Qualifications and Experiences that Employers Seek From Corporate Accountants

Qualifications and experiences that
employers seek from Corporate
Accountants

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................... 1
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 10
REFERENCES...............................................................................................................11
APPENDIX- 1...............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Corporate accountants are specialized in business accounting and finance and
expertly maintains the financial records comply with all laws, regulation and policies.
They also help the executives of the organization internally in their financial decision-
making. For availing the job the individual must need to have a Bachelor's degree in
accounting and finance.
The report includes the different types of job advertisements for the post of
corporate accountant from various organizations. Explaining the personal attributes
necessary for the specified job profile. Further the report carried forward with the
description of professional and academic qualification of corporate accountant.
Comparison of tasks, job roles and responsibilities identified from the job
advertisements.
MAIN BODY
1. List of Job Advertisement :
Job advertisement is the electronic and print notification by an intern to hire an
individual at the specific job task or a position in the organization. It is the most
important source for the recruitment by advertising the request application through
various modes which can be social media, newspaper, job searching websites etc., The
job advertisement sections provides the overview of all necessary information about the
job specification. Most of the advertisement specify the limited time period for
application(Dekker, 2016).
I have collected 30 job advertisement for the various job titles which includes the
working of the Corporate Accountant. This job advertisement covers the position of
Corporate Finance, Corporate Accountant, Corporate and Management Accountant,
Corporate financial Accountant, Accountant, Senior Financial Accountant, Senior
Accountant, Tax Accountant etc. Job advertisement helps the company to invite
individuals to the specified job title and helps them to choose the appropriate individual
from the wide range of applications.
The job titles are taken from different job searching portal which are Seek,
Indeed and Jora. From Indeed 12 job advertisements are taken, 10 advertisements are
pulled from Seek and from Jora 8 advertisements are taken. Each of the position have a
1

different key roles and responsibilities for their job titles. This job titles helps the
companies to easily reach out to the individual with the help of quick searching. This
also helps the individual to access through various job advertisement for the specific job
position within prioritize company. It is very easy and simple mode to access through
various job requirements and an individual can easily apply to the interested job profile
of any company (Rodgers, Mubako and Hall, 2017).
2. List of the Organization:
Various companies post the job advertisement for their specific job need this can
be for the limited time period and for the part-time or full-time this may vary according to
the needs and the requirements of the organization (Yu, Kim and Restubog, 2015). The
organizations which are included in our advertisement are as follows -
 Murphy Pipes & Civil operates in the finance industry.
 Lockheed Martin runs business in technology and defence which is engaged in
the design, research, development, integration of advanced tech systems,
products and services.
 Kone is the global leader in the escalator and elevator industry.
 Origin Energy conducts their business in energy industry. Company performs the
process of electricity generation, renewable energy, natural gas production etc.
 Suncorp Group avails activity of business in the Finance and treasury industry
which includes the insurance, finance, banking corporation and wealth
management.
 Mater is medical researching company which discover, develop, translate and
commercialize medical research.
 Moore Steohens (WA) Pty Ltd. works business in the finance industry which
provides personalized and personalized accounting, audit, tax and business
advisory services.
 West Recruitment conducts in recruiting industry.
 Walker partner runs as an accounting firm under Finance industry.
 CleanCo is leading company for clean and low generation of energy. The
company is engaged in energy industry.
2

 Pirtek is supplier of premium fluid solution and it rolls in the manufacturing
industry.
 Uniting talent serves in Health and Care industry under which it provides home
care facility.
 Racing Victoria percolate in Information technology industry which offers various
broadcast, content across digital and social media.
 Hylton Castle Motors proceed business as transportation and logistics industry.
 Quinn & Associat works in finance industry while accessing in recruiting and
practicing the broking of accounting and financial services.
 Perigon Group Pty Limited is one of the recruitment leader which deals in
recruiting industry.
 TGS Partners Pty Ltd proceed in Finance industry.
 Hays recruitment conducts in recruiting industry.
 Coffey serves in the engineering industry.
 Commonwealth Bank carry on in Financial industry.
 COMO Hotel Asia performs across Hospitality industry.
 Sarah Group Holdings bend in the Construction industry.
 Peregrine Corporation promoted in retail industry.
 Davidson Recruitment accomplish business goal under Recruiting industry.
 Hays compel within the Construction industry.
 Lopaker deals in Recruitment industry.
 Grant Thomson enforce across Financial industry which deals in capital market,
international standards and regulating bodies.
 Powerstaff consulting work in the Recruitment industry.
 Cape exert in the Mining industry.
 Downer Group act in Manufacturing Industry which builds the infrastructure.
3. List of the Job Titles:
Job titles section is the most important part in the resume which describes the
responsibilities of the prescribed position as well as job level. A large company have a
human resource staff which create the different job titles according to the requirements
3

