I remembered weeks ago, I mentioned about finding podcasts and audio products for Accounting. Right now, I had a good website that issue podcasts on various accounting topics every two weeks. The website address is http://www.stevebragg.com/Podcast_Sign_Up.html . The various topics he talked about include Controls for Payroll, Fixed Assets, Journal Entries and many more great accounting topics.

The author of this website, Steven Bragg, is one of the top-selling and most prolific accounting authors in the world, has been quoted in Business Week and CFO Magazine, and has spoken internationally on a variety of accounting management issues. He is currently the Chief Financial Officer of a public company, and has been the CFO or controller of four companies. He holds an MBA from Babson College, a Master of Finance degree from Bentley College, a BA from the University of Maine, and has been a consulting manager with Ernst & Young and an auditor with Deloitte & Touche. He also holds the CPA, CMA, CIA, and CPIM certifications. Steve is the author of more than 30 business books, including the best sellers Accounting Best Practices, Accounting Control Best Practices, The New CFO Financial Leadership Manual, Controllership, Fast Close, Just-in-Time Accounting, and The Ultimate Accountant's Reference. He is also a co-author of the Wiley GAAP Guide, which is the standard accounting industry guide to the most recent GAAP issuances. With more than 17,000 copies sold each year, it is a perennial favorite among practicing accountants.

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A truly successful accountant in the business world has certain characteristics. The accountant who has all the characteristics listed below is rare, but most truly successful accountants have many, if not most, of these characteristics.

In terms of Expertise:
Technical Aspects: Knows accounting principles, accounting standards as well as taxation related to the location.
Management Aspects: Knows the principles and techniques of business management and administration. Ability to provide tactical information to increase efficiency and productivity.
Language: Speaks well and writes well. Spells accurately and has good grammar. This is essentially needed for financial reports.

Personal Characteristics
Dress: Dresses for success, wearing conservative, formal clothing. Polished shoes.
Personal image: Well groomed, clean. Moderate length or short hair, clean fingernails.
Integrity: An accountant sells two things: time and integrity. Has high personal standards of honesty and lives by the organization's high standards. Personal life is consistent with working life's standards.
Confidence: Has self-confidence but is not overbearing. Relaxed.
Service orientation: Always looking to serve others and help solve their problems.
Office/workspace: Neat, organized, inviting. Comfortable.
Personal hygiene: No smell, no bad breath. Good posture. Moderate, pleasant voice. No loud or expansive gestures. Looks healthy and full of energy. Is not sleepy or bored on the job.
Attitude: Positive. Willing to work. Excited to solve problems.
Pleasant personality: Gets along with everyone, including difficult personalities.

Disciplined Resource Management
Money: Not extravagant with company funds or personal funds. Personal finances are in order to create trust.
Time: Uses time effectively and efficiently. This is absolutely essential. Accountants sell their time; expertise and knowledge help, but there must be time to use it. Those who are not good time managers will not be successful accountants.

Etiquette
Sends thank-you notes.
Introduces people.
Uses common courtesy at all times.
Punctual; does not make others wait. Shows time management.
Knows when to stand up in respect of others. Be assertive.
Able to manage meetings and end them gracefully on time.
Attends to details; merticulous.

I may not have all the attributes but I am working on it. In terms of expertise, I am not there yet and I would work hard towards it and this is the area I would on through my ACCA course and hopefully in a temporary job that I could do during my vacation or something.

Morale

Morale is a term primarily used from a military context, to denote the state of mind or spirit of group, particularly regarding discipline and confidence. It can also be related to satifasfaction, since low morale implies a state of dissatisfaction.

How do we look for signs of low morales? Here are some indications:
1. Low productivity maybe a sign of low morale but this may be due to other problems which hold a higher weightage.
2. High labour turnover may also be aign but do take into the account of the age structure of the workforce and other actors in natural wastage. Low turnover does not also neccsarily mean high morale; they may stay due to lack of other job opportunities in the job market.

There are many theories behind morale and two such theories are Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg's two-factor theory.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs depicts a pyramid which shows physiological needs as the bottom role followed by safety followed by social followed by ego and then self actualisation. At any one moment, one need is dominant and remains dominant until satisfied. Once satisfied, it is no longer a motivator and will then be replaced by a higher order need not yet satisfied. Every individual needs are different and a manager needs to identify subordinate's needs and provide the means to satisfy this needs. Take for an example a prostitute especially one that comes from a very poor family: Her main hierarchy of needs according to Maslow's would be to satisfy her physiological needs, to get her own shelter, food and earn money. No woman would wanted to sell their body unless that woman is insane. In order for the woman to sell them is when they are desperate for moeny and could not obtain it in any other ways and therefore, they sell tehir body.
However, there are criticisms to this theory. It is not the complete answer to motivate employees and satisfaction of needs are not the only factor, others like group allegiance, attitudes towards managers may exert stronger motivation. Some people may have very low aspirations, hence no motivation and hierachy of needs may not be applicable to creative people like musicians and artists.

