[Ganondorf]

I have been working at my job for 2 months now, and I have tons of downtime. At first I thought it was just because I am a newbie, but my co-workers have a lot of downtime too (but not as much as me since I am a newbie). I probably only have about 25 hours of actual work to do every week, so that leaves me with about 15 hours of downtime every week.

I think the amount of downtime is just the nature of my job. I work in payroll and billing at a large private company. Monday I have little to do since payroll doesn’t actually start coming in until Tuesday. If I have 3 hours of work on Monday I consider myself lucky.

Tuesday I finally start getting busy once the payroll comes in. It used to take me all day to get it done when I first started, but lately I have gotten more efficient at it since I know a lot more now than I did when I first started. Now it takes me probably 5-6 hours to actually get it done, so I am still left with several hours of downtime after it is done.

Wednesday is by far my busiest day. It’s the only day I actually work a full 8 hours. I do all the billing on Wednesday.

Thursday is less busy than Tuesday, but not as bad as Monday. Thursday I just do any late payroll/billing if any comes in and make corrections and stuff like that.

Friday I have barely anything to do because payroll HAS to be done on Thursday so everyone gets paid on Friday. Friday is again another 2-3 hour workday like Monday, but at least its a little more tolerable since it is almost the weekend. TGIF!!

One thing that particularly amuses me is when I first started the job I created a thread here stating how overwhelmed I was and thinking I wouldn’t be able to handle the job. Now 2 months later I am talking about it being boring with too much downtime. My how things have changed in such a short time. lol

I do somewhat wonder if there is a lot of turnover here too. There are 7 other people in my department. Only 2 of them have been here longer than 2 years. The other 5 have only been here 1-2 years. That to me sounds like most people get bored with this job quickly and move on to something else. I remember when I interviewed for the job, I asked why the position was open, and they said it was because of growth and expansion, but now I am wondering if that is actually true.

I don’t hate my job, even though it may sound like it. I do like the job. The huge amount of downtime is my only real complaint about it. It pays decent (although not great) but I do feel at times that I am overpaid for the amount of actual work I do.

I can’t use the company internet for personal use, but people here do use their smartphones to goof around when they have downtime, so that’s what I do too. If you have a lot of downtime at work, what do you do?

[monikernc]

i do not have a lot of downtime at work but i can use the internet at lunch so i often study and do mcqs after i walk and eat.

AUD - 93
BEC - 82
FAR - 76
REG - 88

How have you been?
Ninja book and MCQs and the forum, all first try! 2016
Licensed State of Montana April Fool’s Day 2020
State of Colorado June 2020 - AICPA Ethics 93
Experience was the worst part of the journey for me. You?
If you want things to change you have to do something different.

FAR 7/25/15 76!
AUD 10/30/15 93
BEC 2/27/16 82
REG 5/23/16 88!
Ninja Book and MCQ and the forum - all the way!!!
and a little thing i like to call, time and effort!
if you want things to change, you have to do something different

[Zyx]

Ganondorf; what's your job? Is it in industry or public accounting? I'm in industry and yes, I have lots of downtime that I get super bored. I cannot study at work nor use internet for personal purposes. I often bring my books or do ninja mqc on my phone but I have to hide it. Usually the last week of the month is very slow when I actually work about 15-20 hrs. It sucks because I have to be there 8am-5pm daily, cannot work remotely. The positive part is it is very flexible but I'm currently searching a new job in public accounting. I cannot deal with it anymore, waste of time and too boring. However, some people like it tho. My boss never comes in the office on time. He normally comes in after 8.30 and take 1.5 hrs lunch break every day!

AUD - 77
BEC - 81
FAR - 80
REG - 77

zyx

REG: 77 x2
BEC: 81 x3
FAR: 68 retake 10/1
AUD: 8/27

[Missy]

Don't goof off during downtime. Use it to learn, do pivot tables or vlookups, or something productive for your career. I'm always amused by people who post they've been at their job a year or two, think they do their job well but haven't been promoted while their peers have. The people who move up are the ones who find something better to do than play on their phones. If your goal is advancement either with your current or future employers don't wait to be asked to take on special projects. Maybe there's a better way to do billing or payroll that nobody took the initiative to research. When I was in your shoes I prepared, without any prompting an analysis of the costs and benefits of going paperless, which became reality as it was a great idea that nobody had given any thought to. But it was my own desire not to have downtime that created that project.

