Chair's Message
Mark Landy, CPA
I was walking through the reception area of our office the other day when I overheard a new twenty-something staff member. He commented to the receptionist about the carbon paper he had found in the back of the supply closet, and was absolutely amazed, not only that there was carbon paper in the supply closet, but that it was used, albeit decades ago, by accounting firms. I, on the other hand was absolutely amazed that a twenty-something individual even knew what carbon paper was, considering the technologically advanced world in which we live.
I mentioned to the young staff member that if he thought the carbon paper was amazing, he would find this truly unbelievable: the full set of hand-posted general ledgers, cash receipt, cash disbursement and general journals that our firm had maintained for one of our clients in the early 1960s. The staff member told me that he had heard of such a thing, but had never actually seen a hand posted set of books. When I showed the individual the hand posted ledgers and journals and he responded with the appropriate amount of interest and awe, I figured it was time to take this technologically savvy auditing neophyte on a trip down the proverbial “memory lane.” (I don’t recommend trying this one at home — unless you’re a beloved grandparent, or, perhaps, you happen to sign the individual’s paychecks.)
Anyway, I sat the individual down in my office and proceeded to reminisce about when I first started my career in accounting. When I first started, we had electric adding machines, not calculators. These machines only added and subtracted. I told him that when state and federal income taxes had to be calculated, there were no computers to spit out amounts: we actually had to use algebra (simultaneous equations, if you can believe it!) to calculate the amounts.
I could see I was losing the interest of my captive audience, so I decided to jump ahead a few years, to the time when the firm purchased its first computer. I explained that the purchase of the firm’s first computer, an NCR computer that required its own climate controlled room, was a big step for a small CPA firm to take. I explained that most CPA firms our size had utilized service bureaus for their data processing needs. My twenty-something captive audience’s eyes were glazing over, so I skipped ahead a few more years, to the firm’s purchase of its first portable computer. The staff member looked confused and asked me if I was talking about a laptop or notebook computer. I explained, to his dismay, that laptop computers were still years in the future — when I said “portable computer,” I was describing a machine something like this: it had a six inch screen, 128K of memory, weighed about 30 pounds and looked like a sewing machine case.
Just as I was about to discuss why our firm started with Apple desktops and changed to IBM-compatible desktops, the distinctive musical tune of a cell phone interrupted my long-winded “blast to the past.” Although I could see that the individual was embarrassed that he’d left his cell phone on, he was relieved the history lesson had come to an end. The individual who called the cell phone was the in-charge on the audit engagement to which my twenty-something staff member was assigned. My auditing neophyte handed me his cell phone — we looked at the screen together, and saw that the audit team on the engagement was waving hello to me. My, how technology has changed our world and our profession.
AZ CPA – January 2006
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