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Archive for the ‘Accounting’ Category

‘Accounting for a Better Life’ is a book in which John Passmore proposes a new, simplified and fun approach, to home and personal bookkeeping and accounting.

The new methods, based on what he calls, domestic well-being accounting, enable people to gain control of their personal and domestic, financial affairs. The system provides the necessary visibility so that users will know exactly what their money is being spent on, and how well balanced their spending is, in relation to its distribution.

The balance is across basic domestic needs and responsibilities, discretionary spending on holidays, leisure and entertainment, and provision for future well-being. Knowing about the current and past spending patterns, users can determine where and by how much, changes might be needed. Budgeting and associated feedback, facilitate the monitoring of such financial planning.

The author believes the new methods have the potential to be adopted as a formal, sub-discipline of business accounting, eventually perhaps, with suitable certificates and diplomas for those who learn how to use it successfully.

With such recognition, the motivation for appropriate investment from industry and the state becomes real, so that domestic accounting, its further calibration and an associated training infrastructure, can all be further developed and refined.

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           If you are an accounting student, you picked the right field of business!  Especially now a days when the economy is struggling, unemployment it rising, and it is getting harder and harder to find a job.  Compared to all the other business fields, accounting has the most job availability, and the best job security.  It has the best job availability because there is much more work for accountants since the Sarbeans Oxley Act, which requires publicly traded corporations to file much more reports and paperwork to the SEC.  The Sarbeans Oxley Act was passed in 2001 after the Enron scam, and requires more filings from public companies to make sure they are not committing fraud of any kind that could affect its employees and shareholders.  If you are graduating now with a degree in finance, good luck to you!  Finance majors are struggling because of the failing economy and it is much harder for a finance major to find a job fresh out of college then it is an accounting major.

            If you are just entering college, and would like to pursue a career in business, you should definitely choose the accounting major.  If you are an accounting major, you can do work in any other field of business including finance, because a knowledge in accounting gives you a much more diverse business education.  Employers in Marketing, Finance, Economics, and Business will definitely hire an accounting major because they know accounting majors have such a diverse knowledge of the business world.  This does not work the other way around however!  For example, if you are a major in marketing, you won’t be able to get a job doing accounting, which then limits your job search when you are ready to graduate. 

            Now that you have decided you want to be an accounting major in college, the entire world of business is at your fingertips!  The key to getting a good job in accounting, and having a leg up on other accounting majors, is taking a co-op or internship.  An internship allows you to work part-time for an accounting firm while still taking classes.  You can earn college credits for taking an internship, and you will get credit usually for one class by taking an internship.  A co-op allows you to work full-time for an accounting firm, preferably during tax season, where you do not take classes and are committed to the accounting firm for an entire semester.  The good thing is that both internships and co-ops in accounting are almost always paid positions!  Other majors usually won’t pay you for taking a co-op or internship because they know you are receiving college credits by working for them.  All accounting firms who are hiring students as soon as they graduate from college usually require that their prospective employees have completed either a co-op or internship during school.  If you graduate in accounting without having completed a co-op or internship, you are at a severe disadvantage to those who have completed a co-op or internship. 

            Employers usually require their prospects to have completed a co-op or internship because when taking a co-op or internship while still in school, you can really get a grasp on how an accounting firm works and how they earn their money.  Co-ops and internships break students in and eliminate the rustiness first-time accountants face when they first enter the field.  Usually three to six months into taking a co-op or internship with an accounting firm, a light bulb goes off in the student’s head, and they gain great knowledge and understanding about what they are doing and how an accounting firm works.  Then, when an accounting student graduates and starts working in the real world, this “rust” is gone because they already have worked for an accounting firm and understand what is going on.  Compared to an accounting student who hasn’t completed an internship or co-op, a student who has completed an internship or co-op is more effective and quicker and more accurate when they first start working.  Employers don’t want to have to deal with students who haven’t taken a co-op or internship because they are “rusty” when they first start and are less efficient than students who have taken a co-op or internship. 

            So if you are just entering college and would like to enter the business field, do yourself a favor and choose accounting!  Even if you graduate in accounting and decide it isn’t what you want to do with your life, you can still enter any other business field.  Also, if you want to have a significant advantage over other accounting students, take a co-op or internship during your junior or senior year.  Many times the firm you took the co-op or internship with will extend a job offer to you for when you graduate school.  Then you can feel confident when you go back to college, and you won’t have to worry about finding a job and competing with other students from your school!  Good Luck!

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 with a major in accounting. You also have to pass a national CPA exam. There’s also some employment experience required in a CPA firm. This is generally one to two years, although this varies from state to state. Once you satisfy all those requirements, you get a certificate that designates you as a CPA and you’re allowed to offer your services to the public.

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So what goes on the accounting and bookkeeping departments? What do these people do on a daily basis?

Well, one thing they do that’s terribly important to everyone working there is Payroll. All the salaries and taxes earned and paid by every employee every pay period have to be recorded. The payroll department has to ensure that the appropriate federal, state and local taxes are being deducted. The pay stub attached to your paycheck records these taxes. They usually include income tax, social security taxes pous employment taxes that have to be paid to federal and state government. Other deductions include personal ones, such as for retirement, vacation, sick pay or medical benefits. It’s a critical function. Some companies have their own payroll departments; others outsource it to specialists.

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