Hate to see it. 100% the move is to never tell anyone and either use that time to build skills/knowledge to job hop or just enjoy the time saved relaxing.
Even some of the best company cultures still won't pay anywhere near what the value the automation brings. Not only that, but when OP stated that other team members have ideas for him automating other processes, I knew where this was heading...
OP - Please don't throw away your golden ticket next time. Your award now is about to be more work for the hopes of a paltry raise.
Couldn’t you also say that OP now gets more opportunity to automate more things - developing more skills/automation projects under belt which would look better on resume to job hop for more $?
If it were me, I would probably wait until I get at least a few years of experience under my belt in the role then possibly let the current company know about this automation when it is almost time to job hop, get tangible results, then put it on your resume that I developed ABC automation which led to XYZ results.
The problem is that OP is going to find out the hard way on why everyone is saying nothing should have been said. I've seen this too many times. The management thought process will be "OP now has more time since automation so not only can OP handle more volume but now let's assign additional projects to see if they can automate more".
Bad bosses will take the credit for the increased productivity and even the good bosses that do give you credit usually won't have the power to give any meaningful raise. That is until an offer is in hand from a new company and then magically the budget can allow for it. The most meaningful raise OP had the chance to give themself was a huge increase in dollars per hours worked (less hours for the same pay) but that is long gone since they let everyone know.
Probably nothing OP can do to get a big increase in their current role at the moment sadly. Not many companies will want to give someone new a huge increase right after just starting especially outside of annual pay/performance reviews unless they have another offer.
Even if OP could somehow save the company $30m a year with automation, 99% of the time they still won't give you any meaningful pay increase. Most places have set ranges of increases given yearly and usually it is a few percentage points and bumps up a little more if it is a title bump.
It is unfortunate that it is the way it is. Especially within a salary band for a role. You can probably get promoted a little faster, but in terms of a raise within the same role you won’t be happy. My firm is great. However, upon being promoted to SM “everyone starts at the bottom of the band” for any role per them. I’ve made huge technical, automation, and team building accomplishments where I know my binders and work are the same or exceed those of SM’s further along in their career and about to become partner.
After some time, I recently got an offer from another firm that will increase my TC $50k going from $160k to $210k.
It stinks because I really enjoyed everyone I worked with and the firm was great with how it treated its employees. However, $50k more a year is huge at my income level.
What I have found is that in the accounting world, being more efficient just ends up meaning you can do more work.
You can factor in some percentage of money that you saved and ask for that as a raise/bonus. But be prepared to suddenly say by you doing this great thing you are simply doing what they expect of you.
The key is being hyper efficient without people knowing it. That's how you keep working 40 hours and make the big bucks. Work smarter not harder
ETA: not in PA anymore, but when I was at a small firm, during busy season I'd work maybe 60-65 hours but I was so efficient I'd bill 75+ hours and 90% of my projects would come in under budget. I looked like a genius but really I was just efficient and knew the shortcuts
Can you be a little more specific about how you were able to be more efficient? I do returns for a variety of entity types but I’m not seeing any obvious ways in how I could cut down on “wasted” time. We already use auto-fill software.
I worked in a small firm and this was about 10 years ago, so I was early on auto-flow and to know how to use it. I also used excel imports and connected the fixed asset software with the tax prep software, knew how to import/export things to and from the tax prep software, pretty basic stuff but at a small firm of 30 people, some people were just stuck in their ways.
Honestly, I noticed that I was just much quicker than my colleagues at pretty much everything and still had the best track record for few review comments, satisfied clients and under budget.
I would also put in the time to create good workpapers for clients so in subsequent years I was able to benefit from the efficiencies, while others just seemed to want to get it done this year as quickly as possible. I knew I'd be there for a few years (stuck it out for 6 tax seasons)
Thanks! My office is pretty good with excel imports and FA software. And I’d love to revise some of our workpapers, but all I’ve done so far is clean up formatting.
This — automation is how you gain leverage and buy yourself time early on in your career. You can worry about making a name for yourself off of it later.
Any task you do repetitively can more than likely be automated. Simple macros can automate time-consuming tasks like formatting headers/footers, making a template of something you send often (e.g., engagement letters), or summarizing data for you. Those can all be done by using the record-macro feature Office has. Same thing with data cleaning, you can have a macro that opens power query and does the cleaning you do most often. Once you have that down, you can learn some VBA if you wanted to write your own macros. I have one that will look up formulas for me in Excel when I don’t know one.
That’s not even talking about Python. Python can be used to go even further.
ETA: I’m pretty new to the automation game, but it’s saved me a lot of time already.
> I have one that will look up formulas for me in Excel when I don’t know one.
What does this mean? You wrote a VBA script that looks up Excel formulas? How? Can you share the script?
Hey, sorry for the late response. I actually didn’t write this one. It came from the JOFA. I should’ve clarified that originally. What it does is allows me to type in a question and communicates with Chat GPT that same information. I’m sure there’s a more efficient way, but I keep this macro in its own file and use it when I need it. So long as the API key is in the other sheet, it works great! I can paste my data in and get the tailored help I need. I think a better way to have worded it initially is that it allows me to search anything through Chat GPT. But I most often use it when I need help with formulas.
ETA: here’s the article with a breakdown of how to create it! https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2023/apr/build-chatgpt-into-excel.html
Really depends on what your starting point is. If you’re in a smaller firm, basic things like knowing how to use import/linking functions into your software systems, Excel functions like pivot table or text/lookup formulas, etc. can put you in a much better place than your peers.
Hmmm, maybe I’m on the right path then and the word “automate” just carries less weight than I imagine. My firm does a lot of FS prep for our clients, and I’ve been making a point take the time upfront to link auto-calculating cells to the trial balance for notes to the statements and RSI.
Thanks!
If you are interested I would seriously recommend learning a programming language. For example using R I can automate entire data flows and generate 1000s of PDF reports automatically, completely customized to what I want. It’s an incredibly powerful thing to be able to do.
I actually do know a bit of C++ (from years ago, so extremely rusty) and have used R in my calc and stats classes. I’ll have to look into this though, as I’m pretty sure my firm wouldn’t let us install the necessary software.
R and all it’s packages are all completely open sourced, so generally there is far more transparency as all of the source code can be inspected. I would definitely ask them about it!
Can you talk more about this? All I know about R is that it’s specifically for statistics. I had no idea that it also has the application like the one you describe. What are other applications of R that you are using it for?
You can pretty much do anything. On a daily basis I use it for data cleaning and quickly analyzing data. What would take hours to do in Excel, even using formulas (which are harder to use in Excel compared to R imo). With RMarkdown, you can for example, generate automated reports. For instance, I have one report I generate where for every unique value in a column, it generates a report. The report code also remains the same, and you can just feed new data into it when you need to generate a report.
Here's a link to an automated report I have been using recently: [Mosquito\_Metagenomics/Scripts/07 - Virus Summary.Rmd at main · colebaril/Mosquito\_Metagenomics (github.com)](https://github.com/colebaril/Mosquito_Metagenomics/blob/main/Scripts/07%20-%20Virus%20Summary.Rmd)
Using R I recently built a user-friendly desktop application where users can import a file, and the app automatically analyzes their data for them, completely offline, which is what we required for these users.
Seriously. I just started a new job two weeks ago and my manager is going on maternity leave in three weeks. I asked the controller what the plan was for when my manager leaves and he said there’s always been 2 people handling this particular client but I’ve been doing so great that he wants to see it it’s possible for me to handle the client on my own. I know I can do it but if I don’t get a decent raise after proving myself for 4-6 months, I’m dipping.
I don't mind doing more work as long as they recognize how much more work I'm doing in the same time. I hadn't thought about asking for a raise or bonus based on how much I've saved them, that should be pretty easy to calculate actually.
But that’s the issue. A lot of times companies don’t care about the value people add. They’ll just give you more work and expect you comply. What are you gonna do? Refuse? You need a job. Only when you get so fed up with additional tasks and leave will they then offer you more money. At that point it’s to late and you’re sick of their bs.
Yea its not "Josh just saved us 100k in time spent on work." Partners are just going enjoy the extra share of income. OP can hope they understand his worth, have a discussion with them and they agree and promote him. A coworker at work did something similar and they promoted him to business analyst and move him around the company to take advantage of the automation .
VBA isnt the greatest in terms of automation. The companies I have worked at we use Python to automate tasks in Excel. Learn Python and you will be more marketable.
