theme that everyone is involved the very individual sport of marathon-running. Not my idea of a relaxing way to spend my free time, but I think some of those accountants just don’t know how to turn off the intensity. Running a marathon is certainly an admirable accomplishment, so I don’t mean any criticism here, just humor .

Golf is the standard, of course. And I need to learn how to play. Soon.

Shutting yourself in a gym lifting weights for a few hours a day seems to be a popular choice for the male accountants who don’t want to run marathons.

Has anyone noticed any hobbies that many accountants seem to have in common? Wine tasting? Stock car racing?

Last week I was lucky enough to get to see Al Koch speak. He is very much involved in the restructuring of General Motors, and has been for the past year or so. He started out as an public accountant, so it is very interesting to see where he ended up.

To relate this all back to taking the CPA exam, Mr. Koch scored the highest cumulative score on the CPA exam back when he took it, winning the Elijah Watts Sells Award. Ten people get this award each year, but Mr. Koch won the gold prize for the CPA exam 1965.

So, while passing the CPA is the important thing, and no one really cares if you get a 76 or an 86, if you do happen to score ridiculously well, you get a whole lot of recognition for it.

Mr. Koch currently works for Alix Partners, a consulting firm that performs “Corporate Turnaround and Restructuring” which is a nice way of saying they help salvage what’s left of bankrupt companies.

His explanation of how the General Motors restructuring was handled was really fascinating. Apparently, they formed a new company, which I’ll call New GM, which took all of the good, useful assets away from Old GM

Old GM, is now left with all the bad, useless assets, and is now called Motors Liquidation. Mr. Koch’s role is now as CEO of Old GM. This involves environmental cleanup of properties, and trying to get rid of acres of factory floorspace.

In addition, Old GM owns some random assets like a 9 hole golf course in New Jersey, and some residential property that used to be contaminated (requiring GM to purchase it) but which is supposedly now safe to live on (so they’re selling those houses off at deep discounts.)

You can read more about this “garage sale” in this article from Bloomberg.

It’s kind of funny–Old GM is worth nothing. Even if it made a profit on selling these assets after the high costs of clean-up, any excess goes straight to the Treasury. Mr. Koch has made this clear to investors on the Old GM website and on public radio, etc. However, every time New GM announces something, like a new car model, the stock price of Old GM fluctuates.

So day traders, if you’re going to buy a stock, make sure you’re buying the right company!

When I named this site “AccountingElf” the creatures I had in mind were the elves from the story “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” While the Shoemaker slept, the elves did careful, beautiful work making shoes.

Unlike the elves in the story, I do not really stay up all night doing accounting. Sometimes I even have time for fun!

I have a lot to post about – last week was my university’s Accounting Career Fair, where I got to meet a few of the firms that are actually hiring this season. Over the weekend we had our first home football game, which means an abundance of craziness everywhere. This week it was back to school with some group projects, and luckily a few recruiting events in the wake of the career fair.

I’m in the middle of reading for tax class tomorrow, so I’m going to get back to that, but hopefully I can put some substantial posts up soon.

I’m quite happy with my levels of studying for the last couple of days. I just need to keep it up tomorrow, and we’ll call it a good week (despite the football weekend!)

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I picked XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) as an essay topic. In order to get course credit for my internship, I have to write a 15-page “Issues and Solutions” essay about, well, and issue I encountered during my internship, and the solution to that issue.

I have completed most of the research I need to write the essay. Essentially, I’m addressing the issue of spending time re-formatting financial data to be able to analyze it for audit tests. My solution is XBRL, but honestly, the benefits XBRL will provide go far beyond solving the issue I saw. This post is intended to be an explanation of XBRL, and also an exercise for myself to make sure I feel confident about how to define the concept.

XBRL is a tagging system, that together makes up a language. Each little piece of data that goes into a financial statement is electronically “tagged” with a label that defines what type of data it is.

Think about how tags we already use online: tags on blog posts can help you instantly pull up all of the posts that mention an issue you’re interested in. Using a common hash tag on twitter (example #sxsw) can make it easy for interested people to find all of the tweets about a certain topic.

My first reaction to what I read about XBRL was confusion about why we haven’t been using this for years. The technology involved is not exactly cutting edge, and there are so many benefits that it seems silly not to be using it.

