Thanks, I hope it's the snow!

Morning all,

I'm friends with a few accountants who are having similar problems further up the food chain due to the number of clients not paying, paying late, going into liquidation.

With more lucrative work they don't normally go after small accounts but in the current situation where you're paying for several staff to basically do very little besides waiting for phones to ring they are going after work that they would not normally go for.

The general consensus is that we're past the worst of the recession and there are a lot of newbie companies that are going to need accounts sorting out. In this situation my friends do not want to have to let staff go when they will need them later but they need to keep things ticking over for now and that's having an effect upon us.

Previously they've passed me work but at the moment nothing at all's coming in and the only income I've got is actually doing a bit of quality assurance and some management reports on systems that I've previously developed for the banking side of my business... And that seems to be drying up as well largely due to a lot of bank systems work being transferred to India.

I believe that this current lack of work is a glitch not a trend. I just wouldn't go and buy a new car at the moment!

But at least I get time to share my words of wit and wisdom with you good people!

Good luck and hope things pick up for us all soon,

Shaun.

Thanks for your replies, shaun I hope it is a glitch, Mark, I hope things will pick up soon!

I currently have one monthly customer, who I process all their sales / purchase invoices & quarterly vat returns, and give them a profit and loss a/c to date.

That is currently it, hence this is why it feels as though I am quiet, at one point I had 3 customers I was working with (in Nov), and it felt quite hectic, due to working Full Time, but it was manageable and I feel I could of took on more possibly.....who knows what is round the corner as they say....fingers crossed for some more busy times!

I want to be busy again!

-- Edited by lor on Thursday 7th of January 2010 06:54:26 PM

I work for an accountant part-time & its gone really quiet, what with the deadline becoming due as well. Im even doing the accountants job now, more pushed onto the bookkeeper to deal with, its all really good experience though, so I dont mind.

Hi Shaun

Quiet here too.

I am sorry to hear that your banking work has gone too.

That attitude from employment agencies always astounds & annoys me. If you were looking for a permanent position below you level of experience then I understand that they may be worried that you might just leave once a more suitable position came along but all your after is temp work so you would think that they and their client would think it was great to have someone with more experience than they need without having to pay loads for it.

Good luck

Regards

Mark

Hi Phillip,

Makes perfect sense of course from an permie perspective but it was the fact that its just temp positions that I'm applying for that didn't seem to make sense.

My assumption on thinking matters through further must be the issue of having more experience, qualifications and knowledge than your direct superior. I've actually got KPMG, PWC and Andersen's on my CV so that's probably a sure recipe for confrontation!

If things don't pick up I may have to consider going back to banking on a permie basis for a while. Uhhh, the thought of having to have peer reviews sends shivers down my spine!