Hi, mind sharing how's the culture and benefits for audit fresh entry? Nowadays do auditors still work until midnight? Just thinking that they have more advanced technology, shouldn't it reduce work for humans, and thus better working environment.

Yes, work till midnight

Sure ACN pays better

Anyone got offer from PwC Acceleration Centre or know what working there is like? Got offer but reading reviews online (from other countries, since in MY jsut opened) seems like it's not so good working there. Don;t have other options tho so its either I take this or go unemployed for another few months or so

Reduce work for human, but that means from last time you have 3 projects, now you have handle 8 projects simultaneously since reduced work

LMAO seriously? Advanced analytics is good but you still need someone to review the results and make the appropriate inferences.

You have to ask yourself, any system or application that is developed to help make your life better is to not give you work life balance.
In the eyes of the company, all these applications are unnecessary cost UNLESS it can be justified to either increase sales/reduce man power costing.

So when your company is paying 100k -500k month for system enhancement and user licenses, it already has been approved by the CEO/Management team to bring more value to the company.

Before
Team of 10 - man power cost 150k a month - can bring in 500k revenue a month (2 projects a person)

Now
Team of 10
- man power cost 200k a month
- system cost sunken cost of 200k

Bring in only same amount of 500k because of "work life balance"?
Expect to pick up double the work to cover the cost of applications as well increasing profit.

No company has ever said oh we did well this year, let's just maintain and don't try to double the revenue next year.

My sister in law works in E&Y. Do expect to work long hours and meet some of the very nastiest bosses in this company. Not everyone/department is like that but the chance of bumping into these people who still rate people based on how long they stay in the office is definetely not small. The staff turn over rate in her auditing department is high for obvious reason.

My sister in law said that PwC seems to have a better working culture but this is just one friend of her out of many PwC staff. Hope this helps.

On a bright side, Is always good to have a job.

My sister in law works in E&Y. Do expect to work long hours and meet some of the very nastiest bosses in this company. Not everyone/department is like that but the chance of bumping into these people who still rate people based on how long they stay in the office is definetely not small. The staff turn over rate in her auditing department is high for obvious reason.

My sister in law said that PwC seems to have a better working culture but this is just one friend of her out of many PwC staff. Hope this helps.

On a bright side, Is always good to have a job.

True, and not forgetting the cost of "investing" millions/billions into talent development/training that enables the people to be equipped with analytics capabilities

In the eyes of most companies, talents is not priority.
That's why counter offers is on a case by case basis.
Training is just part of the perk like WFH to keep staff in the company to get this cert or that title

I look forward to see the new gens quitting in droves till partners will have no choice but to start reducing the amount of new clients they can take

Nothing new here. Big 4 will still see thousands of applicants and will have no issue getting new staffs. I don't have exact numbers but ratio is around the rule of 5. 1 partner with 5 manager and 5 staff for each manager. Bigger clients will have different compositions.

I think all big 4 wants to reduce low quality clients and keep the big ones. Clients like Maybank and Petronas easily eats up 50 staffs (audit, tax and consultancy).

Hmm I somehow feel while its true that big clients have like 50 staffs but the amount of work feels like we need 80... They see headcount but do not factor in complexity of what is being asked and everything to them is like easy to be completed....

Most consulting/ project have this issue. Budget will depends on the charge rate of the staffs. Let's take example of:
Associate: RM100 per hour
Manager: RM500 per hour
Partner: RM1000 per hour.

So if the audit fee is only RM10k and assuming 20% margin/ consistency. We are looking at:
Partner: 2 hour (RM2000)
Manager: 5 hour (RM2500)
Associate: 35 hour (RM3500)

That's average of 1 week job? Most big4 rarely charge full OT to the time charge as most clients won't pay.

And for some reason, on paper it sounds like they assume a manager can do 5 associate workload.

Which is why I sometimes feel businessman have the right mindset..

I met some that mentioned I pay my staff let’s say rm100k a year regardless got projects or not (construction) so if I close a 1mil sale let’s say they got me 900k theoreticallly..

This charge out hours in big 4 are just for book keeping purposes.. just want you to finish fast and generate more income from other jobs….

I do believe that there is a calculation model for Any Audit firm in earning the expected Profit Margin (Those Big Boss mind set or event Global Partnership Requirement)

Extracted from MIA Accountant Today



By the way, the data is related to the FY 2019.