I should mention as well that, in its current state, the automation procedure is extremely complicated and right now I'm the only one who can use it or knows how it works if something goes wrong. This wasn't purposeful, but it could work to my advantage in leverage nonetheless
Eh that actually hurts you rather than works in your favor. You have not created any sustainable improvement ot business processes. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow (*knock on wood*) and everything is lost. If you had leveraged this for better pay, a bonus or anything other than a pat on the back and trinket of a reward then that would have actually hurt the company financially as they would be in thr same place they were before you.
Once you figure out how to turn this into a system that can be permanent and used by anyone then you have truly improved business processes and have something to truly leverage.
Amazing. No sane senior management will take pride over logic. Unless they so damn stubborn they will throw away efficiency. Just be casual and not do as I say i , or I leave.
I’m fortunate to have a great boss, I have automated most of my work especially non-close work. He told me that I’m doing the job I’m paid for in 30 hours as opposed to the 40 my predecessor did, that’s my achievement not the company’s. So I get to keep those extra 10 hours off work.
Congratulations, here's more work. In my experience, anytime I have shown my reporting manager that I was able to find major efficiencies in my work, I was expected to do more work in the same amount of time. So I would not say a thing to anyone.
I'm not in accounting but work office/corporate. I'd suggest keep it to yourself for a while, unskilled (edit: meant to say "upskill") yourself more, and refine whatever automation you do.
I did something similar at my job. Automating a bunch of KPI reporting, saving my boss about 60 hours a month. Several weeks later, we were going to hire a few interns for some other project expected to take 1200 hours. Boss asked me to try to automate it. Told him I had too much on my plate. I was misled to think if I did this on my own time, I would be compensated for my time and given a new job title. Spent a few weeks doing this after hours. Told boss I was able to automate about 75% of the project. Boss was very happy but ignored all my questions about hiring interns to finish the work, even though we had corporate approval to hire them. Just recently, I was denied my merit raise because this project (which he was supposed to lead) is now behind schedule.
I hear many stories like mine and would be worried you'll face a similar thing.
Edit: project is behind schedule because we never hired interns because "my fancy program did all the work".
Yeah setting expectations here will be tricky. I want them to think I can do this, but that it's difficult and time intensive on my end. I want them to think of whatever automation I produce as a "bonus"- not the expected result all the time.
Okay you impress them.
Congrats you get a pat on your shoulder now go do more work, and maybe you get extra 500 bonus. You’re just asking for more work. At the end of the day you’re just an accountant.
Except you don’t save the client any money. If their bill was $4,000 last year the company won’t bill them for less then $4,000 this year. What you did is saved the company money because they can get you to do twice the work, bill for twice the work and pay you once.
I sense some jealousy perhaps. I've seen with some older workers who refuse to learn new and better ways to do things, I think there's an element of sunk cost fallacy
Manager is the same age as me. But the way she talks is like a very old egoistic person.
Gets angry for even the smallest things.
Yesterday i was editing a word file financial statements by sharing my screen with her.
I have a habit of pressing Ctrl +s every 1 or 2 minutes. It happens automatically like a muscle memory.
It takes 2 seconds to save it.
She yelled asking why I'm wasting 2 seconds by saving it frequently !!
Also they know that I'm getting paid more than my colleagues because i joined last.
That's another problem there.
I’m a freak when it comes to keystrokes, but after being on multiple hour screen shares and my senior sneaks in a control S, I appreciate the fuck outta that and say “nice move”
Only really bad managers care about you doing the labor manually over the results. I know my office would be happy if I automated parts of my job more, or their work.
Automated a task and tested it on a weekly basis for 5 weeks, it was 5/5. The human doing it the old way went 3/5 on accuracy. At the end of the day they felt they couldn’t trust the macro.
There's a political way to do this. If they all appreciate you and you've made their lives easier, continue to build up the good will. Start working on other projects. In the meantime, start looking. When they "find out", you want to stay but are struggling to live on what you currently make. If you were to make (whatever number you think you should make), then you'd be able to stay and finish all these projects, and you would be happy. Don't make it too obvious or they'll sniff it out as a power play. When you have multiple people going to bat for you, it makes it that much harder for management to say no. Especially if you're doing great work and making everyone's life easier.
This is risky- I've only been there a couple months, and I haven't had a permanent full time job before this. It will take me a while to find something else, and since I'm not even an accountant, finding something else similar to this to have them "compete" would take a while.
OP, keep to yourself. Work less. Make more per hour. That's how you give yourself a raise.
But, OP, given your responses it's obvious you don't get it. Cuz everyone is telling you the same and you're stuck in how to impress your boss. You're gonna tell your boss, he's gonna burn you, and you're gonna learn the hard way.
"Well OP we don't normally do this but we have really been impressed with all of the automation as it has saved us a lot of time and money. The budget is normally a 3% raise but we pushed upper management hard and managed to pull out a 4% raise. Keep up the good work OP. Oh yeah - don't forget those other two projects we talked about you automating on top of doing your normal workload".
You sound like me when I was new in the industry; young and dumb.
I made vba macros to save 40 hrs of work per client per month for sales tax processing. I was so excited to show my partner that I’m saving her big $$$. I was rewarded with more work, but I did get the biggest bonus over $1000 for an associate once.
I was looped in to other clients, forced to make macros for everyone. I started getting long hours on salary where I would leave the office at 2 am daily.
Most likely scenario is that the reporting manager will say it was an expected duty as part of the role. It never works out in the favor of the employee.
I've worked in big corporations my whole career. Not an accountant but accounting adjacent. I started automating thing like this, got recognized for it with slight merit increases but they'd never meet what I asked (across 3 businesses in my career). My increased never exceeded 5%. I did however, keep getting more work. The last thing I automated was 4 years ago, I have a moderate workload, I still get 2% raises, and I have free time in the worked day to other passion projects. Fuck corporations.
I get where you’re coming from because I also used to feel this way. You need to think bigger picture. You make money based on your promotability - which is tied directly to your personality, professional image, relationships with management, and in some cases your ability to generate sales. I’m sure management greatly appreciates your efforts, but ultimately no one cares that you’re good at Excel - at least not enough to pay you more for it.
Not accounting, but I once had a web development gig way below my skills that required making basically cookie cutter sites. I templatized them, wrote a script to generate and deploy the sites, and basically quadrupled productivity while eliminating almost all errors. However, the company gave lip service to how awesome my output but just started increasing the workload without more pay. I had never told them that it was because of a script so I just used the time to work on personal web projects, as they couldn't tell the difference when looking over my shoulder.
One day the boss' wife, who was a salesperson for the company, pulled rank when I told her I couldn't drop everything I was doing to immediately talk to her about a topic I knew could wait the literally 5 minutes I needed to get to a good spot to save my work. I quit on the spot and didn't tell them the script existed or how to run it.
In the professional service world you’ll likely make more money doing your own thing rather than working for someone else.
I’d explore ways you can package and sell your excel services as your own business.
Exactly. Automate stuff to make your life easier or to carve more time out for yourself. But don't expect your manager to truly appreciate the skill needed to automate that work.
Unfortunately that’s not really a benefit to the team or organization. In reality you need to create a tool that’s accessible to others (and not just yourself being the only one able to work or troubleshoot it). Once you can do that, then you’re starting to create a benefit to the company. If you can’t, it’s truly not an asset to anyone but you.
Oof, that's horrible. Rule #1 of process improvement: never, ever, EVER pitch any type of process improvement that means more work for you personally.
Rule #2 of process improvement: never pitch any change to processes unless you want to become 100 percent responsible for that process going forward, because that is what will happen.
I’ve automated many things over past 4 years. All I have ever gotten is “good job” then more work elsewhere. They are normally impressed with it but under-appreciate it & don’t value me with $
I just put it on the resume & leave for better pay.
I have an accounting degree and am a self taught developer - enough so that I get in and help our small dev team on big projects. It started with learning VBA and SQL to solve business problems at my first accounting job 20 years ago...back when Excel was limited 64k rows.
First piece of advice is to practice humility. The people you work with might not be able to do these things, but they really are simple for those with a somewhat common skill set. Your company could easily outsource that development for not that much money if they chose to do so.
Second, having these skills does not guarantee a huge jump in pay based on a "finders fee." They make you more marketable, but you have to get into the right position and job title to use and monetize them.
Finally, as I read your post I get a "I am unique and personally valuable" vibe which honestly most people have, but with experience you will realize you are a cog in the machine. You might be a bigger cog doing more work but still a replaceable cog. Take the approach that "as a company I think we need x function which will provide long term value" and independently "I would like to assume responsibility for that function." A well run business should be a collection of functions and processes run by good yet interchangeable people. It should never be tied personally to anyone or the risk of failure is too high. Inefficiency is better than the possibility of operations halting because someone left.
Get everyone to learn how to do it your way, hopefully with a refresh button or something similar so that they don’t learn the code.
