What is it that's making you consider accountancy? It might be easier to give you useful info if we know that.
I'm a tax accountant. I haven't yet drowned this January, although there's still time.
If you're thinking, "tax, no thanks!" that is what I thought when I started out. I expected to hate the tax exams in my qualification and the tax part of my role. Turned out tax was nothing like I imagined.
I started off in a general practice role as a school leaver. They sponsored me to qualify and also complete a degree. While I was training (it takes a minimum of 3 years to qualify) I worked on book keeping, VAT returns, accounts preparation for sole traders, partnerships, and companies, did audit work, and also did tax returns for individuals and companies.
So it was pretty varied. Audit work is usually mostly field based (until you're quite senior when you only go out for the planning and closing meetings), the rest tends to be office based unless you're being sent out to collect/return records or help with their record keeping/finance software, etc. If you work up to a very senior level where you're the person leading meetings, pitching for work, and so on you'll often go to clients for those meetings.
The qualification covers all the different areas from book keeping and financial accounts, to managing people, corporate/business law, management accounting, audit, tax, ethics/governance, and business analysis. (I've probably missed stuff, I'm tired!) It is usually during this process that people form ideas on specialising.
While I was studying I found that I enjoyed some areas and some exams more than others and began considering specialising. I never really liked audit very much, but really enjoyed tax and considered insolvency and tax.
In the end my workplace offered to sponsor me to qualify as a tax specialist so I did extra exams, and then eventually I moved into a pure tax role.
I do a mixture of compliance and advisory work. Compliance is preparing tax returns, advisory can be things like restructuring a business or creating trusts for grandchildren. We also help people plan their affairs and liaise with contacts at solicitors and financial planning practices.
Tax is predominantly law. So it's very technical and it changes all the time. The numbers are just what we apply the law to - so whilst they are obviously important, and you need to be competent, often the challenging interesting work is with the law and words rather than doing clever things with numbers and formulas (that's more of a management accounting thing).
Compliance (in the right practice) is much more than data entry. We work closely with the teams who prepare and audit the accounts if it's a business, and if it's an individual we get to know the people closely - you'll be in the background helping with some of the biggest parts of their lives, including the ends of their lives at times.
If you work with business taxes you need to have a robust foundation in pure accounts, because you need to be able to understand and interpret them before you can work out how to get to the right point for tax. With private client work you don't need that extra knowledge, you just need pure tax. Either way it is much more involved than typing numbers into forms and multiplying it by the tax rate. You have to delve in and assess what's going on, look for the intricacies and then make judgements about how the law applies to that activity or cost. You'll do research, debate with colleagues, and get into discussions with clients to learn more about what's gone on or what they want to achieve.
And then there are all kinds of different rules and approaches for different sectors and parts of a business. Working on the tax for a construction project is a whole realm of its own, for example.
So once you're specialising in tax there are so many other avenues for further specialism once you find something that really interests you - whether it's working with individuals, getting involved in big corporate transactions, working in a niche area, international aspects, intellectual property, trusts, a specific sector, a specific tax (eg VAT). Some people move into pure technical roles, eg where they are the go to person in a big firm for everyone else's questions. Generally in practice as you progress you'll be expected to take on roles in managing the team you work in. (I'm being a bit vague on specialisms as it wouldn't mean much to name them unless you already have tax knowledge.)
If you work in practice, if you are less interested in being client facing there is also an important role in terms of internal training and development. Practices generally have an intake of trainees each year, and apportion work out based on skill level. So you'll usually be working in a team with people coming up through the ranks with people to support and train you above, and as you progress there are opportunities for you to train those coming up next.
My days vary quite a lot. Some days I'll work on something for one client all day, maybe preparing work from scratch (eg preparing computations) or reviewing accounts, some days I'll work on lots of different clients doing a mixture of things. It can include reviewing the work of trainees and coaching them, being shadowed by trainees, drafting advice, negotiating with HMRC on enquiries or appealing penalties, helping clients who've got into difficulty get their affairs straightened out, taking calls from clients with technical questions on something they're doing that day or a project they're about to start.... Plus training and team meetings. We also get involved to provide information for financing purposes to banks, and if you have international clients there's even more things to get involved with. And of course, admin things like billing.
We work as a team but each have a portfolio of clients we run ourselves with support from more senior and junior people also assigned to those clients as appropriate if it's bigger and needs more input at different levels. We each have to keep track of the relevant deadlines for our clients and where their work is up to, chasing them up, liaising with them on queries, etc.
Whether you work in tax or pure accounts you'll most likely be facing fixed deadlines all around the year. Accounts filing deadlines are unique to the company based on their year end, corporate tax deadlines are the same. Individuals have fixed deadlines (e.g. 31 January) but unless you're in a compliance centre only doing personal tax returns for January and nothing else you'll likely find other deadlines. Whether you work long hours or overtime on a regular basis (other than occasionally for deadlines or in January) depends entirely on who you work for. It is not automatic.
I enjoy getting knowledge of different kinds of businesses and the things that are important to them; getting to know clients so I can tailor our services to their needs; the variety of my work even though the deadlines are cyclical in a way; the independence of managing my own day (within the boundaries of prioritising and urgent work etc); not having to do lots of travelling and field work; the opportunity to continue using my earlier accounts skills; working in a team where there are always people for me to learn from, and to teach; the fact that there is always something new to learn; the challenge of applying the law to a client's circumstances and debating law with colleagues; and that it doesn't feel like a dead end. There is always somewhere new to take your career if you want.
I also like that what we do is meaningful (so many times in accounts you spend a week or whatever slogging over the perfect set of accounts and applying all your accounting standards perfectly and then the only thing the client wants to know is their tax bill! They don't even read your beautiful accounts).
Not just meaningful in a financial sense, but because we do have opportunities to help people - day to day with things that are too overwhelming or difficult or just generally making sure a business can continue running without being exposed to risks for failing to meet its obligations, but also when something goes wrong and we can step in to resolve it, negotiating with HMRC, helping people who've had awful things happen to them deal with HMRC or get their affairs sorted, and being in the background when people deal with bereavement to help ease the bureaucracy and reduce the burden a little.
For me, it's a job that's about people.