So you want to be a CA?

...but what do you know about being a CA?

Well... they earn lots of money, they are generally considered to be professional, people listen to them (um...cos the CA is usually the boss so they have to!),their opinion is generally sought after, they have influence and they sort out stuff...

So...let me share with you another day in the life of this CA...

I started the day at 5am with my alarm going off telling me to go to gym. I was pretty gracious about this matter and went off for my exercise (I've decided to go on Tues, Thurs and once on the weekend).

After some breakfast and a shower I proceeded to work to start knocking off my "To Do" list that was 20 points long...

During the course of the day I:- (CA's like putting things in point form)
1. I explained to the Tax Manager how to do a Finance month end (we have to learn each other's jobs)
2. logged a call to the Photocopier people as ours was jamming.
3. checked someone's leave record to ensure all was as it should be
4. dealt with the internal auditor being upset with the management accountant and vice versa
5. checked some journals that we had to send to the terminals
6. created a journal
7. posted a journal
8. played the "communicator" and linked people up so they could get the info they required
9. sent out a communication to all the terminals
10. approved a change for the IT system
11. requested a change for the IT system
12. corrected data on the IT system
13. got someone in trouble that wasn't doing their job properly
14. reminded people of work that was outstanding
15. dealt with a difficult person who was irrate and not showing respect to staff in our Finance section
16. and then proceeded to escalate where the difficult person had messed up to someone who also cared (don't mess with a CA, they have influence and have no patience with rude people)
17. authorised foreign payments and local payments
18. answered the phone
19. listened to people's problems that visited my desk
20. got my leave form signed for a half day off on the 13th Feb so we can go away for Valentine's weekend :) :) :)
21. answered the assistant's telephone (he is also a CA, so you can imagine the calls)
22. supervised the staff
23. updated my "to do" list that is now 30 items long and re-scheduled "due by" dates for all the tasks I didn't do today...
24. etc etc etc...

okay, okay, I realise you are bored now... but I didn't force you to read this...

So basically, I left work an hour later than our finishing time, exhausted, made supper and now am blogging.

Tomorrow it should be the same sort of thing (ie. the day's tasks are all going to be unique) but no gym. After work, we'll proceed to my parents to say goodbye to them before they go away to visit my brother and sis-in-law and then go to friends for dinner, Thursday there are more activities after work, Friday a prayer-meeting after work, Saturday a lunch time braai about an hours drive away, Sunday is early morning church... and then Monday comes and it is month end at work...

Phew... so you want to be a CA? - Well if you can figure out how to juggle a stressful day at work, exercise, a new marriage, devotional time, sleep, time with two families, time with friends, church and church activities, grocery shopping and all the normal household tasks then please let me know. My life as a CA is certainly not unique, You either keep up, or bail out... The point of being a CA is that you have demonstrated that you can think, and problem solve - therefore you spend the day problem solving - which is exhausting...

In spite of this all, I do in fact love my job. I just wish the "to do" list was 5 long instead of 30 and I had double the energy. I'm learning a stack of stuff everyday and learning to be assertive and deal with difficult people.

So far this year...

I don't exactly do the whole New Year's resolutions, but I try and set goals for myself each month. Last year, halfway through the year I got pretty distracted - getting engaged and married tends to do that! - so I didn't set any goals for most of the year.

January goals this year are :-
1. To cook/bake two new recipes
2. To go to gym 6 times
3. Finish the book I was given for my birthday
4. Set up a Bible reading plan
5. Make cards and buy gifts for family and friends in January
6. Do the same for February

So...
1. I made a tuna bake - it came out well, but we didn't like the taste...
I made a savoury pie - it came out well, but (co-incidently?)Andrew spent the rest of the afternoon in the loo...
I made cookies - man, they were great (maybe Andrew ate too made and that is why he spend the rest of the afternoon in the loo?!)

2. So far, I've been to gym 5 times
3. I've started the book, but I don't think I'll finish it by the end of the month
4. I've made a bit of a weak attempt at doing a Bible Reading Plan, but I've listened to a John Piper sermon in the car when fetching Andrew from work, and I've read some articles on Christian marriage
5. I've made cards and have gifts for the January people
6. I've started on the Feb people...

And what I've come to realise about me is that I have to have something that I consider "productive" to do for the vast majority of they day. Scrapbooking is productive, as you are creating something, playing computer games is a tiny bit productive when playing with your husband, as you are bonding!!!!

Anyway, I think the whole thing of needing to be productive has come from serving articles and needing to account for every 15 minutes of my working life and then going into a very busy, stressful job, where I need to be productive to get through everything...Interesting how circumstances and life can change you...

A day in life of Debbie at work

Yesterday I was off work, sick with a stomach bug. I thought it would have been fairly quiet at work, but instead I was greeted with 41 e-mails on my return, about 35 of which were actionable e-mails. Whilst trying to wade through these e-mails, the 41 e-mails of the current day were also arriving... shew... by the end of the day I was exhausted trying to keep up with everyone's demands. None of these were what I would term "my work". Oh, they were my work in the sense that I had to deal with them as they are my responsibility or the responsibility of my co-workers who are on leave, but they were not the tasks I had planned for the day or the things that I wanted to do that would actually add some value.

The tasks were, amongst others :- creating cash accounts on the system, changing general ledger configuration, assisting someone with preventing segregation of duties issues, unblocking accounts, following up on payments, authorising payments, confirming vendor details, arranging training details, assisting in putting together an advert to advertise a vacant position, giving internal audit their information so they could audit, changing customer details, visiting HR, filling in audit requests for the auditors of our customers, giving trade references, reading information supplied by HR...

And that is what I call "ADMIN".

So, now you know... a CA does not just play around with numbers all day!! If only we did!!!

The tasks that I would have prefered to have done today would be to test some new reports in our Quality Assurance Environment, complete one or two of my Standard Operating Procedures that I was drafting and meet with staff to begin implementing them.

But tomorrow is another day...