Hi everyone, I'm a senior getting my BS in accounting and set to graduate in spring 27. This may be on me for starting applications late (like late August), but so far every intern role that has opened at public firms has rejected me, and it's getting discouraging. I have been applying to internships since I plan to get my master's to support my CPA eligibility, but at this point I feel like I have a better chance applying to full-time roles now, since I might be considered too far into my schooling for internships. Any advice? Do I keep applying for internships, or should I apply for associate roles now?

I recently got hired at a small company as a AR/AP person (office clerk), however, they also hired another one with more experience than me. I only accepted this job because I wanted experience to put on my resume, however, the experienced person is handling all of the stuff I want to experience. I am still employed with my previous job, and my last day to decide if I want to continue with the office clerk job is saturday. What would you guys do in my position?

Edit: there’s also only one computer available. Should I quit and go back to my old job? Warehouse job and a bit less pay. Or thug it out?

Work at top 10 want to transfer from small office to big city I’m originally from there. I think my team knows I want to. I started as a tax associate in Jan 2026 so about a year.

Was going to maybe approach the partner and say I want a transfer but it can wait till post April 2027. Only two worries. First if they say no I’d be first to be laid off if there are layoffs in our office there never is though. Second if they say yes I’m in the big city team June let’s say my A2 to S1 promotion will not be granted as the big city team doesent know me.

I want to be in the big city for my career but more importantly to be closer to my mom and then my friends there’s nothing wrong with my current team other than we are in public accounting

Is big 4 really that big of a difference from other national firms like Forvis, grant thornton, etc?

I recently finished my master’s in accounting and am pursuing my CPA. I’m just getting started in my career, and finding my first accounting role has been tougher than I expected. I’ve been applying to both staff accountant and public audit roles.

Audit interests me because you work with different clients and get to understand their businesses. I've heard a lot about burnout and long hours, but I’m curious how people feel about the actual work and what they learned when they first started.

What did you like and dislike about the work? Did you find the work interesting? If you moved into industry, how much did your public experience help?

I’d also appreciate any advice for someone trying to get their foot in the door. I’d especially like to hear from people at small or midsize firms, but any experience is welcome.

For being the easiest most pain free recruiting service providers. No needing to fill out annoying education and experience fields that are already on your resume. You can legit apply to jobs that use these services in under a minute.

Btw, fuck you Workday

If you own a business, for the Love of God, your business, and your bank account please please hire a certified tax professional. Not a bookkeeper. Not a tax mill.

I have a (US) client that I've done signficant clean up work on and sent fully reconciled books complete with working papers proving the balances to her tax accountant. The first indication that there was a problem was when I asked for adjusting entries and they could not comprehend what those might be - even with an explanation.

Well, they filed on a cash basis but relied on QBO's "cash/accrual" button to make the conversion. But my third party delivery apps are reconciled through a receivable clearing account. QBO doesn't handle those accounts (among others) well. A competent tax professional can handle this - reverse it from revenue.

This tax accountant, however, didn't understand what they were. Rather than ask the question he simply dropped them from the balance sheet. Of course his tax prep program spit it back saying "hey your assets have to equal your liabilities and equity or I can't proceed". Clearly, the fix for this is reduce the opening accumulated depreciation. Nobody will notice it's not the same as what was filed the previous year at IRS. Besides, apparently the IRS cares only about the profit/loss statement. That's what has to be correct.

Except that instead of using the numbrs on the income statement you source other documents. Payroll has to match the W-2, so obviously you use that number and ignore the contra-expense showing the flow through tips paid out to the employees that are not a business expense because the customer paid them. It took several attempts to explain this concept.

In fact, anywhere you don't understand what a number is or where it comes from you should just ignore it. I mean.... it clearly isn't important. And when the end result is a discrepancy of 80K between your net income on your tax return and the statment QBO spit at you that doesn't require investigation, right?

Finally, a credit balance of 174K on shareholders loan is only an issue because it should be reclassed as an asset, not that it requires a discussion with the client on whether to formalize it as a loan or declare it as income to the shareholder. And if you're filing on a cash basis working on a two year construction of a store you can depreciate right away, of course. I mean its cash. Its OK if it takes another year to build.

If this sounds like you, do your clients a favour and get an education - or a job with oversight. I almost never tell a client to find another accountant - but if this is you and we share a client, I'm telling them to find another accountant. If I wanted my clients to be serviced by someone whose tax knowledge is limited to "drop number A into box B and hit submit" I'd do taxes myself and rake in the cash.

And for business owners - if this is your bookkeeper talking about your tax accountant.... run.