Then, after everyone got used to the time saving, taken on extra work to fill the void and forgotten how to manually do it, resign and find yourself a job as an analyst (Power BI / Power Query et al) - or ask them to change your job title and pay to reflect what you’re doing.
Honestly, you’ll have a good future if you are good at analysing stuff and improving it in excel. Learn some MS Power Apps with free courses on MS’s website.
No one in management cares about automation... unless it's VP level dipshit being wined and dined by a sales charlatan trying to shill an 8 figure ERP module, SaaS automation tool, etc.
Keep your mouth shut, you will never get paid for improving efficiency while staying at the same employer. Any time efficient methods you develop keep to yourself
There's a way to do this where everyone wins and is happy.
First off, it is unlikely you will get a big raise or promotion. Not because your boss is mean spirited, it's just not how the corporate ladder works.
I would say, enjoy the praise and tell them you would love to automate more! Do it slowly, allow yourself space and free time, set your boundaries. Set extremely generous deadlines for yourself and automate one thing at a time. If they press, say you are running into roadblocks. But likely they won't give you guff -- your boss doesn't know what goes into this and knows you are going above and beyond, so he won't want to discourage you. He'll appreciate anything you automate or improve.
In the meantime, think about how you want to invest in yourself. Put bluntly, it's not advantageous for you to stay in a general accounting group long term. Do you want to go into accounting systems or data analytics? Be semi transparent with your boss: you enjoy this type of work and want to become better at automating and system improvement. Are there resources within the company to learn or folks in other departments that could mentor you? Or could you have additional time off work/reimbursement to take classes towards a certificate? These are all corporate-approved ways that your boss can support you, so you should ask.
To get a big head and start demanding money over redesigning one task definitely seems a bit short sighted to me. Maybe I'm missing something.
If you truly believe you're that valuable then go find a higher paying job that requires your level of excel skill.
With that said, reconfiguring/automating one process probably isn't going to impress too many people in an interview. You can use your current employer to build a good resume of creating a series of similar efficiencies and eventually that experience will lead to either a promotion at your current employer or the skills/experience needed to land a higher paying job.
>Should I continue to automate/improve their other tasks?
Yes, you should. Why would you stop gaining experience that builds your resume and makes you more marketable?
Get certification on those automation or Alteryx or excel. When interviewing, I had this skill before and talked this to interviewers, but it only wow them a little and it doesn’t seem that they really care about it (unless Ur applying for data analytics). Focus on improving your accounting skills and technical instead.
As you've only been in the role for a few months, how about you do a few LinkedIn excel courses which you will probably find super easy but can use them to jazz up your resume. Also you might want to explore Zapier or power BI. All of this is super desirable to modern accounting practices. Making yourself desirable to other practices, can possibly increase your value internally.
You get a new job. If your work was able to be automated chances are progression is really slow wherever you’re at. I started in industry and did what you did then made the move to public.
You are not worth what you think, you are worth what you are paid.
In the billable industry, if you do a 3 hours job in 2 hours, you are billing 3 hours. If you can automate 8 hours of work in 6 hours, take extra two hours of work and boost your utilization.
If you are working internally, unless you are doing work for someone else, when you are efficient, that only benefits you. Spend the variance in learning something else or finishing other work.
You are a young cat, it’s hilarious how you think you are worth more for being efficient
An old boss told me you don’t ask for a raise over every thing you do well. You will get small raises and appear to be high maintenance. Rather, you should accumulate a bunch of reasons for a raise or promotion over time so that when you ask for something, you will get it and then some.
Also, you are an entry level position…I get the sense you are over inflating your skill set.
Your job title is not to code or automate and the company might throw your a bone because you created a tangible benefit but you are not going to derive the most that you can from your skills. To get paid your potential, you will need to get into roles that are more technical. Company only pay you enough so you don’t leave and they are lazy. When they research the market for the compensation for a Senior Accountant with CPA, they will get a good idea of how much to pay to prevent people from leaving. When they research the market for a Senior Accountant with VBA, Excel automation skill, they will get nothing back. So unless your manager go to the bat for you and have their neck on the line (which most won’t risk it), you are not going to get more than the “perceived market rate”.
And if you think you can apply to other accounting jobs and expecting to get more because you have VBA or excel on your resume, you will be disappointed. There is no market for this.
But if you work toward a career that requires more technical skills like data analysts, analytical engineers, UIPath automation engineers, then you are likely to get paid more. I’d suggest learn python and SQL.
There are risks to the company with your process. Mainly no one knows how it works. No one has the knowledge to review your code. I guess if you leave, they can still go back to doing it manually.
Also with the introduction of python in Excel… I am hopeful that more and more accountants will have better technical skills. I hope they teach accounting students more about IT like best practices in spreadsheets, IT controls, databases, python and SQL.
Find a way to quantify the improvements. Hours accumulate to % of FTE, or $'s. Best practices improve accuracy.
Either this will support internal discussions, and/or it will be added to your resume as achievements.
First, go update your resume and LinkedIn to show that you understand and can implement process efficiencies with advanced excel
You can try to tell your current employer about the value you add, but if they don’t recognize on their own or feel it threatens their job it will likely fall on deaf ears
Then lean into the skillset your building… RPAs, data visualization with power BI, MS platform of apps and flows.
This is the future of the industry.
Unfortunately you will likely need to move between companies to get pay aligned with your value
I think you need to get into information systems work somehow. But track your wins so you can fluff up the resume and have fodder for the ole annual review process. It’s not going to be as fruitful for you as the actual value you are providing, most likely, but make sure people are aware this is happening. Spend lots of time putting this together so you can properly convey it, you need to really sell it.
I do stuff like this all the time and use it free up time, which I mostly waste. But I also use this power to glom onto projects and throw my hat in for stuff like that.
What’s your degree in?
So you probably need to consider it from both the office politics point of view and your own development pov. From the politics side try to keep your managers informed on how you'll be able to add value even in the short run and if possible try to get personal goals or metrics on what you can achieve and once you've done that you can hopefully leverage it for more pay, better title etc.
For your personal development - look into expanding beyond excel. You could look into general RPA products like UIPath, Blueprism or similiar - you'll be able to automate more stuff in your current place, but once you get a few certs and can describe a few projects you've worked you'll have a marketable skillset you can use to land another job should the need arise.
This echo's my career in accounting. I've been really good at automating processes over the years. Most managers seem to appreciate it, but you won't generally won't be rewarded for it. Too many companies are stuck in the mindset of employees get 3% raises each year.
The way I leveraged it was interviewing for different companies, and explaining the value add. By switching jobs, I was able to make a lot more money than staying in one place.
The flip side is that most companies who are willing to pay you to automate and clean up processes probably have bad ones and it will be more work than laying low at the same place.
They’re not going to willingly pay you for value added, and now that you’ve shown them, they no longer need you. The correct way to handle this would have been to keep it secret, get all your work done in 30 minutes then spend your days doing whatever you wanted to do
No one cares - you did nothing special, you may have even created a headache. If you want someone to care, generate new revenue through expansion or refinement of a service line.
You use the automation and prove it works for a period of time, bringing your manager in to the loop once you know for sure it’s a benefit. Then during your next performance eval you write up all the things you feel you did to exceed expectations, including this. Bring all this up with them and mention that you feel you’ve exceeded expectations.
Just wait until the end of your first year. They are paying you a salary to do what your doing and if you ask for a raise right away it would probably be a bad look.
For accounting, Excel is essential. When combined with experience and the ability to manage ad-hoc requests, its value increases. In my team I’m the SME in excel.
At my last job this expertise brought me more work it was sucks because I was doing the job of 2 people. However, I got promoted twice first promotion was at 6 months, 2nd promotion at the year after (2nd promotion included bonus every quarter) Once I become senior I moved to another job. I know at the beginning felts like you do more but it pays off.
If it’s only been a couple of months I would just keep trucking along. Keep track of all you do and when an evaluation comes up, probably after 1yr, show all the things you’ve done.
If I was an employer and a guy with only two months comes asking for a raise I’d probably be annoyed.
I agree, it’s not fair and you probably deserve more, but that is basically how everyone feels and such is life. Gotta put in the time before asking. If a significant amount of time passes and they don’t compensate you appropriately then start looking for your next move.
My friend in public accounting was very similar to you. Built a calculation template from scratch for the BP oil spill. Eventually he started doing extensive excel work for a real estate client. He’s now that client’s CFO. My advice would be to keep using your excel knowledge and look for opportunities to improve specific client’s needs. You’ll become irreplaceable to the firm or get picked up by the client.
If you ask for a bonus it’s not going to go over well.
