[Jeff987]

I’m a tax accountant (in public) and have a lot of free time since busy season. I don’t need any cpe till next year. What are some things I should learn or skills I should attain? Any other certs I should get?

Passed it

[RedSoxFan77]

Those of you who aren't so familiar with Excel, I think the BEST feature is pivot tables. When I had no clue what a pivot table was, it would take hours to put together a reconciliation at work. I found out about it in an accounting journal, and it's made our processes much more efficient. So my advice is to learn how to use it, if you don't already, especially for large spreadsheets.

FAR 75
AUD 74, 82
REG 58, 74, 83
BEC 68, 75
Licensed 7.1.14!!!

[Anonymous]

^^ — oh yes Pivot tables are like my best friend 🙂 I also know how to do several formulas in excel too like vlookups

I think I will go for classes in excel but I want to be able to write my own macro's. At the moment I can do the simple ones which is record and play but it would be awesome to write my own as then It can get a bit more complex and I can do so much!.

[tomq04]

Coding is great!

I work in a software house and the best I've done is a good bit of SQL, which helps quite a bit in trouble shooting data errors. I also am going to focus back on Spanish once i'm done, but I will start paying for treehouse learning $25/month for full “classes” at your own pace for several of the generally needed languages.

in watching/listening to interviews with the CEO they have been proactive with job placement, and feel that their lessons are on par with a college degree, and one can get through them in 3-6 months full time, or 1 year part time.

Enjoy.

REG- (1) 76
FAR- (2) 64, (5)74, (7)83 (Over achiever!)
AUD- (3) 70, (4) 75
BEC- (6) 75

[RedSoxFan77]

Kenada, agreed! I use vlookups and pivot tables multiple times/day, I also have one simple play and record macro I use sometimes. I took a Macro class a few years but all that stuck with me was play and record. Definitely a great tool if you can be an expert. As far as being a do-it-yourself-er, I am totally not, wish I was though, would save a ton of money on labor if I bought a house and wanted to put in new hardwood floors or do upgrades.

FAR 75
AUD 74, 82
REG 58, 74, 83
BEC 68, 75
Licensed 7.1.14!!!

[Anonymous]

Redsox – i am a girly girl so seriously when i first moved into my husbands Bachelor paid it was like — wht the F is is this? LOL. So I wanted to hire people to do “renovations” and he was like no… we can do it.. and so the journey began. We watched a few videos on you tube. I started getting into HGTV and became addicted to it. I got all my ideas from there.

Lowes became my favorite destination LOLehehehe

The first time we ripped out the old carpets it was yuck then had to pull all those staples…. i felt like they never ended.

We had tonnes of fights but after weeks of doing the work we got all the floors cleaned -screwed down. Got the concrete leveled where we noticed it was not quite right. Then the actually floor installation was okay. I got the hang of doing it. Mu husband had to do the all the “cutting” 😀 I did all the laying it down and spreading the glue.

Anyway, we sold our first house in Texas. It was bitter sweet in the sense we just finished renovating and it looked amazing. Now we had to sell it 🙁 We sold our house in 4 days.

But it was great we did all that as the homes in the Bay area are pretty dated …. like 60 yrs dated. When we bought the new house we did some renovations through a contractor before we moved in IE removing popcorn ceiling, painting all the walls, installing new lights in the ceiling as it had only 2 in the kitchen area.

After REG we removed the carpets ourselves (now I am really good at it!) and then got Lowes to put new ones down..

Next up is removing a load bearing wall that I want to take down so I have an open concept. Then next year we will demolish the bathrooms and doing them up again.

[CPAfit]

@Jeff IMHO go with MMA it will be real bad ass to see an accountant kicking ass in the octagon.

@brainfarts you cease to amaze me I mean redoing your house completely. you've got serious talents girl 😉

AUD - 82
BEC - 78
FAR - 78
REG - 83

HIYA!