Old timer,  A71'er since 2010.

Finance manager/HR manager

 

 

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[srv101284]

[So FAR So Good]

No downtime at work here, and I always find myself jealous of those that do have it.

I work for an investment firm and work a minimum 50 hour work week with every minute of my day filled. There are times where I wish I had even a few hours to be able to take care of a some personal things (maybe answer a few personal emails or make a phone call to schedule a doctor's appointment) that most people usually have the time for in more flexible jobs and take for granted.

Definitely take @mla's advice and use the time to your advantage. There's always something you could be doing to improve your skillset or your career.

AUD - 91
BEC - 85
FAR - 91
REG - 86

.

F - 91 (6/5/2016)
A - 7/30/2016
R - 10/8/2016
B - 12/10/2016

[Pete]

As I've learned, Downtime is Dangerous, especially in public, but likely even in industry. I REPEAT, Downtime is Dangerous. I had Downtime at my last job in public accounting, after tax season. Shortly after that point, I was laid-off.

I would advise that you constantly ask your managers what else you can do or try to look for new solutions and ways to automate different things. Plus, it will help in interviews for future jobs, if/when you look.

At least this is the advice I would give on downtime. For my next job, I will likely be terrified of downtime. Of course, most experiences aren't like this, but i've learned this is one very real possibility. In this economy, you absolutely don't want to be looking for work without a job.

B=84 This exam was such a b**** that I thought I failed-don't know how these things work
A=76 Slacker I am, I'll happily take it
R=81 I LOVE taxes
F=80 I don't wanna get banned for an expletive I'm thinking with "yea" proceeding it

[Vanessachy]

After tax season, it is slow. I wasn't used to it last year, I used to ask managers and partners for work all the time. Now I am used to it, I still ask for work, if they don't have work, I just study for the CPA exam.

Far, 64 82
Reg, 60 86
Aud, 74 82
Bec, 70 81
Done done done! I did it!!!
Licensed CPA in MA, issued October 2016

Far 10/26/2015, 64, 1/4/2016, 82
Reg 7/10/2015, 60, 2/27/2016, 86
Aud, 5/9/2016, 74 (ouch), 7/26/2016, I cannot wait to take this test again
Bec, 6/10/2016, 70,9/8 retake

[Track55]

Zero downtime at work. On travel days I study at the airport or on the plane with the laptop.

(business and industry).

AUD - 99
BEC - 83
FAR - 86
REG - 92

California - Internal Audit

CPA since December 2016.

(took seven tries, 1 year 10 months).

AUD - 74, 99 !!
REG - 74, 92
BEC - 83
FAR - 73, 86

Studying for Ethics exam

California candidate
Business and Industry

[PharmBoy]

I have at least 7 hours of work to do each day. Often more. Some of my work requires waiting on computer/system processes or information from other people, so I work on other things during the gaps, or my days would be very long.

However, I have had other roles earlier in my career where I had 4-5 hours of work each day, but the timing of that work spanned 8-9 hours, so there was downtime. Fortunately management realized the downtime was unavoidable in that role so they were fine with “looking busy” half the day as long as all the required work was completed timely. It's unfortunate I was not doing the CPA exam back then, or I could have easily filled a chunk of that with studying.

[Ganondorf]

@zxy11

I am in industry. I don't have desire to work in public.

All the downtime does worry me that the bosses will let me go sometime, but then I look around and my co-workers have a lot of downtime too and goof off on their phones, so I don't know.

I think maybe part of it is that I work at a large company, and I kind of feel like a “cog in the wheel.” I think I would be happier at a small company or at least have more to do. I just hope I can make it at least 1-2 years here for the experience before I start looking for a new job. This is my first professional job, so I need it for the experience if for nothing else.

[Anonymous]

Payroll is cyclical – just the nature of the beast. I second what Mia said though, if you have down time use it to improve your skill set – Excel is perfect for that – learn pivots or vlookup. Crunch the payroll data every way you can think of. Learn how to create charts graphics from it.