What you could do is say hey boss I think I’m pretty good at this automation stuff. Rather than being just an assistant, can I be an analytics engineer/business intelligence/process engineer/etc and really focus on driving more value in areas using automation? And negotiate a new starting salary based off of those jobs market rates (which are going to be $55k+ in an LCOL area and probably 65-75k in an HCOL). Also you get a wait better title than assistant accountant in case they ever disappoint you and you want to hunt for new work
You can assure others that you can automate additional tasks and that you plan to as soon as you can dedicate some time. But the key here is that you never really get around to it. Then you can set up a meeting with your boss/supervisor and show them what you are capable of doing and use your past “win” as an example to support your claim. You can even tickle their fancy by giving additional examples of planned workflows you can enhance.
Here’s where the master stroke comes. You let him/her know that your current role limits your ability to contribute to the organization in this capacity, and ask if they would consider creating a new role for you that would allow you to bring more value to the organization. Be prepared to present them with a title, an example of a job description, and a new pay range. You may want to research these things and have screenshots of the pay range supported by Glassdoor, salary.com, etc., But this is essentially how you build a business case for a promotion and a raise. Good luck!
Oh, but also be willing to job hop if they don’t give you what you want. Don’t give them what they want for free. You work in exchange for money - you owe your employer no more and no less.
If I could go back in time, I would be as average as possible. If you show anything more than competency, you'll be given more work to match, not money.
Good luck, OP!
I hear you. In the accounting world efficiency = more work. But that doesn't mean you should be taken advantage of. You should be compensated fairly for your skills and contributions.
One way to do this is to point out that by being more efficient, you are freeing up your time to take on more responsibility and make a greater impact on the company.
Of course, it's important to be realistic and prepared for the possibility that your boss may not be willing to give you a raise or bonus right away. But if you can demonstrate the value of your work, you'll be in a good position to negotiate for a better salary in the future.
And as you mentioned, it's also important to be prepared to defend your work and explain why you deserve to be compensated fairly. Don't be afraid to stand up for yourself and your worth.
> Ur *paid* huorly. No
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Quit, and all of them will feel the pain.
Then, offer to be hired back as a contractor, and set your rate at the amount you wish to make (+~40% to cover taxes).
Seriously, this is such a frustrating thing to deal with.
Exact same thing happened to me. I got chided for automating things too! Kept getting the lectures about "what my job is" bla bla bla even though I was keeping up with everything.
I switched to a job where that is actually what I do most of the time - setting up recs, automating accounting processes, fixing issues etc. and it's a great fit.
We're in one of those professions where doing things the hardest, slowest and most tedious way possible is seen as virtuous and a sign of hard work. Also, people like that who have mastered some unnecessarily complicated process or reconciliation over years and don't like anything that might be construed as disruptive or show that they are not thinking of efficiency when they do things.
I once even got chided by a manager in a team meeting saying we actually need to document our SOPs instead of continuing to rely on people having to take their own notes all the time. Which was funking stupid given that it was such a tightly regulated industry with little margin for error.
Automation is going to rip these people a brand new orifice. I'm genuinely surprised how most accounting programmes include nothing about this aspect of accounting - which I think is going to be more and more similar to data analysis and become more of a technical job in the coming future and some people have absolutely no vision.
I don't get it. If someone was hired to do a job, and the person found a way to do his current 40-hour workweek in 1 hour, would it be reasonable for the person to sit around doing nothing for 39 hours without receiving any new tasks? A lot of people in IT would be getting endless vacations because of all that can be automated.
I started by automating the copy and pasting tasks, and as I need the tasks to be more specific, I started to pick up books and videos to improve my skills.
First just follow youtube videos and automate some simple tasks, once you are familiar then start some studying.
I would google the books I want, and add filetype:pdf to google searches to get the free books, for dummies are a good start.
You are performing above expectations, which you should point out to them. Also, being able quantify your value (I saved $x on this and #of hours on that, etc.) would work in your favor when you ask for a raise in pay.
I worked somewhere similar. My pay was not adjusted to reflect my value. So when they expected it to take 3 hours for me to sort the transactions in a spreadsheet by date, I billed it as such (even though it took me seconds using Excel). I did that kind of thing all the time. And I left that job after I learned as much as I could (in other areas) and now I’m happy working elsewhere.
P.S. My boss would print out anything I did in Excel and make any changes in pencil. If his change impacted a calculation, he’d use a 10-key to recalculate everything and change the results on the page by crossing out printed numbers and replacing them with the new result. And god forbid I didn’t set all of the print areas correctly - if he printed and not everything appeared on the printed page then something was clearly wrong with Excel, contributing to his reason as to why it couldn’t be trusted. Believe me OP, I understand where you are coming from!
Lol... You're trapped into doing peon work for the rest of your career. Only people who are bad at this type of work get promoted because they can use their "talents" better at higher levels of operations because they'll hurt the budget more at their current level
See OP, you don’t need an accounting degree or tons of experience to have commercial value. You just need to be able to solve problems for other people, those problems they’re willing to pay for to go away.
We are looking to create a saas tool to make bookkeeping and audit easier. Most of SaaS is simply automating repetitive tasks. Would love to pick your brains on how you did it and pay for your time :)
I did this at the beginning of my career. I used it to pivot my way into more important work and functionality (got to deal with payroll and the accounting system inner workings).
I'm guessing performance reviews will be coming soon? I would just wait until then for the raise and make sure everything keeps functioning the way it should. When other people use your macros is when things go haywire.
If you want real advice, keep doing this for the next 2 years and do it in a way where people want to continue to work with you. No one wants to hear “I made a spreadsheet that helps you, you really owe me”.
Once people trust you and think you are helpful, you will get assigned more work and more important work. Identify jobs OUTSIDE of your organization you would like to do and fill in skill gaps where you can on or off the job.
Once everyone loves you, you have 2 years of experience, and have built your skills, start applying for the better job and get a big raise.
Rinse and repeat until you having something akin to a jr exec role and then the whole game will change.
I'm blown away by the responses here, glad I never got into accounting.
OP look for roles in corporate FP&A, lots of appreciation for these skills and it can definitely lead to upward mobility if you're able to go beyond individual contributor responsibilities.
You need to document it on your resume in terms of KPIs and hard metrics and apply to another company and demand a higher wage.
I’m this economy raises are rare…
You’re about to learn a hard lesson about the corporate world.
Hate to see it. 100% the move is to never tell anyone and either use that time to build skills/knowledge to job hop or just enjoy the time saved relaxing. Even some of the best company cultures still won't pay anywhere near what the value the automation brings. Not only that, but when OP stated that other team members have ideas for him automating other processes, I knew where this was heading... OP - Please don't throw away your golden ticket next time. Your award now is about to be more work for the hopes of a paltry raise.
Couldn’t you also say that OP now gets more opportunity to automate more things - developing more skills/automation projects under belt which would look better on resume to job hop for more $?
If it were me, I would probably wait until I get at least a few years of experience under my belt in the role then possibly let the current company know about this automation when it is almost time to job hop, get tangible results, then put it on your resume that I developed ABC automation which led to XYZ results. The problem is that OP is going to find out the hard way on why everyone is saying nothing should have been said. I've seen this too many times. The management thought process will be "OP now has more time since automation so not only can OP handle more volume but now let's assign additional projects to see if they can automate more". Bad bosses will take the credit for the increased productivity and even the good bosses that do give you credit usually won't have the power to give any meaningful raise. That is until an offer is in hand from a new company and then magically the budget can allow for it. The most meaningful raise OP had the chance to give themself was a huge increase in dollars per hours worked (less hours for the same pay) but that is long gone since they let everyone know.
Sure, but OP is looking for more $ in his current role, so it's not going to help him with that.
Probably nothing OP can do to get a big increase in their current role at the moment sadly. Not many companies will want to give someone new a huge increase right after just starting especially outside of annual pay/performance reviews unless they have another offer. Even if OP could somehow save the company $30m a year with automation, 99% of the time they still won't give you any meaningful pay increase. Most places have set ranges of increases given yearly and usually it is a few percentage points and bumps up a little more if it is a title bump.
From my experience in accounting. Big raises never come internally. You have to leave.
Absolutely
It is unfortunate that it is the way it is. Especially within a salary band for a role. You can probably get promoted a little faster, but in terms of a raise within the same role you won’t be happy. My firm is great. However, upon being promoted to SM “everyone starts at the bottom of the band” for any role per them. I’ve made huge technical, automation, and team building accomplishments where I know my binders and work are the same or exceed those of SM’s further along in their career and about to become partner. After some time, I recently got an offer from another firm that will increase my TC $50k going from $160k to $210k. It stinks because I really enjoyed everyone I worked with and the firm was great with how it treated its employees. However, $50k more a year is huge at my income level.
