Clients are the best part of my job

Yesterday I posted about an article in BusinessWeek featuring an interesting interview with the head of campus recruiting for KPMG. I talked about their international exchange program. Today I’m going to talk about clients.

From the article:

We also tell them if you’re in audit, we go out to the client. So they’re going to be traveling to clients and they’re going to be working out of the client facility. They have to understand that they will be with clients every day and talking to clients, and they have to like that, vs. in tax, they do most of the work in the office.

This is basically my favourite part of my job. I’d much rather be at a client’s doing an audit (or anything, really) than be at the office. And we’ve got a great office. It’s just that much better at a client’s location.

I have one client that I started last year, whose audit is coming up in October. And the hours are insane, because there’s a tight deadline between year-end and the annual general meeting (AGM). But the employees are so wonderful to work with that I’m really looking forward to the job.

And this client isn’t the exception either. I’ve found in my still somewhat limited work experience that most clients are great to work with. No one seems miserable in their job, and no one seems to hate the auditor either! Maybe they just hide it well!

In what other job do you get to go into a different workplace every week or so, meeting new people and seeing and learning many different types of businesses from the inside out?

Google Analytics is open to all

I’ve been using Google Analytics for a little while now to track my blog’s vital statistics, and it’s a pretty well-rounded package, not that I have anything to compare it to.

But to sign up for it, you had to submit your application and then wait for them to let you in, presumably because they were trying to slow down the rollout and not overload their servers.

Well the floodgates are open now, as it has been announced on the Google Analytics Blog and verified by yours truly, you can sign up immediately for the service and reap the benefits of getting to know your site’s visitors in greater depth.

Go west! Or east, or north, or south!

One of the great things about this accounting profession I’m in is the multitude of opportunities available to travel and work abroad, given that many large firms here in Canada are international.

I was just reading an article in BusinessWeek about KPMG, where the head of campus recruiting was under the impression that their international exchange program was something that sets them apart from about a dozen other international firms.

I’m psyched about heading somewhere else to work for a little while eventually. For the time being I’ll be staying put, after all I don’t have my CA yet.

One of my seminar leaders at the School of Accountancy went to London for a year or so and had a blast. It was funny though, because he was Canadian for some reason they felt he was a perfect fit for their US GAAP clients, even though there are a ton of differences between Canadian GAAP and American standards.

In no particular order, here are where I’m most interested in going, when I get a chance:

  • Shanghai
  • London
  • New York
  • Berlin
  • Tokyo

In what other job you can get right out of university do you get this type of opportunity?

Hosting my neilmcintyre.ca email with Google

A little while back I realized that it might be worthwhile to direct all my blog-related email through an @neilmcintyre.ca address, and leave my regular Gmail for personal correspondence.

I set up neil@neilmcintyre.ca and began using it for blog business. But I’ve never liked using standalone email clients like Thunderbird or Outlook. I prefer web-based email, specifically Gmail.

Luckily, Google had recently busted out yet another new service: Hosted email. For those with domains, Google would host your mail for free once accepted into the beta program.

I applied for the program and only a few days later was provided with the required invite code to sign up. I’m using the Gmail Manager extension in Firefox to keep track of my regular Gmail account and my neil@neilmcintyre.ca account.

Here is what the customized login screen looks like:

email hosted by Google GmailSince the readers of this blog are hip and “with it”, I don’t even need to extol the virtues of Gmail over the traditional mail organization systems found in Outlook et al. Suffice it to say, I’m loving Google’s hosted email service!

Abolish the property tax rant

Not mine, but that of historian John Steele Gordon (via Tax Foundation):

In the 18th century, real property was probably the best measure available of a person’s ability to pay taxes. That’s because it generated income from farming or things like water mills, ship yards and stores. Only the very rich had residences on town lots.

But in today’s suburban world, property is a terrible measure of a family’s ability to pay taxes. Almost all privately-owned property today is income-absorbing. And it’s also grossly unfair.

The result is that the middle class family pays a much higher proportion of its annual income in local taxes than does the zillionaire across town.

Also, property taxes are highly visible as they arrive in the mail at least twice yearly. Visibility alone is a good thing when it comes to tax because it allows those who pay it to be more aware of it, but in this case is outweighed by the fact that we’re also being reminded of how arbitrary the tax can seem most of the time.

Another negative is that property tax is unrelated to behaviour, as it depends most often on macro factors outside the taxpayer’s control.