If Based on this calculation, if a audit firm need to have at least 25% Net Profit Margin, they will need to take into account of their own Costing (Staff cost, rental, Leasing of printing machine/laptop, water, electricity and etc).

Bigger firm might have much more complex model and based on this in calculating the Charge out rate as per above mentioned.

For example, the charge rate of below:

Junior Associate RM 150 per hour
Senior Associate RM 250 per hour
Assistant Manager/Manager RM 400 per hour and etc.

Noted that in Big 4 or even Mid-Tier, the boss or Manager don't even tell you the target Revenue needed, you just do the work as per instructed. (Perhaps you generated more than the Revenue that you are really targeted for).

From my Senior Manager from one of the Big 4, "Audit Industry is not a place that you come to earn a lot of Salary unless you sit inside the Room (Partner/Director)".

In the end, Audit is also a business where you boss want their Profit Sharing, low recoverability rate from the engagement will cause less profit sharing. (Somehow unhealthy for long term, that why i would foresee that less applicant will join into Audit, its just a matters of Time.

Look at KPMG Singapore increase the Paid scale of Fresh Graduate by 20% as i think that no 1 wish to join into Big 4 anymore.

Just to share further points:
1) Business strategy: Audit and tax is the cash cow for the firm as it's a statutory requirement, consulting/ advisory is the growth where amount charged can be higher. It's common for the audit dept to charge fixed/ low growth fees to ensure they get the consulting work. With disclosure required by Bursa, this is less likely as firms need to disclose ratio of audit Vs consulting work. For example, audit can be pwc, system audit by KPMG and consulting by EY.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&...JsOat5bbb8xIL7z

2) Retention rate: Audit needs lots of associates to do field work. Only need a handful of manager and definitely not many partners are needed. No fixed numbers but 10% retention rate won't make partners blink. Yes, most money comes from profit sharing partnerships. Big 4 is increasingly using titles like directors/ partners to entice staff to stay longer with same/ lower pay. Banks been doing this long ago.
https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-...20190724-p52adf

3) You are right about costing, there are many other fixed cost to be absorbed chiefly from staff salaries, rentals, laptops, royalties, ...etc. In Asia, it's mostly unspoken that full OT rates are not charged in to keep the fees reasonable to client until the client grow in size to be next Maybank or Petronas. Best clients are actually subsidiaries of large MNCs that can easily afford the lower local currency fees.

4) Charge rate quota. There is also a minimum hours to be clocked by partners for certain engagements especially PLCs. Whether they spend that much time in actual is different story but most budget is worked backward and the stress is always on the manager to ensure timeline and budget is met and associate to deliver it .

Audit definitely not for everybody due to slow market growth, demanding timeline, lack of resources and increasing regulation by AOB and Bursa. However, the statutory requirement and highly standardised work provides lots of employment opportunities. There are staffs that left big4 to setup their own smaller firm to absorb clients their ex bosses deferred/ referred to. Win win for everybody.

Thank you both for sharing such a comprehensive breakdown of the cost.. At the end of the day it is a business and everyone wants more at the expense of other ppl's lives huh... If the partners can just accept a little lower profit sharing maybe retention rate might be higher but again it is a business not a charity so I understand where you are coming from.

I wonder if in western lands, are the big 4 as brutal as the one in Asia?

Comparing western and Asia is not easy and there are many factors.

My perspective it's easier to budget due to:
1) In the west, clients quality are generally better. Clients are bigger and can afford to pay more audit fees. This leads to more resources from audit firm and client with higher profits are also easier to audit due to higher materiality. Audit staffs can focus on analytics than manual work.
2) Currency exchange is better leading to easier targets
3) Audit staffs also higher quality coming from better schools
4) As most western clients have higher standard of governance and culture, the audit work is easier too. Eastern culture tend to be harder for auditors

Asia is developing country as compared to mature western so there are many other aspects. A key development is that in the west, only the bigger companies need to be audited so all the audit work monopolised by big4. In Asia or Malaysia for example, even small sdn bhd needs to be audited. This creates a lot of job for smaller audit firms. There is a law not too long ago that provided some exemptions but tax law may be contradicted. I don't really follow the news anymore but in Asia the focus is still more on quantity than quality.