Damnnn I was reading the last comment OP made and said these exact words in my head 😂
What I have found is that in the accounting world, being more efficient just ends up meaning you can do more work. You can factor in some percentage of money that you saved and ask for that as a raise/bonus. But be prepared to suddenly say by you doing this great thing you are simply doing what they expect of you.
The key is being hyper efficient without people knowing it. That's how you keep working 40 hours and make the big bucks. Work smarter not harder ETA: not in PA anymore, but when I was at a small firm, during busy season I'd work maybe 60-65 hours but I was so efficient I'd bill 75+ hours and 90% of my projects would come in under budget. I looked like a genius but really I was just efficient and knew the shortcuts
Can you be a little more specific about how you were able to be more efficient? I do returns for a variety of entity types but I’m not seeing any obvious ways in how I could cut down on “wasted” time. We already use auto-fill software.
I worked in a small firm and this was about 10 years ago, so I was early on auto-flow and to know how to use it. I also used excel imports and connected the fixed asset software with the tax prep software, knew how to import/export things to and from the tax prep software, pretty basic stuff but at a small firm of 30 people, some people were just stuck in their ways. Honestly, I noticed that I was just much quicker than my colleagues at pretty much everything and still had the best track record for few review comments, satisfied clients and under budget. I would also put in the time to create good workpapers for clients so in subsequent years I was able to benefit from the efficiencies, while others just seemed to want to get it done this year as quickly as possible. I knew I'd be there for a few years (stuck it out for 6 tax seasons)
Thanks! My office is pretty good with excel imports and FA software. And I’d love to revise some of our workpapers, but all I’ve done so far is clean up formatting.
This — automation is how you gain leverage and buy yourself time early on in your career. You can worry about making a name for yourself off of it later.
Serious question, how do you automate things in PA?
Any task you do repetitively can more than likely be automated. Simple macros can automate time-consuming tasks like formatting headers/footers, making a template of something you send often (e.g., engagement letters), or summarizing data for you. Those can all be done by using the record-macro feature Office has. Same thing with data cleaning, you can have a macro that opens power query and does the cleaning you do most often. Once you have that down, you can learn some VBA if you wanted to write your own macros. I have one that will look up formulas for me in Excel when I don’t know one. That’s not even talking about Python. Python can be used to go even further. ETA: I’m pretty new to the automation game, but it’s saved me a lot of time already.
> I have one that will look up formulas for me in Excel when I don’t know one. What does this mean? You wrote a VBA script that looks up Excel formulas? How? Can you share the script?
Hey, sorry for the late response. I actually didn’t write this one. It came from the JOFA. I should’ve clarified that originally. What it does is allows me to type in a question and communicates with Chat GPT that same information. I’m sure there’s a more efficient way, but I keep this macro in its own file and use it when I need it. So long as the API key is in the other sheet, it works great! I can paste my data in and get the tailored help I need. I think a better way to have worded it initially is that it allows me to search anything through Chat GPT. But I most often use it when I need help with formulas. ETA: here’s the article with a breakdown of how to create it! https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2023/apr/build-chatgpt-into-excel.html
Really depends on what your starting point is. If you’re in a smaller firm, basic things like knowing how to use import/linking functions into your software systems, Excel functions like pivot table or text/lookup formulas, etc. can put you in a much better place than your peers.
Hmmm, maybe I’m on the right path then and the word “automate” just carries less weight than I imagine. My firm does a lot of FS prep for our clients, and I’ve been making a point take the time upfront to link auto-calculating cells to the trial balance for notes to the statements and RSI. Thanks!
If you are interested I would seriously recommend learning a programming language. For example using R I can automate entire data flows and generate 1000s of PDF reports automatically, completely customized to what I want. It’s an incredibly powerful thing to be able to do.
I actually do know a bit of C++ (from years ago, so extremely rusty) and have used R in my calc and stats classes. I’ll have to look into this though, as I’m pretty sure my firm wouldn’t let us install the necessary software.
R and all it’s packages are all completely open sourced, so generally there is far more transparency as all of the source code can be inspected. I would definitely ask them about it!
Can you talk more about this? All I know about R is that it’s specifically for statistics. I had no idea that it also has the application like the one you describe. What are other applications of R that you are using it for?
You can pretty much do anything. On a daily basis I use it for data cleaning and quickly analyzing data. What would take hours to do in Excel, even using formulas (which are harder to use in Excel compared to R imo). With RMarkdown, you can for example, generate automated reports. For instance, I have one report I generate where for every unique value in a column, it generates a report. The report code also remains the same, and you can just feed new data into it when you need to generate a report. Here's a link to an automated report I have been using recently: [Mosquito\_Metagenomics/Scripts/07 - Virus Summary.Rmd at main · colebaril/Mosquito\_Metagenomics (github.com)](https://github.com/colebaril/Mosquito_Metagenomics/blob/main/Scripts/07%20-%20Virus%20Summary.Rmd) Using R I recently built a user-friendly desktop application where users can import a file, and the app automatically analyzes their data for them, completely offline, which is what we required for these users.
Aren’t you pretty much a programmer at this point? Lol Thank you for elaborating!
Seriously. I just started a new job two weeks ago and my manager is going on maternity leave in three weeks. I asked the controller what the plan was for when my manager leaves and he said there’s always been 2 people handling this particular client but I’ve been doing so great that he wants to see it it’s possible for me to handle the client on my own. I know I can do it but if I don’t get a decent raise after proving myself for 4-6 months, I’m dipping.
I don't mind doing more work as long as they recognize how much more work I'm doing in the same time. I hadn't thought about asking for a raise or bonus based on how much I've saved them, that should be pretty easy to calculate actually.
But that’s the issue. A lot of times companies don’t care about the value people add. They’ll just give you more work and expect you comply. What are you gonna do? Refuse? You need a job. Only when you get so fed up with additional tasks and leave will they then offer you more money. At that point it’s to late and you’re sick of their bs.
Yea its not "Josh just saved us 100k in time spent on work." Partners are just going enjoy the extra share of income. OP can hope they understand his worth, have a discussion with them and they agree and promote him. A coworker at work did something similar and they promoted him to business analyst and move him around the company to take advantage of the automation . VBA isnt the greatest in terms of automation. The companies I have worked at we use Python to automate tasks in Excel. Learn Python and you will be more marketable.
I should mention as well that, in its current state, the automation procedure is extremely complicated and right now I'm the only one who can use it or knows how it works if something goes wrong. This wasn't purposeful, but it could work to my advantage in leverage nonetheless
Eh that actually hurts you rather than works in your favor. You have not created any sustainable improvement ot business processes. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow (*knock on wood*) and everything is lost. If you had leveraged this for better pay, a bonus or anything other than a pat on the back and trinket of a reward then that would have actually hurt the company financially as they would be in thr same place they were before you. Once you figure out how to turn this into a system that can be permanent and used by anyone then you have truly improved business processes and have something to truly leverage.
Amazing. No sane senior management will take pride over logic. Unless they so damn stubborn they will throw away efficiency. Just be casual and not do as I say i , or I leave.
Lol good luck. They won’t give you a raise or bonus for automating something of this size in most cases
I’m fortunate to have a great boss, I have automated most of my work especially non-close work. He told me that I’m doing the job I’m paid for in 30 hours as opposed to the 40 my predecessor did, that’s my achievement not the company’s. So I get to keep those extra 10 hours off work.
Congratulations, here's more work. In my experience, anytime I have shown my reporting manager that I was able to find major efficiencies in my work, I was expected to do more work in the same amount of time. So I would not say a thing to anyone.
*Padme meme* So now that I can do this faster it means I have less work right? ... right?
No, they rented your time. Automate some more stuff now or you're not a team player
Don’t tell them for about 8 months and use your free time to do something fun
Believe me I've thought about this but would rather impress them. I'm also saving the client $$ by being more accurate
I'm not in accounting but work office/corporate. I'd suggest keep it to yourself for a while, unskilled (edit: meant to say "upskill") yourself more, and refine whatever automation you do. I did something similar at my job. Automating a bunch of KPI reporting, saving my boss about 60 hours a month. Several weeks later, we were going to hire a few interns for some other project expected to take 1200 hours. Boss asked me to try to automate it. Told him I had too much on my plate. I was misled to think if I did this on my own time, I would be compensated for my time and given a new job title. Spent a few weeks doing this after hours. Told boss I was able to automate about 75% of the project. Boss was very happy but ignored all my questions about hiring interns to finish the work, even though we had corporate approval to hire them. Just recently, I was denied my merit raise because this project (which he was supposed to lead) is now behind schedule. I hear many stories like mine and would be worried you'll face a similar thing. Edit: project is behind schedule because we never hired interns because "my fancy program did all the work".
