Everybody Knows... but Me

So, I got sent home from work yesterday. The "Administrator" (non-academic equivalent of the Dean) sent me home personally. I was in the lunch room, quilting, and she came to peek at my work, then took one look at me and sent me home.

She suspected the flu - THE flu, H1N1, that's been in the news for the past six months, and which she personally had about a month ago.

Now, I'm the LAST person to complain about getting a few days off. And I do have SOMETHING... I'm just pretty sure it's not H1N1. Because I'm able to do things. If you really have H1N1, you are either dying, or you want to.

I figured I'd do something I'd been putting off. Something that involves sitting down comfortably for hours on end and doesn't tax the body.

Figured I'd tackle my business accounting.

After all, if I DID have H1N1, I'd be dead soon anyway - so what's the harm in making myself WANT to die? And if I DIDN'T have it, I'd be one step further away from debtor's prison. What's not to love?

So, I dug out all my papers, found the "calculator" app on my computer, sharpened my pencil...

Recently, my "Beloved Future Son-In-Law" (hereinafter to be known as "B") offered to help me figure out where some of the numbers in my financial statements come from.

For those of you not in-the-know about the accounting aspect of business, it's a bit like leaning to do Calculus in Grade 2. The page looks so CLEAN, so CLEAR... Lovely numbers in a column, clearly labelled "Assets" and "Liabilities"... it looks so simple. It looks, in fact, too good to be true. And you know what they say about things that look too good to be true!

Except that all the numbers seem to come out of nowhere. What in the heck is "Due to Shareholder", and why is it a different amount than "Retained Earnings"? Oh, and wait till you discover the wild and wooly world of "Change in Non-Cash Operating Items." That one takes a whole day to figure out! "Cost of Sales", okay, that's what the shipping and customs duties cost me... hmm, maybe it's also the sales tax I paid... I wonder, does that include my guild membership fees, since I have to be a member of the guild in order to sell there, and don't forget I contribute 5% of the value of the sales to the guild... Ok, let's try it all three ways...

It took me about four hours to get through all the numbers that were supposed to appear on the financial statements and begin to tot them up. Of course, none of the numbers made any sense at all, and none of them balanced...In the nick of time, I remembered that I had given last year's papers to B, and realized I was working with starting figures from two years ago...

(And a darned good thing I remembered that, too, because I was just about to pick up the phone and hit the speed dial "S" for Satan, ready to sell ANYTHING in order to get SOMEONE, ANYONE, to take this off my hands!)

As mentioned in previous blogs, I do not possess the gene for understanding accounting. If I had enough money, I would ever so happily pay someone to do this stuff for me. Alas, I have champagne taste, but I'm on a beer income.

Accounting will never make sense to me. B has explained which numbers to add and subtract from each other in order to plug a new number into the financial statements, but it is seriously a "monkey-see, monkey-do" arrangement with me. I don't know WHY any of these numbers exist, I only know that I have to complete a Financial Statement before I can get anywhere near doing my business income taxes, and hopefully avoid jail time.

I figure (no pun intended) that accountants are an evil breed (perhaps related to the aforementioned Satan). They take something perfectly simple and turn it inside-out and wring it and shred it and reassemble it till NO ONE in their RIGHT mind could POSSIBLY understand where all these blessed numbers came from!

Job security, that's what it is! A clever plot on their part to compel us mere mortals to pay them what's left of our hard-earned cash to make the government go away.

Well, after I eat supper I'm going to give it another go, now that I have the correct numbers to start from. I have actually learned something relatively useful from this process, astonishingly enough! When I've finished it, I'm going to set up my books the way the financial statements are set up, so I don't have to think next time I make a sale or order something. I'll just write down the number and fill in the calculation. Next year, when I go through this, I won't have to think. I'll have done it all now.

Yeah.