I decided one day to write down more or less everything I did at work for an entire day. Here is literally a day in the life of a staff accountant at a small accounting firm:
- 7:30 am: Check email, enter yesterday’s time into billing system
- 8:00: Print draft of compiled financial statements for client review
- 8:30: Update another draft compiled financial statement for client changes; extreme difficulty with formatting because of strange setup by former coworker
- 9:30: Restart laptop due to ever-increasing problems; downtime is killing my productivity
- 9:45: Look into inconsistency in prior year reviewed financial statements
- 9:50: Review for open items a tax return started by a former coworker; thought this would mean lots of time spent familiarizing myself with client and workpapers, but turns out return was never started
- 10: Watch Senior Accountant correct an error in one of my workpapers which prevented the cash flow statement of yet another set of compiled financial statements from totaling properly; yet another one of my stupid mistakes leads me to problems with a statement which has become the bane of my existence; I understand statements of cash flow, I just can’t ever get mine to work
- 10:30: Start again on audit with expectation I’ll be interrupted again on some random project
- 2:30: Still working on audit, with little interruption; no lunch today, too much to do; I hate audit planning, but it’s amusing to me that I’m completing the planning documentation when the audit is nearly complete
- 3:45: Take call from partner working from home; time to update draft financial statements that client urgently needs early tomorrow morning
- 4:00: Attacked by partner about a client I haven’t worked on in six months; return is due 9/15, client is out of town for a few days, then spends two days in town before traveling somewhere else until after the return’s due date
- 4:30: Receive tomorrow’s marching orders from Senior
- 4:32: Prepare PBC (provided by client) list for tax return that former coworker didn’t start; notice I’ve worked on six different clients so far today
- 4:50: Total my time by client to see if I can go home
- 5:00: Out the door