NH Licensed CPA - Jun 2018

[Anonymous]

I'm learning to write code for several reasons:

1. My 16 year old son is really into it and is really good at it. After spending the bulk of his childhood studying for the CPA exam, I was pretty much willing to do whatever to have some common interests with him, mom and son bonding time so to speak. But after a little while I got hooked on it. He told me about a website called CodeAcademy that has lessons and it's free. I've finished Webdesign and I'm working on javascript now. I think jquery is next. I'm not sure. Now I'm not going to give up my day job for this, but it's fun, it makes him feel good to know that he is smarter than mom at something, and we get to spend time together. Of course, when I ask him any question, such as “What do you want for supper?” I hear “Do you have the semicolon in the right place?”

https://www.codecademy.com/

2. I can use it to write all of that fun stuff to make Excel do cool stuff. I don't know how yet, but I'm working on it.

3. I've always wanted to know something other than the dirty words in a foreign language, so code is sort of like another language only cleaner. LOL

[taxgeek83]

Aahhh, thanks Kricket! Now I have something else to distract me from studying…. 😉

[Tux]

Jeff987 –

If you're not interested in going back to school, nor the EA or CFP certifications (which were all ideas that I had for you too), then I would suggest going to networking events to make new business contacts and increase your business.

You can go to conferences and meet people outside of your town, or go to local events. Meeting new people could give you new ideas and opportunities, so that your business isn't so slow during “off-season”. Maybe you will learn about a specialty niche market that has a busy season different than tax season, so that you stay busier throughout the year.

I don't know what that might be…. I'm interested in specializing in tax too, but another area of interest for me is estate planning. Maybe that's something you could look into, and would give you a specialty to put your time and attention to outside of tax season. Just a thought.

FAR - 86 - 2/27/14
AUD - 75 - 5/29/14
BEC - 80 - 8/31/14
REG - 89 - 2/27/15
Praise Jesus! I'm done!!

Study resources:
Becker
Wiley test bank

[RedSoxFan77]

Kenada, omg, I'm addicted to HGTV, kind of funny since I rent, and it makes me feel worse about my kind of crummy apartment. It's entertaining to see these outdated homes, in bad condition, and the renovation process, and then new problems are discovered. The before and after is such a huge difference, it always amazes me how beautiful the ‘after' is. If I ever bought a house, I would definitely want the open concept, hardwood floors, modern kitchen and bathroom, etc.

It looks like you're building my dream home! 🙂

FAR 75
AUD 74, 82
REG 58, 74, 83
BEC 68, 75
Licensed 7.1.14!!!

[Anonymous]

hahah yes I got a fellow HGTV addict.. I love those renovation realities. My husband and I just laugh so hard esp when they are so clueless ehehheehe.

I love designing the inside of the house. I come up with great ideas (my husband says so) and we learn how to do it. I did tile the first place at the Texas house. That actually was a lot of fun.

The house we have now is a town house so we can't do so much with it outside but we can instead.

Just now my kitchen is pinkish cabinets (Yuck) and measles looking granite top… Ugggjhh horrible. Before we moved in the walls where this greyish shade. Normally Grey could look nice except we don't get a lot of sunlight so I had to repaint it a pale yellow. It made it more brighter and airy feeling.

My style is contemporary. I like clean lines. My husband likes dark wood or dark tones in the wood so our flooring will end up having dark grains in it. the kitchen I will change from Pink cabinets to a more dark coffee shade with a white counter top. I think we will go for Quartz. Not sure as yet but leaning to that.

The back splash I will go with clear glass mosaic pieces and use the grout shade that has a hit of green in it.

[RedSoxFan77]

Kenada, I find the most entertaining renovation show Flipping Las Vegas, so hilarious, the wife is always ‘we need to do this and spend that so it looks like this', and he's always like ‘uh, no' that's going to cost lots of money,and it's fine the way it is. of course, she's always right because the renovations sell the home and increase its value, then he buys her gifts in the end and tells her she was right.

lol, measles looking granite top 🙂

btw, the coffee cabinets and white counter top sounds awesome! You sound like pro.

FAR 75
AUD 74, 82
REG 58, 74, 83
BEC 68, 75
Licensed 7.1.14!!!

[Anonymous]

heheheh 🙂

I am serious it Look UGLY! like whoever did that kitchen must have either had vision problems so couldn't see what they picked or …..they were just super cheapo's

[soni123]

You have discussed about the most wanted question. I have decided to shift to another country where I can use my CPA and realized that for that purpose I need to develop a good knowledge in this field. For that aspect I have started to take a free lesson from eduhelphub.com where are experts are good at this field and ready to provide a required compact knowledge.

[Deborah]

That's a great idea. I'm thinking that studying to become an EA will help me with the taxation questions. Is this recommended for current candidates or is this a recommendation for after you pass the CPA exam?

AUD - NINJA in Training
BEC - NINJA in Training
FAR - NINJA in Training
REG - NINJA in Training

Deborah Ann

Ninja Warrior

[Author]

Replies