Accounting
Insight
While accounting may seem a stable career from the outside, Australian accounting professionals face relentless workloads and increasing stressors in their day-to-day. The Access Group and Agile Market Intelligence collaborated on a report that explores what being an accounting professional is like today—Beyond the Numbers: An Accountant’s Perspective 2024. The report showed that long hours, compliance demands, and tight deadlines are common challenges that impact the professional and personal lives of accounting professionals.
Heavy workloads and burnout
The report reveals that 40% of accountants describe their workload as heavy, and 26% feel outright overwhelmed. For many, this means feeling exhausted, missing important events with friends or family, and burnout. One respondent even said “I barely have time to leave the desk”.
Compliance, deadlines, and too many tasks are major stressors
Of the factors that cause stress for accounting professionals, compliance demands, deadlines, and the total volume of tasks are chief issues. Over 53% of accountants highlight task volume as their primary stressor, while 46% mention compliance demands. Entry-level professionals report the highest stress levels, with 71% struggling to manage their workloads.
Automation can help, but only with careful consideration
Integrated technology can help reduce total task volume, as automating repetitive tasks can free up precious time for accounting professionals to focus on bigger picture tasks. However, it is key that accounting firms are thoughtful in their implementation, as the report shows that too many tools can have a negative impact. With non-integrated tools, accounting professionals are spending time moving information from tool to tool, which is adding to their to-do list.
Accountants play a vital role in any economy, but too many of them are bogged down with boring and time-consuming tasks instead of being able to use their skills where they are most practical. Accounting firms need to support their staff with the right tools to manage deadlines and workloads—importantly, this means carefully curating the tools a firm uses, not overwhelming the team with reduntant tools and tasks.
