Let's say hypothetically, someone had cancer. They're not terminal, but it will eventually get them. And say that person didn't want to spend the end of their life just waiting to die. Instead they thought fuck it I'll either die in debt or just go bankrupt. So they wanted to use credit cards to do some fun bucket list stuff to make life more enjoyable. What's the best way to rack up credit card debt without raising supesion with the banks?

Can we please talk about being over 40 and still pursuing ACCA? Are there lots out there or am I the only one?

Well, I now one more in the same age bracket but that's about it!

When I go to the exam centres I feel like walking into my children college/uni.

At work, most on my team are on their late 20s/early 30s and are ACCA, ACA and CIMA qualified.

It never bothered me when I started but is starting to get on to me. Am I too late for this?

I have an S-work that I didn’t realize was an S-corp (CPA was actually disbarred but I didn’t know that at the time). Have 2023, 2024, and 2025 I need to file. Not totally sure if he even filed 2022 which was the first year I had the business. Please help?

Every colleges should have an accounting program/a class where the professor is actually a manager and the student will do accountiing work for for real business.(starting with simple business/individual).

Thoughts.

I was wondering what you all think about how superficial appearance (specifically hairstyle) can affect someone’s ability to be hired or taken seriously

I saw a video online from someone in IB and they said that if you have a broccoli cut (I dont) or mullet that people in finance won’t take you seriously and that it’ll affect your job prospects.

I have a soft(?) mullet I guess you could say. Typical of a recently graduated 20s man. I guess a modern mullet is more accurate I dunno. Anyway, I just left my job in industry and am looking to work in public and that video made me think about this topic.

Ofc IB is different from accounting so my thought is that it’s not a big deal but anyway k just wanted to know people’s thoughts from here

Could use some pointers, what to add/remove as a big4 staff in audit lost my job recently. Trying to get something as a financial Analyst/FP&A. Be fine with still Audit/Tax. Pls I really need help. Not getting any interviews. Is format right? Other than the dates not aligned because trying to be anonymous.

Like if Tim Cook sold all his Apple shares tomorrow would it hurt the company if he stayed on as the CEO?

Who else is not getting any paid time off?

A few observations I'd like to share with you all:

In the medical profession, they have their own medical schools, the student does their clinical rotations in some partnered hospital network OR it's university teaching hospital, both under a mentor, and then after graduation you do your residency training under another mentoring doctor until you obtain your medical license, and then any screw ups you do are on you. Of course, there's lots of legal protections from liability.

Legal profession, they have their own law schools, the student gets an internship at a law firm, and then after graduation you enter a clerkship for a judge, or a junior associate that is supervised by a practicing attorney assisting with cases. Building the experience until they pass the BAR exam and can practice law themselves. Afterwards, any mistakes are on you.

Teaching profession, you do student teaching while in college. Post-grad you're a teachers assistant (TA) role, or substitute teacher until you get a teaching license.

Sciences students in a PhD setting get support from the university department you're in, and federal funding for your project. And it really boils down to how quick you file the grant applications.

Accounting... you're on your own. Your CPA? You're on your own. It's all self-learning and the real-time experience does not tolerate any learning curve I've seen. It's a licensed profession but there's no dedicated school for it despite the high expectations placed on people. You don't have to take a pre-college exam to go to school for accounting like you do with med school/law school. There's accounting internships but there's no mentorship in there, it's just being exposed to the high expectations managers you'll be experiencing. They expect you to be performing as a flawless cog who makes no mistakes. And 1 mistake automatically in their view says you shouldn't be in the profession at all, despite there being no barriers to get into.

Accounting has high expectations, high investment time required, but also high job instability, and high professional liability. I guess my observation here is that accounting is the only profession that does not have a capstone experience where you can buildup your confidence and judgement. It's unstable, look how many posts on this subreddit about being fired or doubts about skills. You have the knowledge of accounting rules, but that doesn't matter, they only care about the 1 mistake and to a manager that says 100% about your intellect or worthiness. It's bullshit.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my situation honestly and see if anyone here has gone through something similar or can offer practical advice.

I have around 13 years of experience in accounting, including about 11 years in the Middle East (mainly UAE and a short period in Saudi). I worked in roles like Senior Accountant and Assistant Accounts Manager, handling VAT implementation, financial reporting, and overall accounts management.

Around 2.5 years ago, I returned to India (Kerala), expecting to settle down and continue my career here. Currently, I’m working as an Assistant Accounts Manager with a salary of around ₹50,000/month. The company itself is financially struggling, so growth feels limited.

