The Shipping Industry Accounting Team Case Study
THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY ACCOUNTING TEAM
Summary:
Sarah (the name given by us) has been working in McKay, Sanderson, and Smith Associates a mid-sized accounting team located in Boston that is specialized in commercial accounting and audits for past five years. Her specialty is accounting practices for shipping companies, ranging from small to certain big fleets along east coast.
About two months ago her company merged with another two other accounting firms which has offices in Miami, Seattle, Baton Rouge, and Los Angeles. They avoided centralizing their business around one office in Los Angeles. Instead they formed a new firm called Goldberg, Choo, and McKay Associates in order to leverage the synergies of their collective knowledge.
This merges affected Sarah when she was told that she would be working with the other three members from the other two firms to become the firm’s new shipping industry accounting team, by her boss. The other members were Elias in Miami, Susan in Seattle, Brad in Los Angeles. She had earlier met Elias at a meeting in New York but not the other two.
This shipping team activity involved e-mailing each other about new contracts and prospective clients. They were asked to submit the joint monthly statement reports and issues. Sarah submitted her own monthly reports which summarized the activities of her own clients. This coordination of monthly reports took much more time since different accounting documentation procedures across the three firms were resolved. This took numerous e-mails and phone calls to work it out.
During this process, it took lot of Sarah’s time than it was worth doing it. Moreover Brad’s communication was not that effective. He rarely replies the e-mails. He often used telephone voice mail system which resulted in lots of telephone tag. Brad comes to work at 9:30 a.m. in Los Angeles which is early afternoon in Boston while Sarah has a flexible work schedule from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Because of this Sarah and
Summary:
Sarah (the name given by us) has been working in McKay, Sanderson, and Smith Associates a mid-sized accounting team located in Boston that is specialized in commercial accounting and audits for past five years. Her specialty is accounting practices for shipping companies, ranging from small to certain big fleets along east coast.
About two months ago her company merged with another two other accounting firms which has offices in Miami, Seattle, Baton Rouge, and Los Angeles. They avoided centralizing their business around one office in Los Angeles. Instead they formed a new firm called Goldberg, Choo, and McKay Associates in order to leverage the synergies of their collective knowledge.
This merges affected Sarah when she was told that she would be working with the other three members from the other two firms to become the firm’s new shipping industry accounting team, by her boss. The other members were Elias in Miami, Susan in Seattle, Brad in Los Angeles. She had earlier met Elias at a meeting in New York but not the other two.
This shipping team activity involved e-mailing each other about new contracts and prospective clients. They were asked to submit the joint monthly statement reports and issues. Sarah submitted her own monthly reports which summarized the activities of her own clients. This coordination of monthly reports took much more time since different accounting documentation procedures across the three firms were resolved. This took numerous e-mails and phone calls to work it out.
During this process, it took lot of Sarah’s time than it was worth doing it. Moreover Brad’s communication was not that effective. He rarely replies the e-mails. He often used telephone voice mail system which resulted in lots of telephone tag. Brad comes to work at 9:30 a.m. in Los Angeles which is early afternoon in Boston while Sarah has a flexible work schedule from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Because of this Sarah and