Herzberg's two factor theory
Ferderick Herzberg revealed two distinct sets of factors: those who created satisfaction known as motivator factors and those who create dissatisfaction known as hygiene or maintenance factors. Herzberg also highlighted two basic needs of individuals:
1. The need to avoid unpleasantness. Hygiene factors satisfy this need.
2. The need for personal growth and fulfillment. Motivator factors satisfy this need.

Althought Herberg's model is simple and accesible, it has been critised on a number of grounds.
1. Empirical verifictaion and measuremtn of the claim that motivator factors increase productivity have been hard to find.
2. The research findings are context specific.
3. The original study was based on an inadequately small sample size to draw conclusion.

Hope that you would find this article useful.
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It was an insightful day yesterday as I attended my F1 course on motivation and performance. In time to come, if I entered into the corporate world or assume any leadership role, this lesson could be the most useful lesson I ever attended. Therefore, I decided to share with you some of the things I learned during this lesson.

Many would ask: Why motivate people? Have we not pay them enough? A recent survey conducted and published on a local newspaper had suggested that Singaporeans are not motivated by pay to work. They seeked opportunities and personal development and assume more managerial roles. This is what motivates Singaporeans. Singaporeans are no longer contented with a fat pay check, they wanted more. How we give them? This is why this lesson is important to me.

A well trained, experienced but unmotivated individual is unlikely to be committed to his job, doing only the bare minimum. Likewise, a young and enthusiastic trainee may learn very fast and produce a return on the organisation's investment quickly initially but would lose steam or leave the organisation if he felt unmotivated. I also had an experience with my present organisation whereby everyone wanted to leave because they felt unmotivated. Everyone is only looking forward for their next pay check and they would just do the bare minimum leaving those who are motivated their left over work. Soon, the motivated ones became unmotivated and do just the bare minimum and this became a deadly cycle. Although, every now and then, the organisation would have fresh trainees and recruits, they would have a high labour turnover which is not healthily at all. Therefore, it is in the manager's best interests to have a good motivation throughout a company, from sales office to the production line. With motivation, your staff will definitely be more productive and committed, making fewer mistakes and convey a more positive and enthusiastic air to customers.

There are three keys areas for using motivation as a tool to get work done. They are:
1. Giving employees freedom to achieve an objective. (NOT MY PRESENT ORGANISATION) Let them learn and grow from their job experiences. Guide them in the right direction but do not interfere in the way they are doing or carry out the tasks. I love my previous superiors. They allowed me to do what I wanted to do like studying for my ACCA, sleeping if I am tired or anything as long as I completed the jobs they needed me to do. They also would like interfere with the way I do things but most importantly if I did a mistake, they would guide me instead of scolding or treating me like shit like my current organisation did.
2. Recognition and genuine appreciation for good work done. (DEFINITELY NOT MY PRESENT ORGANISATION) Many companies took for granted that employees getting a good job done is a right as they paid them to do so. What companies do not see is that employees took overtime, skip lunches or breaks just to do a report for their bosses. If the bosses do not appreciate that, the employee may think why should I skip lunch or breaks and do overtime and instead may just do the bare minimum which is happening to all companies, including mine. My previous superior would buy somethings like cookies or anything and he would just gave it to us, making us feel appreciated and definitely, we would not screwed up. I would do just the bare minimum in my current organisation because I do not feel appreciated. From day one, I got this feeling that we are crap and they wanted to kick us to a curb. Definitely not good for my heart so I started to ignore a lot of things and not to care so much, unlike my previous organisation which I loved to help.
3. Good interpersonal relations. (CONFIRM PLUS GUARANTEE WITH WARANTEE NOT MY PRESENT ORGANISATION) From day one, I did not had a good relationships which anyone in the current organisation. I started not to care and I hated each and everyone of them. I still do though although I was just good at conceding them.

This is why up till now, I still hate my organisation. Back to the topic....

