A tall tale told to a taxman?

A tax inspector arrived at the front door of a magnificent 8 bedroom mansion in the depths of the countryside.

"How have you managed to buy this luxurious mansion whilst your income is so low?" he asked the market trader who lived there.

"Well" replied the trader, "When I was fishing last year, I caught a golden fish. When I took it off the hook the fish looked at me and spoke. It said: 'I am a magic golden fish. Throw me back in the water and I'll give you the most luxurious mansion you have ever seen.' I threw the fish back into the water and got the mansion."

The tax inspector looked at the trader suspiciously. "And what proof do you have, to convince me that this preposterous story is true?"

"Well, you can see the mansion can't you?"

Bizarre things audit clients have said...

“The prepayment hasn’t actually been paid yet, but it’s going to be.”
--
“Are you sure you’re old enough to be here?”
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“We’ll fix it before the internal auditors find out.”
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“Well, I don’t agree with GAAP.”
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“As I said, this is not material.”
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So I need to know exactly what you mean when you say ‘general ledger’
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“Ah, my colleague is pretty useless, good luck getting anything back from him.”
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“The fact that there’s an entry means it’s approved. Why do you need support?”
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“Why do I need to document the process when I can just explain the process to my team?”
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"Do we really NEED to have someone authorising the payments?"
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“It’s correct. Don’t even worry about it.”
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“I hope we don’t see you until the end of the year... and I mean that in the nicest way.”
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“I know this entry was wrong, but I wanted you to find it.”
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"There can’t be evidence for every number."
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“Why do you need this for exactly?” [repeatedly, in response to every request for anything]
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“Oh, I thought goodwill meant charity expenses.”
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“Here is the list of unrecorded liabilities.”
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“Can’t you just select these easy samples for vouching?”
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“We don’t have the support for that entry because the person responsible has left the company.”
--
Originally collated and shared by the twitter account @overheardaudit

Texting - a trainee accountant's mistake. True story.

A salutary lesson about how to not follow up after an interview was contained in an article in the Sunday Times about the 'explosion in text messaging' in 2008. Could it still happen today?

Amongst the stories referred to in the article was this story:

Take the example of Ed, a university graduate from Manchester who applied for a job with a top accountancy firm in London. After a virtuoso performance at the interview, the vice-president in charge of recruitment gave him his mobile number in case he had any questions. Young Ed thought nothing of texting him the next day with the following message: “m8, wot a gr8 intvw!! u shld def give me the job lol.”

Needless to say, the vice-president did not oblige.

Of course one could question the accuracy of the story. I suspect it is based on an original story about an American graduate applying for a job in the US office of an accountancy firm. After all, whoever heard of a UK firm with a "vice-president in charge of recruitment"?!

We are accountants, my friend (superb song parody)

We Are Accountants
(An accounting anthem to be sung to the melody of the Queen smash hit)

I've paid my subs
Time after time
I've done my CPD
Filed accounts on time

And material errors
I've made a few
I've had my share of journals kicked in my face
But I've come through

We are accountants, my friends
And we'll keep on counting - 'til month end
We are accountants -
We are accountants
No time for lunch breaks
'Cause we are accountants - of the world -

I've taken work home
Had late conference calls -
You brought me useful provisions - and the documentation that goes with them -
I thank you all -

But it's been no box of Roses
No mid-month snooze
I consider it a challenge before that large audit case -
And I ain't gonna lose -

We are accountants, my friends
And we'll keep on counting - 'til month end
We are accountants -
We are accountants
No time for lunch break
'Cause we are accountants - of the world -

© accountingcelebrity.com 2010

What's the origin of the term 'beancounters'?

The most obvious answer as to why accountants are sometimes referenced, disparagingly, as 'beancounters' might involve counting the beads (or beans) on an abacus. But that's not the case.

There are a number of more likely suggested origins of the phrase - but no one seems to know for sure:

Phrases.org
It is likely that the expression wasn't coined in English but is a translation from German.
 The German word 'Erbsenzähler' (Erbsen = beans and zähler = counter) was used in print by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen in Simplicissimus', 1668, with the same 'pedantic accountant' meaning that we now use.

It is possible that the English usage came from a later and separate coinage, but unlikely.

 The phrase appears in English in Australia soon after the first use in the USA and again this probably ultimately derived from Germany.

An example is found in The Parliamentary Debates of the Australian House of Representatives, 1928:  "It is not a bean counter's bill. There is no attempt to make any savings."

This insinuation that 'bean counters' were penny-pinching accountants who couldn't see the bigger picture chimes in well with the no-nonsense reputation of Australian politicians.

The phrase flourished down under during the 1930/40s before becoming commonplace throughout the English-speaking world later in the 20th century.

 Word detective

"Bean counter" has an interesting history. It seems to have first appeared in the mid-1970s in the U.S., and its original use was simply as a vivid synonym for "accountant," especially one who brooked no nonsense.

 Its first known occurrence in print was in a 1975 Forbes magazine article that referred to "a smart, tightfisted and austere 'bean counter' accountant from rural Kentucky," though we can assume the quotation marks meant the writer had heard the term in use before the date of the article.

In any case, the allusion is clearly to an accountant so dedicated to detail that he or she counts everything, down to the last small, but still important, bean.

By the 1980s, however, most appearances of "bean counter" in the media were taking on a derogatory tone, and "bean counter" is now frequently used to mean a nitpicker who, lost in the numbers, fails to see the "big picture."

WiseGEEK' site has a more graphic analysis that includes:

While an accountant might be asked to perform a thorough inventory of his or her company's assets, only a bean counter would literally count the number of beans contained in the company kitchen's pantry. A financial bean counter may also scrutinize each department's budget to find any form of potential waste, no matter how insignificant or nominal it appears to be.

It is possible that the description was inspired by overzealous kitchen inventory takers who insisted on counting every bean in a bag or every potato in a sack. The act of counting every bean to the exclusion of more important duties would be viewed by many as the ultimate act of micromanagement. Perhaps the term "bean counter" entered the popular vernacular through the commercial or military food industries, where strict inventory controls are common.