Career opportunities in accounting field

There are many different careers in the field of accounting ranging from entry-level bookkeeping to the Chief Financial Officer of a company. To achieve positions with more responsibility and higher salaries, it's necessary to have a degree in accounting as well as achieve various professional designations.



One of the primary milestones in any accountant's career is to become a Certified Public Accountant or CPA. To become a CPA you have to go to college or university with a major in accounting. Your degree must be recognised by Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA). There's also some employment experience required in a CPA firm. This is generally three years. Once you satisfy all those requirements, you get a certificate that designates you as a Chartered Accountant and you're allowed to offer your services to the public.



Many CPAs consider this just one stepping stone to their careers. The chief accountant in many offices is called the controller. The controller is in charge of managing the entire accounting system in a business stays on top of accounting and tax laws to keep the company legal and is responsible for preparing the financial statements.



The controller is also in charge of financial planning and budgeting. Some companies have only one accounting professional who's essentially the chief cook and bottle washer and does everything. As a business grows in size and complexity, then additional layers of personnel are required to handle the volume of work that comes from growth. Other areas in the company are also impacted by growth, and it's part of the controller's job to determine just how many more salaries the company can pay for additional people without negatively impacting growth and profits.



The controller also is responsible for preparing tax returns for the business; a much more involved and complex task than completing personal income tax forms! In larger organizations, the controller can report to a vice president of finance who reports to the chief financial officer, who is responsible for the broad objectives for growth and profit and implementing the appropriate strategies to achieve the objectives.

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Depreciation

In an accountant's reporting systems, depreciation of a business's fixed assets such as its buildings, equipment, computers, etc. is not recorded as a cash outlay. When an accountant measures profit on the accrual basis of accounting, he or she counts depreciation as an expense. Buildings, machinery, tools, vehicles and furniture all have a limited useful life. All fixed assets, except for actual land, have a limited lifetime of usefulness to a business. Depreciation is the method of accounting that allocates the total cost of fixed assets to each year of their use in helping the business generate revenue.



Part of the total sales revenue of a business includes recover of cost invested in its fixed assets. In a real sense a business sells some of its fixed assets in the sales prices that it charges it customers. For example, when you go to a grocery store, a small portion of the price you pay for eggs or bread goes toward the cost of the buildings, the machinery, bread ovens, etc. Each reporting period, a business recoups part of the cost invested in its fixed assets.



It's not enough for the accountant to add back depreciation for the year to bottom-line profit. The changes in other assets, as well as the changes in liabilities, also affect cash flow from profit. The competent accountant will factor in all the changes that determine cash flow from profit. Depreciation is only one of many adjustments to the net income of a business to determine cash flow from operating activities. Amortization of intangible assets is another expense that is recorded against a business's assets for year. It's different in that it doesn't require cash outlay in the year being charged with the expense. That occurred when the business invested in those tangible assets.

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What is financial window dressing?

Financial managers can do certain things to increase or decrease net income that's recorded in the year. This is called profit smoothing, income smoothing or just plain old window dressing. This isn't the same as fraud, or cooking the books.



Most profit smoothing involves pushing some amount of revenue and/or expenses into other years than they would normally be recorded. A common technique for profit smoothing is to delay normal maintenance and repairs. This is referred to as deferred maintenance. Many routine and recurring maintenance costs required for autos, trucks, machines, equipment and buildings can be delayed, or deferred until later.



A business that spends a significant amount of money for employee training and development may delay these programs until the next year so the expense in the current year is lower.



A company can cut back on its current year's outlays for market research and product development.



A business can ease up on its rules regarding when slow-paying customers are written off to expense as bad debts or uncollectible accounts receivable. The business can put off recording some of its bad debts expense until the next reporting year.



A fixed asset that is not being actively used may have very little current or future value to a business. Instead of writing off the un-depreciated cost of the impaired asset as a loss in the current year, the business might delay the write-off until the next year.



You can see how manipulating the timing of certain expenses can make an impact on net income. This isn't illegal although companies can go too far in massaging the numbers so that its financial statements are misleading. For the most part though, profit smoothing isn't much more than robbing Peter to pay Paul. Accountants refer to these as compensatory effects. The effects next year offset and cancel out the effects in the current year. Less expense this year is balanced by more expense the next year.

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Double entry dilemma "why does it credit and not otherwise?"

It is common to learn that students do not know how to post a double entry for business transactions or based on source documents. They simply do not know what to credit or debit. Double entry is basically a system used in accounting world for recording. A debit entry in one account corresponds with a credit entry in another account. How to record a double entry is the key fundamental every accounting student should master with. Thus it is crucial to share some quick leaning method on this.



There are five major catergories of accounts and how will they change when come to credit and debit:-



1) Revenue -Debit (Decr); Credit (Incr):e.g Sales,interest,dividend and etc

2) Expense -Debit (Incr); Credit (Decr):e.g Salaris and wages, rental and etc

3) Asset-Debit (Incr); Credit (Decr):e.g Cash, debtors, land and building and etc

4) Liability-Debit (Decr);Credit (Incr):e.g Creditors, accruals, loan and etc

5) Equity-Debit (Decr);Credit (Incr):e.g Capital and retained earning



Whenever come across with these accounts, you should always remember how will they correspond to double entry. For example, when you are asked to record a sale made to Customer A for an amount of RM325 with a credit term of 30 days. We need to increase the debtor amount thus we debit customer A (debtor) RM325 and credit the sales (revenue)RM 325.



Another typical exmple is, when we pay our rental of RM 500 for May'08 using the cash in hand, we should debit the rental account (expense) RM 500 and credit the cash in hand account RM 500. As cash flew out now.



Hope this would help you to clear your doubts over the double entry dilemma.

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Who Is An Accountant?

If you want to claim yourself as an accountant in Malaysia, you must be a member of the Malaysia Institute of Accountants (MIA). An accountant is a professionally qualified, experience and competent individual bound by a strict ethical code and professional standards and backed by a dynamic professional body.

If you want to find out more, you can refer to http://www.mia.org.my/


Disedia oleh
www.prinsipakaunspm.blogspot.com

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