Skip to main content

busy season hours

How long do you actually work during busy season? I've heard 60 on average but I worked that much doing a Product Control role this summer at a bank. Alot of ex-Big 4 auditors worked there and told me the work was NOTHING compared to audit. Regardless whenever I hear about how many hrs busy seasons involve I hear it's like 55-65, which to me at least...doesn't sound bad... do you also work weekends, etc???


It really depends on your client and your industry. I'd say, on average, you work from 8:30 am - 8:30 pm monday - thursday, a normal workday friday, and then 9-1 on saturdays, which comes out to 60 hours a week. Now, the operative word here is average. You could be on a team that works from 9 am - 11 pm monday-thursday, 9 - 7 on fridays, and then 9-5 saturday and sunday, that comes out to 80 hours for the week. If you get lucky, you work from 8:30-7:30 four days a week, and a 9-6 friday, which comes to about 53 hours a week. So basically, it really varies. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
Don't forget: Back-to-back and multiple busy seasons can and do happen. This could be your schedule for Jan-March, and then again for another 3 month period. Depending on your client, luck of the draw, blah blah blah. This busy season abuse is the #1 reason to avoid big 4 (and in general, public accounting) at all costs.
September 19, 2011 at 8:12 AM
Anonymous said…
http://www.internalauditanalytics.com is a non-profit site set up to help auditors use analytics. Might be a good resource for your readers.
September 21, 2011 at 4:19 PM
Anonymous said…
It really does depend on the client and region. I wish I could get away with 60 hours during busy season on my client. Last season, I averaged 9-12 Monday through Friday and 10-8 Saturday and Sundays. Finishing up my last two weeks of the season with 9-4am. Some guys on the team opted to get a hotel room on those nights instead of bothering to go home.
September 27, 2011 at 3:33 PM
Anonymous said…
Wow, no amount of money is worth those hours.
September 28, 2011 at 8:04 AM
Anonymous said…
For someone making $50K/year and working 80 hrs/wk, the hourly rate ends up being $12/hr. Maybe you can pull something like that off for a few years when you are in your early 20's if you are really gung-ho about accounting. However, it would be never be worth my time, health, sanity and life frankly.
October 14, 2011 at 5:00 PM
Anonymous said…
Why would anyone put up with such abuse? Go to industry and see what it's like to hang out with friends, do stuff you enjoy, maybe have a relationship with people outside of work. That's life. Big 4 is brainwashed slavery.
November 15, 2011 at 3:55 PM
Sean Elrington said…
If you are billing by the hour, long hours mean billable revenue which is good. It is different when you are on salary and cruel to make people work more than a 5 x 10 week. We need to stagger closes in different industries throughout the year by changing tax law. As law get more complex and the economy grows, having this many companies close their books at one time is causing unnecessary stress to families and marriages and health.
December 10, 2011 at 5:39 PM
Anonymous said…
Hey I'm curious what are the hours typically like during non busy season. Obviously busy season is brutal but do you ever get to work a mon-friday 9-5?
August 30, 2014 at 4:24 PM
Anonymous said…
I would like to know who are picking up your kids from daycare or school, feeding and bathing them if you are a single parent auditor. Sounds like a good case for a social worker!
January 8, 2016 at 5:40 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ADP/Payroll

Just realized that the very payroll/adp reports we all enjoyed looking at in order to see how much our client contacts made, now seem to piss me off. Especially when your main contact, who couldn't tell a debit from a credit, makes significantly more than you, and leaves at 5. It's almost guaranteed to get you in a foul mood and yak with your team about the ridiculous salaries that certain employees get when compared to yours.
36 comments
Read more

should you choose to audit financial services?

I'm trying to decide whether to audit financial services companies or non-financial services companies. What would you say are the pros and cons of either industries? Do individuals who choose non-FS have less career mobility within the firm or if they decide not to stay with the B4 after a few years? Really depends on what you'd like to do after (unless you really love auditing). If you want to a controller,etc. at a p/e firm or a hedge fund down the road, you'd want to go into financial services. The pay won't be too bad, especially if you get a share of the insane bonuses they dole out. If you want to audit industries with tangible products and want to get a better understanding of the operations of such businesses, then other industries are the way to go.In terms of mobility outside the firm, auditing other industries is the way to go since you have plenty of options when you exit the audit world. For example, in 2008, after Lehman collapsed, it was incredibly hard ...
47 comments
Read more

auditing vs consulting

I was wondering if you could break down the career opportunities in auditing and consulting (in a big 4). I know that consulting pays more in a big 4 and has more interesting work, but it seems that auditing has extremely good exit opportunities (Financial controller, CFO etc). Any thoughts on which is better in the long run? Well there's different consulting services offered by public accounting companies - the most popular being IT consulting and risk consulting. There are also other consulting services offered, but these two hire the most. Do they pay more? Yes, but not by much. Not enough for you to say: Shoot, the $$ is a huge reason for me to move over. Is the work more interesting than audit? Yes. You're actually looking over a company's processes and telling them what to do instead of what not to do (audit). Everyone I know who's made the switch likes it waay better than audit. In the long run though, choosing audit vs consulting really depends on what you want ...
66 comments
Read more