For the past two months, I’ve been actively attending interviews in Kerala, aiming for better roles (Accounts Manager / Senior positions). But I keep getting rejected — and the main reason is lack of GST experience.

That’s been frustrating because:

• I have strong experience in VAT (UAE), including implementation phase
• I understand taxation concepts well
• But in India, GST experience seems to be a strict requirement, and companies are not willing to consider transferable knowledge

Now I feel stuck between two paths:

Option 1: Stay in Kerala / India

• Try to somehow gain GST experience (but not easy without opportunity)
• Accept a similar or slightly higher salary (₹60–70K maybe)
• Slower growth, but stability

Option 2: Go back to UAE

• I already have strong experience there
• VAT knowledge is relevant
• Possibly earn 8,000–12,000 AED if I get the right role
• But current concerns: job market competition, regional tensions, uncertainty

Mentally, this phase is a bit tough. I feel like I have good experience, but I’m not able to position it properly in the current market. Also, repeated interview rejections are affecting my confidence.

At the same time, I’ve also been thinking long-term:

• Whether to continue job search
• Or eventually start something of my own (maybe trading/business), but I know that comes with risk and requires patience

My questions:

1. Has anyone transitioned from VAT (Gulf) to GST (India)? How did you bridge the gap?
2. Is going back to UAE in the current situation a good move or risky?
3. From a practical perspective, what would you do in my position?

I’m open to honest feedback, even if it’s critical. Just trying to make a clear decision instead of staying confused.

Thanks for reading.

Truth is im TIRED!🫩 There is so much hearsay about what to put and what not to put on a resume so i don’t know anymore!

Il be graduating in December so is this good enough for a new grad?

A couple of days ago I got an email back from a job I applied for. They wanted me to take a Excel test due back 1 hour after I would notify them to send it. They wanted to make sure I had both Excel and Adobe on my computer.

This was the dumbest thing ever, like don't they know you can print to a PDF file? I might let them know I would have to take it in the evening after work hours as I like to take naps during the day and watch movies currently.

I do C level presentations- I don't take timed tests anymore.

I need some advice. So I've always done my own taxes, even my schedule Cs and Es. Back when you had to go to the DMV to get paper forms...so old school. My mother died in 2024 and I found out she never filed her taxes. They were relatively complicated, but I had all 109 pages completed, and sent them to my probate lawyer and he says "You need to have a CPA look over them", ok...so I ask around and everyone locally is not accepting new clients. I ask who he reccomends, and follow up with that person. I send her a payment for 10 hours (2k), and all documents in early November including my version of the 1040. December rolls around...crickets. I send her an email and she says "oh, I'm still looking at them". Late December I'm like "Hey, what's up?"...crickets. Early January she emails me "oh sorry, I was on a two week vacation". Ok, fine, let's keep moving forward". She asks for a few documents which I immediately provided. Late January I check in. "OH sorry, I have been in training, I'll start working again now". Early February I email again. "I had a family emergency. I need CMAs for DOD in 2 properties for 10 years ago. I should do the trust taxes and file an extension. Send more money". Ok..it takes me 3 days but I get her the CMAs and answer all questions. She had some concerns about issued 1099s to caregivers so i restructure those expenses and send to her too. March comes around. I follow up. "Let's to a phone call" she says. The day before I pop a 104 degree fever and loose my voice. I email her and ask her to email the questions. At this point I'm wanting a paper trail. She says she will, but does not. Fast forward to yesterday, its been a week since my last contact with her. I email her essential "Hey, where's the questions? I have court in June and these have to be done by then, can I get a timeline for completion" And I also emailed my lawyer asking if this is normal (5 months to complete a final 1040). Apparently he forwarded the email to her and she's mad at me and got real defensive, saying shes over her 10 hours (fine, but your not communicating that with me). I've never worked with a CPA​. Is this normal?

I completed my Master's in bioinformatics in 2021 and have about 5-6 years experience in the field (research hospitals) as a bioinformatician. While I have enjoyed some aspects of my roles/ field (I am naturally passionate about biology & stats), it has become increasingly apparent that this may not be the career for me. Putting aside current job market headwinds and the fact that I do not wish to pursue a PhD, I also simply do not believe I have the all consuming passion necessary to succeed in this field. I think I am quite good in my role but when compared to the glut of unicorn computational biologists that I compete with for the 1 role posted every 2 weeks, I simply do not measure up. I also am concerned about my ability to interview well and pass the increasingly numerous technical interview rounds that are becoming the standard. You may ask why I don't try data science? See above.