I think that the main roadblock was getting XBRL coordinated and accepted by enough people. Of course, Twitter tags are much more useful when everyone tweeting about a particular event or topic makes an effort to use one common tag. Similarly, everyone using XBRL has to use the same tags for the same data to make full use of XBRL’s capabilities.

That’s why an XBRL taxonomy has to be developed. It is like a dictionary of tags, and defines all the tags that should be used for each particular type of data. The now-released US GAAP taxonomy has over 13,000 tags in it! What a way to demonstrate the complexity of financial statements!

So, okay, I guess there are some reasons behind why XBRL took so long to make it this far. And how far is it? Well in December, the SEC passed a ruling requiring that public companies with a market cap of $5 billion or more must file XBRL financial reports for fiscal periods ending on or after June 15, 2009. These reports will not be audited, and will be issued in additional to traditional audited financial statements. Smaller public companies will have to begin filing with XBRL in the near future too.

My main conclusion though, after all my research, is that external reporting is just a small part of what XBRL can be used for. Rather than waiting for the SEC to require the switch, companies should be jumping to use XBRL as soon as possible, so that they can begin taking advantage of the internal uses of XBRL before their competitors do. Also, when they are required to begin using it, they will have more expertise than their peers, and may even find themselves in a position to consult with other companies about how to successfully manage the process!

Credit: sxc.hu/hvaldez1

At my university, all undergraduate business majors are required to take two introductory accounting classes, one in financial accounting and one in managerial accounting. I have worked as a tutor for both of these classes for about 4 semesters now, and it is the best student job I’ve ever had.

Tutoring accounting is a great part-time job to have as a student. It is interesting to work with so many students, rewarding to help them, and pays pretty well. I mostly worked through my university’s Academic Enhancement office, which provides the services free to students, so does not pay tutors exceptionally well. However, I also tutored privately and charged about $15 an hour, which is better pay than most part-time student jobs in this area.

Just because you are a good accounting student does not mean you will be a good tutor. I was lucky to get started tutoring through my university. They provide some training, and you are seen as more legitimate to the students you tutor.

Tips for Tutoring Accounting

A lot of tutoring is really explaining the same concept several different ways. When I tutor accounting, I’ll use algebra, pictures, examples . . . basically, the professor can only explain it one way. Your job is to explain it in a different way, and chances are, one of the ways will work better.

Keep in mind, just because you hit on an explanation that works really well for your student, that doesn’t mean it’ll make sense to everyone. (Although I would still try it out, if it really helped clear up a concept for someone.)

Sometimes, you don’t even need to explain it differently than their professor did. With one of the classes I tutor, I will go over the same examples their professor already showed them in class, but since I can move slower and give them a chance to ask questions, they can then follow the problem much easier than in a lecture.

Getting Started in Tutoring Accounting

Before you start charging students for your tutoring services, try tutoring accounting for free to a friend or two, especially in their first week of financial accounting when they don’t understand what a t-account or an asset is. You may find it hard at first to explain it to them in a way they understand. Eventually, through attempting to explain it, you’ll figure out how to make it make more sense.

I have been relaxing this week, but working on getting started on my internship essays. I have changed my mind about a hundred times about the topic for my paper. I think I have settled on writing about XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) because it just sounds so useful.

My paper is supposed to address a technical accounting issue I encountered during my internship and a solution. I’m not sure that I really encountered this issue, but it certainly seems that some of the large consolidated audits could benefit from XBRL.

I will have more opinions on this after I get further into my research, I’m sure. It seems like there must be a more efficient way to transfer financial data between companies than what we used during my internship, but at the same time, I think that a lot of the issues may not be remedied with XBRL alone.

I’m interested to read more and see what’s going on with this, as it has been in the works for a few years now, but I never heard anyone at my internship even mention it.

So I had a long chat with one of my favorite professors today about what kind of firm I should be looking for. I didn’t tell her that I didn’t get an offer from my internship, but I told her that I felt like I didn’t fit in at my internship and I was considering looking at smaller, regional accounting firms.

Her opinion was that if one Big 4 wasn’t the right fit for me, there was still a good chance that I would like one of the others. I had been thinking that they might have some differences in culture, but would otherwise be about the same to work for. What I got from our conversation is that there are differences, and that there are also differences within any one of the big firms depending on which part of the country they’re located in.

