3 posts tagged “accounting”

Oh, how embarrassing.  Twice in one day yesterday I made a major FUBAR.  It’s embarrassing as hell but kind of painfully funny because of the stupid mistakes I’ve been making.  Absentmindedness has never been so bad for the workplace.

So here’s what happened…

First, one of our vendors that we pay twice a month (for discounts) had a statement that was sent for the second half of December.  I thought it was for the first half of January and used the discount at the bottom of the statement.  Lois came back and asked why… the discount due date was clearly printed at the bottom “December 26th“ or something and I cut the check on January 3rd.  Should have been NO discount.  They’ll bill us for it later, I assume… but that was a highly embarrassing accounting error and should never have been made.  : (

Second and most recently… I cost a labor bill for an installer yesterday to the WRONG installer AND wrong Job completely.  It’s as if I didn’t think at all when I was doing it and reused the same form data over again.  So now, we have an installer who was OVERPAID and an installer that was UNDERPAID and a job that doesn’t have a proper receipt for work done.  *sigh*   Another very embarrassing error that will no doubt cause headaches for HR for the next day or two.

I’m making a bloody mess of things, I don’t mean to… absentmindedness is killing me inside and out.  Not thinking clearly though I think that I am at any given moment is going to get me fired.   I’ve never made so many drastically stupid mistakes in a row in my life.

I think I’d operate better if I were impaired by drugs or alcohol at this moment than this damn preggy brain.

Oh well, back to delivering disaster... only 4.5 months left...

First thing, you need to have a capital management firm managing the investments of your company.  Secondly, you’ll need to have a 401(k) meeting with your fellow investment disgruntled co-workers and a couple of the firms financial advisors.  Third, you need to raise hell because you’re unhappy you’re paying them more than the last firm and they’re losing your money as well as not letting you see your stocks.  Get an unsatisfying answer, raise a little more hell and then let it simmer and sink in with your co-workers.  (Not that they weren’t thinking about it already…)

Note:  With the old firm, we would lose little snippets of money in the down times but not like this and this “down time” isn’t nearly as bad as the last one.

One of my irritations is that they’re being non truthful.  Telling us very little by waltzing around questions, keeping us in the dark and downright fibbing.  At least they’re not making up new words while they do it.  Another is that we’re paying them more and getting much less… less service, less gain (in fact no gain) and we have much less control over our money than we had before.  They make it look so pretty on paper… but honestly, I don’t have a lot of money and I’d like to keep the little that I do have.  To hell with their looking good.

Of course, we DO have the option to Self Direct at an additional fee of $70 administrative fee per quarter on top of what we already pay them… plus whatever fees to buy or sell stocks and other fees.  Correct me if I’m wrong but, if I’m doing all the work… why am I paying extra?  Shouldn’t I be paying them much LESS???   That doesn’t add up.

Well, at least they showed us our stocks (sort of) this time.

One of the Financial Advisors stopped me in the hallway to give me his card and explain it to me some more why we can’t see what our money is doing.  I don’t buy it.  Not one word.  He brought in accounting aspects, variables… whatnot.  I don’t see how they couldn’t have a spreadsheet or Access database with our non-variables in it and just update the variables.  I don’t know about everybody else but I know that most of us have paychecks that are exactly the same every two weeks.  We debated over costs of creating individual reports and whatnot, he seems to think it would cost a lot of money, I seem to remember creating a pretty complex set of spreadsheets that took maybe an hour to complete and it does SOOOOO bloody MUCH with variables and non-variables that you’d think it was a program.  And I’m not even that great at math!!!

Meanwhile, I stirred up one hell of a wasps nest back in installation.  The everyone is right there with me.  They've been talking about it today.

I've been writing one hell of an email.  Diplomatic, civil and direct.  Just the kind of thing that gets stuff done. 

Unless they were looking at credit card debt, most people would love to see these real numbers.  Me?  Not so much.  Just a random sampling of invoice totals sitting on my desk, all of them waiting to combine and make big beautiful checks.

*sigh* What I would give to have one for myself…

I found myself on autopilot yesterday and it was mildly disturbing.  I had to go back to see if I did things properly, thus I wasted some time.  It wasn’t a huge deal but it IS a weird feeling to look down and see the stack of papers about the size of a 500 count ream reduced to a handful of 10-20 in what seems like mere seconds.  I’m not complaining about that, just that I had to go back and re-check what I had done to make sure it was correct.  (not that I doubted myself, but I am held accountable if a $20,000 check ends up being a $25,000 accident or no.)  Mistakes are rarely made and if made, are caught quickly.

It is a Bloodhound Gang morning.  Listening to “Frosh Two” and it’s getting ready to cue “One Fierce BeerCoaster.”  Humor is my savior.  Without humor I think I would drown in a sea of red and black - & + signs.  LOL

It is a slow morning.  I purchased a new Java Monster drink in “Loca Moca” flavor.  Mighty tasty but a bit too sweet.  I’m glad I also got a bottle of Tropicana Fruit Squeeze “Lime Raspberry” flavor.  Ah, fruit juice water.  Yes, it does remind me of Cherry Limeade.

I have decided to give up on baby making for a while... it's extremely stressful and the studies show that the use of Clomid after 6 months do not show any marked increase success rate.  In fact, they state that if you haven't been succesful in the first 6 months, chances are very slim that it's going to work for you.  Indeed.  So I will visit the doctor in August or so and take the next step but I'm tired of the rollercoaster of getting my hopes up and having them dashed time and time again.

So yeah... that's about it.