Management Accounting: Job Profiles, Skills, Challenges and Course Coverage

RUNNING HEAD: ACCOUNTING
Management accounting

Accounting 2
Final report
Part 1
Point 1
The data analysis and data collection table shows the job profiles of cost accountant and
management accountant. There are 10 job descriptions provided in the tables, taken from
Australian job websites. The data is collected from the websites such as seek.com, adzuna,
Hudson recruitment, veritas recruitment, careerone, mycareer, indeed and Robert Walter. The
job positions analysed mostly belong to manufacturing sector and some are from engineering
and construction sector. All of them are classified as cost, management and inventory
accountant. The basic and common requirements include that one should be familiar with the
work of preparing reports, budgets and forecasts. In order to get selected, an individual must
possess an accountant degree and should have professional knowledge about analysing costs
and related variances. Along with the jobs also ask for having experience in cost accounting
field and skills related to managing the financial accounts and conducting ad-hoc projects.
One should have good interpersonal skills, strong communication, experience with ERP
systems and great knowledge of Excel. The criteria which relates to cost and management
accounting skill is that one should have a degree of CA, CPA or equivalent. The individual
must be from accounting background and should have a specialized knowledge about the
subject.
Part 2
Point 2
CA, CPA, CIMA and other equivalent courses are the most common and important cost and
management accounting skills which are required for the listed positions. It is important to
study such courses as they are considered as professional course and are highly beneficial in

Accounting 3
getting specialisation in the field of accountant. Also they help in attaining good designation
in an organisation. These courses are very much essential for having a job profile of
accountant. Also they are in demand by every organization who is recruiting for the position
of an accountant. It is necessary for an individual to excel in these courses.
Point 3
The less common skills and knowledge related to cost and management accounting are
generally of short duration which do not attract high designation positions. Courses like
Certified Accountant Technician or a simple undergraduate degree can considered to be the
less common skill required for these job positions. They are not given much priority like CA
or CPA because they do not offer specialized knowledge and are not included in the list of
professional courses. To become an accountant, it is important for the person to possess high
level of knowledge and should be a professional degree holder, as required by the companies.
Point 4
Following are the various challenges faced by management accountants in today’s world:
 They need to be proactive as the companies are demanding those accountants
who can easily and quickly adopt the changes happening in the business as
well as in the surroundings.
 The factors related to the external environment modifies the business
structure and its working conditions. These are globalization, changes in
customer focus and rapidly changing technology. A management accountant is
required to cope up with such changes and deal with them efficiently
(Zainuddin & Sulaiman, 2016).