5 Accounting Career Lessons I Learned the Hard Way!

So, I’m an Accountant; a number cruncher, tax man, bean counter. Take your pick. The proverbial guy who looks at his own shoes when he’s talking to someone. Seriously, there are old accountants who do just this.

As a profession, accounting can be both rewarding and challenging, and it's important to have a clear understanding of what you're getting into.

I’ve been an accountant for a couple decades, and I wanted share 5 things I wish I knew before becoming an accountant.

#1. Don’t Do It.

It’s so… boring and often times the work is tedious. Especially when you’re just starting out. Even the courses in accounting were so.. Boring. I remember reading those long word problems at the end of a chapter and after I finished reading it. I had no I idea what I just read or was supposed to do next.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. I probably had undiagnosed ADHD.

But, seriously… conceptually accounting is very dry and hard to grasp without a real world application. I remember when it all started to make sense for me… when I had to do a companies bookkeeping, manually. That’s by hand with a pencil, paper and calculator.

I mean you’ve got debits, credits, assets, liabilities, owner’s equity, balance sheet, and profit and loss. These are all new concepts and definitely not easy to grasp at first.

It’s actually like a puzzle. All the pieces fit together, just right. So, if you don’t like solving puzzles, then accounting is probably not right for you.

#2. Tax Season Is Long Tiring and Stressful.

So, you don’t necessarily need to do taxes if you’re an accountant. It’s a common misconception. There are lots of accountants and CPAs who don’t do taxes. Maybe they work for a private company and do like just accounting or CFO work.

But, the vast majority of the public assumes that accountants and CPAs do taxes. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. And, you can totally capitalize on that.

That’s what I do. I actually enjoying doing taxes. It’s really not that difficult once you know what you’re doing.

The constant tax law changes are big pain and hassle though. But if you think about it. That’s job security right there. You would need to have your head examined if you wanted to study taxes right now.

Seriously, you’ve got the old Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, which is still in effect until 2025, the American Rescue Plan Act, which had all the Covid and stimulus provisions, and now the Secure 2.0 Act, that offers lots of changes with retirement accounts.

I haven’t even read up on that, and if I’m being honest, I really don’t want to. Believe me, keeping up with all these tax law changes is exhausting.

It’s no wonder that 300,000 accountants have left the profession in the last couple years. Plus you have clients, with all their questions, that come up as result of taxes being all over the news recently.

Now, I’m not talking about my clients. I’ve got the best clients. You just need to set expectations and clear boundaries.

So, if you do taxes, you need to plan on long tax seasons, where you essentially have to shut everything else down so that you can get the work done. I mean you don’t have to, but think about it. The work is there, and the money flows.

I know some tax slash accounting professionals, who just absolutely crush it during tax season, for like four months. January, February, March, and April. Then they take the rest of the year off. That’s actually not a bad tradeoff if you think about it.

If you go that route, just be sure to take care of your health and pace yourself. You don’t want to drop dead during tax season. Believe me, it happens.

#3. You Can’t Ever Stop Learning.

My dear old dad was an accountant as well. A CPA in the Philippines to be specific. That’s probably why I became an accountant. Later in life, he would say that he was done learning. He felt that he had studied so much all throughout his life, and that he was done with learning new things.

Needless to say, he struggled with computers, the internet and even basic things like email.

I get it, it’s exhausting. But we all know or should know, that you can’t ever stop learning. The only constant in life, is change. You need to accept that and learn to adapt with all the change life throws at you..

On a bit of a side note. Lots of people are freaking out about Chat GPT, the artificial intelligence chat bot.

It’s pretty amazing, and I’ve actually used it to help me create some recent videos. I’ve heard it can pass the bar exam. I wonder if it could pass the CPA exam. Actually, I would be surprised if it couldn’t.

I think the best approach is to look at learning as something fun and enjoyable. For example, I like gadgets and new technology. After all, technology can often times make life easier. Why not embrace technology and change. It’s inevitable, and you don’t want to get left behind.

#4. You Don’t Need to Be a CPA

I was advised early on that if you wanted to be an accountant, then you should aspire to be a CPA. Because, it was prestigious, well respected, and some would even look down on you if they found out you were an accountant but not a CPA.

Okay, I understand this might ruffle some feathers. I drank the Kool Aid, and believed all of that, and did the whole CPA thing. But now, after having gone down the path, and learning a thing or two. That advice is complete garbage. It’s nonsense actually.

If you want to aspire to be a CPA, then good for you. Don’t do it for any of the reasons that were advised to me. You can do very well without your CPA. It all depends on the career track that you want for yourself.

If you want to work for a big accounting firm, and work your way up. Then you definitely need a CPA behind your name. If you want to work in a large corporation or publicly traded company, having a CPA will help to open doors that would be closed otherwise.

But, beyond those two career paths, I don’t think you need to be a CPA. You can do just as well with an accounting degree, and if you want to do taxes, you can study to be an Enrolled Agent or EA, which is recognized by the IRS.

Agree or disagree. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

#5. There Are Lots of Career Paths.

Accounting is a broad field, with lots of different career paths that you can take. You can work in public accounting, corporate accounting, governmental accounting, or even start your own accounting and tax business like what I did.

I worked in public accounting for almost four years for a small accounting firm in the Chicago area. It was very good experience. I got to do and see a lot of different things. It helped me sharpen my skills with financial accounting, bookkeeping, and introduced me to a lot of different tax preparation scenarios that I hadn’t seen before.

Like anything, to get good at something, you need experience in the field that you want to pursue. I actually excelled at preparing taxes, because I could work fast, I was organized, and detail oriented.

Preparing taxes is very easy, once you know what you’re doing. At a high level, it’s just data entry. But keep in mind, knowing what numbers go where, and what numbers you actually calculate, is the tricky part.

As far as I can see, there will always be a need for accountants, so it’s still a good field to get into.

My advice is to figure out where you want to end up. Meaning, do you want to work for yourself, or do you prefer the corporate world. Work with the end in mind and then work towards that end goal. If a CPA designation is necessary, then pursue it. If not, then don’t.

I personally would look for something where technology and accounting intersect. For example, can you work with a team to develop the next QuickBooks Online? It’s currently the 800 pound gorilla in the space, but accountants have a love hate relationship with Intuit.

They’re now competing with their own accountant community who helped build their company. They’re constantly increasing their their fees, and changing their pricing models for software that accountants relied on heavily like QuickBooks Desktop.

Once a viable up an comer comes along, many accountants like myself would love to move away from QuickBooks.

Anyway, sorry for going off topic.

If you’re worried about automation and artificial intelligence taking over accounting and tax jobs. I don’t think you really need to worry.

300,000 accountants have left the profession in the past two years. Accounting firms are shipping work overseas and hiring accountants in other countries.

I’ve heard that the vast majority of accountants right now are over 40 years old.

So where does this lead to?

If math is correct, then this means a coming global shortage of accountants!

Job security folks!

As Wayne Gretzky famously said "Skate to where the puck is going".

In other words, in order to be successful, one should anticipate and prepare for the future rather than simply reacting to what’s happening.

As you would do in other areas of your life, it’s good to take a proactive approach.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the next blog post!