It gets so frustrating in the summers when we do the small clients and everyone's all over you to not exceed their budgets. First off, financials for small private companies rarely ever get issued quickly. They always linger on, and there's always small things we have to do every week. So this takes up some of our time on a weekly basis. What about the research? To get ready for meetings, one would have to do a little research on the various issues they need to talk about. Where can I charge these hours to? We've already set the budget, and I know I'll be above the budgeted hours for the planning meeting, so i'm already over? Sure, I should have realized this while the budget was being set. But trust me, some battles can never be won. And what about client inefficiencies? Yes, we have to charge that to the client, that's what the book says. Not the case in reality. So that makes us struggle to mix and match hours between clients. It makes you wonder how the norm...
Blogged about my life in the Big 4 and now about life in Private Accounting