Ancient Accounting

[Kurioxan]

Nonononono don't mix me with these fundamentalists.

I've studied business couple of years in university so I became familiar with their occultist rites.

These rituals include changing the batteries of your calculator and making, by the Power of Coffee, the world worse for all of us.

In the name of Debit, Credit and the Balance sheet, - Amends.

Sounds dreadful somehow poor existences

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As an accountant, I only pick up my calculator when I don't want to use a random cell in my Excel sheet. And I drink tea. Although I'm a cost accountant, a breed even other accountants think are kind of odd.

Aaaaah! they are here! we have been infiltrated! run, run for your liiiiives (and wallets)

[Deleted]

As an accountant, I only pick up my calculator when I don't want to use a random cell in my Excel sheet. And I drink tea. Although I'm a cost accountant, a breed even other accountants think are kind of odd.

I knew I wasn't the only one who did this. Calculators are so slow : ((

And other accountants think you are odd because costing is mind numbingly boring, even relative to other accounts stuffs. I would rather input purchase ledger transactions all day. At least they give you a big stamp for the invoices if you're doing PL.

[Reeve]

I knew I wasn't the only one who did this. Calculators are so slow : ((

And other accountants think you are odd because costing is mind numbingly boring, even relative to other accounts stuffs. I would rather input purchase ledger transactions all day. At least they give you a big stamp for the invoices if you're doing PL.

Calculators are good for quick napkin math kinda stuff. But yeah, Excel is just so much better in nearly every conceivable way. It's possibly my favorite computer program, and it always staggers me how most people have no idea how to use it to its potential.

Of course I'm not an accountant.

[Tirivaria]

And other accountants think you are odd because costing is mind numbingly boring, even relative to other accounts stuffs. I would rather input purchase ledger transactions all day. At least they give you a big stamp for the invoices if you're doing PL.

Yeah, variance analysis is where the "fun" is. Although, I'm in the semiconductor industry, so stuff turns over fast fast fast. The product life cycle for some stuff is under five years (only a couple years of actual production) so there's always something new coming down the pipeline. I imagine if I were in the auto industry or something and the engineers were putting the same engine into successive generations of cars, that would get old fast.

[Deleted]

Calculators are good for quick napkin math kinda stuff. But yeah, Excel is just so much better in nearly every conceivable way. It's possibly my favorite computer program, and it always staggers me how most people have no idea how to use it to its potential.

Of course I'm not an accountant.

And like, people turn their nose up at it, like oh god it's so boring spreadsheets nerrrrrr.

Like, even for non accounts or maths stuff it's a fucking godsend. I've got a spreadsheet at work that I used when I was dating a girl with an eating disorder. She liked to have regular eating schedules and know what she was eating in advance, and I hated wasted food and we were on a pretty tight budget so I wrote this spreadsheet where we saved all the igredients lists for every dish we knew how to make, then it has this calendar and you input what you're going to cook on each day, and it vlookups the ingredients and builds a shopping list for you with quantities of everything and all which you can then just print or take a photo of, go to the supermarket, buy exactly what you need for the week or month and you know exactly when you are eating it and all. I was even going to make it so each item on the list came up as a link to the tesco online shop website thing, so you could just click down the list, add everything to basket and then order it online. Was fucking genious. I broke up with her before I got round to doing all the tesco links stuff though.

And then (because I work in a recruitment agency) I hear candidates coming in every day and we're asking them about their skills or whatever and they're like "oh, yeah no I can't do anything with excel it's really boring and stupid" and I'm like I HATE YUO SO MUCH.

[Puupi]

If you can really do that Erin, you should hook up with some programming guys and make a program of it and become a gazillionaire.

[Deleted]

If you can really do that Erin, you should hook up with some programming guys and make a program of it and become a gazillionaire.

I'm not clever enough for programming. I've got a pretty early version of it saved on my home pc (that I'm on at the moment) if you wanna see it?

