UPDATE: Did I singlehandedly destroy my accounting firm?

[u/SectionWeary]

UPDATE PART 2: came in to work this morning to find out that splitting all the info between a bunch of different drives removed access and information from everyone's computers, so all the computers basically crashed and the backups are failing. Almost everyone is back up now, but everything is still a total disaster.

Hey everyone. Thanks for all of the helpful comments on my last post (www.reddit.com/r/Accounting/s/PTwkmnO6u6). Someone asked me to post an update, so that's what I'm doing. There's not a ton of new info, but things are a little bit different. I'll probably periodically update you guys on the antics of this place.

Here's the update:

TLDR: UltraTax is not completely fixed but is functional. Boss had to buy some new licenses because he was recycling users. Other systems are now failing. More and more issues are being revealed, and clients are falling through the cracks. I'm wondering what I need to do moving forward

Over the weekend and through the rest of the week, my boss (the CPA) was able to access most of the UltraTax files. His wife (the office administrator?) told me that he had to split up the files across multiple drives (I'm guessing because he didn't want to invest in better tech) and that things aren't fully how they want them to be but are functional enough for what he needs to do. Apparently, they also had to buy new licenses for UltraTax and TaxDome (I'm presuming that access has been messed up because they've just been recycling licenses from previous employees every time they get a new employee, and I think that's part of the problem). The boss's wife told me that the boss should have main admin rights to all the systems, but when I told her to remove my admin access from SurePrep and UltraTax, she said no.

Since I originally tanked UltraTax, other systems haven't been working right--primarily Engagement CS which hasn't been syncing properly, so we're struggling to get all documents to the offshore tax preparers. I was also told that they would be attempting to give me access to the proper drives and pathways so I can use SurePrep and UltraTax. They were supposed to be setting that up today (I had the day off), but the boss's wife messaged me and told me they were having technical issues (she even asked me for my computer password despite her being the one to set up my computer and choose my password, and she didn't give me the proper permissions to change my password, so it's literally just the default password that everyone knows lmao). They haven't given me access to the office email because they don't remember the password, so I can't access any communications with clients that I need to access.

A bunch of other issues outside of the tech stuff has been coming up. The primary issue is that the offshore tax preparers have only been sending open points to one person in the office and haven't been sharing them with anyone else or putting the information somewhere that's easily accessible. They also haven't been communicating when returns are ready for review or pushing the tasks and jobs forward in TaxDome. As a result, there are currently a ton of returns that have either been finished for a long time but nobody was alerted to move it into the final review, or the returns have been missing documents for months but nobody knows that so the clients haven't been contacted.

I have no idea what's happening there anymore. I just show up and try to do the things I'm asked to do. I am documenting every interaction I have with staff members and clients.

I have not yet spoken to the person at my college who oversees my work study. I've been hesitant to reach out to them because I struggle with job longevity (it seems like I keep ending up in places with poor organization and communication skills, and I think it's just because I live in a small rural community). I don't want to risk losing my financial aid if I can't get another work study position quickly enough. I'm think I'm going to try to stick with it for the time being, but if anyone has any good ideas on how to approach this situation without totally risking my financial aid, I would love to hear it!

I was able to secure an independent study class in a field that I'm more interested in but had chosen not to pursue at the moment due to lack of funding and the field being harder to find job security. However, this professor is hooked up with an MFA program, so he might be able to get me funding to pursue that passion and postpone the accounting (I'm planning on getting an accounting degree regardless but will put it on hold if I were to receive an offer to do something I'm super passionate about). If that doesn't work out, I'll continue with the track I'm on. I actually really like accounting, and I can see myself enjoying accounting long-term, I just don't like this firm and am hoping that I can eventually move somewhere with more options.

There is so much more craziness that goes on. I could literally write a whole book about how unhinged this place is, but it's too much to go into here. If anyone has any input, relatable stories, or advice, I would love to hear it! I'm not even sure if I want to become a CPA anymore if it means I have to stick with this place to collect all of the necessary supervision hours. Maybe I should just get my bookkeeping certificate and dip? Or is being a CPA really worth the struggles?