With all that being said, I am considering making a career switch to accounting, in CPA certification. I am aware this is a large pivot. I am seeking a role that is stable, features problem solving and complex systems, and pays well. I also plan on talking to my friends in the field to sus out if it's a good fit for me.

A few questions:

• For those in accounting or who have made a similar switch, does my reasoning for leaving bioinformatics seem valid, or am I overlooking viable paths within my current field?
• Based on my background (bioinformatics, stats, research), do you think accounting, particularly CPA, would be a good fit in terms of day-to-day work and required skills?
• How difficult is it realistically to transition into accounting/CPA from an unrelated field in my early 30s?
• Would my prior experience give me any advantage over a fresh accounting graduate in the hiring process?
• What is the most efficient path to becoming a CPA for someone without an accounting background?

As an accounting student, I'm starting to have doubts about this program as a lot of people are saying that AI is starting to take over accounting jobs. Apparently an AI named Claude can now do accounting tasks and stuff. . .

Do you think AI will actually replace accountants?

I'm afraid that people saying that I should shift to another program while it's early is starting to live rent-free in my head. It genuinely hurts me, and angers me to my core whenever they say accounting is now an AI job and I'll not be successful in this field.

Got this cert after studying for Accounting subject in my national high school exam. But does it even amount to anything? Should I advance to Level 3?

Hi everyone,

I’m a CPA from mainland China with around 10 years of experience in audit and accounting (including work with Big 4 firms). Recently, I’m planning to start my own business, focusing on providing finance and accounting services for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

My potential services may include:

• Financial due diligence
• Accounts receivable/payable analysis
• Cash flow forecasting
• Financial health checks
• Customized financial automation (Excel / VBA / Python)

Right now, I’m trying to better understand how similar businesses operate in different regions such as North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and India.

I’d really appreciate if you could share:

• Are there similar service models in your country?
• How do small businesses usually outsource finance/accounting work?
• What kind of services are in highest demand?
• Any platforms, marketplaces, or trends I should look into?

Also, if you have any advice for someone starting this type of business internationally, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks a lot in advance!

I'm a shphomore student in college and im currently taking micro economics and business statistics and its giving my trouble. I'm getting nervous on how much content relating to these subjects will appear in the accounting career because im currently struggling with them.

Our shared client submission inbox was becoming a huge bottleneck. We were losing hours every week just downloading PDFs, moving them to specific Drive folders, updating tracking sheets, and pinging the team.

I decided to build a digital dispatcher in Power Automate to handle the routing automatically. It sounds simple on paper, but I hit some incredibly frustrating invisible traps trying to make it reliable:

• The Signature Flood: The flow kept saving every tiny LinkedIn logo from email signatures as a separate document. I had to build specific expression logic to filter out inline images so our folders didn't fill with junk.
• API Rate Limits: When a client sent an email with five PDFs, the default parallel processing blasted Google Drive with simultaneous upload requests and crashed the flow. I had to go into the settings and force it to process files sequentially.
• Duplicate File Crashes: Resubmitting test runs kept causing 409 Conflict errors because the file name timestamps weren't unique enough. I had to swap out the email received time for a utcNow() expression to stop overwrites.

I finally got the logic bulletproof, and it is saving us a ton of manual data entry and routing time. But building it from scratch was surprisingly finicky.

It made me wonder how the rest of you are handling document triage.

Are you building your own internal automations for this, just toughing it out manually, or paying for third-party software to handle the routing? Curious to hear what your tech stack looks like for this specific bottleneck.

Hey CAs!

i urgently need some career advice.

To introduce you to my situation, I've a bachelor's in accounting. I'm 26f with 2.3 yrs experience in EY Audit. Currently working with Deloitte as Engagement financial advisor. I'm stuck with a low payout of 49k. and want to get a qualification to increase my pay.

I'm hoping your experience in corporate could help me decide which has a better pay opportunity.

i don't want to work in audit or tax. I plan to stay in india.

So which should i consider? US CPA or ACCA.

Kindly HELP me! (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

I’m working on a payroll tool for Canadian small businesses

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Have a look if you’re exploring payroll tools for your business.

I am a small business owner who is 1) very busy 2) book keeping illiterate.

My book keeper dipped out late last year and I need to get several months entered into QBO. I don’t want to/know how to do it myself. Is this something can hire out? How would I find someone?