Are "Fun" and "Accounting" Mutually Exclusive?
anToday, over at the Fire Ant Gazette (which is desperately in need of a tagline, by the way), it was suggested that "fun" and "accounting" are mutually exclusive. Imagine the flames that came shooting out of my head when I heard this! This was in the context of discussing the pros and cons of using a "comptometer" to perform various high level math functions such as calculating square roots. Well, right there, you can see why such an audacious suggestion was made.So I'm going to dispel the myth. I'm going to prove, in Foo-esque fashion (i.e. by showing my work) that Accounting = Fun!
I will have to do this in small bits, because that is just how my brain works (how else could I make the above claim, afterall?).
As Exhibit A, we have today's project which involves interpreting French documents. Who knew that those years and years of French would ever pay off? These are not like French legal documents or anything. Just your basic financial statements and detailed trial balances, all tres exciting documents, and all in French. In order to consolidate these and report them on our English-language tax forms, they must be reduced to English (I use the word "reduced" intentionally, for our French brethren's benefit). And you know how ultra helpful the French are...they refuse to give us an English version. The staff that is supposed to be working on this just keeps whining, "but they're all in French!" So I said, "just gimme that, I'll do it" (accompanied by a little eye rolling). Hence, today's refresher course in all of those accounting terms I never learned in high school French class.
Parles vous Francais? Anyone?
I'm currently stumped by the words "Impot Future" Here's what I got when I tried using freetranslation.com: "Impot Future" translates into "Future Impot." Very helpful. Anyone know what an "Impot" is? Webster is not helping either. *Sigh.*
Okay, I realize this is going to be a painful process of convincing you all that my hypothesis is true, but bear with me. ;-)
Labels: An Accountant's Life
posted by Gwynne @ 12:23 PM
13 Comments:
Ok, so...um...you really need to know 'Impot' if you're going to do well with these documents as it means...TAX. Yeah, so that's "TAX FUTURE".
Je parles un peu Francais - however I also parles AltaVista's BableFish http://babelfish.altavista.com/
Probably enough to get the gist of what you're looking at. :)
Ah ha! Deferred taxes! That's it!! Who says blogging is not productive? ;-) T
hanks for what appears to be a much better translation service than I was using. :-)
Maybe to illustrate your point, you could play the "IRS Marital Status Game" where you randomly combine people into families and see what filing status they get... And who they can claim...
(BTW, I teach tax classes for a tax company... and I'm fun!!! LOL)
Jana, absolutely! I've been running a match-making service for years, matching those with the deductions with those who have none, or those with income with those who have unused losses. There's a whole post waiting to be written about the IRS's role in marriage and family practices. ;-)
Hey, I teach tax classes too! So there. Proof positive that accounting = fun! ;-)
Oh, you mean that accounting? Okay, never mind then. ;-)
I made my final decision about accounting back in MBA school when the accounting professor stood in front of the class and said, "Accounting is not a science. It is an art!"
That was the end. Oh, I got my MBA alright, but I didn't take another accounting course.
Jim, it was probably that same line that got me to stay. I've been putting curliques on my 2's and coloring in my 8's ever since. I've been duped! I signed up to become an architect. I really don't know what went wrong. ;-)
boy, you're really going to have to come up with some proof, i'm not buying this
Maths=fun? My brain cannot compute this together even though I took a high school course in accounting....
Susie, I'm going to have to dig deep! I can see that now. ;-)
Rach, I love how New Zealanders (and probably everyone except Americans) calls it "maths" plural with an "s" on the end. That said, I love maths! Maybe I have a brain malfunction, a birth injury of some sort. ;-)
Numbers are fun, but my condition is more OCD. Numbers games, counting things..it's really bad. Even my posts times are on the 7's
(meaning....look at the post time)
I checked it out...you're not joking, are you? Well, at least 7 is my favorite number. Perhaps there's a pill you can take for that. ;-)
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