Back in the days when I just started working newly as an accountant, it was so tough as hell then to cope and survive in this my new role as an accountant after being a student all my life. Before then, that is, while still being a student, it never did occur to me then that there is a huge difference between being an accounting student and being a working accountant.

As an accounting student schooling under the Nigeria educational system, you know that our goal as student then was mostly just to read and pass to please the lecturers and our parents so as to justify the money they spent on our schooling.
That is why after schooling, and I began working as an accountant, I faced certain issues and certain challenges.

The one major challenge that I encounter then as a newly working accountant was the problem of departmentalization which in other words is called division of labour. Though I never realized it then that it was a problem in anyway, in fact then, I thought it was a very cool thing. Why I thought then that it was a very cool and a very good thing, which actually it is in some aspect, I will explain in a moment but let me first explain what departmentalization/division of labour is.

Departmentalization/Division of labour in simplest explanation, is the act of dividing the work that a single person can do from start to finish into several parts or several pieces and then give each one of these several parts to two or more people i.e. to several people to do or carry out.

The reason why I think that it is a good thing, which I still think it is a good thing, is because one, it makes it possible for the said work to be carried out and finished quicker and faster within a very shorter amount of time compare to when only one person is to do it. Secondly, it makes the work less burdensome for each of the several people involved in the work compare to when it is just one person that is to do the work alone.

Now, on how I came to realized that as good as departmentalization/division of labour is, that it is also a kind of a big problem to me as a working accountant.

This is how, it so happened that as I continue to work as an accountant in this company, after some years working there, one of my neighbours who had always known me for long that I am an accountant decided to ask me for a favour concerning his business. He is a business owner, an entrepreneur, he run his own personal business. He wanted to switch the style of recording his business transactions from the layman style to that of double entry record keeping method of the accounting profession. He asked me to explain the whole process to him in a practical way and also help him with the practical setup of the whole process. He wants a simple manual setup that he can carry out in a book; he is not a computer person so he is not interested in all the accounting softwares and all that for now at that time.

It was at the point of trying to help him with this favour that I realized that I myself don’t even yet know this start to finish process of accounting in a practical and applicable way even though I have been working for several years as an accountant. I know the theory, though not as deep as one should since that is all we were taught in school. In that moment, I realized once more that there is huge difference between theory leant in schools and the practical in the real-life situations.

The other place where I could have learnt this start to finish process of accounting the practical way is in the company where I work but I could not learn it there because of departmentalization. In that company, the start to finish process of accounting are departmentalized. For the several years that I had been working there, upto the time that this my neighbour asked for this favour, I had only been working there as what we called, "transaction voucher officer", where all I do is to deal with transactions vouchers all day each day. We have a different department that deals with receivables, we have another one that deals with payables, we have another different one that deals with inventories, we have another one that deals with posting into the general ledger and so, so on like that.

To cut a very long story short, this realization made me realized that departmentalization as cool, sweet and fantastic as it is, it was also a big problem to me because it was placing a very huge limitation upon my life and my growth, it was confining me to a very small circle without me knowing it.

As God would have it, I was eventually able to do something about it and get myself back on track, the result which led me to receiving better job offers elsewhere.

Also, I was able to later help this my neighbour with the favour he asked me for, of which the details of that will be a story for another time.

But in the meantime if you are like as I was then and you will like to do something about it now by knowing the start to finish process of accounting the practical way, starting from the recording of business transactions to the finishing end of producing income statement, balance sheet and cashflow statement. Then check out my documentation, I documented in a plain simple english, the step by step procedures to help you achieve these in a book and am teaching the introductory part of this book documentation for free in my telegram group. Joining this telegram group will help you overcome whatever fear you might initially have regarding financial statements and accounting or finance as a whole. Zero, eight, one, three, one, one, three, six, zero, seven, six, is the number with which you are going to message me to add you to the telegram group if interested.