Accountants make bad engineers. Engineers make bad accountants.
Less than 20 years ago, most basic accountancy was carried out using a pen, a ledger book and a calculator. When computers became common, manual bookkeeping became redundant, though, as Thomas Hardy writes in The Mayor of Casterbridge, “as in all cases of advance, the rugged picturesqueness of the old method disappeared with all its inconveniences”.
With computers, the task for the accountants was no more to get the books correct – the computer did this for them. Thus, in order to keep themselves occupied, they took to demanding more and more information from innocent engineers who, being engineers, hardly knew what was being asked. I get requests from companies that ask me for copies of our black economic- empowerment (BEE) certificate. We have such an animal and regularly send it off by email, consuming engineering time in doing so.
Many of the requests come from organisations that give out work and hardly bid for it, so, why do they need our BEE certificate? Answer: because the accountants want it. Then, for years, I filled out my value-added (Vat) forms. Vat in, Vat paid, cheque enclosed. Not too difficult. But no longer. I have to file my Vat returns through e-filing. This means that I am supposed to log onto the South African Revenue Service’s (Sars’s) website and, provided its blasted software is working, I must fill out a whole lot of stuff in places I do not understand.
Do not get me wrong – I am not computer stupid. Far from it. But why did Sars not just create an electronic form like the old one? No. Too simple. All because that is what the accountants want. It gives them oh so much more information and makes life difficult for the engineers.
Then, I am on site. I need a crane. So I pay cash for hiring one. Get a receipt and all. Oh no, cannot claim Vat. The cash slip must have the crane people’s Vat number, my Vat number and the words ‘tax Invoice’. And no, I cannot write this information on at a later date. Why ever not?
Then I go into the fishing shop and buy a flyfishing line. These lines are 30 m long, are fairly visible and do not stretch much. Useful if we put down measuring equipment at 30 m intervals in the bush, which we often do. I try to claim this line as an expense with Vat. No chance, I have to convince my accountant that the line is for ‘business purposes’.
It hardly seems to matter that, if I wanted to run my flyfishing costs through the business, there would be vastly more than one fly line claimed as an expense and my pal at the fishing shop would gladly issue invoices for ‘protective safety glasses’ (that is, polarised fishing sunglasses), ‘optical distance-measuring lenses (binoculars), ‘fibreglass strain pole’ (flyfishing rod), and so on. But I do not have the time or the patience to correct the accountant, so it becomes one more accountant-induced hassle.
The invention of email has resulted in the assumption by Sars and accountants that everybody has email and a scanner and are too ready to “scan and forward a copy of your letter from the compensation commissioner” or “please submit proof that you have registered your employees for the Umemployment Insurance Fund (UIF)” and similar requests.
One wonders if government, with all its vast computing power, cannot call up my company registration number, see who is registered as an employee and then see if they are registered for UIF. But no, I must do it for them.
And then there is the matter of paying overseas suppliers. With each application for foreign exchange, you have to supply the original invoice, customs duty payment, bill of lading, order, and so on. We told the local bank accountant that we did have an invoice but, since we were trying to pay for the shipping costs of an item, there was no duty payment, bill of lading or order. We exchanged emails back and forth and, finally, I just called up my supplier overseas and gave them a credit card number and paid them. Oh! Accountants! Why could they not have been born engineers . . .