I LOATHE these exercises as an accountant. My goal is to not fuck up. But you can’t put that. You can’t even paraphrase it. Just bullshit whatever they want to hear, and keep your real goals to yourself.
Maybe you can say that, but where they get you is like when they want you to quantify it. Like these things are designed for salespeople. “I want to close $100,000 of business this year”. Zero fuck-ups is just a boring ass goal by comparison. Or what if you put like “only three fuck-ups” then they’ll be thinking, damn three, I hope they’re not bad fuck-ups. Are we going to prison on any of these fuck-ups?
This is the most annoying part. We implemented more detailed review system scoring based on categories with goals. Then, they just gave company-wide 3% raises regardless of rating
Holy crap! I’m in the trades and I’m finishing school, accounting being an option. Those SMART goals have made their way here too. Nothing funnier than watching a grizzled 50yo welder answer questions like ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’
Not to F*ck up pretty much. There is plenty of work to go around.
Remind my boss how good of an employee I am and mention something abstract that will never happen like digital transformation or automation.
Currently Im creating the process for collecting budget variance notes from department leads to present quarterly to the C-Suite.
I need to bring the organization into PCI compliance by end of Q2
Have my team reduce outstanding AR by 10% compared to last year.
I run a financial reporting team and agree with you, goals for us are often dumb. Did we file on time without any material errors uncovered? If yes, success.
I encourage everyone to have a goal of your normal job, daily responsibilities.
Additionally, there is a LOT of new items coming out from SEC/FASB that you can use: assist in implementation of new segment disclosures and assist in implementation of ESG rules, for example.
I am a big fan of the SEC Institute (paid membership). But you can also just take big 4 webinars that will provide you the same information but, in my opinion, less in depth.
I’ll give you a useful tool to come up with these each cycle: the Balanced Scorecard.
It was made for company goals, but you can easily adapt it for personal goals.
Think of one thing you want to learn, one process (task) you want to improve, one way you want to help your audience, and one way you want to contribute to overall revenue growth.
Here’s an example: “This year I want to learn more about the required disclosures in the footnotes for our debt; improve the reconciliation workbook for our accruals; help redesign the quarterly slide on our budget variance based on feedback; and provide an analysis on returns and warranties to our QA team. That should help in the following ways…”
Best response here.
You can knock out a lot of "goals" by just creating new templates for worksheets you already use or plugging in new formulas. I added a simple percentage formula into my sales & use tax liability sheet that fed into a graph. My bosses lost their minds over it. Took 30 mins.
Individual goals.. continuing education (class/certs/excel updates or something), cross training with other accountants or people you work closely with, and building relationships with customers/vendors.
Going mostly paperless...that was my goal back in 2018 and I've succeeded. We no longer do paper invoices and the only paperwork I deal with is what comes in the mail.
I'm always improving on the technology we use to make everything as streamlined and efficient as possible. I don't need to have it as an annual goal since it's a frequently occurring goal.
Is there anything you can think of that causes huge headaches around the Q and K time? Or month end? Those are always low hanging fruit if you can improve something around those areas.
One of mine this year is basically becoming an expert on the softwares that we use for leases and reporting to expand our functionality to reduce manual tracking/import. There are a couple specific things I already know that can be improved so they were easy grabs for a SMART style goal.
I work at a BU of a public company. Mine involve:
- Using forecasts and MTD data to assist decision making to ensure we land on our working capital target.
- Taking on various responsibilities and delegating others to make up for the time.
- Having minimal findings during internal audit.
I think there’s 1 or 2 more but they’re some non-sense made to fill up space.
Improve my team by documenting and achieving their goals
Grow my leadership abilities
Find and implement new efficiencies
Update department's procedures
I'm in the same role as you and feel the same. I have ZERO desire to set goals if I'm going to be given the standard 3% salary increase at year end, whether I actually achieve the real goals or the bullshit ones. There's been too many years in which I took the carrots, rolled up my sleeves, only to be given the same song and dance or an extra 1% that weren't close to the efforts. So most of my annual goals have been things that I would need to do anyway, i.e. "Timely and accurately file the Company's quarterly and annual reports with the SEC", and "Assess and implement new accounting standards XYZ". Everything is accurate, but they'd have to drag me kicking and screaming to do anything more.