of the company. Whereas, smaller companies may often takes their job titles form the
existing organizations structure. Many job titles have clarification along with them, that
are part-time or full-time, permanent or temporary and any job location requirements.
There are different job titles which helps the organization to operate all operational and
financial activities among the company for the smooth flow of the organization functions
and processes(Kirsch, 2018).
 Following are the different job titles which are mentioned in the advertisements -
 Corporate Accountant
 Program Accountant
 Management Accountant
 Senior Reporting Corporate Accountant
 Accountant Senior
 Accountant for Tax
 Accountant for Corporate Financial
 Accountant for Management
 Corporate Control Financial Accountant
 Financial Accountant
 International Tax Accountant
 Tax, Treasury and Banking Accountant
 Management Senior Accountant
 Group Accountant
 Tax Intermediate Accountant
 Account Officer & Financial Accountant
 Assistant Corporate Accountant
 Assistant Financial Accountant
 Senior Accountant
 Corporate Assistant Accountant
 Senior Business Service Accountant
 Senior Corporate Accountant
 Financial Accountant & Accounts Officer
 Certified Public Accountant
4

 Grant Accountant
 Senior Financial & Management Accountant
 Senior Tax Accountant
 Corporate Accountant
 Corporate Assistant Accountant
 Management Accountant
4. Personal attributes necessary for Corporate Accountant :
Corporate Accountant has a significant role in the organization. They are
involved in the financial decision-making of the company. The Corporate Accountant
must have an above prescribed skills for performing the job task under the prescribed
job title. The job skills plays a major role in the job advertisement thus this helps the
company to recruit the appropriate candidate for their company which fulfils the skills
requirements by the organizations. This skills may vary from company to company or
industry to industry it depends on the functions and operation of the
company(Bebbington, Russell and Thomson, 2017). The efficient skills help the
accountant to perform its task very efficiently this may also include their qualification
and extra diplomas which has been undertaken by the individual for the specialization
ion particular field which develops the special qualities and skills. The skills must be
fulfilled by the individual mentioned by the company to avail the job offered by the
organization(Domino, Wingreen and Blanton, 2015).
 Better understanding of business
 Accounting Skills
 Communication Skills
 Proficiency in Information Technology
 Customer Service Ability
 Familiar with laws and regulations
 Decision-making Skills
5 Personal attributes evaluation
The first attribute which forms an important part of corporate accountant is
 Better understanding of the business
5

under this, the accountants have the perfect grasp on the roles linked with their position
like managing the treasury facilities as well have the in depth knowledge of business
functions.
 Accounting Skills
A good corporate accountant should have in depth understanding of the figures as well
as numbers therefore they are required to have better knowledge and should show
transparency as well as accuracy in the financial digits.
 Communication Skills
A good accountant are required to communicate with different departments for
explaining the digits and numbers even to the stakeholders thus the potential to interact
in language which is jargon-free is important for them and hence forms an important
attributes.
 Proficiency in information technology
As an accountant, a person should have the proficiency to work on highly specialized
financial softwares such as QuickBooks, Hyperion and the spreadsheets along with
office softwares.
 Customer Service
Serving the customers better is always the main job of any organization thus a
corporate accountant should have the enough skills and capabilities to assist the
customers whether internal or external.
 Familiarity to laws and regulations
A corporate accountant should have the updated knowledge of different laws and
procedures which are essential for maintaining financial system. Apart from this, they
should be aware of the regulations which are to be strictly adhered in order to grow the
business.
 Decision-making
This skill forms the major part of the roles and responsibilities of a corporate accountant
where they should have a good ability of strategic decision making. They are required to
analyse each and every aspect of the business like various financial indicators and
make the decision, taking all these into consideration(Duska, Duska and Kury, 2018).
6. Professional qualification required in corporate accountant
6

