Monday, December 10, 2007

How Appropriate for my year

This is part 2 of my updates....



Those of you who come fromCSC may have noticed my signature line has a quote from Mother Teresa..."I know that the Lord will only give me what I can handle, I wish he didn't trust that I could handle so much."



That has been my feeling for the year 2007, especially at work. It started in January and February as our now former CFO and Controller were stuck on what was believed to be a special project and left the month end close in my lap as our senior G/L accountant was out on leave along with another member of our team.We did the best we could but with them having to approve journal entries and such, closes went really slow. Plus they had to check everything over and it usually ended up in at least 1 late night for that and fixing the things we missed.


March had the introduction of an Assistant Controller who in hindsight did all of things to get hired for the job and said the stuff our former controller wanted to hear. Once she was in position, she only did things beneficial for her image( it was an effort to get her to do other stuff that needed to be done), gave us (the rest of the team) a hard time but especially me, and when things went wrong not only didn't she take any of the blame, but she'd throw anyone "under the bus" . I got thrown there a couple of times and she even had the audacity to do it once right in front of my face.

The summer was full of high tension as we knew the deal closing was impending and of course our now former assistant controller was basically worthless. Morale dropped around the company and it basically has kept on plummeting until maybe year end. With the new ownership having quite a bit of say, it meant recording new stuff related to the deal and the interim CFO ( our old one had to leave when the deal was finalized) gave us spreadsheets with detail on how to record stuff and it became a major mess that only finally got resolved in late November. Not only that we were putting lots of extra hours. Under the old ownership, it didn't mean as much because they'd make sure we'd leave a bit early once things were done and they were also always making sure morale was good and people were getting respect.

Our Controller quit of her own devices in September with her last day in early October. Our former assistant controller, after hearing some of our reports that we were heavily relying on weren't perfect, left 2 weeks afterward. Her leaving was more to preserve her image that all of us knew wasn't that great though I think she was saving face in her mind.

The new CEO and CFO came in in September and October and basically took over wanting to find their pet projects of gaining understanding of our financials and causing issues while we were dealing with new reporting requirements. They also decided to close the accounting operations in Vancouver in Septmeber and bring it down to us, plus do 2 systems changes in 6 months with no back up. The first one went down in July and put us back 2 weeks during close. The second one is still in process...it is a new accounting system and AP is moving over now, the G/L functions aren't moving over until probably late January. All of this has meant putting in long hours and while it didn't matter as much under the old team, this one it does because they are rewarding us in any shape or form seemingly. We don't get to leave early before a holiday weekend, we aren't getting comp time or whatever. It has REALLY brought me down, which is why I didn't post as much on the board and didn't get a chance to really stitch much this past year.

Adding to that the usual family stuff and dd issues with school etc and you canunderstand why I find my "tagline" is so appropriate.




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