#11 Tickmarks (and Legends)
Jan 28th, 2009 by pfi
Now, we have the opportunity to discuss accounting fundamentals. Forget everything you thought you knew about accountants: debits, credits, even addition and subtraction. None of that actually matters in practice. Accountants rely on Tickmarks and equally, if not more important, Tickmark Legends, to accomplish anything. Accountants have to take a pen that dollar stores would be embarrassed to sell and use it to mark up workpapers into a frenzy of ink to signify work was performed. Note that overachieving accountants make Tickmarks in Excel or Word.
Tickmarks are simply arbitrary symbols to represent work performed. Examples range from (1), (2), to ###, @, %, and *. There is no limit to what can be used as a tickmark. Generally the more arbitrary and confusing, the better, since it allows an accountant to express their individuality and demonstrate that they spent 2 hours scribbling around the edges. People have even been known to take the letters W, T, and F and “cleverly” (by which I mean not clever at all) arrange them into a tickmark.
Tickmark Legends are the index or summary of all the tickmarks used on those workpapers. There is no mystery here, and tickmarks would be useless without the prerequisite legend.
You will find in your experiences working with accountants that more senior accountants have developed increasingly convoluted and arbitrary tickmarks that they must use on every document. Failure to include these tickmarks may incur the wrath of the PCAOB or something like that.
If you are trying to understand an accountant, how they use tickmarks says a lot about their character. Do they meticulously use the same tickmarks in a systematic way to make it clear to an independent third party what has been performed? Or are they illegible chicken scratches that are inconsistent and make no sense at all? Trust me when I say that you DO NOT want to work with an accountant who does not have a good tickmark system in place. An accountant who cannot properly tickmark is not an accountant in any sense of that title, period.
Good one to use for approval
HY = HELL YEAH!
The tickmark legend is the most important part of the workpaper. It trumps even the numbers in the schedule. My favorite tickmark definition, which is not infuriating or shafty in the slightest, is:
Traced and agreed to support.
Staff who write this should be sacked immediately.
Also, add accronyms.
I am a CPA with a big four firm and it’s funny how this article hits the nail on the head.
These are very true…however whiteout tape, really, at # 2? I think most of us are not using paper files anymore. And how about something on technology…the fact that we have our laptops on all the time and when by luck, we close them, we have our Blackberry’s…But when we are on our laptops we have an infinite amount of ways of being contacted here is the short list: email, voicemail, voicemail that is sent to our email inbox, fax, faxes that are sent to our email inbox; and if that is not enough there is the world of inter-company instant messaging. Where at any time you could be IM’d by an intern, admin, audit assistant, audit in charge, senior, manager, senior manager, director, sr director, partner, senior partner, regional partner, regional senior partner and so on til you get some instant message from the Global CEO telling you how his vacation is!
My preferred tickmark for passing analysis was WGAFF.
YOU GUYS ARE ALL CRAZY. I THINK INTELLEGENCE AND EXPERIENCE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN A TICK MARK.
[…] on each workpaper (read: write the same thing twenty times) what has been done, they rely on tickmarks and […]
I know of a time where local freeway numbers were used as tickmarks. On the 10th draft of the financials during a restatement you have to be able to have some fun.
The favorite at my firm is “@” in the colour green, symbolising immaterial.
On-line tickmark best practice forums have become the new wave of hot meeting spots for single accountants. Any respectable accountant would agree that tickmark etiquette is truly what sets the up-and-comers apart from the ho-hummers.
[…] to know accounting principles to get their job done. Being able to copy and paste procedures, make tickmarks, and put documentation (header, workpaper reference, purpose, etc) is all that’s […]
Anybody ever use a happy face tickmark?
My friend actually received a review note: Don’t use a happy face as a tickmark.
[…] this color code is never, ever broken. Having the pen color rule broken is akin to ghost ticking (tickmarking without having done the […]
Hey Everyone, Excel 2003 had the ability to use macros to append tickmarks to spreadsheets. It was really sweet. I just recently ungraded to Excel 2007, and lo and behold Microsoft in its infinite wisdom, has removed macros from the program. Does anyone have any easy way to get tickmarks into spreadsheets?
thanks,
Steve
for a regular tick mark – number ‘3’ in font ‘monotype sorts’
for a bold tick mark – number ‘4’ in the same font
for a cross mark – number ‘5’ in the same font
ENJOYY fellow number crunchers
I still confuse , how to use trickmarks
I’m not an accountant but i’ve seen enough of these marks before on work from them. All I can say is this particular blog post is hilarious because it’s so true!
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If you want some good tickmarks on the computer, try using some letters in the cyrillic alphabet: Б Д Ж И Ф Ч Ь Э Ю Я. I think they look pretty cool, and nobody in the firm I worked in (local firm, not a Big 4) ever made a fuss.
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I am an CPA / Programmer who has developed tick-mark software for use with Excel 2007 2010 and 2013. I am looking for feedback if anyone is willing to try my tick-mark application out. The website is http://www.tick-tools.com. My wife and I used tick-marks extensively, she at PWC and myself at Deloitte. After leaving Public accounting I was suprised that more of my client’s were not using them as they proved to me to be an invaluable tool for documenting working papers.
kindest regards,
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Why not simply use Alt 1, Alt 2, Alt 3, …. Alt 228 (that’s a good one) etc in Excel —
Make certain that the Num Lock key has been pressed to activate the numeric key section of the keyboard.
Depress the Alt key.
While the Alt key is depressed, type the proper sequence of numbers (on the numeric keypad)
Release the Alt key, and the character will appear.
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We use a very helpful audit tickmark excel add-in at my CPA firm that saves countless hours on a monthly basis auditing client worksheets. I highly recommend this add-in and I’m pretty sure it’s cheap for the value it provides:
https://excelzoom.com/audit-tickmark-toolbar/
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