Exciting Opportunities for Varied Accounting Careers

November 9 2017 - We don't necessarily think about the world of accounting as fun and exciting. However, for people who like delving into the numbers behind the business, there's simplicity and understanding even in in the organized chaos of the business world.

Here are a few ways that accounting careers offer different challenges to people who wish to tackle them.

Project Accounting

Accountants who work on sets of management accounts aren't focused on the whole business usually, but rather sub-sets like single divisions or new side projects. The idea of project accounting is to drill down to the profit and loss and running balance sheet relating to a specific project. The managers of that project need to keep a careful eye on the numbers to ensure they don't spend all of the budget provided to them before the venture gets into the black.

Miss a financial step and the higher-ups may well end the project prematurely to the disappointment of all involved. As such, when working on special projects there's a great deal of responsibility to allow the movers and shakers in the room to get creative, build out to new markets, or grab new market share in ways not attempted by the company before when following the mainstream marketing plans.

Choosing Your Employer Wisely

When it's not the numbers that excite you but the company behind the numbers, then it's especially important to pick your employer wisely. Perhaps you're not a rocket scientist but Elon Musk's mission to put people on Mars inspires you and you want to get involved. In this type of situation, you'll want to find job opportunities at SpaceX to help manage the accounts for their various rocket launch and Mars expedition teams. When the numbers don't make sense, customers like NASA won't keep their association with the company. When you've absolutely got to make life interplanetary, you'll be glad that SpaceX has their calculations right.

To have the best chance at cherry-picking the position that you want, you need to be sure that your educational background is up to the task. A masters in accounting is a senior qualification that builds on accounting qualifications that you may already possess. The online MACC is a 100% online course for busy staff who wish to develop new opportunities while remaining employed on a full or part-time basis.

Forensic Accountant

Do you love a good mystery? Want to deep dive into the numbers to figure out what doesn't look right and figure out why? This is the job of a forensic accountant tasked with looking at the financial books to see if anything looks suspicious or out of place. Paper trails that don't make sense, Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent cases are often spotted first by forensic accountants whose job it is to see what others cannot and will not. Forensic accountants are most often called for to look at cases on Wall Street, but they are also used for regular companies where the numbers don't make sense.

Accounting is not the boring field that people think it is. It's actually fascinating for people who have a knack for working wonders with numbers. It's really a question of choosing what aspect of accounting best suits your skills and temperament so you'll really enjoy your future accounting role.