Getting Ready as An Ambitious Accountant

Getting Ready as An Ambitious Accountant

When choosing a career path, everyone would like to pick a career that not only matches their interests as well as fulfils their demands. If you are thinking about accounting, you might be a person who likes to perform calculations on a huge amount of numerical data.

Nevertheless, the assessment of an accountant would not be performing calculations only. You may compute Return on Investment (ROI) of your occupation option. Do you want to work in the leading accounting firms in Singapore or do you want to involve yourself in the industry? Which profession field in accounting fascinate you?

Here are some questions that may help you to find which field suits you the most.

Discover the Varying Fields in Accounting

Lots of people assume that the job scope of all accountants is similar as well as the industry, which is not true at all. There are many fields in accounting with specific expertise. Even so, a good comprehending of essential accounting skills is required in nearly all field of accounting.

There are many fields in accounting, such as managerial accountant, external auditor of an audit firm, tax agent, financial accountant, public accountant, government accountant, forensic accountant or financial planner.

Outline Your Career Pathway

You should first equip a good comprehension of different career choices in the accounting field, then you can make a decision on which route to choose. Most of the accounting positions require efficiency in basic skillset. For instance, are you familiar with Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss as well as the Cash Flow Statement? These skills generally consist of analytical ability and capability to arrange and analyse data. Then, every path would call for distinct skillset.

Opting for Your Most Ideal Job: Which Type of Company You Would Like to Work In?

It is an indisputable fact that accounting services are essential for every kind of business, be it a small company or a big corporation. Subsequently, you can choose which company you want to work in. You should take into account what kind of workplace where you want to work in. Do you take joy in spending time alone surrounded by documents and folders? Or do you like to immerse yourself in meetings? Also, you should think of your goal in minds: would you like to involve yourself in a team of consultants or team of accountants?

With a clear understanding of the accounting field and deciding the best job that suits your character and strengths, the next move will be planning your career path.

Mapping Your Career Pathway

You are very likely need to acquire a Bachelor’s Degree – you don’t need to go to a leading prominent university, just seek suggestion from a well-known accounting firm in Singapore.

You can take on internships in an accounting firm so that you can obtain practical experience of the needs of the job and understanding into the nature of the job. After gaining some experience at work and being assessed, you can sign up for a Master’s Degree program to be more skilled in your area.

Preparing your career pathway as an accountant is vital. Bear in mind, qualifications do not make up a whole person. More importantly, your mindset, character and connections you establish are the keys to success. You will learn more and have a more promising career by being investigative, ready to learn while having legitimate networks with your peers, mentors, teachers and managers.

Should You Outsource Accounting Function?

Should You Outsource Accounting Function

It is important for all SMEs to be geared up with accounting function given the stiff competition nowadays. These services are meant to ensure all the financial transactions were handled appropriately. Occasionally it is practical to contract out financial matters that are extremely tedious especially when the work can be done properly by using an accounting service in Singapore.

Below are the key advantages that an SME can expect by outsourcing their accounting functions:

The company get handy tips (Also see Common Accounting Mistakes Made By Small Businesses) from the outsourced accounting firm. On top of the cost saving with lower priced outsourced services, the fresh eye may also help detect any control weakness that may have existed before the outsourcing.
The key personnel end up being without time consuming and non-value adding tasks. It gives them the ability to be more focus upon even more curcial financial strategies for the improvement of the company.
There is no need of fretting any longer regarding the quick turnover of the personnel as the staff management is now something only occurs at the service provider’s end and that in other words outsourced the headache to someone else.

How do you choose a trustable accounting firm?

There are tons of accounting firm in Singapore that are providing such services. You have to choose the one that really helps you to keep details bookkeeping needs. The very first step is to evaluate whether your organisation will obtain benefit that outweigh the cost of outsourcing. It will certainly aid you to discover the most effective firm for the job.

Price

Prices and fees depend on the type of service that you want to outsource but need to be budget-friendly in terms of value. Staying away from ultra low-cost firm sometimes help you to stay clear of problems because the quality is also usually compromised. Consider from the perspective of value instead may lead you to a better option.

Experience

The years of experience can give you some hints of the effectiveness of the provider. Just those business that employ people having a considerable experience in financing, taxes, audit, costs and accounts can deliver the most effective for your business.

Technology

It is critical to determine whether the agency makes use of the efficient technology such as cloud based accounting software to manage your work and has the capability to use them for swift and anticipated results.

Profit and Loss Account

Profit and Loss Account

We came across a lot of companies’ director that does not ever look at the profit and loss account close enough but simply ask, “What is the profit/loss number?”. This is a total waste of valuable information that they can leverage on to derive business strategies.

Well, we cannot educate you to become an accounting professional. However, we can provide you the fundamentals to assist you get the idea of the profit and loss statement.