Understanding Motivation
Motivation is ' a decision making process through which the individual chooses the desired outcomes and sets in motion the behaviour appropriate to aquire them. This is a definition by Huczynski and Buchenan. In pratice motivation are used in many different contexts. Here are some:
1. Desirable goals and outcomes. (money, power or friendship)
2. The mental process of choosing desired outcomes, deciding how to go to them and setting in motion the required behaviours. This is like internet marketing, you choose your niche areas and your techniques (Search Engine Optimazation, social networking) to increase traffic and you kept doing it.
3. The social process by which other people motivate us to behave in the ways they wish. Motivation in the sense usually applies to the attempts of organisations to get workers to put in more effort.

Motivation is about getting the extra level of commitment and performance from employees, over and above mere compliance with rules and procedures. If individuals are motivated, by one means or another, they might work more efficiently or produce a better quality of work.

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Despite writing articles about what I am learning, I realise I had never write the clear introduction about the course I am studying for.

Why ACCA?
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, better known as ACCA, is the global body for professional accountants. ACCA is the largest and fastest-growing global professional accountancy body with 115,000 members and 296,000 students and affiliates – up over 40% in the last five years. Every eight minutes, somewhere in the world, someone registers to study with ACCA. Besides in the coporate world, if you want to sent accounting documents, financial reports and taxes declaration reports, you would need either an accounting degree in NUS or NTU(not SIM, maybe SMU) or an ACCA certificate to certified that you can be a fully qualified accountant to practise accounting. People who do partial accounting (accounting and finance), finance and business would not be able to sign documents or submit reports related to submit to the government. One of my friends had a degree (masters) in finance and although she held a managerial position and had many years of experience in accounting, she was not able to sign documents and submit reports to the government in her name. Her pay was also shorted as compared to someone similar to her but with an ACCA qualification since she was not able to do the following task. Therefore, for people who wanted a career in finance whether banking or investment, I suggested that you take accounting because it would be really useful to you and please, do not take accounting and something else because it is not a full degree in accounting unless the course states that it is a double degree.

The Registration Part.
There are three ways that you can sign up for the course. Firstly, depending on your training centres, you can sign up at the training centres itself. For my school, FTMS global, you can just sign up at the counter by filling your application form and producing the necessary education documents. The second and most common one is to go to Aljunied and visit ICPAS office at the SAA training centre area. Similarly, you filled in the form and produce relevant documents and they would do the rest. This is the most common approach since ICPAS will directly do your application and submit it to ACCA where else other training centres may also do that but they may also pass it to ICPAS to do the registration for them which may delay the process part of your application. Lastly, you may also register online at http://accaglobal.com/ but do be mindful that you would now have to submit your related education documents yourselves and ACCA would not be responsible if your relevant documents does not go to them which is a hassle as you would have to submit your relevant education documents again and again if they do not receive them. This would delay your registration process. ( I still had not get my ACCA student membership.)

The Requirements
Firstly, you would need to be at least of an age of 18.
Secondly, you need to have a qualification of at least 5 'O' levels or 2 'A' levels with a minimum pass in your English at 'O' level or a degree.
Thirdly, another to qualify for the ACCA is by enrolling in CAT course which takes at least 2 years to complete which I find to be a little time consuming.
Fourthly, have a lot of patience as the process takes a lot of time. I had been waiting for my membership since January and had not received my membership yet.

Thoughts and Feelings
I had no background in accounting at all. In the beginning, it was really tough for me. I could not comprehend what accounting is all about but I learned. Whatever course you are in, you must be an active learner. Be really proactive in your learning. I emailed questions to my lecturers if I had doubts on certain topics. I rasied questions during lecture if I do not know what to do. I listend to podcasts of people from the accounting world. I talked to people in this trade. I lived, breathed and sleeped with accounting. What sparked off as an interest had evolved into a passion and I began to appreciate the accounting standards that I had learned. There is so much thing needed to be learned in accounting and sometimes, you would be caught in a situation whereby you would be overloaded with information. Most of the times, I would just taped my lecturer's lessons and listened to them again and again so that I had a better understanding of the topic. I had also decided that should I orded, I would either take more modules or started to learn the accounting trade by working in an accounting firm.