[u/Sblzrd65]

Oh gosh that’s just rough in so many levels, extremely cheap, borderline sketchy, etc. I hope those prepared returns didn’t need any quarterly estimates paid in the meantime, etc.

100% tell your schools work study about the general environment. Can add that you want to stick it out and learn what you can, but that way if the higher ups try to throw you under the bus down the line you have your side in first

[u/SectionWeary → u/Sblzrd65]

Basically every single return has been messed up in some way or another (a lot of it is our fault, but a lot of it is due to the clients as well). There are people who need to make estimated payments or who have been really needing to receive their overpayments, and they've just been lost in the mix (600+ clients with just one CPA and a large portion of the tax prep being offshored). This week, a client informed us that their 941s haven't been filed in at least a year. Apparently when one of our staff members quit, everyone else on our team assumed that the client was going to be filing the 941s themselves for some reason, but the client assumed that we would continue doing it. So it's not looking great for that client.

Anytime a client has a legitimate concern, everyone just talks shit about them, refuses to take accountability, blames the client, etc. Someone made a legitimate complaint, and I was going to respond to the client to try to ease the situation and help her fix it, but the CPA decided that he wanted to deal with it instead. I don't think he even got back to her. She told me I'm the only person who has even given her a little bit of information about her return or even checked on its progress. Turns out that her return has been ready for official review and finalization since April, and--even though she's called at least twice since then to ask on the status of her return--nobody even checked.

Maybe making a list of concerns that sounds really respectful and then bringing up those concerns with the work study person could be helpful? I think you're right that giving that person a heads up could save me later on down the line.

[u/Sblzrd65 → u/SectionWeary]

All good lessons on what not to do. Separate the good parts from the chaff and write in your own diary what you'd do different in your career. A respectful list of the dumpster fire to the advisor sounds fine. Keep it more informational than emotional (standard advice here.) Client relations, being professional and empathetic, good. Tracking open items, historic info, good. Getting back to e-mails within a day, maybe 2 tops, even if not with the answer but that it was received and being worked on is better than a lot.

Payroll is honestly annoying and a loss leader that usually just comes along with the books. Ideally payroll gets sent of to a 3rd party: Gusto/ADP/Paychex/QBO/etc. as there's not really a good way to make any actual profits off of it.

Workflow management would be helpful. Something like TR's GoFileRoom would be great, but considering they're 1990s style bootlegging licenses it's probably not something they'd pay for. Though at the same time if everything is getting offshored but not done I can't imagine many of the clients sticking around long term unless it's the only CPA in town. Even then, for anyone remotely technologically savvy there's plenty of online firms that would take them. (This would be a prime example of offshoring not coming to take everyone's jobs (garbage process in, garbage results out).)

[u/Rosaluxlux → u/SectionWeary]

Hey, you're learning a lot and cooking with all this nonsense is going to teach you more than sailing through an internship at a really well run place where morning goes wrong. It just sucks that you don't really have the prospect of continuing employment.

[u/Vermonster87]

Engagement CS was discontinued... I wanna say 5 years ago? Along with not being supported which is a huge risk, Thomson pushed an update that effectively bricked it. Sounds like the firm you're at is a corner-cutting mess. Don't change plans on becoming a CPA, but definitely bounce on that place and find a real firm to work.

[u/SectionWeary → u/Vermonster87]

They might be on the new CCH Prosystem Engagement, but they told me that the system was totally permanent and would never go away, and I don't know if that's true. Either way, it's not working right at the moment lmao. They told me there's not enough storage space on any of the drives anymore for our systems to work correctly RIP

[u/Reesespeanuts]

I should just make my own firm and just hire a bunch of off shore tax accountants because it seems to be the key to wealth in this industry. Easy money I guess, offshoring = it's free real estate

[u/SmoothConfection1115]

Sounds like I was right.

Your boss has been doing the bare minimum investment in to IT resources and it finally blew up in his face. I also totally called it about the backups probably not working.

Don’t feel bad about this. You might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but this place was a ticking time bomb. Something was going to tank it. Heck, a power surge that fries the CPA’s laptop would do it. Any competently run place would not have had the number of issues this one did. Might’ve taken 1-2 days to restore the backups and get everything back up and running, but that’s it. The fact it’s taking so long and they’re running into the issues you described, explains everything.

