Satirical Advice for First-Year Trainee Accountants, Audit Clients, and Everyone Else

This starts out as humorous, but my word, does it become serious

“Chartered Accountants need to be ready to lead the business world in this ‘Economic World War that is raging all around us, but are we? “

For so many reasons, everyone needs to watch this.

Satire is defined as a clever and often humorous way of using irony, sarcasm, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticize or expose flaws, vices, or absurdities in people, institutions, or society as a whole. It serves as both entertainment and social commentary, prompting reflection or sparking change through wit and insight.

This is a satirical piece.

It is called “Advice for first year trainee Chartered accountants and Audit clients and everyone else” 

  1.   So, audit clerks, When you are on first job and are eager to make an impression, and they give you your first important assignment, which is to make coffee for the audit team, make sure you make the worst coffee on the planet. 

Reason being that if you excel at this task, guess who’ll be making the coffee for the next 3 years. 

1. Don’t pay any attention to the 3rd years who tell you that they can’t wait to get out of this prison sentence called articles and who constantly remind you that they are at the end of their term, but yours has just begun. 

•  When the 3rd years they give you your second most important task, make sure you excel at it, because you need to make a good impression to ensure that you get put on future jobs and don’t spend your articles warming, your small dedicated space in the clerk’s office. 

The second most important task that the third year gives you is to study the medical aid booklet and then tell them which is the best option.

•  I hope that you don’t go through what I went through on my first day of articles.  A partner came into the crowded clerk’s office, pointed at me and said that I must do a call over with him. 

A call-over is one of the dangerous jobs in the audit profession.  It means that you check the glossy financial statements whilst the other person (in this case the partner) calls out from the draft financial statements before they print the 100 plus copies for stakeholders.  Now, here I am sitting in this Office, all nervous and my only job is to just check that the numbers he calls out are correct.  Easy game right.

However, I have never seen a person talk so fast in my life and also as he was calling out the numbers, he did not even stop to take a breath.

The reason a call-over is so important is because if you make a mistake and the call over does not pick up the error, the 100+ pages of glossy financial statements will go out with errors from the audit firm and your neck will be on the line.  It was even a firing offence.

Now that I recall, the partner in fairness did pause for one second.  If it was when he enquired if I was keeping up.

I wanted to say “What do you think”, but it was my first day and all I did was to give him at thumbs up, because at this stage, I had lost the ability to speak, all my brain could think of was firing offence.

•  When you are given a tax query to deal with where SARS has said that your client needs to pay a huge amount of tax with penalties and interest, don’t be like me and show off your tax skills and write SARS such a compelling letter quoting Sections of the Tax Act and cases etc., SARS then agrees with you and zero’s your client account.  Sounds great right.  But if you do this, you will be called in by your manager and told that in future if there are tax queries from SARS, it will be given to you to deal with.  He then tells you that he will give you so much work to do that you not know if you are Arthur or Martha.

•  Ok, once you get to second year of articles and are now a manager, you will be rewarded with being allocated a section in the audit file such as Debtors (Section E) or Income Statement (Section U).  For the next 2 months, you will immerse yourself in your Section making sure that the number that you present to the audited Balance Sheet is 100% correct.  However, when the partner comes in and looks at the big picture, he informs you that something is wrong with the Debtors because if you look at the big picture the figure you have audited does not make sense.  So back to the drawing board.  (Unfortunately, you as an audit clerk are not exposed to the big picture until it is too late.)

• Back in the day, we used to have much fun such as signing it at the front gate when we arrived at the client’s premises and met the friendly security guard.  For the section under “Reason for visit”, We constantly wrote Theft.  When nobody questioned us, we had our first Management comment item, even before entering the building.

In addition, when we sat with the Finance Director, we did our ARP (Analytic review procedures) and we asked him why Sales increased by 10%.  We then listened to all the reasons that he happily gave us as to why sales increased.

We then informed him that we were mistaken, and Sales was actually down 10% and not up 10%.

 We then watched him squirm as he struggled to find the reason for the decline, undoing everything he had just said.

And don’t be that clerk who arrives at the client for a stock count of roof tiles on 31 December, New Years Eve, and is so lazy to count, that he just takes pictures of the tiles.  He thought that he was so clever when he presented the pictures as audit evidence, but my word, did he get into trouble, and he became a legend amongst clerks with people still talking about him today.

  3.   Advice for clients. 

Never, never never talk about your holiday or your family or anything else with your audit partner even if he encourages you to be friendly and break the ice. 

Reason being is that I have seen interactions in the Board room between the audit partner and the CEO and FD where the spend an hour just catching up. 

Dear client, have you seen the partners charge out rate and do you know that you are being billed for breaking the ice. 

Leave the ice unbroken. 

You shouldn’t even know the audit partner’s first name. 

He doesn’t need to know how you slipped when you were skiing in the Swiss Alps or how well your son did in the Grade 12 exam and is now studying Actuarial Science. 

Case in point, have you seen the skyscrapers that audit firms have built and are competing as to who can touch the sky first. 