A candidate to become a successful corporate accountant should have the
required qualifications as well as should satisfy the following criteria:
The candidate should have the experience of minimum 3 years either in the
similar role or role related to this. The concerned individual must posses an high school
degree or higher as well as should have the minimum 50% on an overall basis.
Applicant must be detailed specific and should have high ability as well as potential for
accuracy. Besides this, strong and a good organizational skills should be present as
well as should have multitasking abilities. A powerful verbal, interpersonal as well as
written communication skills are mandatory with a high level of flexibility and adaptability
to the changing environment (Watson, 2015). Candidate should have the required
potential and should be competent enough to interact different management levels and
must have the knowledge to function in high turnover business. The most important
attribute which the required applicant must have is the ability to perform well under
pressure and meet the strict deadlines (Tricker and Tricker,2015).
Along with the great organizational skills, an individual must have the capability
to function effectively at both the levels that is independently as well as in dynamic team
environment. About the computer literacy, the concerned candidate should have ERP
experience along with a high skills in Microsoft excel. Most importantly, an experience of
generating management accounts involving profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow
should be there. There should be a high willingness and ability to travel and drive
across the entire branches in the group to make sure that the financial standards of
company are being adhered. Apart from all this, the individual must act in accordance
with the company values along with high level of integrity during the representation of
group values(Apostolou and et.al., 2017).
7. Roles and responsibilities
The various roles and responsibilities of corporate accountant are intensively
linked to the topics which have been learned in MPA like the major task of the corporate
accountant encompasses the gathering of large amount of financial data as well as that
of ledgers and eventually consolidate these financial statement along with analysing
their results. Besides this, the major responsibility accounts for analysing finances in
order to estimate the risks and create a forecasting report. Apart form this, the various
7

legislation for the financial processes for a wide variety of corporate structures like joint
ventures as well as companies and thus controlling the periodicals reporting forms the
main task of a corporate accountant. Clearly conveying as well as assessing the
business problems in addition to providing sound solutions and reasoning is what the
major responsibility of corporate accountant. The employee as corporate accountant Is
required to prepare budgets in order to allocate fund for each department.
In contrast to corporate accountant, the main roles, tasks & responsibilities of a
tax accountant after analysing the MPA mainly relates to the preparation of tax returns,
necessary paperwork, payments as well as reports. In addition to this, assessing with
researching the complex tax issues in order to recognize the solutions also forms the
vital part of tax accountant tasks. Applying the basic judgements about the proper use
of standards of accounting and then applying the necessary treatments is also
considered as the primary responsibility of them. The person working on the similar post
is held accountable for preparing other companies as well as the corporate forms tax
reports which fulfil the necessary requirements of legal bodies as well as professional
bodies within Australia. Along with this, a tax accountant is required to keep a close eye
on the industry trends and fluctuations all related to taxation. The concerned person is
mainly involved in offering guidance when the audits takes place and recommending
various strategies for tax savings and to enhance the profits(Margerison, 2017).
8 Additional topics missing from MPA unit HI5020
There are various responsibilities and qualifications which I have gathered from
the different job advertisements and which are misplaced from MPA unit HI5020. On the
part of corporate accountant, the additional requirements which the particular individual
musty have in order to secure this job are like they must have the ability of statutory
reporting where the main task revolves around insurance renewals and monitoring of
the statutory reporting such as activity statements. Besides this, The concerned must
have the ability to mentor the junior team members as well as provide assistance to the
customers. The Additional responsibility which is the MPA has not addresses is that the
corporate accountant are required to collaborate in the internal reviewing of various
treasury facilities. Regarding the procedures, the person working on the above post
needs to identify and formulate the different process improvements. While conducting
8

