Academic Skills for Accounting and Finance

This report discusses the importance of academic skills for accounting and finance professionals, including research, referencing, planning, and time management. It highlights the significance of these skills in the field and provides a brief discussion of each skill. The report also emphasizes the need for continuous learning and staying updated with the dynamic needs of the consumer. Course code: MGBAF0ASA.

Academic Skills For
Accounting And
Finance

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK...............................................................................................................................................3
Identification of academic information relevant to accounting and finance...............................3
A brief discussion about some of the academic skills which are required..................................4
Research Skill :........................................................................................................................4
Referencing Skills :..................................................................................................................4
Planning :.................................................................................................................................5
Time Management :.................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Academic skills are a set of habits that learners pursue to have success in their career.
Accounting and finance require such skills mandatorily. Accounting is a term which relates to
the process of recording the financials concerned to business. Financials on the other hand can be
defined as management of money. Accountants usually manage bulk of data sets hence technical
skills are also mandatory for them. Such type of streams requires proper analysis, planning,
organised knowledge, critical thinking, Great communication skills, and writing skills too. For
Example, Certified Public Accountants require to gain knowledge of professional nature in
specific fields like taxation and financial documentation to meet the needs of clients. The main
motive of this report is to reveal all required basic soft skill to develop worth as a specialised
accounting professional and analyse all the required academic skills to pursue the field. This
report also includes the description of the research skills, referencing skills, planning and time
management (Abhayawansa, Elijido Ten and Dumay, 2019).‐
TASK
Identification of academic information relevant to accounting and finance
For the learners it is essential to inculcate the academic skills into their personality in
order to be an efficient learner. Academic skills provide the confidence to the students to
compete in any area of studies. The core academic skills for the learners involve research skills,
research skills, time management, planning, note taking etc. For the accounting and finance
profession, academic skills play an important role as these skills allow them to work in an
effective and efficient manner (Balios, 2021). Individual going into the fields like accounting and
finance require soft skills, technical skills in order to carry out the provided job of specific
manner. Strong skills for writing, critical analysis and thinking, reasoning, planning active
learning are must in this stream. Personal awareness and Better communication skill are
advantageous skills for all the type of jobs not only for accounts and finance.

A brief discussion about some of the academic skills which are required
Research Skill:
Research skill is the key skill in academics as through research, a learner becomes able to
gain in depth knowledge about the specific subject or topic. This skill refers to the ability to find,
bring out, compare and use the information which is important to the topic specified. It is the
process of comprehensive and well organised exploration of the particular subject or topic. There
are different ways of research but while making research there arise several sources and out of
them some resources can be less reliable so it becomes relevant to find out the source on which a
student can rely (Bucior and Spigarska, 2018). The research involves understanding the context
regarding which research is to be made, discovering new strategies and broad range of
information, questioning about information, organising the research data. To get the reliable
source, the student need to have analytical skill and critical thinking abilities. In the time of
technology, learners can refer to several sources available online. They can access many
scholars' publications available online as well as offline for the reference instead of getting one
source. In the field of accounting and finance, research plays an important role as the term
finance is broader term that involve multiple heads that are used while writing about the finance.
Referencing Skills:
The referencing refers to acknowledgement of the source that is used by the learner in the
academics. Referencing can be referred to as one of the essential skills which can be marked on.
Learning referencing skill in a proper manner is one of the important of the academic skills. The
research is should be referenced properly for finding the source of research. Reference makes the
information obtained through research authentic and reliable (Goodchild and et.al. 2020). The
reference indicates the genuineness of the of the research project as it is completely based on the
author's work. Referencing skills utilize the different aspects such as how to use the references
and where to use it with an adequate positioning. Referencing follows a set of rules and protocols
which is considered as referencing style. Referencing presents that an idea is supported by proper
evidence and credits the original author or the publication. References are used to abide by the
issues relating to the intellectual property rights of the author of the publication, when the
research used is of another author. Basically the references are considered as whole and soul of