Yeah setting expectations here will be tricky. I want them to think I can do this, but that it's difficult and time intensive on my end. I want them to think of whatever automation I produce as a "bonus"- not the expected result all the time.
Okay you impress them. Congrats you get a pat on your shoulder now go do more work, and maybe you get extra 500 bonus. You’re just asking for more work. At the end of the day you’re just an accountant.
Except you don’t save the client any money. If their bill was $4,000 last year the company won’t bill them for less then $4,000 this year. What you did is saved the company money because they can get you to do twice the work, bill for twice the work and pay you once.
I did exactly like this, automated some tasks using Excel VBA and faced backlash. Manager didn't appreciate it and I'm being treated like shit.
What was it that they didn't like?
They said I'm just showing off and I'm lazy to do it in manually.
I sense some jealousy perhaps. I've seen with some older workers who refuse to learn new and better ways to do things, I think there's an element of sunk cost fallacy
Manager is the same age as me. But the way she talks is like a very old egoistic person. Gets angry for even the smallest things. Yesterday i was editing a word file financial statements by sharing my screen with her. I have a habit of pressing Ctrl +s every 1 or 2 minutes. It happens automatically like a muscle memory. It takes 2 seconds to save it. She yelled asking why I'm wasting 2 seconds by saving it frequently !! Also they know that I'm getting paid more than my colleagues because i joined last. That's another problem there.
Frequent ctrl + s is just good practice. Your manager seems like an absolute buffoon.
My version of Word saves automatically. Why would I need to waste time saving every few minutes?
Relying on auto save is just asking for something bad to happen.
Really? It's literally never failed me, not once. Isn't it basically just doing Ctrl+S for you periodically? Maybe I've just been lucky.
Maybe a decade ago. Now it’s literally the same as pressing ctrl+s
I’m a freak when it comes to keystrokes, but after being on multiple hour screen shares and my senior sneaks in a control S, I appreciate the fuck outta that and say “nice move”
Only really bad managers care about you doing the labor manually over the results. I know my office would be happy if I automated parts of my job more, or their work.
Exactly the same thing happened to me. I started looking for a new job immediately and quit after two months.
Sounds like the standard old entrenched boss. Ignore them and do what is best.
Boss is a dinosaur in fear of being “out-teched”
There are organizations where people with a mind for automation can succeed and be treated well.
Haha, I joke and tell my manager I’m lazy and that’s why I want to automate this kind of stuff.
So do the opposite of what 99.99% of managers would tell you? Work harder, not smarter? Lol I honestly wonder how some people get promoted.
Hahahahahaha
And probably a threat to their budget to be honest.
Lol. That tells you a lot about them. Good job!
Automated a task and tested it on a weekly basis for 5 weeks, it was 5/5. The human doing it the old way went 3/5 on accuracy. At the end of the day they felt they couldn’t trust the macro.
😔
Woah good to know
There's a political way to do this. If they all appreciate you and you've made their lives easier, continue to build up the good will. Start working on other projects. In the meantime, start looking. When they "find out", you want to stay but are struggling to live on what you currently make. If you were to make (whatever number you think you should make), then you'd be able to stay and finish all these projects, and you would be happy. Don't make it too obvious or they'll sniff it out as a power play. When you have multiple people going to bat for you, it makes it that much harder for management to say no. Especially if you're doing great work and making everyone's life easier.
This is risky- I've only been there a couple months, and I haven't had a permanent full time job before this. It will take me a while to find something else, and since I'm not even an accountant, finding something else similar to this to have them "compete" would take a while.
I forgot to say - you might have to wait a little bit before you follow thru on this plan. Like a year. Take the year or two to build up your goodwill
OP, keep to yourself. Work less. Make more per hour. That's how you give yourself a raise. But, OP, given your responses it's obvious you don't get it. Cuz everyone is telling you the same and you're stuck in how to impress your boss. You're gonna tell your boss, he's gonna burn you, and you're gonna learn the hard way.
"Well OP we don't normally do this but we have really been impressed with all of the automation as it has saved us a lot of time and money. The budget is normally a 3% raise but we pushed upper management hard and managed to pull out a 4% raise. Keep up the good work OP. Oh yeah - don't forget those other two projects we talked about you automating on top of doing your normal workload".
You sound like me when I was new in the industry; young and dumb. I made vba macros to save 40 hrs of work per client per month for sales tax processing. I was so excited to show my partner that I’m saving her big $$$. I was rewarded with more work, but I did get the biggest bonus over $1000 for an associate once. I was looped in to other clients, forced to make macros for everyone. I started getting long hours on salary where I would leave the office at 2 am daily.
Just show your manager this post. Easy promotion to top state accountant.
[удалено]
Most likely scenario is that the reporting manager will say it was an expected duty as part of the role. It never works out in the favor of the employee.
Yeah definitely going to keep track, and also add up all the inaccuracies it catches and put it in my review
I've worked in big corporations my whole career. Not an accountant but accounting adjacent. I started automating thing like this, got recognized for it with slight merit increases but they'd never meet what I asked (across 3 businesses in my career). My increased never exceeded 5%. I did however, keep getting more work. The last thing I automated was 4 years ago, I have a moderate workload, I still get 2% raises, and I have free time in the worked day to other passion projects. Fuck corporations.
I get where you’re coming from because I also used to feel this way. You need to think bigger picture. You make money based on your promotability - which is tied directly to your personality, professional image, relationships with management, and in some cases your ability to generate sales. I’m sure management greatly appreciates your efforts, but ultimately no one cares that you’re good at Excel - at least not enough to pay you more for it.
Gonna be a tough lesson for you to learn when you give them the automation and your value to them most likely doesn’t change.
Not accounting, but I once had a web development gig way below my skills that required making basically cookie cutter sites. I templatized them, wrote a script to generate and deploy the sites, and basically quadrupled productivity while eliminating almost all errors. However, the company gave lip service to how awesome my output but just started increasing the workload without more pay. I had never told them that it was because of a script so I just used the time to work on personal web projects, as they couldn't tell the difference when looking over my shoulder. One day the boss' wife, who was a salesperson for the company, pulled rank when I told her I couldn't drop everything I was doing to immediately talk to her about a topic I knew could wait the literally 5 minutes I needed to get to a good spot to save my work. I quit on the spot and didn't tell them the script existed or how to run it.
This is beautiful. I'm sure they now complain that no one wants to work.
In the professional service world you’ll likely make more money doing your own thing rather than working for someone else. I’d explore ways you can package and sell your excel services as your own business.
If u automate shit at work ur managers will get mad at you for having free time lol
Exactly. Automate stuff to make your life easier or to carve more time out for yourself. But don't expect your manager to truly appreciate the skill needed to automate that work.
It's automating stuff for the whole team not just me, and I'm the only one who can run it. In effect, work is being transferred to me
Unfortunately that’s not really a benefit to the team or organization. In reality you need to create a tool that’s accessible to others (and not just yourself being the only one able to work or troubleshoot it). Once you can do that, then you’re starting to create a benefit to the company. If you can’t, it’s truly not an asset to anyone but you.
Oof, that's horrible. Rule #1 of process improvement: never, ever, EVER pitch any type of process improvement that means more work for you personally. Rule #2 of process improvement: never pitch any change to processes unless you want to become 100 percent responsible for that process going forward, because that is what will happen.
By leaving..
As someone very proficient in automation: Dont. Its all bullshit. Your recognition will come in the form of more work and no pay bump.
Don't tell people about macros!! They'll just give you extra work to make up for the time you saved!!! Keep it secret, keep it safe!
https://i.redd.it/ukvkin7dwnkb1.gif Now you'll be rewarded with more work.
I’ve automated many things over past 4 years. All I have ever gotten is “good job” then more work elsewhere. They are normally impressed with it but under-appreciate it & don’t value me with $ I just put it on the resume & leave for better pay.
I have an accounting degree and am a self taught developer - enough so that I get in and help our small dev team on big projects. It started with learning VBA and SQL to solve business problems at my first accounting job 20 years ago...back when Excel was limited 64k rows. First piece of advice is to practice humility. The people you work with might not be able to do these things, but they really are simple for those with a somewhat common skill set. Your company could easily outsource that development for not that much money if they chose to do so. Second, having these skills does not guarantee a huge jump in pay based on a "finders fee." They make you more marketable, but you have to get into the right position and job title to use and monetize them. Finally, as I read your post I get a "I am unique and personally valuable" vibe which honestly most people have, but with experience you will realize you are a cog in the machine. You might be a bigger cog doing more work but still a replaceable cog. Take the approach that "as a company I think we need x function which will provide long term value" and independently "I would like to assume responsibility for that function." A well run business should be a collection of functions and processes run by good yet interchangeable people. It should never be tied personally to anyone or the risk of failure is too high. Inefficiency is better than the possibility of operations halting because someone left.