Guess who’s paying for that building.

Incidentally what really happens inside those buildings because we know that clients do not visit the Auditor, but the auditor is required to be at the client’s office.

Are there open plan offices as is the global trend, or does every clerk have their own office.

There can’t be a whole floor for the Tax Department, because we all know that SARS is now so efficient that they have closed almost all the loopholes.

During COVID, were these buildings lying empty?  because last week one of the auditors was telling me that the last time, he was in the office was probably 4 months ago because everything can now be done online with electronic work-papers etc.

   5.   Audit clients. Not sure if you know about something called a summary of audit differences. 

A SAD for short. 

Let me tell you that that means. It means that when the auditors disagree with what you have done, we take into account the number that you came up with and the number we want you to have and calmly work out the difference.  We then smile and just include that difference in our Summary of Audit Differences (SAD).

In the end, if the Total difference is material and you don’t want to budge, then you will get a qualified audit report and then you will the one who is not sad and it’s not SAD, but real word sad.

Seriously though

The accounting profession has faced criticism for being backward-looking, as it primarily focuses on historical financial data rather than proactively addressing current economic challenges.

While accountants play a vital role in ensuring transparency and compliance, their ability to influence broader economic issues like

• Tariffs from the US with retaliatory tariffs from Canada, the EU and China is causing a full-blown economic World War right now and right before our eyes.  Every morning when we awake something new has occurred because Trump has spoken, and how many of us are blissfully unaware as we go about our day, not knowing how it is going to impact us personally very shortly. As a worst-case scenario, and heaven forbid, but you could be called in and told that you are no longer required because your company is being forced into a cost cutting exercise due to what is going on in the world.
•  A new wave on April 2, 2025, is being called Liberation Day by Donald Trump, the President of the US.  As much as we may hate him or love him, he was in fact correct to remind a condescending reporter that he was not speaking to just anyone.  He was speaking to the most powerful person in the World, who has the support of the majority of his people.
• Job losses, high prices and supply chains disruptions are the order of the day.  All industries are being touched,
• Real wars in Ukraine and Russia and Israel and Palestine are raging as we speak.
• Share prices are plummeting as we have seen with a more than 50% drop in Tesla from mid December 2024 to March 2025.  This is just one example.  Other companies are also facing declines.
• South Africa is being showcased on the World stage by Donald Trump.  Words such as “terrible things are happening in South Africa” have been spoken.  R5,6bn of aid has been cut.  Social workers have lost their jobs and people who need their medication are not receiving it due to funding not being available. Our ambassador has been expelled.  AGOA negotiations are imminent and the effect of this on South Africa will be felt all over our economic and financial landscape, reason being the America is one of our biggest trading partners.
• DOGE, (the Department of Government Efficiency) is slicing jobs in the US.  A South African born Elon Musk is leading the initiative which is receiving much media attention.  Musk, the richest person in the World has his own grievances with South Africa.
• Share prices and indices have faced significant declines with trillions of dollars being wiped out as the financial market factors in the effect that these changes will have on the domestic and global economy.
• Japan is selling off Dollar reserves at an unprecedented pace and the dominance of the Dollar is being called into question.
• Trump has threatened BRICS nations with 100% tariffs if we move away from the Dollar.  He has launched attacks against his closest and most trusted neighbor and ally Canada, so the implication is that he will not hesitate to come after us with all guns blazing.

I could go on and on, but the global financial landscape has changed and is changing.  These changes are happening instantaneously.  It must also be remembered that Trump has been in Office for less than 3 months and his term is 4 years.  I am not on the side of either of his decisions although I have a strong view. 

As accountants we are however required to be independent and call it “as it is” without bias. Something that I tried to do with this narrative.

Trump’s decisions and actions may seem ludicrous to us, however, again we must remember that he won the election because he has the support of the majority and these actions are what he campaigned on and American people have been told to expect short-term pain with the promise that they will have long term benefit.  So, we may not see it, but he obviously has a plan. 

So maybe we should stop criticizing him, which is so easy to do, but start recognizing that the better course of action should be to put our energies into trying to out maneuver the obstacles that he has placed in our path and to plan for the ones that will be thrown at us tomorrow and in the near future.

Case in point.  The Board meeting that was held to go through the 31 December 2024 annual results.  Did it consider any of these current issues and how these issues will impact the company or was it also backward looking.  Only you will know, however, my experience is that these thick packs which were physically impossible to read fully only contained stale information.

Directors are required to be strategic and to set the path ahead.  At the conclusion of your last Board meeting, did you set the flight plan, because if you did not you have been deficient because we are already at the end of the First quarter and was the company flying on auto-pilot during this quarter.  Are you intending to see the Q1 damage only at the next Board meeting scheduled for May.  Simply, how many pages of your Board pack contain current information, and did you think that strategic direction was not needed during one of the most tumultuous quarters of any time.  I think we know the answer to that question.

