Getting to Know… Ron Boulton

[JasonHill]

You wouldn’t know it from his extremely helpful replies on the Community Forum, but Ron Boulton was a “very late comer” to accounting.

“I spent 30 years in Chemistry and Physiology at Monash University, where my role was to spend money and to leave it to others to account for it,” Ron says.

His first experiences with computers involved punch cards and a lot of patience. “You’d walk half a mile to the computer centre, and drop it off for overnight processing where something the size of small truck would convert it to what seemed like half a ream of paper.” Errors resulted in a lot of “cursing and trudging” back and forth, adds Ron.

Ron would later learn to program on primitive desktop computers with monochrome screens before being wowed by fancy graphical user interfaces.

Ron’s big career (and life) change came around 15 years ago. “I met and later married Sarah, an accountant and MYOB CC (Certified Consultant) who had established a bookkeeping business.”

“Having puddled around in MYOB without quite knowing what I was doing, I decided to learn a bit more about the accounting side of things and undertook some studies to bring me up to speed on the reasoning behind the bookkeeping.”

Ron can’t remember why he decided to start contributing to the Community Forum, but now is one of the community’s most active members, posting under the username @ronatbas. He’s made over 1400 informative posts, including helping countless grateful community members during the recent hectic end-of-financial year period in Australia.

“Over the years I had been an occasional visitor to the forum and generally enjoyed reading the various solutions offered. It has now become one of those ‘pleasurable chores’ that often provides a chance to exercise the grey matter.”

Ron is based in suburban Melbourne. He and Sarah share their home with two dogs and three adult children.
 

“The dogs know it is their house, we are allowed to use it in exchange for food,” jokes Ron. “The three young adults also know it is their house, and we are allowed to use it in exchange for food and loans!”

Ron’s hobbies include car restoration. “On the rare occasion that I can escape from the office or work-related issues there are couple of historical Renaults begging for attention and to get a few more k’s on their odometers”.