What are the Daily Duties of an Accountant?

Daily duties of an accountant can be versatile as per the industry requirement but If you are willing to become an accountant, then you must be a professional whose main role and responsibility as an accountant is keeping and interpreting financial records.

An accountant is responsible for a wide range of accounting and finance-related works, some of it’s working process may be different according to industries but the job pattern is common in many ways.

You can be an accountant for individual clients or for larger businesses and organizations, you can also work either from home as a freelancer or in an organization by going to the office regularly.

Daily Duties of an Accountant

• As an accountant you need to ensure the accuracy of financial documents on a regular basis and their compliance with the laws and regulations of the state.
• You will be responsible to prepare the financial reports  and maintain them accurately.
• You are incharge of preparing tax returns and making sure that you pay the taxes properly and on time without delay.
• Evaluating and analysing all the financial operations and suggesting the best-practices.
• You must be able to identify the issues and create strategize solutions and help organizations run efficiently 
• Offering guidance on cost reduction.
• Giving best effort for revenue enhancement, and profit maximization.
• Financial forecasting and assessing the risk.

Types of accounting job (according to the daily duties):

If you plan to become an accountant, then you must be studying a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting or relevant subjects like commerce, economy, finance etc.  

As you study accounting you will find that there are mainly two different types of accounting jobs, you can choose either one. 

The two types of accounting jobs are:

• Public accounting 
• Private or managerial accounting  

Accounting jobs can be specialized and categorized in further types. But in the broad category there are these two types of accounting jobs.

As you complete your accounting studies and want to join a job, you need to make an immediate decision on which type of accounting job you want to do, public accounting or private accounting. 

Now let us understand, what are these public accounting and private accounting are?

Daily duties of an accountant in Private accounting:

In order to work in private accounting, you can take the certification of managerial accountant or internal auditor, like Certified Managerial Accountant or Certified Internal Auditor etc.

You can start working as a private or managerial accountant without having a license. 

What you do is join any company, organization or startup as an accountant. You basically work from 9 to 5 as another employee of that organization.

Your job role as private accountant may range from taking care of every day to day’s finance related matters like income and expenses, account payables, accountant receivable, inventory management, taxes, taking care of payroll etc. 

Every startup to medium or large businesses need an accountant. Even Though there are several types of softwares are used nowadays to make the work easier and better, there will always be the need for an accountant in every enterprise in spite of all the technological advancement. From a shop to non-profit charity organizations everywhere the accountant plays a very important role.   

A large organization may have the internal audit departments, where the internal auditors will monitor and analyze the way the organization is being run and confirm that the works of the organization comply with the internal regulation as well as the law of the state. An internal auditor will take care of all the internal controls.

Working as a private accountant in an organization, your work style is consistent and regular, your every month goes like the previous one. Your workload may increase during the ending of the finance quarter, if any changes take place in tax laws, year end, closings but it is temporary. Most of the time, you will enjoy a regular work life.

Being a private accountant, As your job is mostly a 9-5 time basis and you are not required to travel anywhere other than your organization, you will enjoy a good work life balance.  You work for the same organization month after month. You will work 5 days in a week in most cases.

If you are an internal auditor then you do require to travel a lot, but it depends on the size of the entity you are working in, in a larger entity you may need to travel more. 

As you start working in an organization as an accountant, your salary may not be great at the start of your career but as you spend more time and gain experience your salary will be a lot better.

Daily duties of an accountant in Public accounting:

On the other hand if you work as a public accountant then the scenario will be much different. Working as a public accountant means you will be working for an accounting firm. 

In order to join as a public accountant you need to prepare and study for the Uniform Public Accounting test, and as you pass the test you become a certified public accountant (CPA).

This is a professional license for becoming a public accountant. As you become a public accountant you start carrying out the professional responsibility and liabilities just like other people working as a professional. 

In a public accounting firm you will be paid a better salary than a private accountant but you will experience a brutal workload which will be incredibly high. You will be working with different people and you will be required to travel a lot to the client’s organization or company in order to work for them. In order to work as a public accountant you must pass the CPA test or else you can be out of the firm soon.

As you will have to travel a lot and will have tremendous work pressure, it is obvious that your work life balance will be severely affected. You may get a lot of mental pressure.

There are some positive sides like you will get the opportunity to experience different industries and find out which one is the best suit for you. Your clients are going to be continuously changing, so if you don’t like a client just bear with him for a few times and you will get another client soon. You will get a better salary than a private accountant. 

But the bitter truth is that many public accountants experience divorce and become alcoholic due to the work pressure.

Many leave the public accountant job and join as a private accountant. Some open their own firm to provide financial services. And only around one third continue as the public accountant and achieve the promotion.  

In your public accountant job, you will work on taxes, bookkeeping and auditing etc.

If you are working as a tax professional then you will be preparing the tax returns for personal, small corporations and large corporations. You will be handling income tax, property tax, sales tax etc. As the tax returns related rules and regulations are constantly changing, you literally need to be up-to-date with the privacy policy, internal regulation of the organization and  the rule and regulation of the state related to tax return. You also will be doing tax planning and consulting on a regular basis. 

If you are working with the audit department then you will be required to travel to all different types of clients and audit the financial records of their business to make sure that the balance on their books are reasonable. Many times, the client will make further decisions of making investment relying on your audit work. Banks and financing businesses will decide whether a business is fit to get loans or not, or if yes then at what rate they should give loan etc. 

In case you are working with the bookkeeping department then you will work as the accounting department to take care of the payroll with the salaries and benefits of the employees, as the client or business may outsource the entire payroll matters to a CPA firm rather than keeping an accountant. 

In most cases you may work with startups and small businesses because as they grow and become bigger businesses they will prefer to have their own accounting department. 

Working in a public firm as a public accountant, you will see business growing from small to large, therefore you will get the opportunity to see the life of several businesses. 

Without doubt the experience you will acquire as a public accountant is greater than working as a private accountant. You will get the opportunity to meet a lot of different industries and clients for a short and intense period of time. You will be able to learn about several industries and gain a wide range of knowledge. 

You will receive a much higher salary even from the start of your career as a public accountant in comparison to a private accountant.

Most of the time your firm will provide you free training to keep you up-to-date with the changes, the latest federal and state rules and regulations etc. 

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