[Anonymous]

Just wondering your experiences with this…

Had a client in private practice who prepared and gave investors a set of heavily misstated financials – missing subsidiaries, improper accruals, inter-company transactions, wrong usage of terminology, etc. The investors were not pleased.

The controller then sends you a 20 MB spreadsheet that supposedly shows all the cash flow transactions for each individual entity on Wedsnesday afternoon saying that he needs accurate consolidated Income Statements and Balance Sheets for each of the 5 previous fiscal quarters, He says he needs it first thing Friday morning, but you let him know that it is a tall order considering each entity has 500+ trial balance accounts and almost definitely will need to take some time.

The controller is 60 years of age, not a CPA, and never has been.

Thursday is the 4th of July.

You work through your holiday and come in early Friday, finding that there are unwarranted plugs/formulas, and account balances that are not in fact the sum of provided details (granted, the cash and account totals may be correct as provided — but any misstatements in any other account would cause the cash balance to change, and details do not substantiate all totals).

The task, to create an excel tool/code that can covert this stack into the requested set of financial statements, is possible but lengthy, and would be prone to error regarding any new periods or additional accounts not provided (which is exactly what is going to happen). The controller calls Friday morning and is not amused that the task has not been complete; he needs this NOW and you spend the next 20 hearing about why its so easy from the guy who uses the terms “net revenue” and “net income” interchangeably.

I’m not crazy for thinking that this kind of thing takes time, right?

[Anonymous]

Note: Neither I nor my firm had anything to do with the original set of financials given to investors.

[ganudorm]

Should have established that delivering by Friday morning was impossible originally so he didn't expect anything

That's something I've learned in my time in public accounting. Always say something will be done in the maximum amount of time it could possibly take.

[mla1169]

He's yelling out of embarrassment and frustration with himself for having made such a mistake and getting caught by investors of all people. His butt is on the line in a very big way and he interpreted “tall order” to mean it would be done. He should have been told “we can do this but it will absolutely take xx weeks.” He would still have been angry and yelled, but at least there would be no misunderstanding on his end.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[I just love this]

OP,

You better hope your employer doesn't find out about this post.

REG- Waiting 7/1/13
BEC- Waiting 7/23/13
AUD- Studying 8/12/13
FAR- Signed up 10/1/13
Studying with CPAExcel and Wiley Test Bank.

[acamp]

Hey I recognize that rude behavior and the joke of a financial reporting system which lead to wildly misstated net contra-revenue or whatever its called.

THATS ME!!! YOU'RE Fiiiiiiiiiiired!!!! 😉

Ninja + Wiley Test Bank: [FAR - 81] [REG - 76] [BEC - 88] [AUD - 73](doh!)

Becker Videos: [AUD - 82]

California CPA

[Author]

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