#she's a forensic examiner but she does do deductions and stuff like that

[littlechibs]

local girl spends 10-20 minutes washing her hands because she got lost in thought thinking about crossover interactions between two of her favorite characters

[sunchaserwings]

Guess I am liveblogging watching the BBC Sherlock. I can't help myself apparently. Starts after the cut, (I finally figured out how those work!)

Mild spoilers ahead!!!!!

Okay so I just started episode 2. First things first, girl, you could just tell him "No" instead of being all cryptic like "You wouldn't like me" and "I can't. Please stop asking" when he's asking you on a date.

Is... is that a katana being wielded by that person??? It doesn't even look well-cared for?

Roommate: "I can see Herlock trying to hide he's been attacked like that." Yeah, probably. He'd kick a katana underneath his chair. Unfortunately, his "Watson" would notice.

Okay I hate that people keep calling Sherlock a freak and every time I expect Watson to deck a guy. Come on, defend your colleague if you're not willing to call him your friend. Also, seeing this episode when I work as a security guard is kind of killing me. I... this security setup is not that good at all, even back in 2010 and this is supposed to be an expensive ass bank??? Yeahhh, kinda doesn't do it for me. That should be live video footage, not a single frame every minute. Also don't keep access to the door entry logs behind the reception counter.

Part of the only way I'm getting through this is by noting what behaviors of Sherlock match those of Herlock Sholmes from The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and which are more faithful to the original source material as well. Do I need to start keeping a running counter of "Herlock Sholmes would totally do this"? Because if so, we're at three in this episode alone.

Sir??? The medical examiner should be the only one removing evidence from the interior of the body??? Sherlock please, forensics student here is dying. Also detail I noticed, no powder burn on the wound. Either the makeup team was lazy or this is plot important.

Watson is still my favorite character. He also mentioned stuff about traders and stuff which is accurate to the books. And ohhh, Sherlock is pissed. Shaky cam in this feels a bit excessive-- oh you look like Kane Bullard. Yeah you're dead. Does every journalist leave library books on their flat stairs or...?

Modern code-breaking methods won't unravel what? Poor Watson getting held up for vandalizing a public building because he didn't run fast enough. Feels like Herlock and Ryūnosuke lol.

Oh come on, this guy seems sweet. Don't blame him for his crush resigning. Unless he's the killer of course... oh there's a lady taking pictures of Watson? That's worrying. WAIT IS THE DETECTIVE INSPECTOR JUST HANDING OVER EVIDENCE TO A RANDOM CIVILIAN??? CHAIN OF EVIDENCE, I HARDLY KNOW HER!

Watson actually helping Sherlock with his deductions by pointing out something the detective didn't notice and in an almost book-accurate way.

Is Watson about to be poisoned I s2g this man needs a break. It's only the second episode. Oh adding another to the "Sherlock doing a Herlock move" counter. Yippee... also this episode is starting to feel kind of racist. Actually more than that.

Sherlock please go let Watson in-- never mind you uh.... fell for a trap. I don't like how independent this Sherlock is when he's got John right there. Why doesn't the doctor realize that Sherlock was choked and strangled half to unconsciousness??? Unrealistic af.

Kinda like this graffiti artist dude. Hope he comes back. He probably won't. WAIT WHY ARE YOU SPLITTING THE PARTY??? GODDAMMIT YOU TWO! WATSON YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS!

John shouldn't be staring at the ground like that. He should be scanning side to side and up and down constantly. At least he was smart enough to take a photo of the damn thingimajig. John is so relatable on the matter of sleep, at least.

This woman is so dedicated to her work of restoring these ancient relics that she keeps breaking into the museum to care for and restore them. Also I just learned where the Morag Tong from the Elder Scrolls get their name from. Makes sense now. Buuuuut this also feels really awkward and weird and not in the fun way.