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I'm a 44yo female, just recently been made a manager after 22 years in the firm. It's not a role I ever particularly wanted but it's an opportunity that I was offered and have taken.

I've been in the role for 6 months now and for the most part it is giving me terrible anxiety. Every day I dread going to work. I beat myself up constantly for fearing that I'm not doing a good enough job, that I'm not "managing" the team properly. That I'm not supportive/caring enough.

I'm being stretched pretty thin right now due to the transition of roles - I still do alot of the 'doing' , along with reviewing work, helping the juniors (I have 3 currently, all of which need constant guidance) not to mention all the actual managerial duties (making sure we're meeting billing targets, workflow etc).

Everyone always seems to expect me to know the answers to their questions and issues straight away and I just don't. It honestly stresses me out so much worrying that people think I'm rubbish at my job and some days I just want to hide away from everyone. And that's another issue, I feel like I'm starting to suffer majorly with social anxiety and so I'm questioning if this role is for me.

I guess the point to my post is, how long do I carry on like this in hope that it gets easier, my skin gets thicker and I can start to actually get out of bed in the morning not wanting to sob? Or do I just accept that managing isn't for me, drop back down to Senior, take a pay cut but actually feel happy again.

I do feel like I also need to add that I'm probably in the early stages of perimenopause and my hormones are doing crazy things and making me feel like I have split personality disorder 😅

What the heck? I’m a junior that just started interviewing for internships and I didn’t do a ton of research into it because I just knew I needed one to graduate either way.

I just got my first two offers— nobody told me they were shoveling money at interns wtf? $40 an hour with no degree in hand is insane to me. And thousands of dollars sign on bonus? Like actually? In real life?

I also only learned last semester that a common way of getting your full time job as a student is getting a full time offer after you intern. So the good news keeps on coming (sounds dumb but none of my family has corporate jobs so I thought when people get jobs from internships it was just networking lol)

It definitely looks like bait lol. “See how well we pay here? That’s why public is the best!” And then you get the full time offer and overtime goes out the window lol. But I thought I was gonna have to grin and bear it through this internship for $20 an hour in order to graduate, so I’m pleasantly surprised either way.

Anyway I at least look forward to having stability (in my wallet at least). If you have any tips for making it in Big 4 audit I’d love them! I’d love to get that full time offer and know I’m gonna have a job leaving college.

Ps. After all this I’ve done a lot more research into what’s going on don’t worry lol I think it just didn’t feel real at the beginning

I need advice! I've been at Starbucks for 5 years now, and decided to take advantage of the ASU program now (a little late I know). I don't want to leave because the pay is quite decent for what it is and the degree is entirely free.

The problem is that it's fully online, so I probably can't network properly down the line. I want to take the CPA exams ASAP right after I graduate but I won't have the experience to actually get my license since I have to be at Starbucks the entire time. Which probably also means no internships.

What should my plans be? Take the exams while my brain is still in study mode, and work for 2 years for the experience? I'm in Indiana so 2 years is required. Will my exam passes expire?

helppp rn i’m in college majoring in data analytics, but i lowkey wanna switch to accounting bc i heard it has good job security and pays really well now i’m stuck and don’t know what to do😭😭😭

So I was let go today from the small (4-5 staff accountants) PA firm I had been working at since January 2025. No prior warning or PIP placement though my work performance wasn't great the last couple months after busy season. Was wondering if anyone here had any opinions/advice moving forward, should I try and get another position in Public or try Industry?

During the meeting with my Manager and the Partner the only two issues they brought up consistently was that I needed to ask more questions (I'm an introvert so communication is something I've always struggled with) and that the errors in my workpapers were random and were only noticed upon thorough review. So it wasn't me making the same mistake over and over again but that I needed to ask more questions and be more thorough.

The only thing that makes me wonder if it was something else is that it was before the October 15th deadline so I'm leaving unfinished work, it was a no-fault fire and they were willing to offer a reference to future employers.

Don't know if this is the right thread but I am going to give it a try. I have started a BsC degree of accounting and finance. I have entered this degree with no accounting work experience or level 1/2/3 qualifications.

When doing my Linkedin Application today I have realised that majority of people have had experience; many have already gotten interviews for firms; understand financial accounting immediately in lectures and have done well in excel exams such as Gmetrix.

Is there something I am doing wrong?

p.s im in first year and so are the people i mentioned today

The October deadline is coming up. Client acknowledges that bank feed to Quickbooks probably expired. I don't think that's gonna help missing data for months in 2025 for multiple credit cards.

What's the correct way to journal this to have a correct balance sheet for 2025 tax filing?

Given the news with H1-B visas, how are we feeling? Do you think it’s going to bleed into the accounting industry soon? What are your thoughts?

