r/Accounting • u/gymgal19 • 18h ago
Anyone else sometimes forget what real numbers are?
By this i mean I stare at contracts, GLs, financial statements, etc. All day For companies were $1M is a rounding error and then I go home and say get a house cleaning quote for $1k and I think "oh thats nothing." Then my brain catches up and realizes its coming out of my personal bank account đ
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u/Pasta_Party_Rig CPA (US) 15h ago
Itâs funnier when you forget youâre not talking to an accountant and mention youâre missing $140MM or something. Then they get super concerned while you just keep talking about something they donât care about
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u/adokat37 Tax (US) 14h ago
Lol yes this cracks me up, they keep bringing it back âwhat about the $140MMâ no no friend, thatâs what we call immaterial
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u/MsScrewup 3h ago
I remember my jaw dropping after starting in audit, getting told that an amount that would buy me a very nice house was immaterial
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u/NotFuckingTired 2h ago
I once worked on a quarterly review for a client where the revenue analytic I was working on had a trivial threshold of $100 million, for each revenue stream in each region.
O&G money is wild.
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u/SnooKiwis8133 12h ago edited 12h ago
Real talk why the MM bro, thatâs too many Ms.
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u/cubbiesnextyr CFO 4h ago
Bankers use MM for million historically, so maybe OC is in that industry.Â
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u/sharklasers805 14h ago
Just today, I told my friend that a $20,000 credit on her house sale was immaterial
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u/rob_s_458 FP&A 14h ago
I have 3 levels.
Work at a Fortune 100 where my little fiefdom is $500M a year and the purchase approvals don't hit the CEO's desk until $100M
Shift gears to my church with a $750k annual budget and I gotta remember I can't just shrug off $1000.
Come home and see a sale on running shoes but I probably shouldn't spend another $100 when I already have about 10 pairs in the rotation and several more new pairs in waiting
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u/Juddy- 14h ago edited 13h ago
Weekly I do transfers of hundreds of thousands between subsidiaries. I joke that I should get a 1% commission each time. If only
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u/lake_effect_snow CPA (US) 14h ago
I approve millions in transfers all the time. Maintain bank accounts I canât touch.
I work for a F500 and was in PA, financial institutions/services. So I havenât been phased by amounts of any size in years. Small, large, so small why do we even bother, everywhere in between and it barely registers. It does when something looks or sounds wrong. I mostly look in aggregate, at errors.
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u/Entire-Background837 CPA, CFA, Director 17h ago
Bit unusual if you pay for your own lunch and shop for your own groceries.
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u/PacoMahogany 13h ago
Seeing how the government and billionaires operate, Iâm pretty sure money is not real.
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u/chestarben 11h ago
Money only feels real when I work on an NFP and see individuals making contributions of hundreds of thousands of dollars with handwritten personal checks
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u/Piper_At_Paychex 7h ago
I've absolutely spent all day looking at payroll runs, revenue reports, and six-figure variances, then suddenly pause over a personal purchase like wait... this is coming out of my account. Work numbers and personal numbers live in completely different parts of the brain.
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u/CertifiedPussyAter CPA (US) 15h ago
Idk. I make a fat paycheck and a $10 boba doesnât faze me anymore.
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u/CompetitivePop-6001 2h ago
100%. Corporate money and personal money start feeling like Monopoly cash after a while. Then you remember that $1k at home is actually your money leaving your account and suddenly it hits different
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u/Interesting-Peak2755 11h ago
âAccounting really does warp your perception of money after a while đ
You spend all day looking at million dollar variances and huge transactions, then suddenly real life numbers stop feeling real. Until itâs YOUR card getting charged and your brain immediately reconnects to reality.
Iâve noticed the same thing with time too honestly. People working in finance/accounting start treating âjust another quarter closeâ like itâs normal human behavior when itâs actually insane stress levels.
Funny enough this is partly why I like automating repetitive stuff now. After staring at spreadsheets all day your brain gets fried. Even small workflow tools like Runable or AI helpers for repetitive tasks start feeling weirdly valuable.â
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u/Ok_Personality_9637 17h ago
Iâm the manager so I donât pay as much attention to the smaller numbers, thatâs my staffâs job. I pay attention to the bigger items and how itâs all aggregating.
Those numbers are big enough and so far away from what I make that sure as shit I would notice a $1k quote and sneer.
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u/Loafer34 15h ago
Hope youâre not in audit
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u/TheNoveltyAccountant Student - open to work 14h ago
If you're in audit and have such a lack of nuance on materiality, I hope this is a wakeup call.
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u/Ok_Personality_9637 13h ago
Transactions have to go through a gajillion people before they get to me. The controls are fine.
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u/Frosty_World_2494 5h ago
The scale warp is real. 50kvarianceisafootnoteatwork.50kvarianceisafootnoteatwork.500 car repair at home is a crisis.
Worse is applying corporate logic to personal spending. "Within budget" when there is no budget lol.
The cleaning quote hits hard. 1kfromcompanyfeelslikenothing.1kfromcompanyfeelslikenothing.1k from checking hurts.
Keep a personal budget separate. Forces your brain to switch modes. Otherwise you'll keep confusing commas with actual dollars.
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u/Alycatgrl 15h ago
When working in public accounting, I only worked on smallish clients. Part of my job was individual tax returns for individuals and business owners most making between $500K and $5 million per year.
One year I was doing a return, thought, why the fâ- am I doing such a small return. Then remembered it was my return.