Why is Accounting Hard?

I really don't understand why I find accounting so challenging. I just got done taking a quiz in that class, and even though I studied quite hard for it, I still only ended up getting a B on it, and it makes me rage. I took proper calculus with engineers/math majors as well as science classes and I never had this much trouble getting an A on a midterm/quiz. I also took a finance midterm, got a 98, took 2 econ tests and got As or A-s on them, but accounting just isn't working. Has anyone else struggled with accounting as much as I have?

how hard is accounting?

Accounting is a very memorization heavy topic that requires a lot of work and rote memorization. Accounting is about mechanics and if you can memorize the rules - you will be successful.

APAE - Private Equity Partner:
Management accounting is worse than Financial Statement Accounting. For me, it was just a matter of rote repetition, literally over and over. Financial accounting was easy. Statements, statements, statements. Read the lecture slides, read the corresponding textbook pages, do the practice problems. Do the homework again. Read the slides. Do more statements.

fomc:
Learning accounting is a very mechanical process and all that it takes is just a lot and a lot of practice to score a very high mark. The fact that so many people work in accounting confirms the fact its not rocket science. Just look at the number of people with CPAs. Oh, and management accounting sucks. Financial accounting is much easier.

noobstar - Sales and Trading Analyst:
How good you are at accounting has nothing to do with how smart you are. It's nothing more than the result of how much time you spend practicing that shit over and over again until you've got it down cold. So don’t sweat it just try harder and repeat.

Need help with financial statement accounting? Check out the video below to start reviewing concepts.

Read More About Accounting on WSO

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learning accounting is a very mechanical process and all that it takes is just a lot and a lot of practice to score a very high mark. The fact that so many people work in accounting confirms the fact its not rocket science. Just look at the number of people with CPAs. Oh, and management accounting sucks. Financial accounting is much easier.

 

If you arent a creative thinker accounting will be harder for you. To grasp the ideas in upper level accounting you have to think out side the box.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

Cost Accounting is the most creative expression of accounting there is - and most cost accounting professors are mind-numbed twits. Cost accounting is going into, example, a factory and figuring out where every penny is being spent; both real expenditures and things like time and motion, engineering, creative design, etc, etc. This is a job for managers/operators with creativity, not accountants with a rule book. The odds of an accounting professor giving me, as an operator, cost accounting I can use is slim.

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Distressed Industrial Buyer:
Cost Accounting is the most creative expression of accounting there is - and most cost accounting professors are mind-numbed twits. Cost accounting is going into, example, a factory and figuring out where every penny is being spent; both real expenditures and things like time and motion, engineering, creative design, etc, etc. This is a job for managers/operators with creativity, not accountants with a rule book. The odds of an accounting professor giving me, as an operator, cost accounting I can use is slim.

Thanks, Ben Affleck.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

The problem with that approach is that when you encounter a scenario that doesn't appear to fit neatly with what you've memorised, due to a shallow level of understanding, you might find yourself stumpted. Better learn the principles and practice, practice and practice again.

 
austendwayne:
Yes accounting is so hard i spend many year in accounting but don't know understand. Accounting hard because its related to math.

Accounting isn't hard like high level math is hard. It's just learning a bunch of rules as to where to put each bean.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Best Response

I would definitely agree with this. The math you use is pretty intuitive in the majority of cases, a lot of the difficulty is memorizing the rules and understanding the language. The math itself generally makes sense. I personally do not think accounting is that hard, but there are lots of pieces in industry-specific, advanced levels of accounting that are incredibly complex. The CPA examination was not really that hard, it's just a lot of information to remember. If you put in the time with accounting you will inevitably figure it out.

 

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