the audits, the overall responsibility of corporate accountant is about maintaining the
accounts payable, payroll and receivable(Knechel and Salterio, 2016).
On the flipside of the spectrum, the major tasks and responsibilities of tax accountant
lacking in MPA unit HI5020 are addressed as under:
A tax accountant's is held accountable for remitting of the different withholding as
well as PAYG taxes along with the annual reporting liability. Apart from preparing the
tax reports and documents mentioned in MPA, the additional responsibility that the
concerned person is responsible for is preparing the transfer pricing while undertaking
the functional running of varied insurance programs. Over and above this, a tax
accountant is required to maintain a country-by-country (CbC) reports. Helping the
public officer and extending tax support to them in addition to conducting the sanity
checks regarding all the tax related reports which are being designed by outside tax
agents also form their major responsibility. Another cumbersome yet remarkable task
performed by tax accountant includes preparation of the FBT returns for wide range of
entities of different sizes encompassing those having complicated employee packages.
Moreover, maintaining the written tax counselling memorandums together with the
collaboration of senior tax manager as well as department heads also constitute the
main responsibility of tax accountant.
9 Skills, qualifications and attributes for corporate accountant
The most important skill which a successful corporate accountant must have is
the ability to innovate where the person handling a large number of projects should
have the enough potential to bring the innovative ideas for project and increase the
accounting figures. Besides this, another skill is the understanding about different kinds
of accountancy wherein assimilation of new data and managing the projects effectively
becomes the life giving element of day to day tasks. Talking about the experience, the
corporate accountant or the candidate applying for this position must have the good
hands on experience along with the certified management accountant (CMA) credential.
Apart from this, the particular individual must have a bachelor's certification in
accounting or related field. The basic attribute which makes a good corporate
accountant is ethics where they must show integrity in their bookkeeping activities.
9

Another one consists of accuracy under which the accountant must accurate relative to
financial figures and should avoid misplacement of the numbers and digits.
After going through the topics of MPA unit HI5020, I have gained the necessary
skills and attributes which are important for becoming a corporate accountant. The first
skill is the problem solving where I am able to assess the financial accounting issues
and thus have gained the ability to provide sound strategies and solutions to them. This
has enabled me to analyse the business problems from the every point of view and
generate alternatives for them. Another crucial attribute which has influenced me is the
organization skills. This has empowered me to effectively organize my work and keep
upfront with the data's, paperwork which has eventually maximized my productivity as
by systematically maintaining my work I can easily search for important financial
information required. All these skills and attributes have increased my experience to
work on excel and maintain even the complicated balance sheets as well as made me
proficient in preparing financial indicators like accounts payable, accounts receivable,
general ledger etc.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it is concluded that the corporate accountant plays a major
role in the decision-making of the company and help their executives in the smooth flow
of the business so thus a company can avail through their objective along with the
better financial management. The different skills and attributes of it helps the
management to avail through all financial activities and can easily combat with any
financial crisis. Company can plan a budget and manage the financial reporting and can
prepare future forecast with the help of Corporate Accountant so that they can easily
access through all market activities with the better financial management.
10

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Knechel, W.R. and Salterio, S.E., 2016. Auditing: Assurance and risk. Routledge.
Margerison, C.J., 2017. Managerial Consulting Skills: A Practical Guide: A Practical
Guide. Routledge.
Apostolou, B and et.al., 2017. Accounting education literature review (2016). Journal of
Accounting Education.39. pp.1-31.
Tricker, R.B. and Tricker, R.I., 2015. Corporate governance: Principles, policies, and
practices. Oxford University Press, USA.
Watson, L., 2015. Corporate social responsibility research in accounting. Journal of
Accounting Literature. 34.pp.1-16.
Duska, R.F., Duska, B.S. and Kury, K.W., 2018. Accounting ethics. Wiley-Blackwell.
Domino, M.A., Wingreen, S.C. and Blanton, J.E., 2015. Social cognitive theory: The
antecedents and effects of ethical climate fit on organizational attitudes of
corporate accounting professionals—a reflection of client narcissism and fraud
attitude risk. Journal of Business Ethics.131(2). pp.453-467.
Bebbington, J., Russell, S. and Thomson, I., 2017. Accounting and sustainable
development: Reflections and propositions. Critical Perspectives on Accounting.
48. pp.21-34.
Dekker, H.C., 2016. On the boundaries between intrafirm and interfirm management
accounting research. Management Accounting Research. 31.pp.86-99.
Rodgers, W., Mubako, G.N. and Hall, L., 2017. Knowledge management: The effect of
knowledge transfer on professional skepticism in audit engagement planning.
Computers in Human Behavior. 70. pp.564-574.
Yu, K.H., Kim, S. and Restubog, S., 2015. Transnational contexts for professional
identity development in accounting. Organization Studies. 36(11). pp.1577-1597.
Kirsch, A., 2018. The gender composition of corporate boards: A review and research
agenda. The Leadership Quarterly. 29(2). pp.346-364.
11

APPENDIX- 1
12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47