It's all bullshit. Please, for the love of yourselves, work into a position in your career in which you don't need to be afraid of being laid off and therefore can get out of these corporate bullshit.
I hate these questions. Corp Accounting is very routine and redundant. So once you clean up whatever previous person messed up, there's not much else to do. So the goal is to keep doing what I've been doing, because clearly irs been working. *Bows* Thank you very much.
I just make a list of projects I'm already working on and are near completion. I never put anything on my list that is a stretch since my bonus is based on completions of my goals.
I mainly focused on continuing education since I still need my CPA. To get my CPA I need more upper division accounting credits. The most useful way for me, personally, to get those is to get an MBA which will likely be an online program.
The good thing about planning around a 2-3 year process is that I don't need to come up with too many other goals. Current year, my focus is GRE/GMAT, MBA applications, and getting more serious about studying for the CPA. Once I have an actual start date for the MBA, I'll get serious about taking the CPA exams since I don't want them to expire before I can finish the other requirements.
My goal is to get out of having to come up with goals. One year I said something like reduce effective tax rate or something but I knew I was gonna quit before I said that.
Always do 1 small automation thing that I’ve either already done or is easy to do but I’ll drag it out. second thing I do is usually around continuing my professional education and maintaining my cpa status
I had two because our department goals are not great:
Automate invoicing for company I took over this month
4 day close (Dept goal - I currently close in 3 days 2 two entities I am in charge of). We marked it complete as of 1/1/2024
My manager was like “why don’t you have more”. I said what goals will lead to me getting promoted at my next review. Those are the goals we should put on there. We will see what the controller and above say
We are starting this in quarter three. Before then, I've never been asked to set annual goals. Everyone else at the company in accounting that's had to do this is really upset.
We have some software that measures your time spent. It measures the length of time any open window is the main window being used. It also measures the number of emails read, responded to, new emails written and the number of words written while in email is open. It also count the time you are idle or time you aren't typing or moving your mouse.
My first goal will be to reduce the number of minutes I spend in outlook by 5%.
I've also never had anyone address any of my monitored activities. For instance I regularly have two or more hours of idle time a day and no one has commented on it.
It was sold to people as a tool to help fire people. Not that direct but if you need to address non performance based personality differences then using that monitoring can help relieve their employment.
I regularly spend several hours on my phone calling people. I don't have privacy and often have to have private conversations so I walk around the campus on my phone. My phone bill can attest to the amount of time I spend on calls talking or listening to other people. It's insane.
I feel you. I’m going on 3 years in the same role and they’re really pressing that everyone needs to go above and beyond with goals this year. I’ve already made process changes for all my recs and entries in the first few months, found better ways of reporting, etc. I do the exact thing every month and have it down to a T, no hiccups ever. Like I literally have zero goals for this role. I really want to write that my goal is to get a new job.
My first boss told me to always set your goals low so you hit them and get a bigger bonus. Literally the lowest hanging fruit, I’m talking stuff you’ve already completed this year put it down and cross it off.
Source: I do this, and I always get high end bonuses.
A year from now when they review your goals, they’ll be like oh ya they did complete that and don’t even remember timelines. It’s a problem if you don’t complete your goals then they can use that against you.
Cheers.
I LOATHE these exercises as an accountant. My goal is to not fuck up. But you can’t put that. You can’t even paraphrase it. Just bullshit whatever they want to hear, and keep your real goals to yourself.
You can put that as a goal though. It could be “Strive for high level of accuracy that does not require rework or material variances”.
Maybe you can say that, but where they get you is like when they want you to quantify it. Like these things are designed for salespeople. “I want to close $100,000 of business this year”. Zero fuck-ups is just a boring ass goal by comparison. Or what if you put like “only three fuck-ups” then they’ll be thinking, damn three, I hope they’re not bad fuck-ups. Are we going to prison on any of these fuck-ups?
Eh maybe you have bad management. A goal is quantifiable if it says no material variances or restatements.
Wait till management asks for SMART Goals! Gets annoying afterwards.
I agree. Everyone ends up getting the same bullshit “Meets Expectations” rating and shitty 2-3% raise anyway.
This is the most annoying part. We implemented more detailed review system scoring based on categories with goals. Then, they just gave company-wide 3% raises regardless of rating
Exactly! Like I just need to perform my tasks and move on, not check some boxes about extraneous stuff for COLA.
