7 Great Accounting Jobs Right out of College

Anyone going into the accounting field should know that there are abundant opportunities for employment straight out of college, with jobs available in the private and public sectors. Those that want to work with multiple clients can find satisfaction in public accounting. For those that prefer to work for a single company, private accounting may be a better choice.

Accounts Payable

A wide range of businesses, particularly in the healthcare field, employ accountants to perform collection calls on overdue accounts, send invoices, and resolve problems with clients in regard to their bills. It’s a rapidly expanding field with multiple opportunities.

Auditing

Auditing is more than just ensuring that the numbers add up. A wide array of companies employ accountants to look for sources of lost revenue. That can encompass identifying areas of duplicated effort or deficiencies in control mechanisms. Individuals may also be responsible for investigating consumer or vendor claims.

Bookkeeping

Accounts are essential personnel for any business endeavor. In addition to tracking and monitoring income, costs, and financial transactions, individuals will be responsible for providing clients with regular reports and updates about their financial status. They are often called upon to handle a company’s payroll. Don’t overlook the opportunities for accountants at schools, universities, and government entities.

Forensics

The job of a forensic accountant is to examine data, discover where money has gone missing, and how to recover it. As individuals advance in the field, they may also be called upon to testify in court cases as an expert witness and work with law enforcement personnel.

Information & Technology

This is ideal for individuals that are as enthusiastic about technology as they are numbers. There’s a myriad of accounting software from which individuals and companies can choose and accountants in this field will be responsible for helping clients select the best financial software for their needs.

Loans and Analysis

Believe it or not, many banks employ accountants as tellers, credit analysis specialists, and loan officers. Individuals often perform credit checks and financial pre-approvals for loans on homes, vehicles, and business equipment.

Tax Preparation

Preparing taxes is an essential service and many newly fledged accountants begin illustrious careers performing tax preparation. It’s also possible for accountants to acquire regular business clients through the contacts they make doing taxes.

Accounting Software can Save you Time

Time is your most valuable asset. Accounting software can save you time that can be invested back into the business or on pleasurable pursuits. The software provides greater accuracy and multiple record types that can be recalled at any time for any reason. Accounting software is equally applicable whether you’re operating a large corporation, small business, brick and mortar store, or online enterprise.

Even your accountant utilizes software to minimize the potential for errors and automate tasks. You’ll find that today’s options for accounting software is affordable, easy to use, and provides capabilities and functionalities of which you may not be aware. It’s ready to use straight out of the box and typically doesn’t require much in terms of setting it up.

One of the great things about accounting software is the ability to automate the repetitive tasks that take up your time. The software is able to automate invoicing, payment reminders, collections and budgeting, just to name a few. The software is also able to integrate with multiple departments.

Invoicing, statements and other documents can be created automatically and sent to clients electronically via email or printed out and faxed. The feature saves you a substantial amount of time and facilitates payment collection without the need to rely upon time-consuming Excel spreadsheets.

Most accounting software will allow you to automatically transfer and import data from spreadsheets into the program. If you offer credit accounts, the software can identify contact information for those that owe you money and provide a detailed account of the transaction. Financial reports can be prepared for yourself and you’ll have the option of being able to send them to other recipients as needed.

Today’s modern accounting software will have powerful analytics, the ability to create custom reports, and delve deep within your company’s structure to determine where any improvements or changes should be made. With accounting software, you’ll spend less time on repetitive tasks and have the tools to plan for your company’s health and future.

0 comments
Accounting
posted by Mark Battalini
July 31, 2020

Accounting Experts can Save your Business Money

Business owners mistakenly believe they’re saving money by attending to their accounting task themselves. What they’re actually doing is taking time away from their families and other business tasks such as planning for future growth. Hiring an accounting firm to care for your finances saves time, money, and enables you to focus on other priorities.

Business Planning

Professional accounting firms work with businesses at all stages of development – from startups to long-established endeavors. They have a wealth of experience they can utilize to help you advance your business to the next stage in its evolution and provide guidance on managing monetary growth. They can also assist if you need to make changes in its structure.

Informed Decisions

Your accountant will be able to advise you on multiple issues to help you make better informed decisions about your business. They can advise you on a variety of topics ranging from strategies to provide the best return on your investment to endeavors that are risky for your business.

Streamlining

A professional accountant can streamline your books, establish better bookkeeping practices, and “find” money you never even knew you had. You’ll know exactly where your money is going, how much, and discover ways to save your business money. A professional can also assist with strategic spending and saving money with vendors and others with which you regularly conduct business.

Tax Penalties

An accounting professional will be cognizant of all the current tax laws to save you money and avoid errors or omissions that lead to tax penalties. The firm’s professionals will know your business and meet all applicable deadlines, while minimizing taxes and maximizing benefits for greater profitability.

Exit Strategies

There will come a time when you decide to retire and an accounting firm can help you define the best time to exit or what you may need to do before selling the business.

0 comments
Accounting
posted by Mark Battalini
June 28, 2020

Great Ways to Keep Track of your Finances

In today’s busy world, it can be difficult to monitor and manage your financial health. Keeping track of your finances involves more than simply knowing how much is in your account or making sure you pay the rent or mortgage on time. There are a number of ways that anyone can utilize to better manage their money that includes the following, in no particular order.

