Accounting is about words as well as numbers

I guess the non-accountant’s view of accountants is that they are people who are good with numbers. Certainly there is a need to be numerate, but, to my mind, accounting is about words as well as numbers.

It is important to be able to produce a balance sheet that balances and to analyse the financial aspects of a project or investment. More than that, accountants need to be able to communicate what their balance sheets and analyses mean. Sometimes that is face-to-face communication, but more often it is done in writing.

Personally, I think accountants tend not be as good at writing as they are at counting. I suspect relatively few of them ever receive any training in writing. Instead, they learn on-the-job by copying the form and style of their predecessors. That is true for me, too. I can remember being a newly-qualified accountant and basing the letters and reports I wrote on the copies I found in the files (this being the time when files were made of paper and hung in order in a cabinet).

Subsequently, when I worked for a Big 4 firm, I attended a report-writing training session that was enormously useful, both for the audit role I had at the time, and ever since. It showed be how to order thoughts into a narrative that flows.

That was over 25 years ago. Since then I have made it my business to learn more about writing, in terms of content and also presentation. The way that words, tables and charts are formatted and laid out on a page can make it easier or harder for the reader to understand the message that the writer wants to communicate. 

Over the coming weeks I am going to share some tips to help accountants improve their written communication. Some tips will be about the content of the writing, some about the process and some about presentation. Watch this space!