15 jobs you can get after you finish Accounting Degree

 

When I was half through my Master’s degree in Accounting, I was unsure about the accounting jobs available after completing my degree. These days, the internet is a different world and the students are much smarter than I was. Just a click away, you can find some information on the topic you want to know.

Having worked for more than 12 years in various accounting designations, I would like to bring my perspective about various jobs that are available in Accounting. This may help some of you to plan your career well in advance and work towards it.

My strong determination and yearning to learn new skills made to work in various fields of Accounting ranging from Financial Accounting to Systems. This is not hard if you plan ahead of your next move of your career. During this process, I took help of mentors who guided and guiding me in my career journey.

Accounts Payable Officer:

My first job was Accounts Payable Officer in a Multi-National Company. This designation is basically ensuring the invoices received by the company are paid on time. For example; you are working for company A – toy seller. As part of their operations, it may procure toys from various manufacturers. When the manufacturers sends an invoices to pay. The accounts payable officer works on processing invoices and paying them on time.  These invoices can range in various volume; large organisation has huge volume of invoices. To undertake this payment process, Accounts payable officer is recruited.

Accounts Receivable Officer:

This is opposite of Accounts payable officer, the company provides services or products. This job helps in processing the payments received from the customers. Sometimes, the Accounts Receivable officer is also called as Collections Officer where the overdue accounts are followed up. However, this position might be called differently in an outsourcing companies. It is advised to look at the position description of the job you are applying for. This was my second part time job for an Australian Tourism organisation.

Book keeper:

Book-keepers does the same job as Accounts payable and receivable for a small organisation.Usually, these positions do not need any qualification except the experience.

General Ledger Officer/Assistant Accountant/Accounts Officer:

This is another step up for graduate after payable or receivable jobs. This is offered to graduates who have completed their graduation and pursuing professional qualifications like CA or CPA. This was my third job which helps you to understand the finance structure of the business and assist the accountant in all aspects of Accounting.

Financial Accountant:

This is one of the essential jobs of the organisations. Some organisations may have only one Financial Accountant overlooking the functions of Accounts payable, Accounts Receivable and related functions of the Accounting function. This job requires staff management skills, statutory reporting along with good communication and negotiation skills. Sometimes, large organisations recruit these positions with no staff supervision. This accountant does financial reporting, P&L analysis and general ledger reconciliations on monthly basis by assisting the management in their decision making process. I really enjoyed working in this role for one of the private companies. Sometimes, quite challenging with strict deadlines.

Management/Budget Accountant:

Every company at the beginning of the year focus on setting the budget for the new financial year. As part of this process, Management Accountant plays an important role by liaising with various divisional heads and ensuring the budget is allocated to each department as forecasted. This position again requires good communication and negotiation skills along with professional qualifications and experience to make a role success. This is another role I really enjoyed working. This role involves communicating to different stakeholders across the organisation and processing their budgets appropriately.

Treasury Accountant:

This role is like a cashier to the organisation in simple terms. The treasury accountant provides cash flow information to the organisation and monitor bank accounts on daily basis. This role collaborate with financial accountant on regular basis to ensure that there are sufficient funds in the bank for making payments and providing net position at the end of each week.

Taxation Accountant:

This role is good for someone who loves to deal with taxes. This roles ensure the taxes are filed according to the rules of the tax office. In Australia, there is a Goods and Services Tax filed every quarter for a company registered as a business. This Accountant ensures that this is done on time. Sometimes, this role is merged in the role of Financial or Management Accountant depending on the company operations. Large organisations have a specialised role to perform their taxes across the globe.

Fixed Asset or Capex Accountant:

Every company has its own assets. As a graduate, you know Assets have depreciation, sale, buy or sometimes write offs. To perform all these tasks, Fixed Asset Accountant is required. This role set up assets in the systems, run depreciation, post to General Ledger, reconciliation between fixed asset register and general ledger, follow up on discrepancies, recording profit or loss on any sold assets, providing relevant reports to the management on status of all assets, write off any unwanted assets etc.

Project Accountant:

These Accountants are mostly recruited by construction companies. Large project based organisation may recruit these accountants to work on each project allocated. This accountant mainly deals with Work in progress payments, budget vs actual variance as the project goes on and any discrepancies are reported to the management. Further to this, there is regular reporting to the management.

Systems Accountant:

This is another interesting role that combines system and accounting skills. If your interest is in systems and accounting, then this is the role for you. When I did this role, I learnt many new things in Systems. I consider this as a unique role. It combines IT and Accounting skills together. I was fortunate to learn scripting, queries and generating various financial statements based on the requests of the users. The main aim of this role is to develop reports or run reports by understanding the accounting requirements. This involves working closely with Accountants and understanding their roles.

External Auditor:

As you may be aware, this role performs various types of audits independently to the organisation. These jobs are offered by the large consulting organisation. You work for an organisation, but perform an audit of their clients to provide independent advice on their controls. This role requires to be good at understanding Accounting Standards and checking the controls within the department or processes of the organisation.

Internal Auditor:

This is rarely noticed by many graduates. I was not aware until I saw a job notification about internal auditors. These Auditors are internal to the organisation and mostly held by large organisations. Currently, am working in this role and you will love this job if you like variety. It advises various stakeholders on improving their processes or controls. This role performs any type of audit within the organisation to provide independent, objective assurance to add value and improve the organisation’s operations.

Finance and Business Partner/Analyst:

In the recent days, the role of accountant is changing from a conservative approach of crunching numbers to more dynamic in nature. This role is one of them. Now-a-days, companies are advertising with this title or Finance Analyst. Ostensibly, the accountants role has changed to a partnering role than a sit alone role. Further, this job requires you to partner with Business managers at various levels to discuss the implications of the projects undertaken from accounting side. For example, if the management decides to recruit a position, then this role provides all insights from the financial perspective and helps the management actively in their decision making.

Business Manager/Analyst:

This is pretty similar to the above but may involve more on analysing the various aspects of the business. Nowadays, the data is available in various forms and shapes. The accountants needs to analyse the data in various aspects and provide to the management on regular basis.

The experience in the above jobs enhance you to grow from mid to senior level management roles like Associate Director of finance, Director of Finance, Chief financial officer, Group finance manager and all. Now am sure that you got an understanding of how Accounting graduation fetch you corporate opportunities. At the same time, I would like to remind you all the above jobs are for you if you are good at soft skills like communication and negotiation skills, good professional background like understanding of accounting concepts, standards along with good computer skills.

Why late? plan yourself ahead and acquire relevant skills. If you are ready and looking for work, refer to these websites.