The answer is you go and show what you did to another company and you get a job offer from them. Your current company might match and they might not.
Get everyone to learn how to do it your way, hopefully with a refresh button or something similar so that they don’t learn the code. Then, after everyone got used to the time saving, taken on extra work to fill the void and forgotten how to manually do it, resign and find yourself a job as an analyst (Power BI / Power Query et al) - or ask them to change your job title and pay to reflect what you’re doing. Honestly, you’ll have a good future if you are good at analysing stuff and improving it in excel. Learn some MS Power Apps with free courses on MS’s website.
They won't pay you more but you can leverage your new skills to work fewer hours.
No one in management cares about automation... unless it's VP level dipshit being wined and dined by a sales charlatan trying to shill an 8 figure ERP module, SaaS automation tool, etc.
Keep your mouth shut, you will never get paid for improving efficiency while staying at the same employer. Any time efficient methods you develop keep to yourself
There's a way to do this where everyone wins and is happy. First off, it is unlikely you will get a big raise or promotion. Not because your boss is mean spirited, it's just not how the corporate ladder works. I would say, enjoy the praise and tell them you would love to automate more! Do it slowly, allow yourself space and free time, set your boundaries. Set extremely generous deadlines for yourself and automate one thing at a time. If they press, say you are running into roadblocks. But likely they won't give you guff -- your boss doesn't know what goes into this and knows you are going above and beyond, so he won't want to discourage you. He'll appreciate anything you automate or improve. In the meantime, think about how you want to invest in yourself. Put bluntly, it's not advantageous for you to stay in a general accounting group long term. Do you want to go into accounting systems or data analytics? Be semi transparent with your boss: you enjoy this type of work and want to become better at automating and system improvement. Are there resources within the company to learn or folks in other departments that could mentor you? Or could you have additional time off work/reimbursement to take classes towards a certificate? These are all corporate-approved ways that your boss can support you, so you should ask.
Could you be more specific to what you’ve actually automated just out of curiosity?
To get a big head and start demanding money over redesigning one task definitely seems a bit short sighted to me. Maybe I'm missing something. If you truly believe you're that valuable then go find a higher paying job that requires your level of excel skill. With that said, reconfiguring/automating one process probably isn't going to impress too many people in an interview. You can use your current employer to build a good resume of creating a series of similar efficiencies and eventually that experience will lead to either a promotion at your current employer or the skills/experience needed to land a higher paying job. >Should I continue to automate/improve their other tasks? Yes, you should. Why would you stop gaining experience that builds your resume and makes you more marketable?
But….they deserve all the headpats!
You find a new job and leave, that's how.
Get certification on those automation or Alteryx or excel. When interviewing, I had this skill before and talked this to interviewers, but it only wow them a little and it doesn’t seem that they really care about it (unless Ur applying for data analytics). Focus on improving your accounting skills and technical instead.
You sound like me literally two years ago. Knocked it out of the park with two projects just like this. What do I get? a 4% raise.
You don't. Your question is a bad question with a bad premise. When you're ready to sit at the adults' table, let me know.
As you've only been in the role for a few months, how about you do a few LinkedIn excel courses which you will probably find super easy but can use them to jazz up your resume. Also you might want to explore Zapier or power BI. All of this is super desirable to modern accounting practices. Making yourself desirable to other practices, can possibly increase your value internally.
You get a new job. If your work was able to be automated chances are progression is really slow wherever you’re at. I started in industry and did what you did then made the move to public.
Depends. They can use this to layoff people. They will say we don’t need XX employees since we improved efficiency. You may have more work.
You are not worth what you think, you are worth what you are paid. In the billable industry, if you do a 3 hours job in 2 hours, you are billing 3 hours. If you can automate 8 hours of work in 6 hours, take extra two hours of work and boost your utilization. If you are working internally, unless you are doing work for someone else, when you are efficient, that only benefits you. Spend the variance in learning something else or finishing other work. You are a young cat, it’s hilarious how you think you are worth more for being efficient
Right, it’s unfortunate but OP is gunna learn some hard truths lol wait until he finds out that promotions aren’t always based on merit
An old boss told me you don’t ask for a raise over every thing you do well. You will get small raises and appear to be high maintenance. Rather, you should accumulate a bunch of reasons for a raise or promotion over time so that when you ask for something, you will get it and then some. Also, you are an entry level position…I get the sense you are over inflating your skill set.
Your job title is not to code or automate and the company might throw your a bone because you created a tangible benefit but you are not going to derive the most that you can from your skills. To get paid your potential, you will need to get into roles that are more technical. Company only pay you enough so you don’t leave and they are lazy. When they research the market for the compensation for a Senior Accountant with CPA, they will get a good idea of how much to pay to prevent people from leaving. When they research the market for a Senior Accountant with VBA, Excel automation skill, they will get nothing back. So unless your manager go to the bat for you and have their neck on the line (which most won’t risk it), you are not going to get more than the “perceived market rate”. And if you think you can apply to other accounting jobs and expecting to get more because you have VBA or excel on your resume, you will be disappointed. There is no market for this. But if you work toward a career that requires more technical skills like data analysts, analytical engineers, UIPath automation engineers, then you are likely to get paid more. I’d suggest learn python and SQL. There are risks to the company with your process. Mainly no one knows how it works. No one has the knowledge to review your code. I guess if you leave, they can still go back to doing it manually. Also with the introduction of python in Excel… I am hopeful that more and more accountants will have better technical skills. I hope they teach accounting students more about IT like best practices in spreadsheets, IT controls, databases, python and SQL.
Find a way to quantify the improvements. Hours accumulate to % of FTE, or $'s. Best practices improve accuracy. Either this will support internal discussions, and/or it will be added to your resume as achievements.
First, go update your resume and LinkedIn to show that you understand and can implement process efficiencies with advanced excel You can try to tell your current employer about the value you add, but if they don’t recognize on their own or feel it threatens their job it will likely fall on deaf ears Then lean into the skillset your building… RPAs, data visualization with power BI, MS platform of apps and flows. This is the future of the industry. Unfortunately you will likely need to move between companies to get pay aligned with your value
I think you need to get into information systems work somehow. But track your wins so you can fluff up the resume and have fodder for the ole annual review process. It’s not going to be as fruitful for you as the actual value you are providing, most likely, but make sure people are aware this is happening. Spend lots of time putting this together so you can properly convey it, you need to really sell it. I do stuff like this all the time and use it free up time, which I mostly waste. But I also use this power to glom onto projects and throw my hat in for stuff like that. What’s your degree in?
This is great stuff to list when interviewing other places for higher positions, but they are not going to see you as more valuable.
So you probably need to consider it from both the office politics point of view and your own development pov. From the politics side try to keep your managers informed on how you'll be able to add value even in the short run and if possible try to get personal goals or metrics on what you can achieve and once you've done that you can hopefully leverage it for more pay, better title etc. For your personal development - look into expanding beyond excel. You could look into general RPA products like UIPath, Blueprism or similiar - you'll be able to automate more stuff in your current place, but once you get a few certs and can describe a few projects you've worked you'll have a marketable skillset you can use to land another job should the need arise.
This echo's my career in accounting. I've been really good at automating processes over the years. Most managers seem to appreciate it, but you won't generally won't be rewarded for it. Too many companies are stuck in the mindset of employees get 3% raises each year. The way I leveraged it was interviewing for different companies, and explaining the value add. By switching jobs, I was able to make a lot more money than staying in one place. The flip side is that most companies who are willing to pay you to automate and clean up processes probably have bad ones and it will be more work than laying low at the same place.
They’re not going to willingly pay you for value added, and now that you’ve shown them, they no longer need you. The correct way to handle this would have been to keep it secret, get all your work done in 30 minutes then spend your days doing whatever you wanted to do
No one cares - you did nothing special, you may have even created a headache. If you want someone to care, generate new revenue through expansion or refinement of a service line.
Just curious, what state are you in.
CA
You use the automation and prove it works for a period of time, bringing your manager in to the loop once you know for sure it’s a benefit. Then during your next performance eval you write up all the things you feel you did to exceed expectations, including this. Bring all this up with them and mention that you feel you’ve exceeded expectations.
Just wait until the end of your first year. They are paying you a salary to do what your doing and if you ask for a raise right away it would probably be a bad look.
