It is our financial year end at DLA Piper. The time when everyone is metaphorically squeezed until every last drop of billable time is drained from us, so that it can be included on bills that can then be despatched to our clients before the end of the month.
As part of this exercise, and for curious reasons that I won't describe because I don't understand them, the firm is apparently entitled to include the value of these last-minute issued bills in this year's figures, regardless of the fact that the mere issuance of a bill is (whisper it quietly) not actual cash in the bank, nor even a guarantee of payment. Why we get to pat ourselves on the back for having achieved annual targets when this achievement seems based upon an exercise in false accounting that could ultimately come unstuck seems to me at least to be no grounds for celebration if, by coincidence, we just make our target.
Perhaps this explains why the likely achieving of annual targets will be greeted by little more than a pat on the back, and the immediate circulation of next year's targets (which will be this year's figures, plus an uplift designed to make everyone raise their eyebrows and echale from puffed up cheeks) which, come 1 May, we will begin pursuing all over again.
Am I too simplistic in my undertanding of accountancy I wonder?
1 comment:
Truly, Accounting is one of the Dark Arts.
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