I think we all know Watson has the real brain cell here-- wait no he just left the target alone to go help Sherlock never mind. I think she's going to die. She deserved better. Welp, this is gonna haunt John.

Scotland Yard being incompetent, check. Sherlock being an uneccesary ass to Molly, check. Why is he written like this I hate it. WAIT THOSE TATTOOS WOULD HAVE BEEN NOTED ON THE AUTOPSY REPORT WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS WRITING???? MY FORENSICS STUDENT ASS IS GOING HAYWIRE

Quest search using internet explorer. Gods this is old. No wonder last episode that "MePhone" app took so long to load. Watson update your browser to Firefox. Also Mrs. Hudson appearance! We don't know much about her in the original books but BBC her seems to be somewhat faithful adaptation wise, however Sherlock's behavior towards her is not. Oh and adding another to the Herlock Sholmes counter.

John passed out from exhaustion didn't he. Not a good look when you're just starting out-- oh at least you apologized for it-- he's flirting. Okay John you go and get yourself a girlfriend. Hope this relationship lasts (it probably won't). Looks like Sherlock is interfering with the date... goddammit. Oh fuck the second hand embarrassment is killing me.

The yellow filter is ass. Stop this. Also is that a goddamn crossbow. It is. Sarah is also... a character. I guess. Very dull and uninteresting, clearly only there for John's character arc. Is this how most — if not all — of the women are going to be?

John you're in a room with a killer that has seen your face. There is no way this ends well. Also expecting Sherlock to get a gun to his head or something. Never mind he almost gets a sword to the face. WATSON YOU'RE A BETTER FIGHTER THAN THIS-- Oh Sarah is a badass. Okay, I guess she has a bit of a character.

Sherlock you need to eat. Also please stop being an ass to Sarah she's trying to help-- in fact she's actually helping!!!

Nice callback to the first episode, Sherlock knows German! Also this is canon to the books! He knows a ton of European languages as does Watson! Although Watson's Italian is canonically worse than Holmes'.

Thats not Holmes knocking at the door. Aaaand Watson is down. Watson abducted? Is Sarah a double agent? Sherlock is going to go apeshit. Never mind Sarah isn't. This relationship isn't going to last-- creepy camera lady just called Watson "Holmes". Oh yeah, this relationship is not continuing. Sorry John.

Sherlock Holmes to the rescue! Kinda acting like Batman but this is also accurate to the books! Really nice touch to show off his ability to confound his enemies in combat. Also add one to three "John has killed a man to protect Sherlock" counter.

"Don't worry. Next date won't be like this." IF THERE IS A NEXT DATE???? WHAT????

Accidentally posted early at this point but I'm just editing the post.

PA Lady has the hairpin. Oh my God, she has the hairpin. It's over a thousand years old.

Oh look someone just left a cipher mark outside. Is this a goddamn Moriarty thing? Are they only here because of Moriarty? I need to make a separate rant about Moriarty at some point because the entirety of the Sherlock Holmes fandom just latched onto him when CHARLES MILVERTON WAS ALSO RIGHT THERE

Anyhow that's episode 2 done. Feels really kinda racist, John gets to do more but also is kinda not smart sometimes, and Sherlock is an ass. Oh and Moriarty cameo. Yippee... see y'all for episode 3 later. Sun signing off

[scriptaccountant]

Hello, subledgers. I have missed a couple of the accounting words of the day. Unfortunately, my queue ran out and I didn’t realize it because I was busy with class and work the past week. To make up for my lack, I’ve decided to give you some real actual content. 

Below the cut, you will find my review of The Accountant. There will be spoilers for the plot.

This is really just some of my thoughts on the accounting portion. Please note this is only about the accounting part of the movie. Autism is a major part of this movie and I am not going to discuss how badly or how well it was portrayed because that’s not the focus of this blog. This movie also examines family relationships, some psychological responses to situations and spy/assassin dynamics as well as military and military family life. I won’t discuss any of those. I know that @scriptautistic has mentioned that neither of their mods has seen the movie and neither has @scriptshrink . I do not know if @scriptsoldier have seen it, and there’s currently no scripthitman. Perhaps when the others watch the movie they will be willing to discuss what was done right, what was done wrong, what was a good start, what fits with this plot, but might not work for another, etc.