The core concept of profit and loss always surround on this one basic formula: profit or loss is what you get after deducting all expenses from all the revenue generated for a given period. All other things are meant solely to provide more information on the expenses or sales so you can tell exactly how straightforward it is to be well-verse in the profit and loss statement

In some cases, the bookkeeper uses various words for sales, profits, as well as costs. This can make things confusion and gave you the wrong impression that accounting is an uphill struggle. Occasionally, some bookkeeper might use terms like revenue can be rather than sales, it is not difficult to interpret, you just need to be more pay more attention of the nature of the transaction.

The company’s sales can be categorised into different classification depends on the nature the of business or the type of information that add value to the management. For instance, a car dealer might be interested to separate their sales into new and used car sale as the type have distinctive treatment on GST calculation. All these revenues are then aggregated when drawing up the profit and loss account.

The same is true when it comes to expenses can separated into different groups such as good purchase cost, staff cost, rental and utilities etc. All these costs will eventually be added to get the total expenses figure but breaking the cost down into different classes offers insight on the killer areas to be focus on.

As mentioned above, sales minus the expenses gives you the net profit. However, the profit may not always represent the cash flow in a given period. The key difference between profit and cash flow is the timing so when looking at a longer period of time, the cash flow will match the profit or loss.

With these, you should be able to get a grasp of profit and loss statement and relax, if you don’t. We are working with a panel of accounting firm in Singapore that can offer the expertise and help you with these paper work.

Accounting Principles: Going Concern Principle

Accounting Principles - Going Concern Principle

The going concern principle (Also look at Accrual Concept, Monetary Unit Assumption and Business entity concept ) mentions that an organisation will certainly proceed with its operations for the near future. The principle presumes that the firm will not be required to stop its procedures or sell off because of any type of factor.

Keep in mind that services presume that they will certainly run forever and also they will certainly utilize their properties up until they are totally decreased. Services accumulate costs as well as pre-pay expenditures due to the fact that they plan to run forever.

This indicates that some organisations may not run forever. If your accounting professional thinks that business could no much longer be a going concern, this increases the concern of whether your organisation’s possessions are damaged.

This implies that the worth of a company that is presumed to be a going concern is generally more than its discontinuation worth. This is due to the fact that a going concern entity can proceed making revenues for as lengthy as it runs.

Auditors review a service’s capability to proceed running as a going concern entity for a duration not more than year. There are a couple of points they think about to establish if business ought to proceed running. These consist of:

– Proceeded adverse patterns particularly running outcomes

– Infraction of finance contracts by the business

– The firm being refuted profession credit history by its providers

– Any kind of legal action versus the business that needs it to quit running

– The firm undergoing long-lasting expensive dedications

It’s essential to maintain your organisation procedures tidy and also escape anything that may make an auditor tip that your company must not proceed forever. It’s feasible for your company to reduce an auditor’s sight of the organisation’s going concern condition.

Let’s not be reluctant to talk to an accounting firm in Singapore if you require aid so to guarantee you are constantly on the appropriate track.

Accounting Principles : Monetary Unit Assumption

Accounting Principles - Monetary Unit Assumption

Accounting is a systematic recording, compilation of reports, and analysis of financial transactions of business. Note that a business accountant should only communicate business transactions which can be expressed in monetary units. This is what is known as the monetary unit assumption in accounting (Also see Accrual concept and Business Entity concept).

As an accounting or a financial professional, you should abide by ethical standards that govern what kind of business you conduct, who you serve, and how you use your skills. The Financial Reporting Standards set some of these account ethical standards and accounting principles. Regardless of whether you want to hire an accountant or you want to do the accounting tasks for your business on your own, you should be aware of these accounting standards and principles. One of the accounting principles you should understand is the monetary unit assumption.

The monetary unit assumption is sometimes known as the money measurement assumption. For you to apply this accounting principle, you must ensure that the transactions you are recording are reliably quantifiable in terms of money.  For example, if you pay accrued wages of S$3000 to an employee, this transaction can be recorded in your business books because it can be expressed in terms of money. However, this doesn’t mean that the amount must always be exact. In some instances, estimates are used in the preparation of business financial statements.

Non-monetary transactions

These are transactions that don’t involve any financial matter and don’t result in a transfer of funds between the buyer and the seller and don’t affect the business financial accounts.  For instance, employees are a valuable asset in your business, and you can’t express the value of your employees in terms of money. Also, a business brand name is an important asset, but you can’t attach a monetary value to it. According to the monetary unit accounting principle, you cannot include the value of your business employees in your business books.

Limitations of Monetary Unit Assumption

Though monetary unit assumption offers basis upon which to value business transactions, there are two primary limitations: handling items which are difficult to quantify and inflation.

Keep in mind that the monetary unit assumption doesn’t take into account the effect of inflation. Inflation is the increase of prices of products with time. For example, a product could be bought at S$1 in 1977, but today, it costs S$4. The monetary assumption doesn’t provide basis for accounting for this difference in prices as a result of inflation.

Talk to an accounting firm in Singapore today so to get some professional advices so to ensure your company’s accounts are properly kept.