Accountant Requirements
An accountant is a person who deals with the accounts of an organization, firm , bank, Institutions or business enterprises, companies, individuals customers, Federal, State, and local governments. He records the income and expenditure, assets and liabilities and the entire monetary value transactions.
He renders service in budget analysis, financial and investment planning, information technology consulting, and possible legal services. He renders service for public accounting, management accounting, government accounting, and internal auditing. A Professional Accountant needs certain Accountant Requirements. According to Us Government Mandate a Professional accountant should have at least a bachelor's degree in accounting. He should have competency through the recognized university's licentiate degree. He should have a great skill.
Accountant Requirements depend upon the firm or an institution where he works, such as corporations, governments, nonprofit organizations, business firms, financial enterprises. Banks Institutions, or individuals. Accountant Job Requirements can be traced on the functions that an accountant is expected to discharge. Therefore he should have Educational competency, A Pass in the CPA Exam, A Pass in the Ethics Exam, A genuine Experience in accounting field, A license certificate in CPA .
A Professional accountant should be a Certified Public Accountant or a Chartered accountant. He should have the membership of CPA's Organizations. Certified Public Accountant Requirements are that a professional A professional Accountant should have passed in CPA ( Certified Public Accountant ) and must obtain license. He must pass in the CAP exam soon after finishing the State academic Bachelor's Degree or licentiate in Accountancy. Before obtaining the SPA license the accountant should have passed in the Ethics exam too.
Chartered Accountant Requirements demand from a student certain distinct qualifications. He must have a four year degree college studies in degree in accounting, finance, audit, tax or any other business-related field. A minimum of 24 semester hours in accounting and audit has been demanded for an accountant . In USA the Chartered Accountant Requirements vary from state to state. After the normal academic studies Chartered Accountant should pass in a comprehensive four-part exam such as Auditing and Attestation, Business Environments and Concepts, Financial Accounting and Reporting and Regulation.
These studies in Auditing and Attestation topics will drill a student's knowledge of auditing procedure, techniques and reporting. The study on Business Environments and Concepts will expertise an accountant in economics, finance, mathematics and statistics. The studies in Financial Accounting and Reporting will enable an accountant to be competent to analyze, prepare the financial statements and Report. He must have a certificate in Ethics too besides a certificate of experience.
Bookkeeper Requirements will train the book keeper to maintain the daily voices of income and expenditure and the ledger. He has to maintain the records of the transactions chronologically and accurately on day today basis. Bookkeeper Job Requirements too demand a degree in accountancy or at least a diploma in accountancy after the graduation. Certified Management Accountant Requirements require the expertise in addition to that of normal accounting. He should have at least a degree in managerial accounts. The CMA or the certified Management of Accounts needs a license in the competent field along with the certificate in ethics and a certificate of experience.
CMA Requirements will train the candidate to coordinate all the branch units account and prepare a general report of all the accounts put together. CMA Job Requirements demand the academic qualification, CMA license, Certificate in Ethics and the experience. CMA Requirements will assure the accountant to be fully qualified. Besides all the technical qualifications the competent account should have a polite and elite personality with proven good relationship with the staff and the leadership qualities besides the language expertise. Accountants capable of carrying out advanced functions such as tax planning, finalization of accounts, audits, cash flow management, and profitability analysis etc., would obviously have to be paid more. Therefore, the employer or the hiring authorities need to determine their exact requirements, and then advertise such job vacancy.
Bookkeeper job requirements have undergone drastic change since the arrival of accounting software programs. Formerly, bookkeepers would supervise clerks responsible for keeping track of receipts and payments. Effectively, bookkeepers were recording the transactions at their end as well. But computer programs do such double entry very easily. Therefore, bookkeepers suddenly became redundant. However over the years, new functions such as customer services, payroll accounting, and billing functions have slowly been transferred to bookkeepers.
CMA Job requirements include assessing working management requirements and negotiating term loans. While bookkeepers are able to ensure that accounts are kept accurately, and the receipts and payments are recorded correctly, they may not be able forecast the financial requirements of future. For this, professionals such as Certified Management Accountants are required. Similarly, Certified Public Accountants are responsible for reporting to the government about accuracy of the accounts related information, including information related to tax.
In other words, services of CPAs become necessary when the nature of work involves auditing, and tax planning. There are accepted norms and standards to which the books of accounts should conform. CPAs are responsible to ensure that accounts and information generated from them conform to such standards. In contrast, a Certified Management Accountant or Bookkeeper would be more concerned about arithmetic accuracy of the accounts. It can be seen from the above differences that accountant requirements may differ and they need to be identified correctly.