But, let’s begin.

After the introduction where the Main Character is shown as a young boy, we cut to him as an adult working as a small time CPA. He’s providing tax advice to a couple that owns a farm and is going to have to pay taxes. He notices that the woman has a unique necklace. He asks if she made int herself and she said yes. He then asks if she sells them and she hedges around a bit and says that she does at some church functions. Then he asks where she makes them and she says all over, but she likes to do it at the dining room table, but her husband doesn’t like it there. He keeps trying to shush her. This is for his protection. What he does in this scene is basically tax fraud. He calls her necklace making a home based business and then writes off a portion of the household bills as being business-related expenses. That’s not a problem, except that he encourages the husband to up the amount of space “devoted” to the business when he knows that no particular space is devoted to the business (he wants her to stop contradicting him so that he can claim that his understanding was that it was devoted, in case of audit). It is a perfectly acceptable deduction to deduction a portion of your mortgage and household bills for a home based business in proportion to the amount of space used for the business. But you have to actually have a space devoted to the business and you have to actually have a business. That means you have to run it as a business including tracking expenses and sales, using a separate checking account, using a DBA if possible, and showing a profit motive. If you cannot show a profit motive, including earning a profit in 3 of the past 5 years, then the IRS will likely consider it a hobby. Hobby expenses can only be deducted up to the income from the hobby. This character probably knew that since his backstory includes working for unsavory criminal type people, so he’s used to considering the rules somewhat flexible. We find out he does forensic accounting, which is done sort of like an audit (at least in this movie, I’m taking forensic accounting in the Fall and will have more info then). He did this for criminal organizations and now he’s planning to do one for a legit company, which is the basis for the movie.  Caveat, if his specialization is in forensic accounting or auditing, he would not be as smooth on tax accounting as someone that focuses on it. Income tax accounting, and income tax auditing are completely different beasts than financial statement accounting and auditing. They have different goals, different rules, different regulating bodies. Income tax has to follow IRS guidelines, financial statements should follow GAAP (which isn’t strictly necessary if the company isn’t publicly traded, but if it is, the SEC requires audits to make sure GAAP is followed, and it’s good practice for to follow GAAP anyway, that’s why they are the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).  He goes to the company, they make some tech thing, super cool, super not talked about. A low-level accountant lady found something that didn’t match up and they want him to look it over to find out if someone is stealing from them, and if so, how much. He asks for the past 10 years worth of data. The guy gets all fussy. He asks how long the guy has been there, 15 years, he asks for 15 years of data. The lady that found the mistake to start offers to help, he tells her to leave him alone. He brought his lunch, works better alone, doesn’t need help, socializing not his thing. She’s a bit confused but takes it in stride and then he starts going through financial statements and folders full of invoices and records. The company I work for is a manufacturing company for a pretty high tech industry. It’s a small company, under 50 people. For 2014, I have 12 banker boxes full of financial data, the bank reconciliations, credit card receipts, invoices for accounts payable. That’s not including any payroll stuff, any invoices for items sold. For 15 years worth, using that as a base, he should have 180 bankers boxes full of files. Plus the tax files and the actual financial statements (and he should have the monthly and quarterly statements, not just the annual, audited statements). He sets up a chart on the white boards to track certain information, that’s good. I didn’t look at the titles close enough to see if it’s what I would have tracked, and I’m the sort to keep it in an excel file, not a giant white board that anyone can see, but, hey, to each their own. Then he starts running his finger down columns of numbers from the financial statements. I’m not sure what numbers, the page didn’t look like a statement that I’ve used. And we see him looking over invoices and writing things on the boards, then writing more things on the windows. And he’s throwing out marker after marker as he goes through boxes. Maybe he doesn’t use excel because he doesn’t have to pay for the markers. Short break for lunch where he bonds with the accounting lady a bit while eating on the steps outside. Apparently, they don’t have benches, or tables, or a break room at this company. (Is this a thing people actually do somewhere? All my jobs had a place to sit.) 