the research concerned. Referencing need not to be so numerous as it will result in decline of the
efficiency. The list of references is mentioned in the end of every file being written.
Planning:
Planning is the skill that is quite obvious to have for the performance of any task, it is
considered as an initial process of performing any task. Academic skills provide a great base to
the personal hard and soft skills too. Planning can be classified as soft skills. Planning is a
process of mental thinking requires thinking in advance. It is an intellectual activity which
requires deep thinking. It helps the person or entity to decide what to do, how to do, when to do,
and who has to do it (Hossain and et.al. 2020). It is very uncertain as it is related to forecasting the
future. Planning facilitates a clear outlook and help to determine the way to reach the end
objective no matter personal or corporate. Planning is the process of identifying the tasks to be
performed as per its goals and objectives. It is an analytical activity performed universally and at
about all level of organisational task as well as in human lives. An efficient resolver may use
planning for dividing their work load in order to complete their task smoothly and within the
given deadlines. Planning skills help in easy learning and execution of defined functions. It
considers better control and awareness to goals. Primary goal of planning is to reach at the
desired end. Such goals may only be achieved if the planner executes the made plans in a defined
and timely manner. It is not only a function but it is the first and primary step for any task. Better
planning skills leads to better task management. Planning improves cooperation and facilitates
efficient utilisation of scarce resources for discharging tasks in a significant manner. Hence
Planning is such proprietary skills which cannot be transmitted but can be taught up during
academic life for better carrier enhancement.
Time Management:
Managing time is core of every field in the academics because it helps in completing the
task within the stipulated time. For the enhancement of the skills and knowledge it is necessary
to perform the given tasks in conjunction with the time assigned on priority basis. Time
management generally refers to the assignment of the time for the certain topic as it will help the
students to complete the topic within the time (Huy and Thuy, 2021). Not in academics, time
management is also needed in every area such as job, business, managing households etc. The

academic writing may seem laborious without proper time management plan. Time management
helps the learners to be efficient while completing the given task. There is a common phrase
which is used generally “Time is money.” which states that time should be managed as the
person manages his money ( Shen, 2021). Time should be relative to the work, it means that time
and work should move parallels in the same direction. If a student is highly efficient in
performing tasks, then he can outperform over his competitors. Time management skills involve
many skills such as prioritizing the tasks according to their values, decision making, setting goals
to be achieved, multitasking, strategic thinking and scheduling. There are three major factors also
known as 3P's of time management to be more productive, which play an important role in the
time management and those factors are planning, prioritizing and performing. Time management
can help the learners in many ways such as; it reduces the stress, the approach towards the task
becomes positive, it also saves the more energy for the leisure time, goals become clear and
focus gets improved thereby goals become easier to achieve.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be easily concluded that the accounting and finance consists
the wider variety of job fields and require heavy specialisation. Specialisation refer to higher
focus on core fields in addition to major course requirements. Great academic skills help
professional to successfully meet the additional requirements. Great academic skills provide
better job accomplishment and higher confidence during job performance. Accounting job
involves complex data and hence strong teamwork and interpersonal skills required to discharge
the jobs. skills like time management help the accountants to maintain timely records. Great
awareness to academic skills is so important as persons working as accountants and in related
fields required to stay updated at regular manner to meet the dynamic needs of the consumer.
Beginning with growing skill set by pursuing entry level jobs may lead a learner towards its
goals (Suryani and et.al. 2018). Better academic knowledge helps the professionals to accomplish
goals individual and organisational goals in desired effective and efficient way.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abhayawansa, S., Elijido Ten, E. and Dumay, J., 2019. A practice theoretical analysis of the irrelevance‐
of integrated reporting to mainstream sell side analysts.‐
Accounting & Finance. 59(3). pp.1615-
1647.
Balios, D., 2021. The impact of Big Data on accounting and auditing.
International Journal of Corporate
Finance and Accounting (IJCFA). 8(1). pp.1-14.
Bucior, G. and Spigarska, E., 2018. Methodology of teaching financial accounting subjects to the students
of secondary economic high schools (post-secondary schools). In
EDULEARN18
Proceedings (pp. 5355-5362). IATED.
Goodchild, P. R. and et.al. 2020. A New Course in Practical Accounting: Skills for Use in Daily
Life.
Business Education Innovation Journal. 12(1).
Hossain, M. M. and et.al. 2020. Factors affecting business graduates' employability–empirical evidence
using partial least squares (PLS).
Education+ Training.
Huy, D. T. N. and Thuy, N. T., 2021. Education for students to enhance research skills and meet demand
from workplace-case in vietnam.
Ilkogretim Online. 20(4).
Shen, Y., 2021. CEO characteristics: a review of influential publications and a research
agenda.
Accounting & Finance. 61(1). pp.361-385.
Suryani, A. W. and et.al. 2018. Shunning careers in public accounting firms: The case of Indonesia.
The
British Accounting Review. 50(5). pp.463-480.