Reference and Education

Different types of accountants

Finance is the foundation of every organization. Accounting plays a vital role in running every business whether it’s big or small. It’s essential to record, analyze, summarise, and extract the reports about transactions of an organization. Accounting helps you to track income and expenditures, ensure statutory compliance and provide investors, management, and government with quantitative financial information. Thus accounting jobs are considered the safest jobs in the world. Accounting careers are far more diverse. So take a look at different types of accountants.

Different Types of Accountants and What They Do

Auditors

All businesses need to record their financial information. Auditors ensure that the accounting records are precise and accurate. They review financial statements, accounting systems, account books and fiscal records. Auditors also help organization from fraud and to increase operational efficiency.

Mainly there are two types of auditors: internal and external. Internal auditors work within the company and they examine issues related to financial and business practices of the company. External auditors work independently on the organization they are auditing financial records and issue an opinion regarding the financial statement of the company. Both internal and external auditors work with different industries. 

 

Consultants

An accounting consultant is an expert in all aspects of business. They are skilled in finance and who can help individuals or organization to make financial decisions. They can prepare financial reports, analyse financial statements and interpret all types of financial data. 

This includes preparing tax documents, making recommendations regarding tax decisions, and making sure all documents are maintained properly. Financial consultants may be self employed, with their skill they can get placed in any organization.

 

Cost accountant

Cost accountant makes sure to meet the business cost efficiency.  They make sure that the money spent by the company is well planned and worth it. Their responsibilities include monitoring unit cost variance, implementing cost for materials and labor, preparing cost associated shipping, analysing production cost and reconciling beginning raw materials, work-in-progress and finished goods stock. They need to collect cost information and maintain an expense database.

 

Financial accountant

A financial accountant is responsible for managing all the financial records of an organization. They have to compute, maintain and classify financial records of organisations. Their major responsibilities include : 

  • Preparing monthly profit and loss.
  • Tax reporting and inventory processing.
  • Advising on estimating project funding.
  • Creating KPI reports.
  • Preparing weekly cash flow statements and controlling expenditure and cash flow.
  • Examining financial records for check for accuracy.
  • Reconciling billing vouchers.
  • Making financial statements public using software 

And more. 

 

Forensic accountant

Forensic accountants are the detectives in accountants. They have the special skills to help in the world of criminology. The main goal of a forensic accountant is to find fraud in accounting records. They analyse financial records to check whether there are any errors, fraud or omissions. Also responsible for making reports on revenue losses and damages from contract breach. They have to perform regular financial record audits to ensure that they are in compliance with the law. Forensic accountants need to keep an organized file of all legal cases and attend court when needed.

 

Fiduciary accountant

Fiduciaries are the people or organization who manage assets on behalf of another person or a group of people. Money managers, financial advisors, bankers, insurance agents etc all have fiduciary responsibility. Their responsibilities include clearly showing gains and losses, starting all accounts in cosine manner, summarise it’s content, documentation of all transactions, detailing both current and carrying values and more.

 

Government accountant

There are so many government forms and there are many types of government accounting. Government accountants manage budgets, expenses and revenues at federal, state and local levels for organizations such as military, law enforcement, public schools etc. One of the main responsibilities of a government accountant is to organize and maintain financial documents, data and reports. Also they have to contribute to the budget development programs. They have to make sure that the taxpayers money is spent wisely. 

To earn a job as a government accountant a bachelor’s degree in accounting is required and CPA or MBA is preferred. 

 

Investment accountant

An investment accountant usually focuses on investment brokerage or asset management firms. They monitor and maintain client investments. Investment accountants keep track of third-party activity related to their client’s or firm’s investment. Also they manage debt investments like bonds and bank loans. Preparing tax reports on investment accounts is another responsibility of an investment accountant. 

This job requires more than a bachelor’s degree and must include accounting certification and advanced training.

 

Management accountant

Management accountant analyzes and prepares financial reports on the organisation and presents the reports for the seniors. They advise on how to improve an organization’s financial health. Management accountants are also associated with budgeting, external financial reporting, risk management and performing profitability analyses. To be a management accountant you need to have great technical accounting skills and organisational skills. A four year degree is generally required for a management accountant.

 

Project accountant

Project accountants works mainly on specific projects. They have to keep track of project reports. Also these accountants oversee anything that affects overall project cost. Thus they have to maintain records of all relevant income and expenditure of each project. Another responsibility of a project accountant is that they have to create and approve all project related billings to customers and also investigate all expenses not billed to customers. Project managers need to create and submit government reports and tax returns related to the project.

In order to be a project accountant you need to have some experience along with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. 

 

Certified Public Accountant (CPA)

Public accountants most often work in private practice or for an accounting firm and one of the upper-level accountants. The main requirement to work in this field is Certified Public Accountant certification. So to be a CPA passing the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Exam is a must. Certified public accountants often handle accounting tasks, like tax preparation, financial planning, audits and more. They need to perform regular, detailed audits to ensure accuracy in financial documents, expenditure and investments. 

 

Staff Accountant

Staff accountants are the generalist accountants. Every business either it’s small or big, needs a staff accountant. So these accountants maintain general accounts and basic cash management tasks. They are also responsible to meet with the clients to discuss confidential accounting issues. They have to conduct month-end and year-end closures. To be a successful staff accountant one must have good communication skills and make decisions.  They should also maintain a high level of organization skills. 

Accounting offers a wide variety of jobs. If you are good at numbers there is an exciting future waiting for you. Pursue your career with the one that fits you best. Take an accounting course from recognised accounts training institutes, get certified and make yourself job-ready to face the challenges in the market.

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