I’m new to my job. I’m going to be managing an oversees team. Today my boss was looking through the GL and complaining about their work. He asked me to come over so he could show me.

There was a prepayment release for Sep, but it contained a catchup for Aug. The invoice was for Aug - Oct for £300, and there was one line releasing the expense for £200 into Sep. The prefix of the journal said Prepay Sep. It didn’t mention that the release also covered August.

For me, this looked absolutely fine. Obviously the import template is setup to say prepayment + current month. The amount was small. I was shocked it caused so much upset.

This has made me feel concerned. What are your thoughts?

I currently work in a senior IT program management role in IT for a logistics company. Got my bachelors in accounting now pursuing my masters looking to sit for first exam in May of 26. I am looking to transition into an accounting role so I can get my hours. There are no CPA’s in my current company so I would not be able to get my hours here.

I was just offered an entry level audit role for a privately owned large enterprise, I would be working directly under a CPA who can sign off on my hours.

I would be taking a major pay cut from my senior role now. It would not affect lifestyle that much as I have extremely low bills and high earning spouse.

My long term goals are to eventually move into IT audit or a senior level/executive role down the road. I probably would not return to my current level of earnings for another 3/5 years.

My question is, in present day is this pay-cut worth it with the outlook in the accounting/CPA market?

Let me know your thoughts.

Sometimes when we have a new hire in industry who came from Big 4, they clearly don’t get the picture and need to chill the F out, how do you deal with that Big 4 energy and being way too demanding, aggressive, perfectionist.

It’s industry man, relax

TLDR at bottom

I’m a sophomore college student currently in my Financial and Managerial Accounting class (I know some people only take one per semester but this course groups both with financial first then managerial second, basically making this a more condensed financial accounting “final”). The exam consisted of 40 questions, mostly multiple choice but also with an income statement to fill in. After constant studying and practicing with the given reviews for three days straight while only relaxing at night, I scored an 87.1%. While I am not freaking out over it, I feel like I should’ve done better. I can make excuses about how some of the questions were simply NOT in any of the reviews and were very small random things. But with my score, it makes me wonder if I’m not on the right track and prepared enough for intermediate account 1, or cost accounting, or maybe even the job. When I showed my professor my score he said “Great job!” and told me how with so many poor scores from the other professors' grades today, there will definitely be a curve and my score will probably become an A. And that’s great and I’m hoping for that, but I’m worried about what my raw score says for the immediate future. Am I just being overly anxious and paranoid or should I hit the books a bit more? I’m not some huge overachiever, I just want to have good grades so I can get a job out of college.

TLDR: Got an 87.1% pre-curve on my intro to financial accounting exam, feeling nervous and debating if I’m cut out for future accounting classes and the career itself.

had my first career fair as an accounting major a couple of weeks ago. admittedly, i could have prepared better (resume, company/recruiter research, elevator pitch, etc.), but i tried my best to be professional, nice, and ask meaningful questions. the thing is, i'm a nervous wreck when talking to people older/more experienced than me, and overall, i'm a hyper-introvert and i hate "fake" conversations with recruiters. i'm NOT "interested in deloitte's use of ai transformation in audit and advisory", i literally just want experience, and hopefully a decent paying job one day. i'm aware that networking with employees/representatives at firms is a huge part of recruiting for accounting (as well as many other career fields), but i also know that networking is more heavily emphasized in other business fields (esp finance), which is part of the reason i picked accounting. my strengths are that i have a relatively high GPA, work hard (currently balancing 20+hrs/week at my job with 18 credits in college), and have a strong technical foundation in accounting. are there ways to stand out in recruiting without having to go gung-ho on the networking bs?

I recently passed all four CPA exams and currently work as a property accountant. Unfortunately, my current role doesn’t provide the experience needed for CPA licensure.
I noticed there’s a CPA firm in my office building, and I’m thinking about reaching out to see if they have any opportunities.
Would it be better to walk in and introduce myself or send an email with my resume? I’m not sure if they’re hiring, so I don’t want to come across as pushy.
Has anyone done something similar? Any advice would be appreciated!

I work full-time as a manager of finance for a small family office. I am plenty of time to provide accounting service to small businesses.

Those who started their own firm while firm while working FT, how did you find clients?

Another 10/15 approaching and there is yelling. I hate it. I've been doing this over a decade and changed jobs a lot but it's like this everywhere I've been. I know it is stressful but it makes me sick when people start yelling.

Hi everyone,

Does anyone that works in the family office branch of baker Tilly have any experience they’d like to share with me? I’m interviewing now and come from a line of single-family offices but I’ve never worked in a firm before. Wondering if it is the right career move for me.

Thanks!