Not typically part of being a CPA. Documenting inefficiencies...

There are several things about my job that I think are incredibly inefficient. One example happened today and I think its extremely comical when you think about it and also an example of the mentality and inefficiency of some New York/Wall Street/Corporate counterparts I work with. First some background: I work for a firm that was acquired by a Wall Street Investment Bank about 4 or so years ago. We do the accounting for most of their private equity funds. I happen to work on a $2.5 billion Real Estate fund. We have counterparts in New York who interact directly with the deal professionals. We are not permitted to contact them even though their information is what we use to produce the financial statements for the fund. Our counterparts are also not accountants but rather finance people. They review all of our work which doesn't make sense. Why hire a group made up of CPA's to do your accounting if you then shoot holes in all of their opinions and double check all of their work? Don't understand that one and its probably the inefficiency that would need to be corrected in order to fix all the other broken processes we have.

Anyway, today's example is that an analyst in New York wanted me to rename a package of partner commitment schedules that we prepare in excel with a specific name. Mind you that was the sole reason for us to resend these files; change the name on them. In the time it took her to draft the email she could have done exactly what she was wanting to do. Inefficiency at its finest! Not only that, she was extremely vague in exactly how to name each of these files. Mind you there were 8 of them that all had different partnership names and I was supposed to read her mind and know how to name each one! I also have no idea how they store these on their file server and cannot access them. The have to save them off of the email I send in order to have them on there server anyway!

I think I am going to start documenting how stupid and inefficient this business model is that I work in. I am a CPA that answers, but not reports, to an analyst in New York. I tend to think of myself as not an egotistical person, (not everyone would agree with that statement ha!) but come on. This is beneath me and wastes my time. It also wastes the time of people who work for me and wastes the precious time and money of a company that needs both in the worst way right now. The stock dropped another 7% today. Coincidence? I think so...