[thechapman]

This isn’t related to eating time because a budget is too tight. Is anyone ever tempted to eat some time just because things simply took you too long? I’m a first year associate, and I’ve been considering eating time just because of the steep learning curve in public accounting. It seems like it takes me a little longer than I think it should to get certain things done, especially if it’s the first time I’ve been assigned to a certain task (which is the case 99% of the time). If you have experience as a senior or above, what are your thoughts on this? I’d appreciate any insight.

Passed - 2014

[hneagle1]

I have never really eaten my time before. I would rather be honest and

accurate than give the illusion that I can get

items done faster. if you are a first year, there will be a learning

curve, I think it's natural! And people should understand that!

FAR - 82 (8/30/14)
AUD - 95 (10/7/14)
REG - 82 (11/7/14)
BEC - 85 (11/26/14) - PEACE OUT!
Roger CPA, WTB, Becker, and Ninja Notes (with added prayer, tears, and hope!)

[silvercamaro77]

I think it's normal to consider, but I don't think you should do it. Honestly, you're a first year and have no clue how long it should take a first year to do it because you've never done it before. Next year the new first year will feel exactly the same way and probably won't be able to do it any faster that you have this year because it's going to be his/her first time doing it too.

The only way to get a good feel for how it long it should take you is to ask your senior how much time it should take or how much time they budgeted for it to take.

AUD- 95
FAR- 75
BEC- 83
REG- 85

Officially done! Exclusively used NINJA for BEC, REG, and FAR

[Isostasy]

I'm surprised everyone is saying they don't eat time, even on the other thread but the people I know in real life all do it to a degree. I'm salaried so it doesn't matter how many hours i work, like right now if I get a project I will try to get close to the budget and bill the rest to admni since they know I don't have work but when it's really busy I usually won't eat time because i have to meet certain billable hrs and I would be working crazy hrs if i ate time. Do what you have to, the budgets are usually tight and if you're new then it takes even longer and if the person before you ate their time then you're just gonna look bad.

[Determined CPA]

This post made me hungry

A - 75
B - 78 God is good.
F - 77 Answered prayers.
R - 84! Done!!

Paperwork sent - waiting for license!!
Still on a cloud and in shock. Through God, all things will happen.

[Anonymous]

Nope. Never.

It's a bad idea. You're only shooting yourself in the foot down the road. There's another post about this somewhere. It's fairly recent too.

Long story short- when a team eats time:

1) They're not accurately capturing the time it takes to complete an audit and can screw up the economics of it

2) You could end up getting an extra 20 hrs dumped on your desk because a partner/manager didn't know they were already pulling 65 hr work weeks. Working 65 hrs per week sucks. Working 85 sucks WAAAAAY more.

2) We bill by the hour- you're taking money out of your partners mouth. That doesn't make them happy. You're best off letting them know that something took longer than expected and why. It is the partner's decision to write down your hours- not the peons that work for him. (I'm a peon too).

3) Misrepresenting your hours may be a fire-able offense. You may not like your job, but I'm sure your credit and/or bank account does.

[soyanks]

One time I gave a simple task to a newly hired staff. It involved putting few contracts (PDF files) into the audit binder.

The kid billed one whole hour when it should have taken him about 5-10 minutes.

FAR - 86
REG - 85
BEC - 90
AUD - 84

[Anonymous]

If you gave the same task to another newly hired staff, do you think it would have taken them an hour too?

[soyanks]

@Akvod.

Not unless, you decided to do the following:

1) Receive the PDF files via email.

2) Open or download them to your desktop

3) Open the audit binder

4) Decide that you are hungry so go to the pantry to grab a little snack

5) Upon returning to your cube, you decided that you will also need some coffee to go along with the snack, so you return to the pantry

6) Upon your return, you see a coworker passing by, so naturally you decide to chat

7) Then, you remember that you had a task on hand, so you log back into your laptop.

8) You see a new email message awaiting you in the inbox. It's a chain thread started by one of your co-worker with a link to a hilarious Youtube video. You decide to click and watch

9) Afterwards, you return to the original task. But suddenly, there is a new Windows update and it requires you to log off and restart the computer.

10) Log back in, open Outlook again. Open audit binder again.

11) Complete the task

That should take about 1 hour

FAR - 86
REG - 85
BEC - 90
AUD - 84

[Anonymous]

I think part of the time is spent just learning what he's dealing with and where everything is. For you, it's just a matter of doing the mechanics. For a new person, they might have no clue what something is, where it belongs, what order, etc. A small part of the hour is just printing out the files and putting it in the binder, the other part might be reading the files, trying to understand what they are, looking at the files already in the binder, etc.

New person could have also had technology issues and not know shortcuts we take for granted. Etc.

[Anonymous]

It could also be that he took five minutes to do the work and he spend 55 minutes putzing around on Snapchat or whatever interns are doing these days.

When I refer to “eating time”, I'm not referring to fabricated time. I'm talking about time actually spent working.

That kid should be monitored and spoken to if that kind of stuff keeps going on.

[Anonymous]

Is he an intern paid hourly? That could encourage inflating time spent.

[soyanks]

No. He was a full staff.

And no. You only have to drag and drop the PDF file into the audit binder (its all electronic)

And no. No other staff in that staff class had this issue. Every class has one or two of hires who look good on paper but his/her work ethic is terrible.

Another member of that same staff class – she came from an ivy league school and for the first 6 months, she came in really late everyday (around 10AM) and when the issue came to a boil and it went to HR, she just decided to quit.

FAR - 86
REG - 85
BEC - 90
AUD - 84

[Anonymous]

Well then I suggest you approach him. Don't be confrontational. Just say “Hey, I was reviewing your hours, and saw you took 1 hour on this. Was this a typo? Did you have any trouble with it? If so, can you tell me so I can explain it better in the future?”

If he gives you a BS response, you're certain that he's no good. If he says otherwise, then you know what his weaknesses are and how to work with him, and it might be something that's not just unique to him (e.g. didn't know where the folders were located).

[Isostasy]

Let's use soyanks example and you know your mgr is gonna think you're stupid or lazy because something that should've taken 15 min took an hour for whatever reason. I would bill .3 and eat the rest especially if you're new and trying to keep your job.

And most firms usually write time off and don't bill the entire amount. And if they didn't want their staff eating time then their budgets would be more accurate instead of just using last years budget. Also, soyanks we are humans… We use the bathroom and talk to our coworkers and look at our phones. The problem comes when you make budgets and don't take this into consideration. You put us in a bad spot because we'll either look stupid for taking too long or lazy for not working enough hours or having too much admin time.

To the OP I've found that having descriptions in why you took too long helps in case the manager asks about it and only do this for emergencies otherwise they might assign you more work like someone else said because you're not billing enough.

[mccaberp]

This will catch up to you real quick as it did one of the associates at the company that I work at. He was billing timing to other clients in order to boost his realization %. He got away with this for a while because there's a rolling budget on many of our clients for consulting work but people catch on and when managers are billing their clients you can bet your ass that they're taking note of who is billing what and for what purposes.

AUD: Pass
REG: Pass
BEC: Pass
FAR: Pass

First try CPA. Thank god. God bless America.

[Author]

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