r/Accounting • u/ahad3107a CPA (US) • 3h ago
The most dangerous phrase in accounting might be 'We have always done it this way.'
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u/soloDolo6290 3h ago
My last year in public accounting, they really emphasized challenging workpapers. New interns and staff are great at this when they ask why we do something. Maybe the workpaper is needed but the testing isn't actually testing what we want it to.
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u/ahad3107a CPA (US) 3h ago
Exactly. A process can be well established for years and still fail to test what actually matters.
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u/HiBoobear 3h ago
My favorite dumb accounting joke:
“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“Idk it’s what they always do”
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u/buffenstein 3h ago
My favorite coworkers are the ones that reinvent the wheel. I've had the same exact report in 12 different formats. It's a new employees favorite thing to do.
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u/Sprocket_Scientist Controller 3h ago
And it now takes them 2x as long but features elaborate formulas and the whole crayon box of color coding!
I’m all for reinventing the wheel. We’ve come a long way to achieve the wheels on an F1 car, but my rule is that your new wheel must be better for its purpose. Better is often the simplest and most durable solution, not the most complex and maintenance-intensive one. Such solutions are often difficult to design and elegant in their simplicity. You don’t need an F1 wheel on a shopping cart or a Mars rover.
This is also the diseconomy of scale exacerbated by AI workslop. I see people building these intricate machines, but when Jerry’s on vacation and his vibecoded macro falls apart, you’re spending more resources on corrective maintenance than you saved.
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u/buffenstein 3h ago
Exactly. "We've always done it this way" is not scary unless it's the answer provided for a fundamentally broken system.
If I'm impressed by something, and I ask why they're doing this impressive thing, "We've always done it this way" is a totally acceptable answer.
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u/borky47 CPA (US) 3h ago
Completely disagree. Accounting is based around the idea of consistency and standardized reporting. I think I understand your point though, staff should understand why it has always been done a certain way, instead of relying on whoever prepared it in the past.
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u/CowgoesQuack69 2h ago
Yes and no. We have work papers to make invoices for x vendors. The person that created the originals were made in the 90s with limited excel experience. Then taken over by someone with limited excel experience.
Also swapped systems in the last year or two, so they take twice as long to get the same information.
It’s a slow process to update them, but just for 10 vendors it’s around 100m+ a year. The staff know why it’s done a certain way, but they have been doing it the same for 10 years. (Also not in ap, but the invoice backup sent to ap)
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u/DR320 3h ago
I think yes & no. I’m all for change when it’s needed and encourage continuous improvement and updates for efficiency sake. But I have also been in corporate settings where the leaders think everything needs to be updated and revamped for the sole purpose of them having something to show their boss and old processes that are not broken get rearranged and it causes headaches.
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u/Physical-Draw9788 3h ago
Yeah, I always hated that one but it always told me what my next step was.
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u/Ok-Thing4762 3h ago
In itself it isn’t a ‘dangerous’ phrase - as others have said, there are sometimes very good reasons why something is done in a particular way and the people responsible are fully conscious of why.
It’s unacceptable when it is used as the sole justification for why something is done in a particular way. It suggests that no-one really understands what they are doing - they can mechanically follow instructions but may well not be able to validate the result, nor see the possibilities for change.
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u/Kailmo Bookkeeping 3h ago
OMG I worked at a company that switched accounting platforms and wanted to keep the same exact coding when they were so different. And when I started the accountant created a CoA with over 800 accounts when what we needed was actually half of that. She was afraid numbers were going to get used incorrectly so she created the exact same list of accounts for each department even if they were irrelevant to the department. And when I came in and said this was stupid nobody wanted to change anything because that would be too complicated. I died. I died.
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u/Thusgirl Tax (US) 3h ago
Or one of the most useful because sometimes consistency means more than method. Especially when there's multiple methods to choose from.
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u/mldyfox 1h ago
As with all things accounting, I think it depends on what you're doing.
My first accounting job after finishing my bachelor's was essentially an accounts receivable clerk. My predecessor's process was, download the payments from one system into Excel, then print a physical sheet of paper and highlight the items we'd be billing for. Then, type in the total we planned to bill into the Excel reconciliation sheet, and enter those items into an itemized list and attach to the bill, along with the actual documentation that came with each payment.
The first thing I did was eliminate keeping paper files of everything, and create extra tabs in the reconciliation workbook for the payments and itemized list copies. Saved so much time with the stupid filing.
My second accounting job used a template for a different type of accounting, one they'd used for 2 decades that still did the job they needed it to do.
Same company, different tasks, different way of doing things. And only one of those tasks had a system that absolutely needed upgraded.
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u/Kozak170 31m ago
Eh it’s pretty much a 50/50 thing in my experience between this leading to actual improvement or someone burning hours fucking up the workpaper because they didn’t actually try to understand why it was done that way in the first place.
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u/Distinct-Cut-6368 Human Verified 3h ago
Counterpoint: Chesterton's Fence.
There is possibly a good reason why things have always been done that way. It may be outdated and no longer valid but you should try and figure out why something was done that way before you start changing everything.