What is the most challenging aspect of being an accountant?

As an auditor, I think the most challenging aspect of the job is the work life balance. The hours can be long during certain months of the year. Although not really avoidable during busy season, during non busy season, it is important to ensure you make time for your family and yourself. Whether that is booking a vacation, being home for family dinners or getting to the gym, you need to make time to do it. You will likely last longer in your career if you keep up with that and will be happier in general!

As with a lot of client service roles there are fair bit of demands on your time and some unpredictability in your schedule so will certainly create challenges with respect to managing your time and ensuring your priorities are clearly defined.

As an accountant, I think one of the more challenging aspects of the job is the ability to be accurate and thorough. It is very important for accountants to be accurate and precise because your job is essential to running the business. I can't eloquently describe the challenge of being accurate, but I'm sure you could imagine that after staring at spreadsheets and numbers all day everything starts coming at you sideways. Another thing I find challenging about being an accountant is that there are actually a lot of rules, guidance, or literature that gets put out on how to treat certain transactions from an accounting perspective. It's almost like being a lawyer, especially if you decide to become an public auditor.

I hope this gave you a sense of some challenges of being an accountant. (P.S. if you work in public accounting, you will end up working a lot of hours during busy season.)

Hi Vivian, let me start by saying that every profession has challenging and rewarding aspects. However, working as an accountant brings a lot of responsibility and requires a lot of attention because you have to follow very specific rules and stay up to date on any changes to them. It is a wonderful feeling when you have helped your client meet accounting requirements so they can keep running and growing their business. The most challenging aspect, in my experience at an accounting firm, is using the client data for your work. Sometimes clients may not have enough internal resources but they should give you information to start each project and if the information is not well-organized, you have to work longer and harder to provide the advice to the client. Another challenging aspect are the tight deadlines and time pressure to complete the work.

For me, the most challenging aspect of the profession is the constant updates and being able to stay on top of changes to accounting standards, practices, and incorporating technology into our work to help facilitate better/faster results. There's always going to be better ways to do things, and finding solutions to everyday problems is going to be a constant part of the job. It gets harder to find these solutions, however, as accounting standards change and you need to always be updated on what the correct treatment for a transaction/auditing procedure is, because you cannot find solutions if you aren't prepared and fully knowledgeable of the items you're dealing with.

Hey Adalberto! Great question. As most folks have mentioned, achieving work-life balance, and managing your time efficiently are definitely a challenge when you first start off on the accounting path. However, as a consultant within the accounting profession, I can tell you that managing expectations of your clients, superiors, as well as your peers also require constant effort. You will find that there will be multiple demands of you at any given moment, so prioritizing the more important work first, and letting others know of what they can realistically expect from you given your work load can be challenging at times. The solution to this is frequent and effective communication with your clients/team about where you are with their demand, so that you can proactively manage their expectations. Good luck!

One of the challenging aspects is that the hours may sometimes be long, and if there are unexpected deadlines that need to be met, you may have to adjust your schedule to fit the work in. On the flip side though, there are times during the year where there is not much going on, and it is easy to take vacation and disconnect.

Hi, I believe the most challenging aspect of being an accountant is learning. Accounting has many different aspects to it from tax to auditing to advisory and consulting. There is always something to learn, which can be a great thing. I work for a public accounting firm and I work in a very specific group which deals with regulated investment companies. I work on tax returns and reviewing workpapers. There are so many adjustments and different tax terms that come out of each aspect of my work and I am constantly learning.

The fast pace life of public accounting can be tough when balancing family, friends and your out of work interests.

As a tax professional in a Big 4 firm, I would say some of the most challenging things about being an accountant are:

-Unpredictability of client needs - they keep me on my toes whenever they call to ask for some additional reports.

-Updates to supporting documents received - this can create additional changes to the work performed and typically the deadlines don't change hence creating longer hours towards the end of a project.

-Having to keep up with the new changes to the tax laws in recent years.

Hi Adalberto , I have been working as an accountant for 8 years, specifically in public accounting. What I find most challenging is that you have to keep up with several specific rules for auditing and for accounting. It takes time and a lot of reading for you to make sure you got all the literature you need to solve/address your day-to-day issues. Good luck on your research.

The most challenging aspect is managing my schedule. Work/life balance can be achieve you just need to be proactive in managing your schedule.

 The msot challenging aspect of being an accountant is how time consuming it can be. Managing yor work-life balance can be very diffcult. Depending on the company you work for clients can take up alot of your time. Most companies have programs/ flexible schedules set in balance to help you achieve this balance.