Under employment

Things are pretty bad out there nobody seems to be hiring, at least in the accountancy field. In that accountants feel its bad, in that when clients jobs take an hour when they previously took 2-3 days you know its bad.

Anedotally when I was still working as an accountant I worked near the payroll department, it was an absolute apocalypse, we, or rather they kept on running out of pre-printed p45 slips we would have deliveries almost daily and still they would run out of them. I wonder how bad it is going to get as this is presumably just the start.

I have however found a job as a kitchen porter working for a bangladeshi resturant in a small town not far from where I live. They are a nice couple who smile an awful lot, I help out now and again lifting and doing the chopping as well as washing the dishes. Pay? , national minimum wage £5.85 an hour.

Although granted working as an accountant wasn't exactly the highest paid job in the world either, I used to make just under £10 an hour. But its a big fall from grace when I used to earn about £270 a week post tax down to £117 a week. Being under 25, single and renting I am ineligible for any benefits. Although I would probably not take them anyway as it is an admission of defeat.

P45 day

It is often said that a recession is when your next door neigbour loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job.

Today was that day.... I received my P45 for you non Brits out there this is a summary of your pay to date. Ideally it shows your gross pay and your net pay for the purposes of giving it to your next employer so that they can work out how much tax to deduct of you when you start working.

P45s are in 3 pieces for this purpose, one which you keep for your records, one which can be goven to HMRC so you can claim back any tax in the unfortunate case of not being able to find a job shortly. The other one is to be given to your next employer.

At the very least I was given a week of pay for severance purposes, but you know its bad when you are given marching orders in the middle of the busiest period of the year for accountants.


Anybody want to hire an ACCA qualified accountant?

Something is going on

I can't log onto my computer or email at work and my jobs assignment board does not go beyond January, I think I am about to be made redundant.

Confirmed

Yup those were boxes of P45s the fact that the delivery man had to go up and down the stairs multiple times gives me an indicator that there are bad times ahead. I'm worried to be honest in that I wonder when my P45 will arrive as our clients are doing so little trade we simply can't justify sending them large bills. Everybody is tightening their belts.

But in other news today I've been reducing payments on account for HMRC for quite a while, in that taxes paid on Jan and Jul 31st are determined by last year's results as an estimate. If they are above last years you have a balancing payment at 31st January. If you have too high an estimate or your turnover falls off a cliff you reduce the payments on account.

I've universally had to reduce payments on account for EVERY client I've worked on, I can look back and see trends of falling turn over for a given period of time. It all looks bad.

Something not right

I work nearby the payroll office and they are ordering an immense amount of stationery these days, boxes being delivered on a daily basis. I suspect that these are P45s. In that generally in accounts work part of your job is to analyse trends and variations year on year. Small variations 5-10% usually don't matter but anything bigger needs investigation.

I often phone them up and almost universally every client states that they are doing less trade much less trade, many are simply ticking over at idle just covering their expenses.

I wonder how long this can go on, I can feel that because our work load has been cut WE the accountants will soon be cut which is not good.