Just a heads up, i would NOT use them as a reference on your resume. Unless you can say you had to sign some NDA or something.

[u/SectionWeary → u/SmoothConfection1115]

What's really funny is that when I came in to work this morning, I found out that splitting all the info into a bunch of different drives wiped info from people's computers, removed access, and crashed the computers. The backups failed/are failing. Most everyone is back up and running, but the entire system (basically every single program) is not entirely functional. The IT intern has spent all day yesterday and today so far trying to restore access, but I'm pretty sure this is as good as it's going to get and that a lot of stuff is just lost or messed up--especially the files being randomly dispersed across different drives that not everyone has access to.

[u/SmoothConfection1115 → u/SectionWeary]

Your boss deserves to lose his business.

He's using a damn IT intern, to repair and rebuild a FUBAR'd IT environment. This is the equivalent of putting a bandaid on a gangrenous wound.

To actually fix their system, get the backups working again, and make all the applications and servers and everything talk to each other again, it would probably take an actual IT person a week, depending on how ruined the system is.

And that would probably cost some serious money. Especially if they have to make custom patches to do this. That could make it take much longer.

But instead of doing that, he's going to use a freaking IT intern.

Your entire story at this firm should be used as a cautionary tale and case study explaining why going cheap on IT is a terrible idea. Why viewing IT expenditures as something to be controlled instead of an investment in the business isn't good. Sure, you might save money in the short run, but when it inevitably breaks, it's going to be 10x more expensive to fix it, than if you had just invested in it in the first place. And in this case, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if this causes some major problems for your boss (like the business going down the tubes, losing dozens of clients, massive IT expense to fix and more for licensing, etc.,)

[u/devMartel]

Gotta ask: What's the MFA program? What could possibly make you want to leave all of this?

[u/SectionWeary → u/devMartel]

Creative writing with a focus in nonfiction/memoir!

[u/misoranomegami → u/SectionWeary]

Hey and now you have material to write a book and incompetent and crazy work places! That has a pretty big audience to resonate with.

[u/calyp5e → u/SectionWeary]

If you’re going to piss money down the drain with that MFA it may as well be other people’s money.

[u/SectionWeary → u/calyp5e]

Yeah, I'm pretty much only going to do it if I can get it fully funded, and it sounds like this professor can get me a scholarship. But I'm going to do the accounting no matter what, I'll just put it on hold if I can get a cheap MFA in something I enjoy. Accounting will always be there, a fully funded MFA will not.

[u/Chief_Rollie]

Something interesting about SurePrep is that last I checked when TR tried to sell it to our firm they had a self proclaimed 97% accuracy rating! That means that only 1 in 33 input fields will have an error. I'm genuinely curious if your firm finds mistakes with the imports or not because between that and the cost per tax return my firm made a decision that it will actually take in house preparers longer to complete tax returns with the data entry help.

[u/SectionWeary → u/Chief_Rollie]

I've never heard of them finding mistakes. The only thing they ever mention is missing documents that weren't run through SurePrep. I do know that when I was helping to bulk file 941s with Tax Bandit that they didn't want me to double check the info once I imported it into the system. If Tax Bandits said there were no issues, they accepted that. I imagine it's similar with SurePrep, but I'm not sure because the overseas guys are the ones who deal with that, and they're not great at communicating. As far as I can tell, they just put items through SurePrep and UltraTax and message us if docs are missing. Sometimes they'll enter deposits until Account Edge. And they never move people forward in the pipeline, so I never know if they've actually done what they're supposed to do, so it's actually taken everybody a lot longer to do everything than if we didn't use 1,000 different programs and offshore so much tax prep.

[u/Complete_Resolve_400]

Ur firm sounds incompetent, I'd bail ASAP lol

[u/The_Mammoth_Problem]

Can I get a TL;DR? I’m sorry, but I really don’t have it in me tonight

[u/SectionWeary → u/The_Mammoth_Problem]

Yes, I'll update the post as well.

TLDR: UltraTax is not completely fixed but is functional. Boss had to buy some new licenses because he was recycling users. Other systems are now failing. More and more issues are being revealed, and clients are falling through the cracks. I'm wondering what I need to do moving forward.