Accurate Budgeting

A budget doesn’t mean you can’t spend for fun. It does mean that you need to account for the must-pay expenses first, such as rent, car payments, utilities, groceries, and insurance premiums. The remainder will provide information on major expenditures ad areas where you might save.

The Little Things

Small expenses are the bane of a budget. They nibble away at money that you could be saving and they account for a significant amount of money each day. Some of those small expenses include eating lunch out, whether it’s by yourself or with co-workers, or designer coffees and juices. Start saving receipts from each purchase and total them up at the end of the month or use a debit card for each purchase so you can go back and identify each one on your bank statement.

Savings

Everyone should have a savings goal whether it’s for a major purchase or for retirement purposes. If your budget doesn’t have a category for savings, create one. It can be any amount you want, but financial advisers recommend a set percentage of your income. Don’t be tempted to draw upon your savings. If you have extra money at the end of the month, shift it to your savings.

Software

There are dozens of software programs that will help you budget your money, track expenditures, and even send you alerts via mobile device so it’s easy to manage your money on the go with today’s busy lifestyles.

0 comments
Accounting
posted by Mark Battalini
May 22, 2020

What are Auditors?

Accountants and auditors help to ensure that the Nation’s firms are run efficiently, its public records kept accurately, and its taxes paid properly and on time. They perform these vital functions by offering an increasingly wide array of business and accounting services, including public, management, and government accounting, as well as internal auditing, to their clients. Beyond carrying out the fundamental tasks of the occupation-preparing, analyzing, and verifying financial documents in order to provide information to clients-many accountants now are required to possess a wide range of knowledge and skills. Accountants and auditors are broadening the services they offer to include budget analysis, financial and investment planning, information technology consulting, and limited legal services.

Specific job duties vary widely among the four major fields of accounting: public, management, and government accounting and internal auditing.

Internal auditors verify the accuracy of their organization’s internal records and check for mismanagement, waste, or fraud. Internal auditing is an increasingly important area of accounting and auditing. Internal auditors examine and evaluate their firms’ financial and information systems, management procedures, and internal controls to ensure that records are accurate and controls are adequate to protect against fraud and waste. They also review company operations, evaluating their efficiency, effectiveness, and compliance with corporate policies and procedures, laws, and government regulations. There are many types of highly specialized auditors, such as electronic data-processing, environmental, engineering, legal, insurance premium, bank, and health care auditors. As computer systems make information timelier, internal auditors help managers to base their decisions on actual data, rather than personal observation. Internal auditors also may recommend controls for their organization’s computer system, to ensure the reliability of the system and the integrity of the data.

Government accountants and auditors work in the public sector, maintaining and examining the records of government agencies and auditing private businesses and individuals whose activities are subject to government regulations or taxation. Accountants employed by Federal, State, and local governments guarantee that revenues are received and expenditures are made in accordance with laws and regulations. Those employed by the Federal Government may work as Internal Revenue Service agents or in financial management, financial institution examination, or budget analysis and administration.

0 comments
Accounting
posted by Mark Battalini
May 21, 2020

How to Analyze a Financial Statement

Its obvious financial statements have a lot of numbers in them and at first glance, it can seem unwieldy to read and understand. One way to interpret a financial report is to compute ratios, which means, divide a particular number in the financial report by another. Financial statement ratios are also useful because they enable the reader to compare a business’s current performance with its past performance or with another business’s performance, regardless of whether sales revenue or net income was bigger or smaller for the other years or the other business. In order words, using ratios can cancel out differences in company sizes.

There aren’t many ratios in financial reports. Publicly owned businesses are required to report just one ratio (earnings per share, or EPS) and privately-owned businesses generally don’t report any ratios. Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) don’t require that any ratios be reported, except EPS for publicly owned companies.

Ratios don’t provide definitive answers, however. They’re useful indicators but aren’t the only factor in gauging the profitability and effectiveness of a company.

One ratio that’s a useful indicator of a company’s profitability is the gross margin ratio. This is the gross margin divided by the sales revenue. Businesses don’t disclose margin information in their external financial reports. This information is considered to be proprietary in nature and is kept confidential to shield it from competitors.

The profit ratio is very important in analyzing the bottom-line of a company. It indicates how much net income was earned on each $100 of sales revenue. A profit ratio of 5 to 10 percent is common in most industries, although some highly price-competitive industries, such as retailers or grocery stores will show profit ratios of only 1 to 2 percent.

0 comments
Accounting
posted by Mark Battalini
April 29, 2020

Revenue and receivables

In most businesses, what drives the balance sheet are sales and expenses. In other words, they cause the assets and liabilities in a business. One of the more complicated accounting items are the accounts receivable. As a hypothetical situation, imagine a business that offers all its customers a 30-day credit period, which is fairly common in transactions between businesses, (not transactions between a business and individual consumers).