[Reeve]

And like, people turn their nose up at it, like oh god it's so boring spreadsheets nerrrrrr.

Like, even for non accounts or maths stuff it's a fucking godsend. I've got a spreadsheet at work that I used when I was dating a girl with an eating disorder. She liked to have regular eating schedules and know what she was eating in advance, and I hated wasted food and we were on a pretty tight budget so I wrote this spreadsheet where we saved all the igredients lists for every dish we knew how to make, then it has this calendar and you input what you're going to cook on each day, and it vlookups the ingredients and builds a shopping list for you with quantities of everything and all which you can then just print or take a photo of, go to the supermarket, buy exactly what you need for the week or month and you know exactly when you are eating it and all. I was even going to make it so each item on the list came up as a link to the tesco online shop website thing, so you could just click down the list, add everything to basket and then order it online. Was fucking genious. I broke up with her before I got round to doing all the tesco links stuff though.

And then (because I work in a recruitment agency) I hear candidates coming in every day and we're asking them about their skills or whatever and they're like "oh, yeah no I can't do anything with excel it's really boring and stupid" and I'm like I HATE YUO SO MUCH.

Yeah, it drives me nuts. On the one hand you have the people who think it's boring and useless and have no idea how to use it, while on the other, you have people who think every damned thing needs to be in a true database. Databases are great end solutions, but they take forever to put together properly. Excel has a great place as a quick and dirty way to do fantastic stuff.

Excel is simple, extremely flexible, and has the added benefit of being manipulable with VBA. Oooohhhh, the magic I can do with VBA...

[Deleted]

Whatevs, just cause I'm hella proud or smth. Early version and kind of messy, and I'm pretty sure I found a way to get it to group stuff so instead of having like "rice 100g" multiple times it just added them together. Will check tomorrow. Not much on it anyway but you see the point / where I'm going with it

http://i.imgur.com/QeIY0m2.png

[Reeve]

I once made a spreadsheet that could open every spreadsheet in a folder (typically 500 or so files) run through the sheets, identify the ones that were the wrong format or missing data, take the ones that were the correct format, pull the data into a new workbook where it could be consolidated, and automatically set up various pivot tables to analyze the data.

[Yvaelle]

I once made a spreadsheet that could open every spreadsheet in a folder (typically 500 or so files) run through the sheets, identify the ones that were the wrong format or missing data, take the ones that were the correct format, pull the data into a new workbook where it could be consolidated, and automatically set up various pivot tables to analyze the data.

I feel like you are Geordi LaForge, techno-babbling your way into making the main deflector dish (Excel) solve every problem of time and space

[Reeve]

I feel like you are Geordi LaForge, techno-babbling your way into making the main deflector dish (Excel) solve every problem of time and space

Hah! The tachyon pulses occasionally disrupt my field modulation.

The funny thing for me is that I made that 2.5 years ago as a stopgap solution to be used until such time as we could move the whole process into Oracle, but they're still using it today.

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Easy, the Emperor is the end all be all and what he says goes. If it takes a while to get some people paid, so be it.... Oh, and they didn't pay soldiers the same way we do today... nor did they pay the slave labor that built/mined/did any manual labor for them.

Side note: my favorite ancient accounting records were in regards to payments made using beer.

Emperors were often overthrown or deposed when they assumed what you just said to be true. That's especially true if they failed to pay the Praetorian or the Military on time, or if they failed to keep the free grain allotments flowing in Rome.

[Yvaelle]

Hah! The tachyon pulses occasionally disrupt my field modulation.

The funny thing for me is that I made that 2.5 years ago as a stopgap solution to be used until such time as we could move the whole process into Oracle, but they're still using it today.

Ya my ex was an accountant for a fairly big company, and wrote them some pretty fancy excel sheets they never moved past either - she used to complain about it all the time, because she thought she had been gunning for quick promotion with all her fancy solutions, and instead she felt kind of trapped there eventually - because she became "Keeper of the Excel Secrets" - and all her work went from her job toward sitting in her office maintaining the excel secrets and teaching people how to use them.