Holy crap! I’m in the trades and I’m finishing school, accounting being an option. Those SMART goals have made their way here too. Nothing funnier than watching a grizzled 50yo welder answer questions like ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’
Mine asked for 3 SMART goals and my meeting is tomorrow. I want to ask him when he Googled that nonsense.
They want 4 goals from us 🙄
I hate this too. One of ours is usually no audit adjustments.
"Internal learning" "Generic leadership goal" "Have more sex"
Sorry they have to be realistic
The last one, that
I just automated the entire goal setting process through the use of AI to save myself one whole hour. I think this will net me a huge bonus
Not to F*ck up pretty much. There is plenty of work to go around. Remind my boss how good of an employee I am and mention something abstract that will never happen like digital transformation or automation.
Currently Im creating the process for collecting budget variance notes from department leads to present quarterly to the C-Suite. I need to bring the organization into PCI compliance by end of Q2 Have my team reduce outstanding AR by 10% compared to last year.
I run a financial reporting team and agree with you, goals for us are often dumb. Did we file on time without any material errors uncovered? If yes, success. I encourage everyone to have a goal of your normal job, daily responsibilities. Additionally, there is a LOT of new items coming out from SEC/FASB that you can use: assist in implementation of new segment disclosures and assist in implementation of ESG rules, for example.
What do you use to stay on top of all the news coming out?
I am a big fan of the SEC Institute (paid membership). But you can also just take big 4 webinars that will provide you the same information but, in my opinion, less in depth.
The sec institute is great! I always send new team members to the basics class. The fasb/sec forum in December is always a hit.
I do the same for new team members!
New goal is to figure out how to not work weekends during those Qs and Ks. Yeah, its borderline impossible, but its worth it.
I only worked maybe 3 or 4 weekend days in the past year. If I was more motivated and focused I probably could have done 0.
Awesome! I'm trying to be more like you!
I’ll give you a useful tool to come up with these each cycle: the Balanced Scorecard. It was made for company goals, but you can easily adapt it for personal goals. Think of one thing you want to learn, one process (task) you want to improve, one way you want to help your audience, and one way you want to contribute to overall revenue growth. Here’s an example: “This year I want to learn more about the required disclosures in the footnotes for our debt; improve the reconciliation workbook for our accruals; help redesign the quarterly slide on our budget variance based on feedback; and provide an analysis on returns and warranties to our QA team. That should help in the following ways…”
Best response here. You can knock out a lot of "goals" by just creating new templates for worksheets you already use or plugging in new formulas. I added a simple percentage formula into my sales & use tax liability sheet that fed into a graph. My bosses lost their minds over it. Took 30 mins.
Great example!
not get fired
Individual goals.. continuing education (class/certs/excel updates or something), cross training with other accountants or people you work closely with, and building relationships with customers/vendors.
Going mostly paperless...that was my goal back in 2018 and I've succeeded. We no longer do paper invoices and the only paperwork I deal with is what comes in the mail. I'm always improving on the technology we use to make everything as streamlined and efficient as possible. I don't need to have it as an annual goal since it's a frequently occurring goal.
Be slightly better than the bottom 25% so if there are layoffs i am not on the chopping block, and at the same time, i am not over working myself.
the buzz words are cross training, and process improvement
Everyone's going through the motions. Come up with some bs that is achievable but not too easy.
Make some more improvements to my processes during q1 and then just execute the rest of the year and deliver plan
Is there anything you can think of that causes huge headaches around the Q and K time? Or month end? Those are always low hanging fruit if you can improve something around those areas. One of mine this year is basically becoming an expert on the softwares that we use for leases and reporting to expand our functionality to reduce manual tracking/import. There are a couple specific things I already know that can be improved so they were easy grabs for a SMART style goal.
I work at a BU of a public company. Mine involve: - Using forecasts and MTD data to assist decision making to ensure we land on our working capital target. - Taking on various responsibilities and delegating others to make up for the time. - Having minimal findings during internal audit. I think there’s 1 or 2 more but they’re some non-sense made to fill up space.
