Accounting is required in businesses, not just to know about profits and losses, but it is required by law. From a billion dollar company to small grocery store, all are required by law to maintain accounts. These accounts are helpful to calculate taxes that are owed to the government. However, accounts are a lot more useful than just that, they help in calculating profits and losses which are the primary concerns of any business.
Profit and losses are the first real motive for accounts maintenance, but there are other uses as well. Maintaining accounts is not something anybody can do. This is a specialist job. The accountant is the one who is the expert in maintaining accounts. Accounts cannot really be called an industry, but it is an integral part of all business and industries. Although, it is slowly growing as an industry on its own, it will always be a part of businesses first.
As an industry on its own, there are professional accounting firms that handle the accounting of other companies. These firms have well qualified accountants working for them. They also have a management who handle getting clients for the firm. Once a client hires them, they get access to all the financial data of the client and prepare accounts on behalf of them. They have to maintain confidentiality about the client's financial details and finish the accounting process in the stipulated time. These are the duties you will find in the accounting home page.
When we think of accounts, the only profession that comes to our mind is of an accountant. Though, this is the primary position, there are other variations in the accounting professions. Since, the numbers of accounting duties have increased; it has become difficult for just one accountant to manage it all. The position of accountant has been divided according to the additional duties and now there are separate types of accountants to do separate jobs. All these varying profiles are and their duties are covered I the accounting responsibilities section.
In a company which possesses their own accounting department, there is a whole accounting department that is dedicated towards managing the accounts. There are many positions in this department and all of them are not necessarily accountants. There are clerks who are assigned to help out the accountants. There is a lot paperwork that is generated for accounts and the clerks are the ones who manage the papers. They may not possess in-depth knowledge about accounting, but they know a few basics about accounting and follow the instructions of the accountants.
The profiles of account departments clerks and other employees are stated in accounting responsibilities section. One such important position is of the bookkeeper. There are so many accounts to manage and books to keep that a separate position of bookkeeper was created for it. As the title would suggest, this position is about maintaining the books of accounts. They have to make entries regularly and balance the books at the end of the day. These are just the basic few duties they have to follow, to know all duties and the opportunities this job provides, read the about the bookkeeper position in the accounting responsibilities section.
There is a lot that is not known about the accounting profession. People assume that since this job is about working with numbers, it might be boring. However, that is not the case; for people who like working with numbers this profession is a good one to have. They have all the financial data of a company and their expertise is used whenever the company is facing a slowdown. Theirs is one of the most important positions in the company and there are many different lucrative positions. Information on all of them is available in the accounting responsibilities section.
Here is the list of different types of accounting job responsibilities: