Being an accountant is a start to being successful
A successful accountant hastypically earned one or more college degrees. If you have no desire to go to college and earn a degree in business or any other degree there is a good chance that you can become nothing more than an accounting clerk, doing the same type of work each day. That is, if that particular job was not replaced by a computer that can easily do that type of work.
Yes, learning basic accounting is an essential requirement if you desire to earn a business degree, along with a knowledge of marketing, management and the other elements of running a successful business. If you have not already guessed, you must have excellent math skills.
Business is all about making a profit by either selling tangible property and/or selling a service to consumers.Accounting for that business activityis simply recording the financial activity of the business, which is primarily recording the income and the expenses of the business for a determined period of time such as a week, a month, a quarter and/or a year of business activity.
All of that business data is eventually presented in the form of financial statements that disclose the business activity for the period. Yes, the accountant is the keeper of the financial records of the business. Depending on the size and the sales volume of the business there can be many accountants, each of which specializes in one part of the business activity.
There can a property accountant that records the purchase of buildings, manufacturing equipment and vehicles. There can be a tax accountant that prepares the business tax returns and assists with tax audits, including being in compliance with Federal, State and Local tax laws.
There can be aninventory accountantthat accounts for the sales of finished products and the purchase of raw materials that are part of the finished products sold to consumers.
There can also be an auditor who examines the books to determine if all of the income and expenses are posted to the proper accounts.
An accountant can become a corporate officer, such as a treasurer or a chief financial officer. The treasurer usually manages the corporate bank accounts and invests the corporation's surplus money. The chief financial officer supervises those other specialized accountants and prepares the financial statements.
As you can see from the above there are many kinds of work opportunities for educated accountants. No matter what kind of specialized accountant you choose to become there are periods during the year that require many hours of overtime, depending on the time of the year.
Then again, if you do not want to work for a corporation or other form of business you can become a C.P.A. (Certified Public Accountant) or a P.A. (Public Accountant). Small business owners usually hire the services of such independent accountants to record their business activities each month and prepare monthly and yearly financial statements, together with the preparation of the business tax returns.
Now that you have some ides of the kind of work that an accountant does you should also be mindful of the fact that it is valuable to earn a degree in accounting and gain a great deal of accounting experience if you expect to become a chief financial officer of a corporation or simply an independent accountant.