An accounts receivable asset shows how much money customers who bought products on credit still owe the business. It’s a promise of case that the business will receive. Basically, accounts receivable is the amount of uncollected sales revenue at the end of the accounting period. Cash does not increase until the business actually collects this money from its business customers. However, the amount of money in accounts receivable is included in the total sales revenue for that same period. The business did make the sales, even if it hasn’t acquired all the money from the sales yet. Sales revenue, then isn’t equal to the amount of cash that the business accumulated.

To get actual cash flow, the accountant must subtract the amount of credit sales not collected from the sales revenue in cash. Then add in the amount of cash that was collected for the credit sales that were made in the preceding reporting period. If the amount of credit sales a business made during the reporting period is greater than what was collected from customers, then the accounts receivable account increased over the period and the business has to subtract from net income that difference.

If the amount they collected during the reporting period is greater than the credit sales made, then the accounts receivable decreased over the reporting period, and the accountant needs to add to net income that difference between the receivables at the beginning of the reporting period and the receivables at the end of the same period.

0 comments
Accounting
posted by Mark Battalini
April 28, 2020

What is Forensic Accounting?

Forensic accounting is the practice of utilizing accounting, auditing, and investigative skills to assist in legal matters. It encompasses 2 main areas – litigation support, investigation, and dispute resolution.

Litigation support represents the factual presentation of economic issues related to existing or pending litigation. In this capacity, the forensic accounting professional quantifies damages sustained by parties involved in legal disputes and can assist in resolving disputes, even before they reach the courtroom. If a dispute reaches the courtroom, the forensic accountant may testify as an expert witness.

Investigation is the act of determining whether criminal matters such as employee theft, securities fraud (including falsification of financial statements), identity theft, and insurance fraud have occurred. As part of the forensic accountant’s work, he or she may recommend actions that can be taken to minimize future risk of loss. Investigation may also occur in civil matters. For example, the forensic accountant may search for hidden assets in divorce cases.

Forensic accounting involves looking beyond the numbers and grasping the substance of situations. It’s more than accounting…more than detective work…it’s a combination that will be in demand for as long as human nature exists. Who wouldn’t want a career that offers such stability, excitement, and financial rewards?

In short, forensic accounting requires the most important quality a person can possess: the ability to think. Far from being an ability that is specific to success in any particular field, developing the ability to think enhances a person’s chances of success in life, thus increasing a person’s worth in today’s society. Why not consider becoming a forensic accountant?

0 comments
Accounting
posted by Mark Battalini
March 15, 2020

Bookkeeping Basics

Most people probably think of bookkeeping and accounting as the same thing, but bookkeeping is really one function of accounting, while accounting encompasses many functions involved in managing the financial affairs of a business. Accountants prepare reports based, in part, on the work of bookkeepers.

Bookkeepers perform all manner of record-keeping tasks. Some of them include the following:

They prepare what are referred to as source documents for all the operations of a business – the buying, selling, transferring, paying and collecting. The documents include papers such as purchase orders, invoices, credit card slips, time cards, time sheets and expense reports. Bookkeepers also determine and enter in the source documents what are called the financial effects of the transactions and other business events. Those include paying the employees, making sales, borrowing money or buying products or raw materials for production.

Bookkeepers also make entries of the financial effects into journals and accounts. These are two different things. A journal is the record of transactions in chronological order. An accounts is a separate record, or page for each asset and each liability. One transaction can affect several accounts.

Bookkeepers prepare reports at the end of specific period of time, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. To do this, all the accounts need to be up to date. Inventory records must be updated and the reports checked and double-checked to ensure that they’re as error-free as possible.

The bookkeepers also compile complete listings of all accounts. This is called the adjusted trial balance. While a small business may have a hundred or so accounts, very large businesses can have more than 10,000 accounts.

The final step is for the bookkeeper to close the books, which means bringing all the bookkeeping for a fiscal year to a close and summarized.

Making a Profit

Accountants are responsible for preparing three primary types of financial statements for a business. The income statement reports the profit-making activities of the business and the bottom-line profit or loss for a specified period. The balance sheets reports the financial position of the business at a specific point in time, ofteh the last day of the period. and the statement of cash flows reports how much cash was generated from profit what the business did with this money.

Everyone knows profit is a good thing. It’s what our economy is founded on. It doesn’t sound like such a big deal. Make more money than you spend to sell or manufacture products. But of course nothing’s ever really simple, is it? A profit report, or net income statement first identifies the business and the time period that is being summarized in the report.

You read an income statement from the top line to the bottom line. Every step of the income statement reports the deduction of an expense. The income statement also reports changes in assets and liabilities as well, so that if there’s a revenue increase, it’s either because there’s been an increase in assets or a decrease in a company’s liabilities. If there’s been an increase in the expense line, it’s because there’s been either a decrease in assets or an increase in liabilities.

Net worth is also referred to as owners’ equity in the business. They’re not exactly interchangeable. Net worth expresses the total of assets less the liabilities. Owners’ equity refers to who owns the assets after the liabilities are satisfied.

These shifts in assets and liabilities are important to owners and executives of a business because it’s their responsibility to manage and control such changes. Making a profit in a business involves several variables, not just increasing the amount of cash that flows through a company, but management of other assets as well.

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm
Saturday	closed
Sunday	closed

Archives for Accounting