Ways Accountants Flex Their Accounting Skills
If you have ever spent more than a few hours interacting with an accountant in their work environment, you may notice that the experienced accountants are really good at certain aspects of their job. As someone who has worked with and trained students and new professionals for many years, I can personally tell you that some people are very impressed by some of the skills that experienced accountants pick up along the way. Today, I’m going to share with you the three main ways that experienced accountants flex their accounting skills.
Excel without a mouse
Perhaps the most common accounting flex is using various functions in excel without a mouse. Using excel in this way demonstrates a solid proficiency in the most essential software for any finance related career. But how do accountants get to this level of proficiency? The answer is practice. Many accountants are practicing in Excel for more than 5 hours per day and over time they will leverage anything that can help them save time on their work. Some may focus more on creating specific charts, some may be better at navigating workbooks with multiple tabs and links, and others may focus on formatting and clear documentation. While knowing a few shortcuts isn't necessarily impressive by itself, what is impressive is the speed at which users can navigate excel using the shortcuts that they have committed to memory through frequent use.
10-Key speed and accuracy
10-key proficiency is a fundamental skill that many older and operational accountants have mastered. The ability to swiftly and accurately operate the numeric keypad sets them apart, ensuring efficient data entry and minimizing errors. Over the years, I've Experienced a number of older accounting firm partners that could type on a 10-key with incredible speed and accuracy, even if they weren't as proficient with Microsoft Excel. Just like Microsoft Excel, these accountants gain proficiency through practice. Operational accountants that need to key in lots of data as well as older accountants that needed to manually key in data during their public accounting days are the most practiced 10-key users out there!
Citing numbers - Accounting Standards Codification, Tax Forms, IRS Code
Accountants love numbers because numbers are a core component of their job. In particular, public accountants are required to understand all sorts of numbers such as:
Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) - You may have heard of ASC 606 or 842, but do you know about 810? 805? 740? Technical accountants are exposed to these different standards on a regular basis and need to cite guidance from them quite often. Some accountants are able to surprise their coworkers by mentioning specific paragraphs off the top of their head like the right-to-invoice practical expedient outlined in ASC 606-10-55-18!
Tax Forms - When working with smaller businesses, it’s critical to understand what tax elections a company may be making. Accountants that work with smaller businesses will often be able to call out which forms they need to file such as 1065, 1120, 4562, and many, many more. Experienced tax accountants are able to understand exactly what forms are necessary and can list them off from memory to impress their tax coworkers. Additionally, any auditor that can name more than 5 different tax forms is proficient enough to impress their audit coworkers.
IRS Code - The IRS has a significant influence over the professional lives of accountants because the IRS Code is the basis for many tax and operational business decisions a company can make. As a result, it’s an accountant’s job to understand the areas of the IRS code that may affect their clients. Some examples of this are:
Section 409a - Qualifications for tax credit employee stock ownership plans
Section 501 - Tax exempt organizations
Section 179 - Election to expense certain depreciable business assets
Just like the other flexes listed above, the true impressiveness of this knowledge comes from the speed at which the accountant can recall the knowledge in a regular conversation, which comes from countless hours of previous exposure.
There you have it, my top 3 ways that accountants flex their accounting knowledge! Do you have an accounting knowledge flex that you think I missed? Let me know in the comments below!