[hutchinson29]

I am an accounting student and just finished my 4th year of school. I have 1 more year left to get 150 for the CPA.

I have 2 accounting related jobs right now. One is as a finance assistant where I assist the staff accountant and assistant director of finance with a variety of accounting tasks and I am learning a lot and like both my bosses and my job. I have taken the feedback positively and have seen it as an opportunity to improve.

My other job is as a bookkeeper at a very small business. The owner is only successful in keeping the business alive because she puts out a product that people like, however aside from that, she is not a good business person. The bookkeeping system they have in place is a disaster to say the least. When she hired me she said that she would like me to revamp the system a bit. But that is where I may have went wrong when I accepted the position. She said a bit when in reality it needs a complete ravamping. One would have to have a lot of creativity to make a system worse than what is currently in place. I have tried convincing her that gnucash would be a more efficient way to do at least a part of the bookkeeping, and that it would reduce costs because of decreased labor time. We spend quite a bit of time recording transactions in the current system, up to 30 minutes for 1 transaction. She is not approving of any of the possible implementations. I realize one of her concerns could be that she knows there is a lot of turnover and wants to keep what she is familiar with. The ways she has suggested I revamp the system would require cell referencing poorly input and inconsistent data and on top of that with the way things are currently done there is a lot of inserting of rows which would create problems. When I first got there, instead of making cells bigger they were merging cells which I had to undo because that can create problems if you move the data. I have also tried making the invoices in excel which isn’t as convenient as gnucash but it is a way to do it. She hasn’t approved of any of the implementations to date because she wants advertising on the invoices. I have no problem with that because there are other parts to the business but when it is actually a statement, not an invoice, the number of rows necessary does not leave room for enough advertising on the print out and she doesn’t seem to comprehend that idea. Payroll is also done in excel which can be risky creating potential liability for the business owner.

Aside from not being able to make any changes the boss is very inconsiderate of her employees’ time. This is her only job and she is there less hours than we are. We have to get up for work in the morning and she doesn’t, so some nights she will keep us there until 11:30. I wouldn’t mind it if I was spending that time learning new things or if it had nothing to do with her being unwilling to do any of the work herself. But that is not the case. If we have a question we have to spend 20 minutes searching Google instead of spending 30 seconds asking her because whenever we ask her something regarding any of the non-bookkeeping tasks she just says she doesn’t know and to ask Google. This is stuff related to graphic art for the newsletters. Keep in mind these are things that in the interview I told her I didn’t know how to do. If I spend 30 minutes attempting to figure something out, she will assume no attempt was made at all. An accurate analogy of the feedback I receive from her would be let’s say you are playing a sport and you do something right but your coach doesn’t know what he’s talking about and tries to correct you on it. The majority of the feedback I receive from her is a result of her ignorance, although there is truth to a small amount of her feedback. Asking questions results in criticism because she will assume you are asking because you were not listening, even if you could repeat word for word what she said. An example would be asking what the move to a new location would mean for the bookkeeping staff while we are in limbo and do not have a computer set up in a new location. She would say don’t you remember that 4 weeks ago at 11:30 at night that I said I will be moving the computer to my house. Well yes, I actually do remember that, but my question was related to what that would mean for us. So you want us coming into your house although no customers will be walking in to your house to make payments? OK, fine with me if that’s the case, but I was just asking. You could have been moving it there for your own use only for the week.

So I am considering two possibilities. I give her a phone call and talk about the possible changes with her over a beer and maybe even a PowerPoint presentation on my laptop and see what comes of it. This could bring false hope if it goes well. It could also piss her off. Best case scenario she decides to allow the implementations. Or I can quit. I have 3 jobs right now, so when school starts I will have to quit to only have 2 jobs during the school year. So I will be quitting at the latest the end of August.

If I suck it up and stay and she never approves of any changes I will consider it a waste of my time. I could be getting to bed earlier and then waking up earlier to start my day and working out in the morning. With the 3rd weekend job I just got I will have more than enough to pay my rent and may even have some money saved up upon graduation.

If I stay and she approves of the changes I will learn through the process of implementing and utilizing the system. If that were to happen, i would consider it worth it being a little more tired during the day for the summer. However, I do not know if that will happen.

I figure I have already suffered so I might as well try to get a reward from it, however it could be a situation where it is sunk cost, or sunk suffering so to speak.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[hutchinson29]

KBinMN, I think part of it has to do with exactly what you mentioned. Sometimes seniors don't understand the depth of what they are asking and don't always understand why the way they are suggesting something be done might not be the most practical way. I have typed up a letter of resignation.

[hutchinson29]

KBinMN, I think part of it has to do with exactly what you mentioned. Sometimes seniors don't understand the depth of what they are asking and don't always understand why the way they are suggesting something be done might not be the most practical way. I have typed up a letter of resignation.

[Anonymous]

You can certainly add advertising to a QB statement or an invoice. It's not that difficult. I set my husband's up with a referral coupon on the bottom. If you like the job and want to stay then you might need to take the first step and go ahead and work on transitioning things to QB even though it would mean doing double work until she sees that it is a good thing. You can upload service items, inventory, employees, vendors and customers or copy and paste from Excel, so that part is easy. Setting up the Chart of Accounts is super easy. Then it's just a matter of putting in the beginning balances and setting up the custom invoice and statement. You might want to point out to her that by going to QB you can automatically add a finance charge to overdue invoices, which will make her money. You can even download bank statements (most banks have a download transactions feature to .iif) to make the bank recon a 15 minute process. I have an Excel Add-on that converts Excel files to .iif files that can be uploaded to QB.

You could make a start on the transition, show it to her, explain how it will not only save her money, but make her money, and if she is still change resistant, then I'd had her a resignation letter.

[Anonymous]

You can certainly add advertising to a QB statement or an invoice. It's not that difficult. I set my husband's up with a referral coupon on the bottom. If you like the job and want to stay then you might need to take the first step and go ahead and work on transitioning things to QB even though it would mean doing double work until she sees that it is a good thing. You can upload service items, inventory, employees, vendors and customers or copy and paste from Excel, so that part is easy. Setting up the Chart of Accounts is super easy. Then it's just a matter of putting in the beginning balances and setting up the custom invoice and statement. You might want to point out to her that by going to QB you can automatically add a finance charge to overdue invoices, which will make her money. You can even download bank statements (most banks have a download transactions feature to .iif) to make the bank recon a 15 minute process. I have an Excel Add-on that converts Excel files to .iif files that can be uploaded to QB.

You could make a start on the transition, show it to her, explain how it will not only save her money, but make her money, and if she is still change resistant, then I'd had her a resignation letter.

[Author]

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