Unfortunately, if Trump is the school-yard bully, then although nobody likes the bully to win, the reality is that the bully is stronger and faster and fiercer.  So, for South Africa, what is the destiny of what lies ahead.  Warning signs should be flashing brightly but are your seeing it and hearing it your cockpit.

We have already seen Trump offer refugee status to a portion of our population, whilst we see other people being forcibly removed from the US.  Reports indicate that over 70,000 people have expressed interest in Trumps offer and within a few hours of that offer being made, the US SA Department IT system crashed because there were over 20,000 enquiries in a matter of hours.  So, are we the rainbow nation?

Begs the question.

Where is the accounting profession whilst this global war is going on.

SAICA’s website indicates that there are 54,000 Chartered Accountants, and in a population where we have 54 million people, that means that 1 out of every 1,000 people is a Chartered Accountant. (Let me repeat.  One out of every 1000)

In addition, there is a stat saying that 1 out of 3 CEO’s on the JSE Top 40 is a Chartered Accountant.

Reason being.  Chartered Accountants are specialists.  We are business specialists.  We are akin to a brain surgeon or a heart surgeon in the medical field.

Although I am the humblest person in the world, the reality is that when people ask you what you do and you say you are a Chartered Accountant, it is interesting that they don’t ask any further questions.

They automatically know what that means.

To them it means that you are a specialist and those letters behind you name speak for themselves.

But here is the reality

Our profession has a

1. Historical Focus: Accounting standards emphasize past financial performance, which may not provide actionable insights for navigating present economic crises.
2. Limited Scope: Accountants are often constrained by regulations and standards, which may prevent them from addressing broader economic challenges.
3. Impact on Businesses: The profession’s focus on compliance and reporting can sometimes overlook strategic advice that businesses need during crises.
4. Global Challenges: Issues like tariffs, job losses, and market volatility require interdisciplinary approaches. Experts such as us should at least be flagging these issues as we see it.  It does not make sense we have been imbued with these skills whereby only one of us out of a thousand has managed to attain the title of Chartered Accountant, and then when we are required to assist, in a constantly evolving financial world we remain silent.
5. Evolving Role: There is a growing call for accountants to adopt forward-looking practices.

In conclusion, I have devoured the News.  Why.  Because we cannot keep our heads buried in the sand.  We are not immune to what is going on, especially since we as South Africa is being dragged onto the World stage to make a statement on race.  Job losses have already occurred globally, and job losses will hit our shores as well, if it has not already done so.  The scale of such will be unprecedented.   It is not business as usual out there. 

As indicated, there is a full-blown economic war going on and each day it is getting more intense as fresh news breaks.

As experts we cannot allow others such as Economists and traders and analysts to play the role of showing the pulse of the situation.  They have their role to play, but

We and our profession need to weigh in on this discussion.  It is not the time for silence, and if change is needed for us to uphold cornerstones of our profession such as Relevance and Timeliness then maybe we should consider how we can do this.

It cannot take years.  For clarity, we need to find a way to use the immense expertise that have being given during our academic and practical training to face the public with relevant and timely information.

Imagine the world that we would live in if we could elevate concerns based on current information instead of just historical information.  We need to take this challenge head on.

In no way am I suggesting that Chartered Accountants do not look at historical information, because there obviously is a place for that, however we need to add a strategic and powerful string to our bow.  A string that will evaluate the current situation such as trade wars etc. and warn of things like cash flow crises and impact on future sales and prices etc.  (Just ask Tesla, which has suffered a massive collapse wiping off more than $600 bn since December.)

I am not just painting a picture where all is lost.  I am also proposing a solution whereby, I can show that within a day, glossy financial statements can be converted from a completely Pdf document to an Excel document.

Then all that needs to be done is to link the Trial Balance to the glossy AFS format and we can then get real time AFS, or management reports in a user-friendly format at the click of a button. 

The link from accounting packages whereby data can be read by Excel can then complete the circle.

It can be done and with IT and accounting experience using an Excel VBA bespoke model I have built it. 

Thus, in this world that we live in where there is talk of going to Mars, self-driving cars, AI silently taking over the world, and tech companies calling the shots, the reason that we do not have real time financial information in an IFRS format cannot be complex accounting systems.

We can and I have shown that it is possible to cut through the clutter.  More information will follow.

If we as a profession do not rise up and face this challenge, then we risk the reality of being usurped as experts in the business world.

The last thing that we want is for the World to say, yes, Chartered Accountants are very good at looking at and expressing an opinion on Historical information only, however we need a new body that will advise us on the reality of the current situation as it unfolds.

The analogy is made that if you go to a heart surgeon because you had a sharp pain in your chest last night 29 March 2025, and are afraid that you are having a heart attack and will be leaving your family behind, you do not want the heart specialist to produce a 100 plus page glossy report showing that you were perfectly fine as at 31 December 2024.  That report will not be relevant or timely.

And yet.  This is what we are doing.

We need to undo it or face extinction as a profession that is not relevant or timely and that is not upholding these principles which are cornerstones of what they said they will do.

This is a promised post from my website called Viverge.co.za

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