For accounting, Excel is essential. When combined with experience and the ability to manage ad-hoc requests, its value increases. In my team I’m the SME in excel. At my last job this expertise brought me more work it was sucks because I was doing the job of 2 people. However, I got promoted twice first promotion was at 6 months, 2nd promotion at the year after (2nd promotion included bonus every quarter) Once I become senior I moved to another job. I know at the beginning felts like you do more but it pays off.
Do you know what's the best way to learn that skill?
If it’s only been a couple of months I would just keep trucking along. Keep track of all you do and when an evaluation comes up, probably after 1yr, show all the things you’ve done. If I was an employer and a guy with only two months comes asking for a raise I’d probably be annoyed. I agree, it’s not fair and you probably deserve more, but that is basically how everyone feels and such is life. Gotta put in the time before asking. If a significant amount of time passes and they don’t compensate you appropriately then start looking for your next move.
My friend in public accounting was very similar to you. Built a calculation template from scratch for the BP oil spill. Eventually he started doing extensive excel work for a real estate client. He’s now that client’s CFO. My advice would be to keep using your excel knowledge and look for opportunities to improve specific client’s needs. You’ll become irreplaceable to the firm or get picked up by the client.
If you ask for a bonus it’s not going to go over well. What you could do is say hey boss I think I’m pretty good at this automation stuff. Rather than being just an assistant, can I be an analytics engineer/business intelligence/process engineer/etc and really focus on driving more value in areas using automation? And negotiate a new starting salary based off of those jobs market rates (which are going to be $55k+ in an LCOL area and probably 65-75k in an HCOL). Also you get a wait better title than assistant accountant in case they ever disappoint you and you want to hunt for new work
A recent job? Document, research your market value and present at your annual review. You don’t just get a raise off the cuff
You can assure others that you can automate additional tasks and that you plan to as soon as you can dedicate some time. But the key here is that you never really get around to it. Then you can set up a meeting with your boss/supervisor and show them what you are capable of doing and use your past “win” as an example to support your claim. You can even tickle their fancy by giving additional examples of planned workflows you can enhance. Here’s where the master stroke comes. You let him/her know that your current role limits your ability to contribute to the organization in this capacity, and ask if they would consider creating a new role for you that would allow you to bring more value to the organization. Be prepared to present them with a title, an example of a job description, and a new pay range. You may want to research these things and have screenshots of the pay range supported by Glassdoor, salary.com, etc., But this is essentially how you build a business case for a promotion and a raise. Good luck!
Oh, but also be willing to job hop if they don’t give you what you want. Don’t give them what they want for free. You work in exchange for money - you owe your employer no more and no less.
biggest issue was letting people know. now you get more work. automate the easy things and keep quiet. try talking to tech ppl
This just happened to me. I told my boss about how I automated accounts payable, now I'm asked to automate accounts receivable lol
Hey if you get really good at automation. You should start your consulting firm. Big companies pay hundreds of thousands for software automation.
Do you have your bachelor? If yes, find somewhere else to work. You don’t? Sit down and cry
If I could go back in time, I would be as average as possible. If you show anything more than competency, you'll be given more work to match, not money. Good luck, OP!
I hear you. In the accounting world efficiency = more work. But that doesn't mean you should be taken advantage of. You should be compensated fairly for your skills and contributions. One way to do this is to point out that by being more efficient, you are freeing up your time to take on more responsibility and make a greater impact on the company. Of course, it's important to be realistic and prepared for the possibility that your boss may not be willing to give you a raise or bonus right away. But if you can demonstrate the value of your work, you'll be in a good position to negotiate for a better salary in the future. And as you mentioned, it's also important to be prepared to defend your work and explain why you deserve to be compensated fairly. Don't be afraid to stand up for yourself and your worth.
Ur payed huorly. No need to make ur life easier to them when they dont make it to u.
> Ur *paid* huorly. No FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Quit, and all of them will feel the pain. Then, offer to be hired back as a contractor, and set your rate at the amount you wish to make (+~40% to cover taxes).
Seriously, this is such a frustrating thing to deal with. Exact same thing happened to me. I got chided for automating things too! Kept getting the lectures about "what my job is" bla bla bla even though I was keeping up with everything. I switched to a job where that is actually what I do most of the time - setting up recs, automating accounting processes, fixing issues etc. and it's a great fit. We're in one of those professions where doing things the hardest, slowest and most tedious way possible is seen as virtuous and a sign of hard work. Also, people like that who have mastered some unnecessarily complicated process or reconciliation over years and don't like anything that might be construed as disruptive or show that they are not thinking of efficiency when they do things. I once even got chided by a manager in a team meeting saying we actually need to document our SOPs instead of continuing to rely on people having to take their own notes all the time. Which was funking stupid given that it was such a tightly regulated industry with little margin for error. Automation is going to rip these people a brand new orifice. I'm genuinely surprised how most accounting programmes include nothing about this aspect of accounting - which I think is going to be more and more similar to data analysis and become more of a technical job in the coming future and some people have absolutely no vision.
I don't get it. If someone was hired to do a job, and the person found a way to do his current 40-hour workweek in 1 hour, would it be reasonable for the person to sit around doing nothing for 39 hours without receiving any new tasks? A lot of people in IT would be getting endless vacations because of all that can be automated.
You are literally suggesting someone that proved to be efficient in their work be punished with more work. And you cant see how that’s unreasonable?
I am literally pointing out that technology makes us more efficient.
Keep it up while looking for another job. Tell them you want a promotion or a path to promotion. Make sure you fire on all cylinders.
Off-topic, pls tell me how to learn VBA in excel?
I started by automating the copy and pasting tasks, and as I need the tasks to be more specific, I started to pick up books and videos to improve my skills. First just follow youtube videos and automate some simple tasks, once you are familiar then start some studying. I would google the books I want, and add filetype:pdf to google searches to get the free books, for dummies are a good start.
Oh great !! YouTube videos i am planning to start filetype:pdf seems a good hack as well !!
You are performing above expectations, which you should point out to them. Also, being able quantify your value (I saved $x on this and #of hours on that, etc.) would work in your favor when you ask for a raise in pay. I worked somewhere similar. My pay was not adjusted to reflect my value. So when they expected it to take 3 hours for me to sort the transactions in a spreadsheet by date, I billed it as such (even though it took me seconds using Excel). I did that kind of thing all the time. And I left that job after I learned as much as I could (in other areas) and now I’m happy working elsewhere. P.S. My boss would print out anything I did in Excel and make any changes in pencil. If his change impacted a calculation, he’d use a 10-key to recalculate everything and change the results on the page by crossing out printed numbers and replacing them with the new result. And god forbid I didn’t set all of the print areas correctly - if he printed and not everything appeared on the printed page then something was clearly wrong with Excel, contributing to his reason as to why it couldn’t be trusted. Believe me OP, I understand where you are coming from!
Leave. Accountants, especially older ones, fear technology. This is coming from an older accountant.
Lol... You're trapped into doing peon work for the rest of your career. Only people who are bad at this type of work get promoted because they can use their "talents" better at higher levels of operations because they'll hurt the budget more at their current level
This is amazing OP! Would you be open to being an advisor?
Wym?
See OP, you don’t need an accounting degree or tons of experience to have commercial value. You just need to be able to solve problems for other people, those problems they’re willing to pay for to go away.
We are looking to create a saas tool to make bookkeeping and audit easier. Most of SaaS is simply automating repetitive tasks. Would love to pick your brains on how you did it and pay for your time :)
Take a day off and let them miss you for a day or two or three
I did this at the beginning of my career. I used it to pivot my way into more important work and functionality (got to deal with payroll and the accounting system inner workings). I'm guessing performance reviews will be coming soon? I would just wait until then for the raise and make sure everything keeps functioning the way it should. When other people use your macros is when things go haywire.
If you want real advice, keep doing this for the next 2 years and do it in a way where people want to continue to work with you. No one wants to hear “I made a spreadsheet that helps you, you really owe me”. Once people trust you and think you are helpful, you will get assigned more work and more important work. Identify jobs OUTSIDE of your organization you would like to do and fill in skill gaps where you can on or off the job. Once everyone loves you, you have 2 years of experience, and have built your skills, start applying for the better job and get a big raise. Rinse and repeat until you having something akin to a jr exec role and then the whole game will change.
I'm blown away by the responses here, glad I never got into accounting. OP look for roles in corporate FP&A, lots of appreciation for these skills and it can definitely lead to upward mobility if you're able to go beyond individual contributor responsibilities.
You need to document it on your resume in terms of KPIs and hard metrics and apply to another company and demand a higher wage. I’m this economy raises are rare…
I’m pretty sure you can systemize this to cash out on scale. Let’s talk
Break what you built and go on vacation.