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When Non-Accountants Do Accounting: A Halloween Horror Story
- Brett J. Federer, CPA
- Sep 23
- 4 min read
Halloween accounting horror story
The scariest monsters in business don’t come with claws or fangs — they show up with good intentions. A teammate offers to “help with the books,” a co-founder decides to save money by doing the numbers themselves, or a friend swears modern software makes accounting foolproof. At first, everything looks calm. The numbers seem to behave.
But accounting mistakes don’t rattle chains the first night. They creep in quietly, like footsteps on a staircase you thought was empty. A payment gets dropped in the wrong category. A balance doesn’t quite match. A fix gets layered on top of a fix. By the time you notice, the house is already haunted — the beginning of a true Halloween accounting horror story.
Note: This post is part of a special Halloween series. The Messy Accounting Department series will continue in the following article.
The Rise of Zombie Numbers
The first warning sign doesn’t come with a scream. It comes with numbers that look alive but don’t quite feel right. A cost ends up in the wrong place, a balance sheet doesn’t reconcile, or revenue shows growth that doesn’t match reality. At a glance, everything still walks and talks like a financial statement. But deep down, something has gone cold.
These are zombie numbers. They stumble forward month after month, never corrected at the root, infecting every report they touch. A small error in one category bleeds into gross margin. Margin distortions creep into burn rate. Burn rate misleads cash runway. Suddenly, the very metrics that should keep you safe are dragging you toward decisions built on rotten foundations.
And like zombies, these numbers don’t rest once they rise. They shuffle into the next close, and the one after that, multiplying over time until the living (your actual performance) is outnumbered by the dead.
Ghost Entries That Refuse to Leave
If zombies distort what’s alive, ghosts haunt what should be gone. These are the transactions that never seem to stay put.
Maybe rent shows up in utilities one month. Someone fixes it — but the fix leaves a trace. Next month it wanders into payroll. Another correction, another trace. By the time it finally settles back into rent expense, the ledger isn’t clean — it’s a graveyard of reclassifications, shadows of past mistakes clinging to the books.
Each ghost slows down the close. The team spends hours retracing old steps, not building new insights. Reports begin to lose their consistency, because no one is sure which version is the “real” one anymore. Audit trails break apart, and leadership finds itself asking the same uneasy question: Can we actually trust these numbers?
The truth is, once ghosts begin roaming through the financials, they rarely leave on their own. Each correction only creates more echoes. And the longer they’re allowed to linger, the harder it becomes to separate clean numbers from the haunted ones.
The Witch’s Brew of Risk
Individually, a mistake here or there feels harmless. A misclassification can be explained away. A rework can be patched. But like ingredients tossed into a cauldron, these errors don’t stay separate — they mix. And once they’re blended together, the result is a witch’s brew no founder wants to taste.
Fraud exposure begins to bubble up when no clear controls exist. Without separation of duties, it becomes easier for bad actors to slip through unnoticed.
Audit nightmares simmer when shifting numbers draw questions that take weeks to answer, often at the worst possible time.
Investor distrust spreads like smoke when reports never tell the same story twice, making boards and banks second-guess your leadership.
Hidden costs surface when every “cheap fix” today becomes months of expensive cleanup tomorrow.
One ingredient might not matter on its own. But together, they create a toxic brew that poisons trust, drains momentum, and leaves leadership second-guessing every move.
Why This Matters
Financials aren’t just numbers for accountants — they’re the flashlight founders use to find their way through uncertainty. But when that flashlight is dimmed by errors, the path ahead is harder to see.
Margins that appear strong may actually be weak. Burn rates that look safe may already be on fire. A runway that seems to stretch out for months may end abruptly, far sooner than expected. What should bring clarity instead creates illusions, and every decision begins to feel like a gamble in the dark.
The real cost isn’t only measured in money or time. It’s measured in confidence. Without clean, consistent financials, leadership is forced to make choices with hesitation, never fully trusting whether the numbers reflect reality. And once that trust is gone, every conversation with investors, banks, or even employees carries more weight and more doubt.
The Final Word
Accounting isn’t about punching transactions into software. It’s about building a system of cadence, controls, and consistency — a system strong enough to keep the story of your business clear.
When non-accountants step into that role, the results are rarely just “a few mistakes.” They grow into something bigger: a haunted house of errors where zombies roam, ghosts linger, and every new month adds another layer of unease.
This Halloween, keep the monsters where they belong — outside the books. Protect the financial story that guides your decisions, and make sure the only ghosts you see are wearing costumes, not hiding in your reports.
Want to keep your numbers ghost-free year-round? Click here to learn more.