It is sometimes really hard to know what the person is thinking. Besides, I have the tendency to making a conclusion from the first impression, therefore, I tend to give other people a chance or a benefit of a doubt. Start my bitching: I had communications issues with this one particular guy. From the beginning of the day, he had been rubbing me the wrong way. Firstly when I went to the room, he was like why are you, why can't you just help to do some stuff? Why can't you take your initiative. The tone sucks and he was practically yelling. Is it my fault that I did not help him? Am I obliged to help him in the first place? I would have help him if he did not yell at me like that. I was like ok, fine, I just do it. The next thing, we went back to the room. I told him, I had to go somewhere to do our stuff. He was like no and no and no. He was yelling and I was like: ok, he said need to ask the person-in-charge and I was ok, I ask the person-in-charge but you no need to yell and make a big fuss over it. So I went to tell the person-in-charge and he was fine and that settled everything. I did not what the hell is wrong with him? He seemed to be upset over almost everything. My sergant and I agreed that he acted like he is the big boss down here. Fine, I went up to do my stuff. Then, I had a call which I thought was him but it was not. He asked me where I was. Me, being the bitchy one, would say why should I tell you? I said that and hang up. I already had issues with him when I told him where I was before, he gave me that stupid tone that why should I know? Go and tell your your superior la. After that when I came back, he shouted, yelled at me and I apologised. My Sergeant wanted to step in but guess what happened. He yelled back, ' Excuse me Sergeant....' I was pissed. I literally wanted to punch his face. If it is Yong Xiang, he would have shouted back and created the lastest whoohaa. ( I should have done that because I am the bitchiest one) Immediately, I retorted and said to him, 'why you treated him this way, if you have issues with me, you settle with me, not treat him this way.' My superior came in and he yelled back and go and eat your lunch. My Sergeant was pissed. He told me that if it is outside, he would have yelled back and scolded the person. I felt very bad because there he was trying to help me settle issues with that stupid person but he was being attacked just like Yong Xiang and Sergant Sim incident. I completely if not suppressed myself and asked him. At first, he was avoiding the issues with me. I had to dig and dig and dig until he finally opened up to the underlying issues with me. I mean if he had issues with me, he could have told me and not be so unhappy about it. Am I that unapproachable? Maybe because I am too bitchy, that's why! I told him about the previous incident what happened regarding Stanley but what the hell, I was over and done with that person. He was like linking the past to the present. I was like I am doing my job and if you want me to do something, I would have done it. RIGHT?????? But come to think about it, I really can suppress myself from being too crazy and of course bitchy. He said that other people feels that I am mean to him. I asked him do you think I am mean to you? he said no, because he thought we are friends. I asked him again do you think I am mean to you? He said no again. I asked him the final time. He said yes. (FINALLY!) I hated him from not being honest with me. He cared about how other people feel about me treating him vs me treating others? HUH?!?!?! I treated everyone the same and I did how I feel and bitched if I am angry. I can be very mean (BITCHY!) if I am angry and that's me what. However, at the end of the day, I would not be angry over a thing very long and then I would be nice t you all over again. I would say hi and bye to him. You asked for mutual respect. Have I not give you that? I did not yell at you like you did to me. I did what I was told. Isn't that called mutual respect?? Even if you yelled at me for asking too much questions, have I even said anything. Iwas like ok about it but right then, I did not see the things eye to eye. He was crazy. Anyway, I did told him that he must be honest with me. I did not knwo what went through his head. He obviously cared about how people feel about him. He was really very sensitive and I thought he maybe in the end trapped in the office politics forever which was meaningless to me. I hated it and I always dismiss them as rubbish. Anyway, from now on, I would try my best not to hurt this sensitive new age, egotistic guy from the ancient world. Anyway, I managed to hug my dearest friend from my previous organisation and I am happy about it! SHOUTOUTS TO THEM!!! Those are the people that I cared about deeply and always would. They asked me about my new organisation and my course. I told them the lastest things and happenings and I also told them I still do not like my organisation. It was like they did care about me more than the people that I recently worked with. I think that even the incik forget that I got night classes at all but my dearest ex s ir still asked me if I was coping well with my course and asked me if there is anyway he could help. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH MYCURRENT ORGANISATION?? Still hated the place. Whoohooo! End of BITCHING!

I am tired, really tired. You can see that I am still up at 1am blogging. Anyway, here is my summary for today's lecture.

1. Why a need for regulation?
- separation of ownership and management
- limited liability status
- economic power
2. Objectives for General Purpose Financial Statements (GPFS)
- financial position
- performance
- cash flow position
3. Components of financial statements
- Balance Sheet
- Income Statement
- Statement if changes in Equity
- Cashflow statements
- notes to account
4. Format for IAS1.
Revenue XX
Cost of Sales (XX)
Gross Profit XX
Other Income XX
Distribution Expense (XX)
Admin Expense (XX)
Finance Cost (XX)
Profit before tax XX
tax (XX)
Net Profit XX
5. Finance Cost are basically interest payables.

That's all for now!!!