I remember hearing she left over it eventually - (Excel) knowledge is a terrible burden!

[Reeve]

Ya my ex was an accountant for a fairly big company, and wrote them some pretty fancy excel sheets they never moved past either - she used to complain about it all the time, because she thought she had been gunning for quick promotion with all her fancy solutions, and instead she felt kind of trapped there eventually - because she became "Keeper of the Excel Secrets" - and all her work went from her job toward sitting in her office maintaining the excel secrets and teaching people how to use them.

I remember hearing she left over it eventually - (Excel) knowledge is a terrible burden!

I made very certain that any solution I proposed would be used and maintained by someone else. I don't mind doing an update for them once in a blue moon if something breaks, but it's their job, and I have no problem telling them that if they can't make it work they're free to go back to using their old system. Luckily, they've been able to make it work without me, except for maybe 20 minutes of helping them per year.

But yeah, you definitely want to make sure that once you've handed off a solution, it's truly handed off.

[Deleted]

I made very certain that any solution I proposed would be used and maintained by someone else. I don't mind doing an update for them once in a blue moon if something breaks, but it's their job, and I have no problem telling them that if they can't make it work they're free to go back to using their old system. Luckily, they've been able to make it work without me, except for maybe 20 minutes of helping them per year.

But yeah, you definitely want to make sure that once you've handed off a solution, it's truly handed off.

This is why i moved into internal audit (trained accountant by profession): i tell people that their processes suck and they should do something about it (without actually coming up with any solutions myself - i just tell them to improve it and move on.) Pays well.

[Simmias]

Easy, the Emperor is the end all be all and what he says goes. If it takes a while to get some people paid, so be it.... Oh, and they didn't pay soldiers the same way we do today... nor did they pay the slave labor that built/mined/did any manual labor for them.

If you honestly think this is how it went down.... wtf is wrong with you? you're an embarrasment.

[Reeve]

This is why i moved into internal audit (trained accountant by profession): i tell people that their processes suck and they should do something about it (without actually coming up with any solutions myself - i just tell them to improve it and move on.) Pays well.

Yeah, I was occasionally the guy who was told to fix those processes. I remember internal audit had to go through several thousand documents by hand a few years ago. It took them like 2 months. I took that, and made it so that they could do the same thing in 10 minutes. There was much muffled swearing and happiness.

[McTurbo]

it wasn't thought of in that manner.. thats what outposts and the roads were for. logistics were huge. you moved or staged material in advance to enable your forces to move or operate. do not count out foraging (foraging means more than hunting, but taking crops, or merchant goods usually with little to no pay)as this was one of the main reasons an army moved so slow back in the day. setting up a city sized camp wasnt as simple as saying stop here beside the road.

a continuous supply of materials and goods brought up from different Providences along the way toward where ever they were fighting was usually bought by the ton or bushel by a quartermaster who then had to verify and justify the expense, the bigger the army the more quartermasters and pursers you needed. without paperwork like we had now you took a man at his word.. waste was frowned upon and so was starving your army.. so you got good at what you did and learned how much so many men could eat in a day along with how much fodder you would need for the animals and so on..

what they didnt do was track individual purchases like we do today. our detailed records would have astounded a record keeper back in the day and Arabic numerals allows us to use larger numbers and more specific numbers than roman numerals in a smaller amount of space. accounting just wasn't the same as your use to.

[Theinquisition]

As a DBA while in the army I created and managed a spread excel spreadsheet that was linked to SQL and manged the maintainence program on over 1 billion dollars worth of Helicopters and equipment.

It was stressful, and I don't miss a minute of it. I was more of a do'er than a Administrator.

[Gheld]

I can just picture Giorgio Tsoukalos asking the question: "Did the Caeser's armies really develop precise accounting practices thousands of years before the first version of LOTUS 1 2 3 was released... Or did they, as ancient astronaut theorists believe; outsource their logistics to accountants that were literally; out of this world?"