The main selling point of Big 4 seems to be the “opportunities” you get from them. I think that people are referring to opportunities to move to a good job when they say “opportunity,” and are not necessarily referring to opportunities within the firm.

Then again, Big 4 does offer opportunities to re-locate while still working for the same company. That can make life easier if your spouse has to move for work, as you can hope for a transfer, rather than having to quit and find a new job entirely. Also, you can move to a different job within the firm, such as from audit to tax or forensics if you aren’t happy with your job. I don’t think a smaller firm could be so flexible.

Another good point that my professor made was that since there are fewer people at a small firm, then it could be even harder to fit in because there would be less diversity.

I’m not sure what to conclude here. I think a smaller firm could be nicer, but you would need to be pretty clear on what you want. For example, I know there is at least one regional firm that does a lot of forensic accounting, so if you knew that’s what you wanted to focus on, you could go for a job there.

I think I have to really define what I’m looking for before I fling myself into the job search again, so that I can explain to a potential employer exactly why it is I would love to work for their firm.

The “corporate America” image Zappos wants to avoid is basically what most CPA firms are stereotyped as being. I found this video interesting because their goals of providing high quality service and having enthusiastic, well-trained employees is essentially the same as what those CPA firms are aiming for.

Of course, your average corporate customer perhaps doesn’t appreciate the “little bit weird” core value, the same way your average individual consumer does, but it is interesting to think about!

Also, I wonder if the way they treat their employees is something that we’re going to see more or less of in the future. They provide free food and snacks, and encourage employees to decorate their offices to express themselves. The CEO has a desk/cube that’s just the same as everyone elses’.

sxc.hu/chappy14

My last couple of posts about the end of my internship have gotten quite a bit of attention, Thank you as well to everyone who links to me!

The reviews and comments on the posts sparked a lot of discussion about how recruiters and potential employers view blogging, as apparently not many interns out there are interested in sharing their experiences the way I have!

I’ve been involved with social media for a long time now, starting with Livejournal and DeviantArt at the beginning of high school. In fact, I still stay in touch with some people that I first got to know through DeviantArt.

There is something that appeals to me about blogging and connecting to so many other people just by searching for shared interests. It is very rewarding to know that even one person got something valuable out of my experiences (besides myself of course!)

I Can't Hide. sxc.hu/sande2

I know that I can’t rely on anonomity in this blog, as much as I can go out of my way not to link to my full name, etc on here, so I do have to pay attention to what I write. However, from the recent responses I’ve gotten, I know that there are people and firms out there who are just as excited about blogging and social networking as I am.

I had a great conversation with my father today about his views on blogging and online networking. I told him that I was a little nervous about the fact that I seem to be unique in blogging about my accounting internship, but that I really enjoyed being involved in this new world of networking.

My dad told me that when he was studying engineering, 40 years ago, the university got ahold of two Wang computers (think today’s TI-83 calculator). The students had the chance to use them, but you know what? None of them did. And look at where computing went from there.

Maybe some employers will shy away from the fact that I have a blog, but I hope that the ones that are pumped up about social networking will see it as a positive point about myself!

You learn some of the acronyms as you go through college business classes… but then you get into the real world and people start throwing these letters around like they know what they mean!

My last client was a software client that makes ERP and CRM software. I knew that these terms were familiar, but I had no idea what they stood for. And then when I figured out what they stood for, I still didn’t really understand what they meant. Those acronyms tend to stand for equally baffling words.

For example, ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. What kinds of resources? What kind of stuff does this do? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, but again, with no direct experience I only have a vague idea of what that kind of software would do.

I didn’t really need to understand what the client’s software did, so I never looked it up, until now when I have downtime and they keep popping up in my e-learnings! Also, as a full-time worker, it is important to understand the client’s business, which means I need to be able to comprehend what it is their product does.

My approach to acronyms in the future will be to look them up as soon as I start hearing them tossed around on the job, or see them on a client’s website. However, I feel like I would really have a better picture if I could actually USE some ERP or CRM software for a bit to see what it looks like and how it works. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Any ideas for how to understand business-specific software without getting the chance to use it?