I think I remember your original thread! So this is even better news.

Learning to Be contented (notice I didn't say happy) at work is a tricky balance. If you're going to stay at a big organization there's really no escaping the cog-in-the-wheel feeling, unless you're like Jeff and take the real risk that goes along with starting a business.

But from what you've said, you certainly should be able to move into something that's less repetitive. I see so many postings lately for financial analyst jobs that look interesting. I started using Indeed (the website) just to get some good language for my resume, but it has been instructive on what's out there and what skills are in demand.

[Anonymous]

@mla great advice as usual.

can you point me in the right direction of where to start the ‘going paperless' analysis? i would like to perform this for my small firm as things are quite slow right now as well.

[Missy]

I started with a local document scanning and storage company, the sales manager is now a good friend and I've taken three companies paperless with her since the mid 90's LOL. This co is in Manchester NH but you can find something similar.

The information they will need to quote you is how many indexes and how many pages. An Index can be anything you want but basically its a search field. So for accounts payable my index was a check #, a vendor name, and a dollar amount. Usually its something you can export from your ERP/Accounting software to a .csv file. Each check could have 8-9 pages of backup between the voucher, the approval, the purchase order copy etc.

Obviously the more pages you have scanned, the less it costs per page. And each index costs slightly above a page. I want to say we were spending about $800/mo for scannning. However prior to that we had something like 4,000 sf of office space, on three separate floors in the same building, and nearly 1500 sf were occupied by filing cabinets and file storage. We were able to leave our lease on one of the three floors, fit more cubicles in the top floor once all the filing cabinets were gone, have more of our staff easily available to each other, etc.

You can also buy or lease the software and keep the physical scanning in house (I think the software is called Image Silo?)

I want to say it took me about 4 mos to get a quote by the time I could give them all the numbers and then another 6 mos to make it a reality.

If you're in industry, one of the biggest perks is you can give your auditors a temporary password to access the images so you don't have to spend days printing out paper copies of documents that will end up shredded when the auditors leave, save a tree and all.

Old timer,  A71'er since 2010.

Finance manager/HR manager

 

 

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[Sang]

I am a staff accountant for a small industry company with about 35-38 employees.
September will be my 4 year anniversary.
I usually have a little downtime during the week, and I have downtime all day on Friday.
Friday, is when I try to catch up on everything else, and it is usually a relaxing day for me.

Many of my co-workers are usually on Facebook during their downtime.
Although it is against company policy to be on Facebook on the company's computers, most of them have been at the company for 10-20 years, so the policy is very lax.
I think 50% of the employees at my workplace have been with the company more than 10 years, and the company has been around for 22 years.

My 2 main hobbies are photography and politics.
When I have downtime, I usually check Facebook on my phone for about 5 minutes, to read about current news and to look at pictures posted by other photographers.

FAR: (5/24/16) | (7/16/16)

AUD: (9/07/16)

BEC: TBA

REG: TBA

FAR: (05/24/16) | (07/15/16) | (10/22/16)
AUD: (09/07/16) | (11/29/16) |
BEC: TBD
REG: TBD
Using Roger CPA Review + Ninja (MCQs, Notes, Audio)

[TrackStar]

I'm a financial analyst and it's slow but I still have my Becker and Ninja Notes to review in between my work. There's not many deadlines like my last two accounting positions. I absolutely love it bc I can think but the only downfall for me is that I like busy-work it helps to be more efficient and productive bc my school work and work go hand-in-hand. Working hard at work gives me more drive to go home (while the wheels are still turning) and kick it into full drive with studying. It alway has been that way for me that's how I managed to work on two MBAS outside of work and go to the gym 4Xs a week. But when things are slow I fell the slump and it's hard to get motivated.

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with the problems longer" ~Albert Einstein ~

FAR (04/16/16)-61, (07/23/16)- Becker, Ninja Notes, Ninja MCQs
Reg (09/10/16) Becker, Ninja Notes, Ninja MCQs
AUD (11/05/16) prob. Roger, Ninja Notes, Ninja MCQs
Bec (TBD)

[Author]

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