How to become an accountantHow to become an accountant
Accountancy is one of the most highly sought after services in the business world.
Great businesses need great accountants and if you can put yourself into this bracket, you are setting yourself up nicely for a long and successful career.
But what does it take to become one of these highly skilled experts entrusted with analysing the finances of business and individuals and making sound growth suggestions based on their findings?
In this blog, the team at www.accountantsplus.net will help you to find out. As one of the top accountancy firms in central Scotland, they know better than anyone after all.
Without further ado, lets jump straight in and examine the steps that you need to take to thrive in the accountancy sector.
What do accountants do?
Before you start your journey to becoming an accountant, you first need to learn exactly what it is that you will be doing each day on the job.
Accountants have a huge responsibility, in charge of providing businesses with financial advice that they can use to optimise their activities and make better decisions going forward.
As an accountant you may be asked to monitor finances on an ongoing basis, or brought in at a key time such as the end of the tax year to oversee annual accounts preparation.
You may also be tasked with managing payroll and investigating and mitigating risk.
What skills do you need to be an accountant?
As an accountant you need to be great with people. You not only need to be able to communicate often complicated concepts and ideas in a simple and easy to understand way, but you also need to be a calm and reassuring presence.
You are giving advice to people who have worked incredibly hard for their money and giving them advice on how to use it. They will understandably be wary and it is your job to prove your worth and gain their trust.
What qualifications are required to become an accountant?
It might surprise you to find you that there are actually no legal requirements on who can be an accountant. Unlike many professions, a university or college degree is not a prerequisite for providing accountancy services.
However, this is slightly misleading as most accountancy firms will expect you to possess some form of formal qualification and you are unlikely to get too far without them.
Any degree in maths, economics, statistics, or business finance is a good starting point for a career as an accountant.
What is great about these degrees if that they are the foundation of many different career paths so even if you wish to be an accountant now but later change your mind, your studies will still come in useful.
If you do not wish to go to university, or didn’t get in, don’t worry, there are many other routes into the industry.
One of the best of these is through a professional body such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) training schemes.