Which of us doesn’t turn to a Bolshevik dictator when we’re in need of a good quote about a seismic week in the news? My mass murderer of choice is Vladimir Lenin who said:
“The are some decades when nothing happens, and there are some weeks when decades happen”
These last seven days (or so) feels like one of those weeks. In the UK, the first Labour Party budget in 14 years, and in the USA, a Presidential election.
It was the best of audits. It was the worst of audits. Let me introduce you to two auditors, Harry and Alice. Both face the same audit challenges, but they’ve had very different weeks.
Harry is an old-school auditor, with a love of spreadsheets and a capacity for hard work. On Budget day, he’s at his audit client’s office by 8.00am, ready to dig through numbers and crunch tax codes for hours.
He wraps up his on-site work around 8.00pm and heads home, with a ready meal and the remote control for company. He’s been fending off client calls all day, but the client questions keep pouring in.
Bill from Bristol is in the middle of a company sale and in a spin about changes to Capital Gains Tax. Laura from Leeds is on a recruitment drive but wants to apply the brakes until she knows what the new Employer’s NI contributions will cost her.
There are lots of calls to return from lots of Bills and Lauras. Harry tackles every call, dutifully opening spreadsheets and triple-checking figures while trying to keep his eyes open. By the time he’s done, it’s 1.00am 😴
Then there’s Alice who’s also at the action end of an audit. But Alice has a secret weapon: The Audit Toolbar, which automates lots of the tedious audit tasks. Between The Audit Toolbar and the team, she’s happy to stand back.
When Rob from Runcorn calls wanting to know if opening a US office is still a good idea under a new President, she has plenty of time to help, before taking Ruby from Rugby’s calls. She wants to discuss accounting for her company’s crypto gains if they cash in with the markets spiking on the election news.
Alice’s day looks very different from Harry’s. She’s able to help her clients, check-in on the audit and head home at 6.00pm for dinner. No late nights, and no caffeine IV drip required. Just Pinot 🍷
Budgets and elections always mean change, and clients want auditors like Harry and Alice to tell them what it all means. You have a choice how you want that to look.
Are you Harry? Work all day and then an evening of client calls, drowning in data and endless Excel formulas.
Or are you Alice? An existing customer of ours, outsourcing a lot of the grind to The Audit Toolbar which pulls the numbers together on autopilot, so she has time for her clients and an actual life.
To all you Harry’s, still recovering from the trauma of two huge events and little sleep, maybe it's time to change the story.
Until next week,
Christiaan
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