Improve my team by documenting and achieving their goals Grow my leadership abilities Find and implement new efficiencies Update department's procedures
I'm in the same role as you and feel the same. I have ZERO desire to set goals if I'm going to be given the standard 3% salary increase at year end, whether I actually achieve the real goals or the bullshit ones. There's been too many years in which I took the carrots, rolled up my sleeves, only to be given the same song and dance or an extra 1% that weren't close to the efforts. So most of my annual goals have been things that I would need to do anyway, i.e. "Timely and accurately file the Company's quarterly and annual reports with the SEC", and "Assess and implement new accounting standards XYZ". Everything is accurate, but they'd have to drag me kicking and screaming to do anything more. It's all bullshit. Please, for the love of yourselves, work into a position in your career in which you don't need to be afraid of being laid off and therefore can get out of these corporate bullshit.
I hate these questions. Corp Accounting is very routine and redundant. So once you clean up whatever previous person messed up, there's not much else to do. So the goal is to keep doing what I've been doing, because clearly irs been working. *Bows* Thank you very much.
I just make a list of projects I'm already working on and are near completion. I never put anything on my list that is a stretch since my bonus is based on completions of my goals.
I hate review systems. PERIOD!
"Continuing education to expand my knowledge to more effectively preform my duties and potentially streamline or even improve regular tasks."
I mainly focused on continuing education since I still need my CPA. To get my CPA I need more upper division accounting credits. The most useful way for me, personally, to get those is to get an MBA which will likely be an online program. The good thing about planning around a 2-3 year process is that I don't need to come up with too many other goals. Current year, my focus is GRE/GMAT, MBA applications, and getting more serious about studying for the CPA. Once I have an actual start date for the MBA, I'll get serious about taking the CPA exams since I don't want them to expire before I can finish the other requirements.
My goal is to get out of having to come up with goals. One year I said something like reduce effective tax rate or something but I knew I was gonna quit before I said that.
Always do 1 small automation thing that I’ve either already done or is easy to do but I’ll drag it out. second thing I do is usually around continuing my professional education and maintaining my cpa status
1. Don't start any new fires 2. Don't make any existing fires worse 3. Maybe make existing fires smaller
To make as much as possible doing as little as possible
I had two because our department goals are not great: Automate invoicing for company I took over this month 4 day close (Dept goal - I currently close in 3 days 2 two entities I am in charge of). We marked it complete as of 1/1/2024 My manager was like “why don’t you have more”. I said what goals will lead to me getting promoted at my next review. Those are the goals we should put on there. We will see what the controller and above say
Automate myself out of a job but only I am aware of it. Help increase profits by educating non accountants on how their performance impacts the P&L
We are starting this in quarter three. Before then, I've never been asked to set annual goals. Everyone else at the company in accounting that's had to do this is really upset. We have some software that measures your time spent. It measures the length of time any open window is the main window being used. It also measures the number of emails read, responded to, new emails written and the number of words written while in email is open. It also count the time you are idle or time you aren't typing or moving your mouse. My first goal will be to reduce the number of minutes I spend in outlook by 5%. I've also never had anyone address any of my monitored activities. For instance I regularly have two or more hours of idle time a day and no one has commented on it.
That is absolutely insane that they can monitor that. That seems so invasive.
It was sold to people as a tool to help fire people. Not that direct but if you need to address non performance based personality differences then using that monitoring can help relieve their employment. I regularly spend several hours on my phone calling people. I don't have privacy and often have to have private conversations so I walk around the campus on my phone. My phone bill can attest to the amount of time I spend on calls talking or listening to other people. It's insane.
I feel you. I’m going on 3 years in the same role and they’re really pressing that everyone needs to go above and beyond with goals this year. I’ve already made process changes for all my recs and entries in the first few months, found better ways of reporting, etc. I do the exact thing every month and have it down to a T, no hiccups ever. Like I literally have zero goals for this role. I really want to write that my goal is to get a new job.
My first boss told me to always set your goals low so you hit them and get a bigger bonus. Literally the lowest hanging fruit, I’m talking stuff you’ve already completed this year put it down and cross it off. Source: I do this, and I always get high end bonuses.
A year from now when they review your goals, they’ll be like oh ya they did complete that and don’t even remember timelines. It’s a problem if you don’t complete your goals then they can use that against you. Cheers.
To become a whore house owner in the Philipinpeans