Then he’s writing more. Next day we find out when he tells accounting lady that he’s found where false invoices were being put in and when it started, how long it went on for, what numbers showed it. She’s amazed. He went through 15 years in a day. She only went through one year.

She should be amazed. A normal audit which uses random sampling to determine that statistically, the numbers are probably correct, uses a team of auditors (of various sizes, but usually more than one) and takes days, weeks, maybe longer (longer for smaller teams or bigger company being audited), but it normally takes a couple of days to make the audit plan. He can skip that part, but we were still given the impression he didn’t do a random sample, he checked everything.

Remembering how he ran down the numbers and could recall numbers, he’s obviously supposed to have Autism granted Accounting Superpowers. But still, to claim he went through 180 boxes of paperwork in a day is beyond speed reading. 

He tells someone how much was stolen before he has tracked who or why. Then the guy that wanted him there gets killed (hitman plotline), so they kick him out, erase his work and take his boxes of info. He gets really upset. Partly because one of his autistic traits is a need to finish puzzles that he’s started. But also, that would really piss me off too. (And again why I use excel, save and back it up). That’s a lot of work to have just wiped away. 

So he leaves, and the hitman plotline speeds up and the accounting part slows down. Then near the end when the romance plot seems to be heating up (with the accounting lady because you know us accountants don’t find anyone as sexy as other accountants. This is a lie. I actually read someone advise an accounting lady that engineers can make good romance partners, though. so maybe write that into your story), he suddenly figures out the who and why because of a case some years back where someone else did something similar. That’s probably the most honest accounting thing in this movie. 

100% correct things: 1) You spend hours working on reconciling accounts to find something wrong. You can explain the outcome of your work in one sentence. 2) If you’ve spent hours reconciling something and were stopped before you finished, it will keep bugging you until you figure it out, and you’ll probably have the “aha!” moment at a completely unrelated and awkward moment. 

Other correct things: 3) ZZZ Accounting is a horrible name from a marketing standpoint (also, I think it’s a joke about accounting being boring). You aren’t going to get many walk-in clients that way. But if you need free time for forensic accounting for mob bosses and your tax accounting is a little rusty anyway, it’s a good enough cover. 4) Laundering money through multiple businesses will probably make it less noticeable. Also, you should have them be in different places and not make your accounting firm seem an odd one to pick if you’re going to use that to do their taxes. These are crumbs the feds (treasury dept, in this case, I think?) will use to figure out who you are and where you are. 

Wrong things: 5) Tax preparers are probably more likely to recommend tax fraud. Accountants spend a lot of time and money on keeping their CPA license and saving someone $ on taxes isn’t worth losing that. Even if they are nice and let you shoot guns on their farm. 6) Cross-functionality is pretty rare. Knowing the basics and enough to keep the license up, yes, but truly intricate knowledge of tax law and the time requirement for forensic accounting is not especially likely. Most accountants will have a specialization that they know really well and then a broad base knowledge of the other areas.  7) Financial records are huge. A single year for even a tiny mom and pop shop would be a few banker’s boxes. Also, most companies will not keep these records for 15 years. Other than leases and similar items which are kept for the length of the lease, most financial records are kept 7-10 years, and not all of those must be on site. 8) We have computers now and we love them and we use them. It lets us move numbers around and compare them more easily. 9) A full review of all financial information including reconciliation of errors would take more than 24 hours even with Accounting Super Powers. Well, that’s my review. If anyone else saw it differently, let me know. In the meantime, keep it in the black. Disclaimer